Picks of the Week One Year Ago Today! 4/20/17

What up CHU Live Crew!?! Shawn B. back again with another “One Year Ago Today round up.
Hope everyone’s doing well! Warm weather is starting here in New England…sort of. Not sure about everyone else but that Vitamin D really gives me a jolt of energy after a long winter. Even walking into my comic room feels different and gets me excited for a summer of collecting and comic events. I usually just go to the Boston Con, but this year I’ll also be attending MASSive Comic Con in June. Want to get my first print of The Pro signed by Jimmy and Amanda. That’s right we are on a first name basis. We go way back. We even went to different schools together.
Anyway, this week I wanted to quickly break down how I am determining Original and Current Value. Remember this is new for me too so I am trying to hone in on the best approach here. So, if you have any suggestions please let me know.
Original Value(or cost): Due to limited historical data of sales one year ago I’ve mostly been using Midtown and ComicBookRealm to find the original value. For variants this can often be higher than the average sales price one year ago and be a little unfair to Anthony, Mel and Poyo. We have solutions in place going forward, including Mel (Thanks Mel!) now providing current ebay pricing on his specs but those won’t come to fruition for another 50 weeks. So again, if anyone has any suggestions on a better way to calculate this for the next 50 weeks please let us know.
Current Value: For this I usually first check the main on line retailers to see if the book is sold out everywhere. If not, then my feeling is that the value is the current asking price. If so, I will check eBay for sold listings and get an average of all the sales for the last 60 days and try to use no fewer than 10 sales to get an average. This can be challenging at times because the book could be sold out everywhere with little to no sales in the last 90 days. For these situations I think going forward, I will provide the current asking prices with a note. Again, always open to suggestions.
Looking forward to the feedback. And with that said here we go with the 411 on the 420 specs.
WINNERS!

Disney Kingdoms Haunted Mansion #2 Cover C Incentive Brian Crosby Variant Cover – Mel & Anthony Pick
 Original Value: $10 Current Value: No recent sales but going for sale from $40-60.
 Crosby had a solid variant run on this series. You could still double or triple your money from the original cost but I believe a quick flip here would have seen the most gain.

Mad Balls #1 Cover C Incentive Dan Zettwoch Variant Cover – Mel & Anthony Pick 
Original Value: $10 Current Value: $25
Exactly a year ago Mel said, “This will be hot trust me….Sleeper variant of the week.” Nice work Mel! I was lucky and got mine for $2.99 because my lcs doesn’t usually raise prices for smaller publisher variants.

Street Fighter Unlimited #5 Cover D Incentive Kandoken Street Fighter V Game Variant – Mel Pick 
Original Value: $20 Current Value: $40
 These female game variants were getting top dollar right after release. Quick flip would have been best but still profitable today.

Dark Souls #1 Regular Cover – Anthony Pick 
Original Value: $4 Current Value: $10
Nice pick Anthony!

Fourth Planet #1 – Poyo Pick 
Original Value: $4 Current Value: $10
 Clutch call Poyo! Good Indie Pick!

Sun Bakery #1 – Anthony Pick
 Original Value: $6 Current Value: $15
This is the original series release from Alternative Comics but it looks like the latest Image release has possibly created some recent sales for this one.
LUKE WARM PICKS! (Or Tauntaun Picks! What’s the internal temperature of a Tauntaun? Luke Warm!)

4 Kids Walk Into A Bank #1 Regular Cover – Anthony & Poyo Pick
Original Value: $4 Current Value: eBay sales at $5-6 but also available at Midtown
A ton of movie variants on this one. I like the themed variants that they did on this series and WCNGH. Rosenberg is a good writer and this is a good book.

Black Eyed Kids #1 – Anthony, Mel and Poyo PICK!
 Original Value: $2 Current Value: $2-4
I wasn’t going to post this one but since it was an AMP Triple Threat Recommendation to at least be a great read (which it is!), I figured it warranted a mention.

Bloodshot Reborn #12 De La Torre Variant – Mel Pick
 Original Value: $20 Current Value: Still available at on line retailers
Still a neat cover from a good artist.

Captain America Road To War #1 Cover B Variant Francesco Mattina Cover – Mel & Poyo Pick
Original Value: $5 Current Value: Still available at on line retailers
. Still a bad ass cover of CAP! Mattina has been on the rise lately so don’t count this one out. I bought one and am glad I did!

Silk #7 J Scott Campbell Variant – Anthony Pick
 Original Value: $4 Current Value: Still available at Midtown
In Anthony’s words “A grower not a shower!”
MISSES

Divinity II #1 Cover F Incentive Adam Gorham Variant Cover – Mel Pick
 Original Value: $40 Current Value: $10 on eBay and still available at Midtown for way too much.
I jumped on this train just like Mel based on the success of Gorham variants from the first Divinity series. If you haven’t checked out Divinity yet I highly recommend it.
Un-specced

Joyride #1 
Original Value: $4 Current Value: $4 
From release to August 2016 this book was selling for up to $20 after word of it being optioned! Mel did cover this in one of his Big Gems posts.