kimik

Just got a couple of freshly slabbed copies back from Sarasota. This book is my favorite early X-Men since it was the first HG back issue I bought when I was starting to collect seriously as a teenager in the early 1990s. It graded out at 8.5 years later, and was promptly sold for an "obscene" return in 2004-2005.

It is funny to see the board reactions to these threads when they pop up every year or so. We have seen numerous price gap ups since the start of these boards, and the pattern has always been the same for the established keys/hot covers - run up, plateau/small correction for a while, then run up again as cycle repeats itself. And, there is a pattern as to which books move first and which follow later (as well as publishers) - the top books in any age move first, then the rest follow typically in order of importance. Movies/TV have distorted this a bit, but titles like the X-Men and FF were no

Shadecraft #1 is hitting $20 now. I am surprised - I did a bulk order, but was not expecting it to do anything until a trailer for the show since I figured it would be heavily ordered.

How much is it costing you by not bagging and boarding as 9.8s turn to 9.2-9.6 instead. As for the LCS, drop me a PM, but you should know.

I posted this in another thread recently, but my money is on a Valiant book based on the number of store stock longs I have seen of Rai 0, Turok 1 and Bloodshot 1.

Joey is the best in the biz. And I told you so.

You should have taken a picture of how you had those stored. On a serious note, look at the stock that one LCS owner in town is pulling out from his 80s/early 90s spec buys that are in storage. A couple of years ago he hit 93/100 9.8s on his Infinity Gauntlet 1 submissions (and the 5 copies I bought from his other case graded 9.8). Prior to that, the NM 98s that I bought when he broke that case graded 9.8 for the most part with just a couple of 9.6s. It is possible if the cases/boxes are stored properly.

If you stored books better in your hoard you would have more 9.8s.

Although, right now X94 > Hulk 180 from a value perspective. Hopefully that keeps up.

It was only a 6.5. The grades were hit and miss across the collection. Off the top of my head, the early issues graded out as #1 CGC 4.5, #2 CGC 4.0, #3 CGC 5.0, #4 CGC 3.5, #5 CGC 4.5.

It is fun to see how high prices have come in two years. In August 2019 I paid $8K CDN for a run of X-Men #1-300 that yielded my CGC 4.5 #1.

It likely will, similar to Hulk 180 and 181.

I wonder if it is not even higher than that. I know of two raw copies that are still here in town as of last year to the best of people's knowledge, along with potentially another 1 or 2 low grade copies that surfaced in the late 90s that no one has seen since (I do not know if the LCS owners are talking about the same copy or not). If Mitch's print run estimate of 250,000 is accurate, then having just 0.08% of the print run survive seems low to me.

I don't think that is a risk with the first gen holders. There is a reason those books were prone to shaken slab syndrome.

I picked up 20 of the Rai 0s, but back then they were everywhere. At the time stores were dumping their 90s overstock - the same intermediary had moved a long of ASM 300s at $5 apiece from the same source a year prior to that (along with longs of ASM 252 and each of the McSpidey 1 covers). Again, I foolishly only bought 20 instead of taking them all.