The Dreaded 6.5s ?
One of the toughest grades to get a handle on is the dreaded 6.5.
The question is: Are you getting your money’s worth for the ½ grade improvement. Let’s use Incredible Hulk #1 as the example. The 6.0 grade for the book is $3000.00. Go down ½ a grade to 5.5 and the book guides at $2750.00 but go up half a grade to 6.5 and we’re looking at a guide value of $4750.00.
So here I am upgrading my 5.5 to a 6.0 and paying $250.00 for the ½ grade upgrade. All of a sudden my 6.0 is not good enough and I want a 6.5. I’d be looking at $1750.00 extra this time for my ½ grade upgrade.
These 6.5 grades are tricky because they’re the first step into the massive void that is the 6.0 to 8.0 grade splits.
Let’s see how the market is treating this trickiest of grades.
Amazing Spider-Man #29, Marvel Comics, (10/65), graded by CGC at 6.5 with Off White to White pages sold on eBay for $190.00 on April 15th. Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $106.50. This book sold through the Best Offer option at 178% of guide!! Wow! This doesn’t seem right. As a comic book dealer, I have lots of mid grade early run Spidey’s but I have a heck of a time getting even guide for them. Someone made this offer! Perhaps it was an alignment of the specific book, the specific grade and a specific buyer that all came together for a super strong result. If the buyer is reading this I’ll ask him to contact me because I have more of the same to sell! Advantage seller!
X-Men #1, Marvel Comics, (9/63), graded by CGC at 6.5 with Off White to White pages sold on eBay for $4,199.95 on April 14th. Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $3543.75. This comic sold at 18.5% above guide through the Buy it now option! Every now and again ‘Buy it Nows’ get that nice bite. Though I will say that any of the big Marvel Keys above a 6.0 grade have been getting sold money. I do feel a 6.5 is not a strong enough grade on an X-Men #1 to merit too much a premium. There is a built in premium inherent in the 6.5 grade that I think should suffice for this book. That being said, the market disagrees with me because the book was able to get almost 20% over this guide price. Advantage seller.
Green Lantern #76, DC Comics, (4/70), graded by CGC at 6.5 with White pages sold for $251.38 on eBay on April 13th. Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $161.50. There were 20 bids that chased this book to 155.6% of guide. Over the last several years the guide has really meant little with this book. A Bronze Age 6.5 should not be getting over 50% premiums but the cost of this book in the higher grades is so prohibitive that results like this are expected. An extra bonus for this copy is the White Pages. Page quality is a big factor in value and the buyer got the best page quality possible. Green Lantern #76 will remain a big book whose guide value will increase dramatically so on this one I’m going with advantage buyer.
Superman #8, DC Comics, (1-2/41), graded by CGC at 6.5 with Cream to Off White pages sold for $1050.00 on eBay on April 13th. Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $1299.50. A Best offer of 80.8% of guide did the trick for this book! This was the kind of result a was expecting on most the 6.5s that sold. This below guide performance actually bucked the trend which was nice to see (of course the seller of this book wished otherwise). Very early Superman comics are extremely collectible and there are not that many out there grading above 6.0 so I think this is an excellent long term purchase. I’d love to have a solid run of early Sups graded 6.5. I think the seller puller the trigger to early on the Best Offer feature. Advantage buyer.
Marvel Spotlight #5, Marvel Comics, (8/72), graded by CGC at 6.5 with Off White pages sold for $122.50 on eBay on April 11th. Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 6.5 is $93.50. It took 15 bids to get this book to 131% of guide. I’d say that Ghost Rider is one of the top 5 Marvel creations of the 70s. To me he’s right up there with the likes of Wolverine, Punisher and Blade. Spotlight #5 has one of those black covers that make very high grade copies ridiculously expensive. Someone looking for a solid copy on a budjet has to set his sights on 8.0 copies or below. This 6.5 shows very nicely and it does have good page quality. Picking it up at a 31% premium above guide is close to the mark. Neutral.
Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Price Guide Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
