With these reviews, we find out how right or how wrong we were, what we missed and what you can likely still find at cover price, likely at the local comic shop or at online retailers.
This wraps up the May in review of the last 3 weeks from the month.
Let’s review the top ten selling titles one more time.
- Dceased #1 – 242,365
- Doomsday Clock #10 – 117,419
- Batman Last Knight on Earth #1 – 113,287
- Savage Avengers #1 – 111,736
- Batman Who Laughs #5 – 108,677
- Amazing Spider-Man #21 – 92,538
- Immortal Hulk #17 – 87,444
- Batman #70 – 83,518
- Batman #71 – 82,704
- Amazing Spider-Man #22 -78,102
Now onto the remaining highlights from May. These will mostly include books we spec’d on and or books that are likely sold out (not necessarily from Diamond), books that heated up, surprise books, etc.
May 15th Books
Aberrant Season 2 #2 Billy Ripken Variant – ??
Anyone who collected baseball cards in the late 80’s knows this was one of those must have cards. The infamous f*ck face Billy Ripken card.
Sold out pretty quickly from most retailers but not a lot of action on the secondary market. Latest auction ended at a buck while the best sold listing was best offer at $8.95. The print run is unknown as it didn’t even make the Comichron May Sales list.
Immortal Hulk #17 – 87,444
Now with the demand growing, the print runs are also on the rise, making this an easy book and title to obtain. This is just a mention as you can still find these likely locally at your own shops or online.
These are no longer quick spec flip books but likely long term holds if any of these characters in the story continue to grow in popularity.
For those collectors who try to complete a set, this makes the earlier books more desirable long term if you ask me.
Last Stop On The Red Line #1 – 5,960
This book saw initial sales peaking around the $10 average mark but that was short lived.
Still sold out at most retailers, sales are now making this a cover price book for the most part, with only a few spilling over cover price.
This book was marked as being returnable, possibly skewing the total print run but at 5,960, that’s pretty small to begin with. I say if you find’em, buy and hold. Any type of media deal on a book like this could make this a winner down the gambl’in path.
May 15th was a really weak release week if you ask me. Not a whole lot of excitement coming out of this week to report on.
May 22nd Books
Miles Morales Spider-Man #6 – 33,538
This was initially a solid $10 book. With the first appearance of Starling, I believe this one should be a hold rather than sell.
Perhaps if you obtained a few extra copies and sold 1 or 2 to make profit now to cover your overall costs of purchases, hold one or two I say.
Recent solds put this a bit over cover and on a good day you might still get a $10 for it.
War of the Realms Agents of Atlas #2 – 20,315
Probably the winner book out of May. New characters made this a solid $20 at it’s peak price. Still going strong as a $10 book.
Flip a few to make recoup your costs, save a few for the long haul. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of this new Atlas team. Seems Marvel will push this for the diversity aspect it brings forth.
The 1:25 variant did really well but has fizzled off a bit. Reaching over $100 early on, it’s still a solid $50 book. So if you can find these cheap, grab’em.
May 29th Books
Amber Blake #3 – 2,135
The Nodet variants are the real winners from these if you can find them for cover or cheap. They’ve been really nice quick flips but that’s the only advice I can give if you find them as they have been dropping in price pretty quickly.
The regular Guice cover is mostly sold out online, with such a small print run that’s a likely given. Not much love for it on the secondary market though as it’s still just a cover price book.
Star Wars #108 – 40,284
Just an honorable mention. Sold out at most online retailers but this Michael Golden cover was a great cover by a great artist.
There was one sold listing around the $10 mark but most sales still put this at cover price.
I don’t even think my local shops go this cover as it was non-existent in my area when I last checked.
Rick and Morty #50 – 13,300
The book that was nowhere to be found, well, not the regular covers but the 1:25 variants.
If you actually landed any copies of these, consider yourself special. These as a pair were fetching upwards of $1000.
Things have since settled down with prices now hovering around the $500 to $600 sale tag.
For you die hard Rick and Morty fans, this is one you wait, I think the price might continue to fall a bit more. The hardcore collectors with apparently plenty of money to throw around got theirs due to FOMO kicking in. So those with a little patience might be able to snag these at a much lower price if you missed out.
That’s May in review. It wasn’t a huge month for comics but it is what it is. There were a few highlights. It’ll be interesting to see this month a year from now to see what’s going on.
Immortal Hulk’s 1st Printing sold more than ALL 5 issues of Marvel Zombies combined (212,396 according to Comichron)
We have zero subscribers for rick and Morty so only 1 shelf copy was ordered and no qty variants considered ever.
https://www.thrillist.com/news/nation/avengers-endgame-rerelease-new-post-credit-scene
Avengers Endgame coming back with new content and surprises June 28th in theaters.
Amber Blake keeps getting printed in that magazine size so we try not to order it if we’re paying attention but still accidently brought in several of the issues so far. When Diamond ships these oversized books, they drop them on top of the regularly packed books in the box since they don’t fit the box correctly allowing them usually to bounce all the way here damaging corners and such. DC Black Labels are getting the same problem and customers are already saying they don’t want any more since they don’t fit in the standard comic boxes easily and for shipping don’t fit the flat rate envelopes like regular comics. I imagine even with Amber Blakes low print run, due to the stupid sizing, the undamaged high grade copies are even fewer and far between since Diamond’s not set up to ship them safely..
Diamond will never care about protecting books when shipping. These are periodicals to them and the cost is the same no matter the book. So yeah, magazine size books thrown into boxes designed for regular sized comics will always arrive unprotected. The shops I’ve visited, all Amber Blakes were always in really bad shape.
We have 4 subs for R&M, but we sell 15-20 copies of every issue.
For issue 50, we ordered 12 each of the three main covers, sold all of them. But I hadn’t even heard of these variants until this post.
And yes, Diamond simply does not care about condition of variants unless it’s a 1 in 500 (in which case they are shipped from a different office and aren’t handled by warehouse staff). Roughly half of all the 1 in 25s we have ever received were 7.0 at best. And I stopped giving “shipment feedback” a couple years ago because it’s clear no one does anything about it.