What is the deal with this book? Constantly surging to number one and yet in mint condition is only worth $36! That would barely pay for the cost to CGC this issue. In Amazing Spider-Man, #798 Dan Slott (writer) created an interesting amalgam villain the combination of Green Goblin and Carnage. The storyline was intense all the way up to Slott's final issue of the series. I was disappointed when he left this comic. I enjoyed the writing and freshness with which he brought to Spider-Man (Peter Parker). The story had Spidey utilizing allies to defeat this monstrosity, Red Gobbie. Dan Slott got personal with Spider-Man showed his weakness, and had the villain squeeze that weakness: his family. Stuart Immonen nails the emotional toll on Spidey with the interior art. Look, everyone loved this entire storyline. It has taken first in popularity of recent comics published. Where is the surge in price? Is this the beginning of a surge or just more of the same lateral price slide since August?
This book has everything going for it, except profits. Amazing Spider-Man #798 is a huge new villain for Spidey and all of us were waiting at the trough to buy this issue at the cover price in the stores. I had given up trying to determine when the Red-Gobbie would appear and started buying issues at #795 onward. Surprisingly, the CGC Census only shows 1240 issues outstanding. Now I thought for sure this would be around 10,000 at least. But perhaps people are sitting on a raw copy for the next big appearance of Red-Gobie. Whatever the reason, the hype had everyone stumbling trying to find the first appearance of Red-Goblin issue. Here is the trick; at last count, there were 17 variants. Now I might be a Bronze Age Luddite but that is way too many books for me. The best of the bunch is probably the Amazing Spider-Man #798 (Alex Ross Virgin Variant). Even owning that book is a risk given the massive amount of copies with different covers available.
Look, the whole point of collecting is that you have something rare, something with value because there are not many in existence. Amazing Spider-Man #798 changes all that with 17 Spidey-Friend variant covers. Currently, ASM #798 has dropped -6.8% for return on investment in mint grade. In other words, if you own it the value has dropped almost 7% since print. The grades (9.6) up +31.2% and (9.4) up +35.6% show positive returns but these purchases were from two months ago when the book came out. My guess is any sales in these grades will also return slight losses. Red-Goblin slaughters opponents and speculators at the same time, stay well away from the "Carnage."
Amazing Spider-Man #798 (Alex Ross Virgin Variant)
The high quality of an Alex Ross Virgin Variant could not save the day. The Amazing Spider-Man #798 (Alex Ross Virgin Variant) costs $150 FMV with the latest sale in October 2018. Unfortunately, Spidey and his friends can't even be saved by the power of Alex Ross, the mint (9.8) has a negative return of -52.2%. It looks to my nearsighted eyes that prices peaked back in September. Choose your poison, either Alex Ross or the first print ASM #798; either way, purchasing these comics is like exploding a Red-Gobbie pumpkin bomb on your profit margin.
