Bronze-Age Marvel Variants

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Important Iron Fist 14 sale sets record

CGC boardie Keldog sent me a message about an important sale of an exceptionally high-grade Iron Fist 14 35 cent variant. High-grade dealer Greg Reese's Rare Comics sold this CGC 9.2 copy of this key bronze-age issue. The sales site shows the comic as sold with the price shown as $6000. GPAnalysis reports the final sale as $5600. Since the last reported sale of a CGC 9.2 Iron Fist 14 was $4100, this is a new record for the book. This sale amount is also higher than the last reported sale of one of the two 9.4 copies in existence in 2006 for $5100. Your guess is as good as mine, but this sales implies a five figure value for a 9.4 copy in today's market.

Kid Colt 219 ebay sale

A couple blogs ago, I mentioned that a great variant hunter had found a lot with at least two Kid Colt 35 cent variants. Well the second Kid Colt auction ended and again produced expected results. $413.28 for what could only be described as a Poor to Fair copy. I don't think there are any other bronze age comics which would sell for this kind of money in this condition except for 35 cent price variants. In fact, I am not sure that there are many silver age comics that would sell for this kind of money in this condition. A poor Amazing Fantasy 15 which is the key silver age comic and the first appearance of Spider-Man would sell for between $1000 and $1500.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Avengers 147 30 cent price variant latest addition to the 4 Figure Club

A sensational example of Avengers 147 30 cent price variant was recently auctioned by Heritage. It is the latest price variant issue to crack the $1000 dollar barrier. It is not surprising because of the popularity of the Avengers movie, the popularity of the Avengers comic book title, and the popularity of the marvel price variants. The single highest graded example of this issue by two grades (followed by 2 9.4s) this auction was sure to bring the excitement and it did not disappoint.

Some other notable Price Variant Sales.

On ComicLink,

On ebay

one of the best if not the best 30 cent variant collection ever sold,

another good ebay seller,

From Heritage

Arrrgh. I was out of the country and missed this one. Kid Colt 218!!!!!!

I went to China for a week and completely missed this one. One of the best variant hunters found a zero feedback seller listing a lot consisting of several issues of bronze age dreckage. He smartly noticed that the seller was in Toledo, Ohio which we think is one of the test areas for selling 35 cent variants and that despite the sketchy pictures, this lot was worth the $50 bucks that the seller was asking. Why would this normally ignored box of bronze age beaters be worth $50, you ask? Well check the scan and look closely in the middle.

The variant hunter received the books and correctly listed the Kid Colt 218 as the super rare Kid Colt 218 35 cent price variant and the auction closed at $540. Yes, $540 in VG, and I can assure you that the buyer was ecstatic. If I had seen the auction, the book would have gone higher, but still it wasn't a bad return for the seller. In my opinion, sometimes 3 day auctions get missed, I think that a 7 day or 10 day auction would have achieved even better results for this book.

Ohh, and by the way, the lot also contained an even more beat-up Kid Colt 219. We will see how that one does.

GPA variant report for May

As I have written before, GPAnalysis is the best source of information on certified comic sales. I highly recommend a subscription if for no other reason than getting the market reports. One of the market reports is the price variant sales report. This is the report for May 2012.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Some Notable 35 Cent Variant Sales on Ebay

It appears that several new collectors have entered the 35 cent variant fray. I have missed out on three books that I need in the past four weeks with what I thought were strong bids but in actuality wasn't even close.

John Carter 1