The Venom movie has finished its opening weekend with some big numbers at the box office, but that's not translating into higher values for Venom keys, including the holy grail, Amazing Spider-Man #300.
It's much too soon to hit the panic button, but as an investor, you will want to keep track of the data. If it's any indication of things to come, the ASM #300 in a 9.8 will raise an eyebrow. Leading up to the release of Venom, the three sales between September 30 to October 2 were all in the $2,500 and $2,600 range. While it's only a single data point, the first post-movie-premiere sale on October 7 had a significant drop to $2,250.
What about the lower grades, you may ask?
The 9.6 and the 9.4 are holding strong, but the 9.2 has dropped off a bit. Last month, it was steadily selling in the $500 range. Between October 4-6, the sales were closer to $450, but that's nothing to be concerned about. What is concerning is the last sale on October 7 which was for $345. That is the lowest a 9.2 has sold for since February.
Going a little further down the ladder, we've got the 8.0 experiencing a drop, too. The most recent sale as of this writing was for $265. Prior to this, there hadn't been an 8.0 ASM #300 that sold for under $296 since July 19, and that was for $290.
Nothing below a 7.0 has sold this month, but that fine/very fine has kept in the $280 range, but after seeing the dip in other grades, you'll want to watch this one for any signs of falling values.
September was a good month for Lethal Protector. The 9.8 routinely sold for triple digits, which continued to October 1 when it reached $160. The next day, one brought another $100-plus sale, and the sales kept in the $75-$90 range all the way up to the October 4 premiere date. The past 10 sales, however, have all been below $80, with the latest being $67 on October 7.
The 9.6 is seeing a similar drop off. Whereas the 12-month average has been $60, two of the past three sales have been for $40 and $33. The near mint-plus isn't alone; the 9.4, which was averaging $51 over the past 12 months, last sold for $31. There hasn't been anything below a 9.0 sold thus far in October, and after that very fine/near mint was bringing around $45 in June and the first of September, the most recent sale was slightly down at $39.
Donny Cates breathed new life into Venom earlier this year, and the series is still going strong. The first issue of the latest series had been bringing record sales month after month, but it appears as though it's about to experience a hiatus.
For the first few days of October, a 9.8 was bringing sales of mostly $50-$91, minus one outlier of $40. On October 4 - the day of the Venom movie premiere - one sold for $81. Two days later, that same near-mint-plus comic dropped to $31. While that alone is not enough to predict the future, it is alarming that the next sale was only $35.
I'm not going spend time looking at the lower grades because there haven't been any grades of the standard cover lower than a 9.2 that have sold on eBay. The other part of this is that the 9.8 is your litmus test. In other words, if it's dropping by $50, then you can be sure the other grades will fall as well.
