In honor of this past Wednesday’s Collecting and Investing Tips #7 (where we looked at how to spot restoration on lower grade comics) this week’s auction highlights will look at the hottest of the hot – with a catch.
There is nothing hotter on the comic book market than the Marvel Keys. It seems record prices are being set every time one of these comics goes up for auction in high grade. What about the lowest of the low grade? How are these comics faring when they’re all beat to crap and hanging on by a thread. Let’s have a look.
Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962) is the natural place to start since this is the grand daddy of all the Marvel keys. A CGC graded 1.0 sold for $2095.00 on Oct. 13th. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 2.0 is $2400.00. If we divided the 2.0 price by 2 to get the 1.0 price we’d come up with $1200.00 as guide value for a 1.0. This dog copy sold for a healthy 75% above the strict guide value. In my view this is a very impressive result. I still think there is a lot of room for Amazing Fantasy #15 price wise.
Fantastic Four #1 (1961) had 2 really rough copies recently sell on ebay. On Oct. 5th a CGC graded 1.5 sold for $910.00 while on Oct. 7th a CGC graded 1.0 sold for $665.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 2.0 is $1700.00 which would technically make a 1.0 guide at $850 and a 1.5 guide at $1275. Both these copies finished well below guide with the CGC 1.0 copy realizing about 78% of guide and the CGC 1.5 copy realizing an even worse 71% of guide. It appears to be all about the grade with the FF #1s.
Incredible Hulk #1 (1962) is also a super tough Marvel key. On Oct. 14th a CGC graded 1.5 sold for $800.00. The Overstreet price guide value for this comic at 2.0 is $1000.00 which would technically made a 1.5 guide at $750.00. This low grade Hulk realized about 7% above guide.
Well. As expected, the Amazing Fantasy #15 is overperforming even in really low grade. It was a bit surprising to see Fantastic Four #1 do so poorly vs. guide. Hulk, as always, held his own.
Walter Durajlija is an Overstreet Price Guide Advisor and Shuster Award winner. He owns Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
