A couple of lower grade 35 cent price variant books to illustrate a point.

There is a tremendous amount of collector interest in the Marvel Price Variant issues.  Collectors looking to complete specific titles and collectors trying to complete the entire series create a healthy competition for any fresh material that hits the market.  In addition to the Rawhide Kid 141 in CGC 4.5 that I mentioned in an earlier post, there were two other sales of nice CGC certified 4.5 books that illustrate the true rarity of these books and offer a perspective on the pricing for the books.

On ComicLink, a CGC 4.5 copy of Amazing Spider-Man 173 sold for $205.  This is the seventh highest graded copy out of eight graded copies.  The key term is that there are only eight graded copies and there are certainly more than eight Spider-Man collectors looking for these books.  Comparisons to sales of the regular issue are really difficult, because with 17 copies graded in 9.8, there just aren't that many collectors looking for a CGC 4.5 regular edition.  Honestly, a 4.5 copy of the regular edition is not worth slabbing.  The closest comparison I could find is a CGC 8.0 regular edition that sold in December 2012 for $10 (or 1/2 of the CGC encapsulation fees).  A CGC 4.5 Spider-Man price variant is worth twenty times a CGC 8.0 of the regular issue.

GPA reports the sale in May of 2013 of an Iron Fist 15 graded in CGC 4.5 for $180.  The statistics are similar to the Spidey 173.  There are 21 total books graded of the price variant issue while there are 21 9.8s graded of the regular issue.  The closest comparison is again a CGC 8.0 regular edition that sold for $19 in September of 2012.  A CGC 4.5 Iron Fist price variant is worth ten times a CGC 8.0 of the regular issue.

It bears repeating.  35 Cent Price Variants regularly trade at ten to twenty times the price of the regular issues.  For the rarest of the rare books like the HB's, horror, war and western price variants the multiple is 100 times, i.e. Scooby Doo 1 in CGC 8.5 at $3500 versus $35 for the regular issue.  Or try Star Wars 1 in CGC 9.6 for $26,000 versus $190 for the regular issue.