November 2014 Comic Market Report: Heritage. I Guess I'll Talk About Heritage.

At one level, the month of November was a bit boring. We've gotten to a new normal in the comics hobby and at this new level, something like an Action #1 selling for over $300,000 isn't that big of a deal. Lead by that book and the seriously underwhelming Amazing Spider-Man #300 cover, the whole November Heritage Signature Auction overall failed to spark much excitement for me (with two personal exceptions which I'll talk about in a minute.) It was a solid auction, with a few highlights, but there was nothing that really set my collector's heart aflutter. As Mark at Bleeding Cool has pointed out a couple if times when covering vintage comics, the record sale for a comic book was $350,000 just over five years ago. Now that number has been left so far in the dust a $300,000 sale barely registers for one of the big books.

On a personal level it was very exciting for me as I got my hands on two books for my Daredevil run that are just phenomenal copies and I got them for what I felt like were fair prices. I was also able to watch them sell live, which is always fun- at least when you win.

Since there's dominant theme or book for this month, I'll be covering more books than I normally do.

Sound good?

Ho-hum, a $300,000 Action #1

The big book in the recent Heritage auction was the aforementioned Action #1. It sold for $310,700 which is, nowadays, mostly noteworthy for the fact that it's less than the $388,375 the 3.0 Billy Wright copy sold for when it went up for auction in 2013. It's still a lot of money. It just seems like this is the new normal and we're no longer excited by some of these results.

There's something wrong with that.

I mean, someone just paid $300,000 for a beater. That's just crazy.

The Sexiest Book Alive?

The Loveland Collection, a subset of books in this auction, featured some really nice copies. The Journey Into Mystery #83 shown above is a prime example. To my mind, this book was one of the best buys in the auction. I don't know what the future holds for Silver Age Marvel keys, but whatever happens to them in the future, a perfectly centered, white paged copy is going to lead the way. I'm not a huge Thor fan, and even I covet this copy.

If you get a chance, take a look at the other books from this collection. There are two more posted later on (lucky me), but beyond the Daredevils there are some other really sharp books that came out of the collection. I especially like the Fantastic Four #52 (which went to a boardie!), the Fantastic Four #5, and the The Avengers #9.

Whoever owned those books had a great eye.

I Guess I Can Stop Promoting Pep Comics #22

When I originally launched the $100,000 club list it felt a bit bold to place the Pep Comics #22 and Archie #1 from the Church collection on the list. I felt like they were undervalued keys but it was double what they'd been purchased for when they sold as a set. Also, at the time, Archie wasn't as well appreciated as he is now and the difficulty of sourcing those books wasn't widely understood. Not so much anymore. When a 7.0 sells for $143,400.00, it's no longer undervalued.

Which is as it should be.

The $100,000 paid for the Church Pep 22 and Archie #1 looks like a real bargain right now. That's got to be $500,000 worth of comics in today's market.

$140,000 Worth of Stats

The Amazing Spider-Man #300 cover sold for $140,000. Considering that it sold for $125,000 previously this sale was a loss for the consignor. Assuming that the consignor sold without a seller's commission (and I would think that would be the case for a piece of this caliber) he ended up losing few thousand dollars on the sale.

It's a weird piece. On the one hand, it's mostly stat so it's not all that much from a pure art perspective. On the other hand it's the cover to Amazing Spider-Man 300 and it should be worth a bazillion dollars. In this case, the fact that there's barely any art wins.

Too bad because it's truly an iconic image.

The Best Possible 9.4s

Finally, these are the books I ended up winning from the Loveland Collection. To my eye these are basically the best copies I was ever going to see at 9.4. I went all-in on them. Like many of the Loveland books these well-centered, white paged books. I'm a happy dude. I have a handful of books left to finish the run. A nice #1 and a nice #7 are going to be the big goals for the next year or two. Wish me luck…

That's all for now. I've got ComicLink and ComicConnect to sort through for next month so I ought to be busy!