CGC Census Analysis: Ten Year Look at Spider-Man 14 & 300 1 1

[DC#]

Caught some YouTube video recently where the host predicted that the next five years would see an "explosion" of comic grading.    That sort of ran counter to my intuition which was the softening of the market and the exit of more casual market participants would lead to an eventual decline in volume of grading.   One of the big changes would be declining prices making more books less economically viable to slab.     I would expect a lag where the peak grading feel somewhere behind peak prices....but I would still assume the curves would somewhat mirror each other.   

Decided to take a look at a couple of Spider-Man keys to see what has been happening over the past 10 years with a particular look at the past 4-5.    Wasn't expecting to really see the entirety of grading ecosystem and so I don't know if I can really say anything about whether volume of grading is declining.    But there was some interesting stuff.     Took a look at ASM 14 and 300 Universal copies between January 2014 and January 2024

 

In looking at volume of submissions.   Both 14 and 300 saw big growth in the late 2010's - with 300 really rocketing up with the pandemic.     14 has been bouncing around at pretty high levels since the pandemic (double or more the rate of submission as 2013-16) but did drop off pretty sizably in 2023.   300 was a rocket ship in 2021 and really cratered in 2023 - but still at levels that are double the mid 2010s.     Will submission volume keep going down if prices don't stabilize some?   Has the readily available population of quality books been diminished in the past few years meaning fewer of the lower grade books will make it to CGC?

 

When you look at the change of number of copies by grade - 14 and 300 are exactly the opposite (as you would expect).     14 saw far fewer additions in the 8.5 and above grades and a lot of growth in the lower mid-grades - seems logical more people were getting the lower quality books graded as prices rose so dramatically.    300 did see some growth on the tail (anyone have a 0.5 copy out there?) but it was really concentrated on the 8.5 and above books.   9.8 alone added over 1.1k copies in the 10 year period.     

 

 

So the influx of books driven by the rising values really altered the % of books in grade - even though overall quantity of books rose in every grade.     For example, ASM 14 in 8.5 went from 6.5% of all Universal copies in 2014 to 3.2% in 2024.    The average grade of all books went from 5.76 to 4.93 over that time.   I know a lot of people talk about lots of high grade Silver books out there unslabbed - but if they are out there they have not been submitted at the same rate as the lower grade books.     Even 300 saw ratios go down for 9.2 and better as more and more of the lower books came onto the census.   It's average went from 8.93 to 8.54

 

So what does all of this mean?   I have no idea.    I just wanted to look at it.  

 

Forgot to add:   ASM 300 Universal grew a whopping 21,590 copies or 313% between Jan 14 and Jan 24.   ASM 14 grew by 2,776 copies or 172%.    There were 57% more ASM 300s on the census in 2014 than there are ASM 14s in 2024.   

Edited May 23 by DC#

[valiantman]

It's interesting to watch these numbers every six months, particularly the average universal grade.

Here is Amazing Spider-Man #300:

http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/comicid/273/6mo

The average universal grade of 8.58 (2024) has dropped from 8.78 five years ago (2019), and it was 8.93 as you noted back in 2014.

Here is Amazing Spider-Man #14:

http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/comicid/118/6mo