Did anyone else notice the recent spike in prices on some key Copper Age (c. 1983-1991) books at the beginning of the month? On November 4, 2018 Amazing Spider-man #238 (Feb, 1983) sold for $1, 225.00 and then, on the same day, Batman #428 (December 1988), fetched an astounding $413.97 (both sales completed by eBay auction).

Regarding the Spider-man sale, this book currently has a FMV of $1, 200.00 in certified 9.8 grade, according to GoCollect.com, so that one is in keeping with recent values. The Batman #428, on the other hand, is currently coasting at $220.00 FMV price for 9.8 graded copies. Sure, the latter sale might end up a weird outlier, but even ignoring that sale it’s difficult to deny that certain Copper Age titles - check out prices on: Batman Adventures #12 [Sept. 1993], Amazing Spider-man #300 [May 1988] , and more recently, Spawn #1 [May 1992] ! - can now hold their own not only against some Bronze Age keys but even against important minor Silver and Golden Age key issues.

Maybe it’s because, as a Gen Xer, I grew up with Copper Age books (these were the books of my adolescent years), I picked most of them up for cover price and sometimes have a hard time understanding why anybody would pay so many multiples of those original prices to own these very common books.

But the trends are undeniable. Copper Age comics are spiking:

Batman #386 (from August 1985) sold for $472.70 at the end of October.

Uncanny X-Men #266 (August 1990) regularly fetches prices between $400.00 and $450.00 and has broken the $500.00 barrier multiple times. These are solid prices for these abundantly available modern books.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is: are Copper Age books rising disproportionately to their supplies or can this boom be explained as related to the tide that has already lifted Silver Age titles way up and is currently lifting Bronze Age books higher in price?

I think some of the highest sales driving up prices are actually occurring on scarce and rare copies of the given comics. Batman Adventures #12 had a smaller than average print run and was aimed at a younger audience. This led to many copies getting torn up and bent into low grade and that, when added to the Harley-mania factor, largely accounts for its consistent high prices.

Other ground breaking sales, such as those on Spider-man #238, can be explained as equally due to factors of popular characters and rarity of select copies.

For example, ALL Spider-man comics are highly desired right now. The appeal of old Web-head is too hard to resist. Add to this that, though Spider-man #238 prices are rising gradually price spikes have been especially pronounced on Canadian price variant editions. A Canadian price variant of that book sold for a record-breaking $2, 300.00 at auction on Comic Link in August 2018.

I’ve discussed the value of these Northern alternate covers in the past, eh (see here), but recently a few factors have led to the wider acceptance of these books facilitating a premium on prices that many buyers are willing to pay.

First, CBCS, the second most popular grading company, is now officially marking Canadian price variants on their slabs as the alternate editions that they are (see here). Can CGC be far behind? Also, these books, as I discussed in my previous post, are exceedingly rare and especially difficult to find in high grades.

Of course, this is economics we’re talking about, and most booms are followed by busts, and in the collectibles world we must also keep in mind the volatile nature of comics as investments.

That said it’s still in the interest of speculators to watch the behavior of prices of Copper Age books. If a wider bust in comic prices occurs (and it most likely will at some point), the Copper Age books, as the last to spike, might very well be the first to see a drop in prices.