Whenever a new month rolls around I find myself peeking at the new month’s GPA sales data. I’ve been telling myself that price drops should be levelling off soon for at least the last 8 months, it’s like an echo. I’m not prepared to point out any meaningful trends with my limited data sampling but I’m still sensing that more price drops are coming. But again, its really choppy now, which probably means we are in what should be the trough. I saw a CGC 9.8 Amazing Spider-Man #129 CGC 9.8 bump up 10% over a few recent sales which is great news but I also saw a CGC 6.5 Incredible Hulk #181 go for way too low, as I said, choppy. We’re all touting scarcity as the antidote for these price drops but even there we have to be choosy. If I had the time I’d start a new column called “the next time this books sells it will pop!”, I had that thought while I was watching a recent sale of Sensation Comics #20, there had been no meaningful sales in over 5 years and I knew the one on auction would go high, I think it almost tripled its last GPA. Unfortunately finding the good stuff, before it gets to an auction, is getting harder and harder, my advice to you is if you have a book within grasp that you know shouldn’t be within your grasp (you’ll know), grasp it.
While I’m talking about GPA, an important thing just happened with 2025 rolling in, the the GPA past years headers have moved to show 2024 and 2023 when logging in with a laptop or a desktop computer. Its important those skewed by pandemic years of 2021 and 2022 get pushed out of eyesight, the front end of 2023 still had some pandemic residual values showing so it will be even better next year when the quick glance will only show the 2024 and 2025. None of this matters to those of us who take the time to go in deep into the GPA site when analyzing data, but who has time for that.
Our Ice Collectibles YouTube Channel is over a week old and I feel like I’ve been doing it for months, it is quite an involving enterprise, thanks to all who’ve checked the videos out. I’ll remind everyone now and then to subscribe to the channel if you haven’t yet.
As always, the show must go on and for us that show is the icecollectibles weekly eBay auction. Our Cover of the Week, which I found while digging through the “going to eBay auction” pile, is Chamber of Chills #7, Harvey Comics from April 1952, drawn by Al Ivison, this is pure pre code horror right here. Oh, and the winner of the book will not be disappointed, the interior is nasty!
From the same Chamber of Chills #7 we get our Ad of the Week, a house ad boasting about all the great titles available from Harvey Publications. Man, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many duds one one page, I mean, what on here is remotely collectible? Maybe the Mystery and Detective books but how do you show off 13 books from 1952 and come away with almost nothing?
On a good day I fancy myself a creative type but damn, I wish I had 10% of Jack Kirby’s creativity, the man was a wellspring of innovation and ideas. This famous double page spread from Fantastic four Annual #6 takes you to places no other artist was taking you to at the time, too cool.
Last night we closed out our latest weekly icecollectibles eBay auction, there were some great lots in this auction including this delicious run of Fantastic Four. FF #161 to 170 closed at $164.50 USD. I thought this was a great result for both the buyer and the seller. It’s so, hard to go out and sell raw run books individually, investing in the time and effort to try and earn $30 each for them will cost you more in than you earn, a lot with all 10 in earns a great return for the seller and offers the buyer some good savings when compared to trying to buy them all individually, win/win.
Hey! I bet the issues of Sad Sack are worth twice as much in Canadian currency as anywhere else!