Not a clue. I own a beat up copy because of the Kubert cover, but not sure why it's going so high. I did look at Lonestar, and they are buying high grade copies at about $10 a clip, so they would be selling it in the $30-40 range most likely if they had any in stock. However, they are buying a lot of the issues of that series around that one at about the same rate, so it may not be the particular issue but the series itself that is fetching those kind of prices. However, once you get in grades less than VF, their buying price drops off a cliff (and all their in stock copies of F or lower and cheap, or CGC consignments of high grade books), so my guess is that DC horror books (like romance books) in high grade are harder to get because they weren't necessarily bought by collectors like super-hero books were, but by more casual readers and they were not preserved in bags and boards for posterity immediately after reading, but were often read, reread, passed around and then thrown in a box or a shelf in an attic or garage until someone later sold them off when cleaning out said garage/attic or found them and put them up on ebay or what have you, so higher grade copies command premium prices but low grade copies can be gotten on the cheap.

Out of curiosity, what was the grade of the copy on ebay you saw?

-M

I stumbled across this guy's channel due to the explosion of Marvel cards. It popped up in my recommended videos on youtube because I watch a lot of comic-related videos, and the headline about Marvel cards intrigued me so I watched it, and then watched one or two others to see what he was about, and now even though I did not like or subscribe, his new videos show up in my recommended videos all the time. His stuff is a decent window into the speculator market and mindset though (a mindset I don't share but I know a lot of comic dealers and amateur wheeler and dealers among my network of convention friends and acquaintances who follow this kind of stuff so I am passingly familiar with it). His stuff can give you sense of the approach and scope of the spec market, and this video in particular focuses on two Wandavision spec books (FF 94, ASM Annual 16) and tracks their price growth in the wake of he show. It's an interesting watch if you're trying to get a handle on what the modern spec market looks like, and it's not alone in the plethora of spec-focused comic channels on youtube.



It certainly is a different perspective on the world of comics than mine, but I've known folks who follow this kind of worldview of collecting since I first started getting to know collectors when I discovered my first lcs and conventions circa '84 and '85. But back then it wasn't the internet they turned to for info it was the market analysis articles in each year's Overstreet and sources like that.

-M

It's LISTED there because the owners think they can get that much for it.

A quick check of the Sold Items shows that since December 15 of last year, just five copies of this book have sold individually, ranging from $3.99 up to $17.50 for a copy marked NM- condition.  That last book is the only one to break $8, excluding shipping.

I never look at the asking prices as the going rate.  Always check the Sold/Completed listings to see what the book is really valued at in the market.

So hours after the White Vision reveal on Wandavision, a copy of WCA 45 CGC 9.8 sold for $1475 + $50 shipping on ebay, so effectively $1500. For the same money you could get an Avengers 57 CGC in the 9.0 to 9.2 range. That's kind of jaw-dropping.

Out of curiosity I was watching a youtuber's (swagglehaus who I linked here for his Marvel card video in Shax's thread about trading cards) post-show analysis of some of the key books relevant to the Wandavision show to analyze their growth and what the future may hold in terms of their value. And he said something which stood out to me. His aphorism to describe the way the market works now-which was-books are only valuable as long as the are relevant to pop culture. Essentially if they stay relevant, they stay valuable, but if they lose relevancy their value will plummet. So the future value of WCA #45 may very well be contingent on what role White Vision plays in the MCU moving forward. If he remains a big part of the MCU, he remains relevant and demand will remain for the book and it will hold value. If he has a lesser role or is written out, the relevancy disappears and so will the value.

It makes for a very volatile market to be sure. It's not entirely different from the 80s and 90s when a book jumping because a hot artist was working on it was common, and it's value held only as long as that artist remained a hot commodity. IF he fell out of favor, the value of the book dropped. The scale between then and now is a little different, but that mechanism of relevancy to popularity dictating if a book holds value is the same.

It seems though, if you are buying books to keep (collect or read) and not playing the spec game, you need to act either in the very short term (before a book gets tied to a pop culture vehicle) or in the long term (after it loses relevancy) as the middle game is too volatile and too pricey to operate in. And if a book remains relevant, you'll eventually have to pony up to get it, as it will hold value.

I am not sure how relevant the Wandavision books will remain-with Flacon and Winter Soldier on the horizon and Loki after that, I can see the "oooh shiny" squirrel effect drawing people's attention away from the Wandavision books unless some kind of announcement of new projects or more details of Do Strange 2 with Wanda's role hinted at are made to keep people's attention on those books.

It makes me grateful I am not really in the market for much when it comes to Marvel back issues any more, as the DC film and movie slate doesn't seem to have the ability to move the needle as much as MCU material does, but the effects are still felt on DC books and indy stuff with ties/futures in the larger pop culture zeitgeist.

-M

Why would someone pay $50 shipping for comic book?