CovrPrice.com Top Ten Selling Comics for Week of 12/6/18

37 thoughts on “CovrPrice.com Top Ten Selling Comics for Week of 12/6/18”

1. I emailed my LCS to have them pull two copies of “Hawkeye vs. Deadpool” #0 for me to add to my Spider-Gwen collection. Their website was showing the book in stock for AU $10.50.
   I went in to pick up my order a couple of days later to find only one copy on hold for me. My friend working the register told me the owner looked up “Hawkeye vs. Deadpool” on eBay after I placed the order and decided the book needed to be marked up to AU $50, and that he would only honour the website price for one copy.
   I’m glad to have gotten a copy for $10.50, but I think it was wrong of him to only half-fill my order at the agreed price and expect me to pay considerably more to get the other copy I had already ordered.

   1. Yeah, that’s kind of crappy. I would have honored the prices if I was running the shop.
      I understand shops gotta make money but as a shop owner I would also try to keep up on trends in prices to stay ahead of the masses seeking out the new hot books.

   2. Similar thing happened to me about a month ago. Young avengers 1 got hot. Dug out 3 copies priced at $6 ea. Owner would only sell me one copy.
      Told me it was “to be fair to other customers who wanted the book.” Whatever. That was BS. I sold my copy for $35. I bet his sit on the shelf for $40 and if demand keeps up I bet he keeps raising the price too. And a few days earlier I bet he would have been ecstatic to move three back issues at $6.
      The copies I left behind were dinged up anyway. Took a while to sell my NM copy as it was….focusing on ASM 365 now…probably hard to find a try NM+ copy in the wild….that hard stock cover and hologram do not hold up well from what I’ve seen.

      1. Yeah, back issue bins are fair game. If an owner doesn’t price their stuff correctly, that is their fault, not yours
         Also, as some have suggested, if they had that policy, they should have posted a sign stating so.
         I bet if you walked up with six copies of some random issue of a recent X-Men spin-off book that they would have gladly sold it to you.

   3. I have learned to never call a shop and ask for a hot book. The last time I tried that, I was told over the phone that said book was sold out. When I visited that store a few days later, the ‘sold out’ book was now mysteriously available, and on their wall for a marked up price. Never call a comic shop.

2. I should dump another EOSV #2 now that Spider-Gwen is heating up…

   1. Poyo, if you’re thinking of selling one, I’d be interested in being a prospective buyer.

      1. I need to dig them out. I’ll let you know.

   2. Okay, you have my e-mail so fire away when ready.

3. I’d look at it this way, that store owner has bills to pay too. If he/she doesn’t make enough money they will close and you will no longer snag deals from them at all. I’m sure you get deals from there often enough? A better practice for him would be to do what one of my lcs does…they have boxes in the front that customers can dig in and they have long boxes in the back that once the customer box sells a Hawkeye vs dead pool 0 they go to the back check for another copy as well as check eBay price and price accordingly. I’m the king of getting shutdown on deals. At least you were able to get 1 at a good price.

   1. The other way to look at it is that that book will never sell at the marked up price. Owner gives bad faith to a customer in the hopes of eventually selling a book.

      1. I’d like to hear from The Guy Who Owns a Comic Shop on this topic. I thought their primary business revenue was new comics and maybe diversity including roll playing games, statues/busts and other pop culture items. I would think if you’re relying on back issue sales to keep you in business you’re in a sad state of affairs. And screwing over your customers for a few bucks on a single hot issue is going to potentially push them away (including future revenues) that you depend on to stay in business.

      2. Here you go, D-Rog 🙂
         Most stores around the country don’t do enough back issue sales to matter. There are some (we happen to be among them) for whom back issues are a focus. Roughly 70% of our entire store space is devoted to back issues. We have a dozen boxes of Silver Age out at all times, plus two dozen boxes of high grade Bronze, plus dozens of boxes of high grade 1980s, and an appropriate amount of 1990s to current.
         Back issues represent 18.8% of our revenue, behind New Release Comics at 28.3% and ahead of TPB/HC at 16.9%, Funko at 12.0%, and Apparel at 9.3%. We sell over 20,000 back issues a year. They represent a disproportionate amount of our labor costs, as back issues take 8-10 times as much time to process as new books, but the margins are higher and fundamentally we want to be an actual comic shop rather than a pop culture store, so we commit to the product.
         We attempt to charge a fair market price for everything we sell. Overstreet is irrelevant, and has been for years. We use a combination of sources to price our back issues, including GPA, MYCS, eBay, and others. We aren’t typically a shop of choice for people looking to flip. But we have “regulars” who live 200 miles away that drive specifically to fill their lists from our inventory. Those customers are loyal. Flippers are not. Our prices are nearly always cheaper than GPA-MYCS-eBay, but not cheaper enough to justify a purchase for flip.
         We don’t do website sales, so I don’t have a policy to point to. But when we plan to limit copies of a book, we post a sign saying so (Batman Damned #2 will be limited to one copy per cover per customer next week). If someone wanted to walk in and buy all 5 of our current copies of ASM 300 in the store because they’d heard something we hadn’t? We would honor the marked prices and let the customer buy them all. But would we agree to also sell the 6 copies currently at our warehouse location waiting to be processed? Probably not. They don’t sit at the warehouse with prices on them. We would price them when we made them available for sale and not before. So the next copy to arrive at the store might well be priced higher than the ones that just left.
         My biggest issue with the Hawkeye Deadpool shop is they didn’t post a limit on their site. Announcing in advance that website prices were limited to 1 per customer would have saved grief for everyone.

         1. Going back to the original poster, if they agreed to the sale online, I think they should honor it. But if they had six additional copies in stock when you got there to pick them up, then I would not allow them to go that cheap additionally. If they were for the PC I would be ok with one, but for them to initially say no to any copies, I think that is wrong.

   2. LCS owners have to understand their position in the market for speculators, collectors and investors. They are distributors in this market, like Diamond is the distributor to them, they are the distributors to this brand of consumers who ultimately fuel the entire market. Not only does this type of consumer drive sales to an LCS, they influence new consumers into the market.
      It’s my take that part of what led to the crash in the 90s was the LCS falsely inflating and over-inflating prices. Once they became greedy for the extra money on a book you had over-saturation and people buying in at a high price where an ROI could never be realized and people dropped out of the market altogether as it wasn’t worth their time and money. Graham Crackers in Chicagoland is the worst at this in this area. Plus they are very liberal graders with their back issues over estimating Fair Market Value.
      As long as I have a shop or shops that I view as my honey pots I’ll keep shopping there. Once an LCS starts inflating their prices I stop going there. The motivation to go there stops. Now I also read and collect comics but my speculation and investing produces enough revenue and disposable income to allow me to do so. If the trend of an LCS increasing prices continues and minimizes my ROU I may drop out all together, cancel my pull list and subscribe to a digital subscription service like Marvel if my only motivation is to read the books.
      EBay has opened up the market so I view EBay as a positive influence on the market. What I see hurting the market are dealers and vendors selling Raw copies at CGC graded prices. That’s another phenomenon that has begun happening in the last two years. It’s becoming more and more common.
      Typically any book that is High Grade, meaning VF+ (8.5) or higher, should produce about a 20% profit after having it graded or more. But if a LCS, vendor or dealer is trying to realize that price from a Raw copy that too destroys any investment motivation and potential. At best it turns the investment into a long term play hoping for a movie option and at worst it causes the investor to break even or lose money should you send that over-priced Raw copy for grading and it comes back at the estimated Raw grade. The only chance for profit is a movie or show option and/or the grade coming back higher than the estimate,
      Now, I’m not totally innocent when it comes to selling Raw copies at the CGC graded price as I do it. However, that generally happens when my buy in for that book is high. Heck I’ll list the book at an inflated price hoping to realize the future price of the book sometimes if I think the book is under valued and I’m sure many vendors think the same. But I’m not a vendor who supplies the EBay market, I’m the EBay retailer who needs to realize profit to sustain his business to keep it viable.
      Vendors and LCS owners have the advantage of purchasing at wholesale prices and can typically pick up collections at 50% or less of Overstreet or Fair Market Value where the same is not true for most of the people selling on Ebay. Our main supplier is the LCS and the vendor at a convention. These two players in the market have to understand how critical their pricing is to the sustainability of the current Bull Market in comic books.
      It will keep going for quite some time as long as the overall economy is healthy and people have disposable income but also there is a need to keep it profitable enough for speculators and investors to stay in the market. Readers and collectors alone will keep the publishers producing content but it’s the speculators and investors who provide the larger scale growth.

      1. Very well put.

      2. Although I don’t, as a rule, practice the “markup to the max” game, shops have a right to do as they see fit .. paying for the piles of new books that end up in dollar bins .. it’s a Free Market .. a shop has as much right to markup as a speculator does .. that’s how the Market works .. the Customer can pay it or not, that’s their choice ..
         Having been at this since dirt, I’ve seen the Market ebb and wane many times .. shops that don’t plan for the lean times will no longer exist when another downturn occurs .. I planned for the Future, even though I’m much closer to the end than the beginning .. my building is paid in full and my Diamond weekly order is shipped COD, so it’s always paid in full, despite being offered “terms” many times over the years ..

      3. “speculators and investors who provide the larger scale growth”
         No .. it’s loyal customers that come in on a weekly basis and new folks to the Hobby .. 90% of my Pull and Hold people read and don’t give a whit about what a book may or may not end up being worth .. that’s what keeps a Shop going long term .. I have customers that are the sons and daughters of customers that brought them in when they were small children ..

         1. For new comics I would agree with you uncle Willy. However for older complex and back issues I see speculators and investors driving the market and allowing for higher prices on those books. In turn those books sell for higher prices in shops. Which some people are complaining about. A store owner cannot say speculators don’t drive the market for older box in a lot of cases and the new hot book of the week. Because they do

      4. The comments on comic book economics are thought provoking. All this flipping and market prices at LCS discussion has got me questioning my recent decision after 25 years to start reading and collecting again…last books bought in 1993.(sex drugs rock n roll college jobs wife kids=25 years) Seriously though, Im intrigued to see Bat penis and Rag butt but not THAT intrigued.

         1. There are many excellent books. Superhero fan, try Black Hammer. Horror fan, try Cold Spots. I could go on. The economics of it, for a lot of us, is a big part of how we fund our collections. We sell what others are chasing after so we can buy the books we want to collect. If you are just jumping back into comics, don’t let that distract you though. It is fun, but we still have healthy doses of no sales related chatter here about comics.

   3. I completely agree with the “Free Market”. I’m not against an LCS raising their prices on hot books if they are in the know, but when someone is at their store and they refuse to honor their sticker price because they look up a book on Ebay the moment someone is purchasing or has already placed an order then that is poor customer service and reeks of desperation for an extra buck. It’s the same as if an Ebay seller would cancel an order they sold for $20 to a shrewd buyer due to the fact the book is now selling for $50 based on new information. That is poor business ethics and customer service and consumers will reward neither the Ebay seller who pulls that stunt nor the LCS who behaves in a similar manner. It’s a business model for failure simply because they are not being loyal to a customer. “Loyalty” goes both ways, business relationships involve at least two parties at all times. And simply dismissing a customer because you think they are a speculator is shortsightedness. That attitude is evidence, in my opinion and experience as a Sales Professional, of poor salesmanship and leads to missed opportunities. It’s cutting off a portion of the market. I for one reward multiple shops who treat me as a valuable customer and spread the love of my wallet on multiple repeat visits. They earned my business and have my respect and loyalty because they honor their prices and provide me with stock that I can move and profit from. It is on the business to earn the loyalty of the consumer not the other way around.
      I don’t disagree that an LCS has a right to mark up whatever, whenever, and for however much they so please. That’s not my argument. I have nothing against people trying to maximize their profits. As I said, I do it and I’m sure other speculators/investors do it as well as an LCS. Why wouldn’t they if the there is a market of buyers willing to pay that price. Given that line of thought, it is contradictory to the argument that “speculators” do not drive growth. If that were the case an LCS wouldn’t take advantage of inflating the price of the book themselves, which by the way, also makes them a speculator despite being an LCS. The badge of LCS or LCS owner doesn’t absolve you of the speculator label. An LCS is as much a speculator as the person selling on Ebay precisely because they are an active participant in the speculator market. To say otherwise is being disingenuous and trying to act “holier than thou.” Like somehow an LCS is immune from being considered a speculator? I think not.
      On the issue of who drives “growth”, yes of course pull list buyers sustain business, in particular for the long term, but in terms of the short term and growth, the only way pull box list buyers provide growth is by either increasing the number of titles they read every month or by gaining more pull box list buyers. (Both of these numbers are influenced by the quality of content produced by the publishers and the marketing strategy and tactics employed by both the publisher and the direct market industry professionals such as an LCS) In those manners an LCS can certainly experience growth. However, when an LCS has a dedicated investor/speculator who comes by every week and drops anywhere from $50 to $200 or more on average on back issues, I’d wager that is providing a greater growth percentage at least in the short term than a pull box list buyer or buyers. Now if you gain a loyal speculator/investor who returns week in and week out I’d wager that increases your revenue significantly. BUT, they need a solid economical reason for doing so and by an LCS being more focused on the speculation themselves rather than the distribution it can have an effect on the volatility of the comic book market. Multiple that investor or speculator by 5 or 10 and the number you move in volume alone will outweigh selling that one book for an extra $20. Also, inflation equals growth. That goes hand in hand hence the reason why anyone would increase the price of a book. You’re growing your profit margin with an inflated price so that’s why you participate in the speculation whether you are a shop owner or an Ebay seller.
      There are several other factors involved as well I’m sure such as regional location, average income of the population of that region, etc, so you have to look at some of this from a microeconomic perspective but when I think about the macroeconomics of the entire comic book industry, the trends I’m seeing from an LCS and from Vendors at conventions, I don’t see a good trend happening. And I am specifically referring to Raw copies of Key Issues being sold at CGC graded prices. Also, dismissing Overstreet outright is not sound analysis I’d say. The majority of vendors I see at conventions have a copy of Overstreet on them as do serious collectors, investors and speculators. Overstreet survived the Wizard phenomenon in the 90s and will survive the tech phenomenon currently happening. I’d wager that it will always be used as a reference. They may have to change their pricing model and start using the same technologies in use such as GoCollect, GPA, and Ebay sales if they’re not already doing so to provide their analysis.
      Now, that is my perspective as a speculator/investor. From the perspective of a collector and reader, if I really want a key issue or an issue to complete a run or to read a storyline, my feelings are different.
      Personally I fall under all of these categories but I’m not trying to make this personal. Just trying to analyze the market and keep it thriving. The argument I’m making is that it is not the speculators/investors who hurt the market and so many defensive LCS owners claim, rather it is the LCS owner and Vendor who begins to behave as a speculator themselves who hurt the market in the long term and especially in a Bull Market such as this one we’re currently experiencing.

      1. Every shop out there is a Speculator each and every month .. when that Diamond Order is placed, we speculate on how many, if any, copies of hundreds of books are worth ordering, based on nothing more than knowing your customer base and a thin catalog description and pic .. it’s a crap shoot each and every month .. none of us has a Crystal Ball .. we buy on Faith and Customer Knowledge .. as well as what we personally think about a sight unseen book ..
         My New Weekly Rack books stay at cover for some weeks after release .. they always have, and they always will .. no matter what the “heat” may be .. after a reasonable time at cover, if a book is still there, we may or may not check the Market ..
         When the “spec bubble bursts”, and it will, it always has in the many years I’ve done this, it will be the Pull and Hold customers that keep the doors open .. which they do today and will continue to do .. it is the job of the LCS to do whatever they can to expand the Market .. that’s what’s good for the Hobby ..
         My philosophy since Day One and what I tell New Customers entering the Hobby is very simple “Buy what you like and if it goes up in price, consider that a Bonus ..”

4. “Marvel Tails: Peter Porker The Spectacular Spider-Ham #1” has had a lot of sales over the last 7 days also. Probably deserves an honorable mention.

5. Both my copies of New Avengers #27 just sold within 30 minutes of each other.
   Was something announced or happen in the comics or just coincidence?

6. New Avengers trailer just got released and it has a shot of Hawkeye as Ronin in it. Look for all New Avengers #27 and the variants go through the roof.

7. poyo if your selling your edge of spiderverse #2 I will buy it.sending you an email after I book my vegas trip. lets make a deal chicken-man .I see it both ways.if you own a shop you should stay on top of trends hire a kid pay them 8-10 an hour to watch the net for you.try and keep prices fair and try and keeit fair for people coming in however stores with large backstocks can’t watch everything so sometimes I will checke bay on stuff and do what I feel is best o.k. off to email poyo and book a trip love you guys thanks for being in my life blind adam out

8. I don’t think anyone is going to change their mindmuch, but it seems the story from my LCS has changed slightly since I originally posted.
   It wasn’t my order for two copies of “Hawkeye vs. Deadpool” #0 that sent the owner to look at eBay. My two copies were pulled from the warehouse and were, for a short time, waiting in my pullbox.
   Another person, meanwhile, ordered seven copies of the same issue, prompting the owner to look it up on eBay, change the price and retroactively halve my order.
   There isn’t a limit of one per customer, the other guy is allowed to buy all seven copies ordered, but only the first one would be $10.50. The price for the rest, and to any other customers, is now $50 ea.

   1. That guy could have been a little more discreet. 7 copies of an older book is bound to elicit some curiosity in the seller.

      1. Agreed. I do the bleed method. Grab a copy here with some stuff. A copy there with some more stuff. Doesn’t attract attention.

9. Holy paragraphs Batman…….Why does anyone care about Spidey 2099 have a dozen of those holographic covers.

   1. Has to be one of the highest print run Spidey comics ever.

   2. People care about Spidey 2099 for the exact reasons that people cared about Gwenom. Despite a large print run (every book in the early nineties had a large print run. Its a moot point), it is a key for any ASM collector. It has the 1st appearance of Spidey 2099. A character that has carried his own title since he was created, 25 years ago. I know you know this, Alana.

      1. Also, I think Spider-verse is bringing massive attention to all Spider-Man alternate characters. I loved Spider-Man 2099 back in the day. I even like X-Men 2099. Didn’t really care for the rest of the line

      2. I understand the importance of Spidey 2099, just don’t understand why the rush on the book that only usually happens upon movie or tv news.

         1. All things Spidey are on fire. Do not question it or try to understand it. Just enjoy the ride while its here. ?

10. Came across 3 copies of ASM 365 today…all marked up to $15…all had some very bad spine ticks. Passed.

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