Hot take on New Mutants #98, Ultimate Fallout #4, or some other modern book that keeps soaking up all the Modern Age attention. Not. That was in Borat’s voice. Here we check out a few other modern age books that have recently and quietly topped the $2,000 mark.

 

BONE #1 (1991)

In their 1st appearance, the Bone cousins are thrown out of Boneville and have to make their way through a dangerous valley. After hanging around the $5,000 level for half a decade, sales for CGC 9.8 slabs of Bone #1 shot up in late-2020 with two record-high prices. One went for $12,000 on eBay and the other for $13,200 on Heritage. The majority of sales for all the CGC graded slabs of Bone #1 first came onto the market around 2015/16 timeframe. This was likely due to rumors and news surrounding an animated movie trilogy that was being planned at WB. It fizzled for a few years until in late 2019, when it was announced that Bones had moved over to Netflix as a series.

Speculators at the 9.8 grade really liked that last bit of news, as the dramatic spike is seen only at that grade. The Netflix premium in effect. At the lower grades, sales prices have trended only slightly positive. Between the overall low volume and movement strongly correlated with movie/series news, some caution is advised at its current prices.

The sales data for Bone #1 seems to be separated into two different pages: link 1 and link 2. The second one with the Out From Boneville subtitle at the bottom is actually the cover for the 2005 hardcover and paperback editions with the comics reprinted in color by Graphix, but the individual sales data appears to be for the original Bone #1. Probably a website sorting issue that needs looking into. Outside of that, there are indeed about a dozen different prints of Bone #1, the first printing has the logo in red.

DEATHMATE ORANGE PREVIEW (1993)

The Deathmate series was a crossover event between Image Comics and Valiant Comics. Instead of the typical numbering system for issues, the Deathmate comics used color names instead. The most popular and expensive ones in the market are generally Deathmate Black and its gold variant, mostly due in part to the book containing the 1st full appearance of Gen 13. Their FMVs are $65 and $160, respectively. Then came the sky-high $2,247.22 sale price of a Deathmate Orange at auction.

Why did that single book go for so much? It wasn’t just any other Deathmate Orange. Typically, Deathmate Orange was distributed as part of Previews (June 1993, Vol III, No 6); with Batman on the book and also Plasm #0. Raws of these Previews currently sell for around $40. Is this an opportunity to cash in on some weird arbitrage going on? Unfortunately, no.

Attempting to remove Deathmate Orange from the Preview book will result in a significant reduction in the condition of the book to ever attain a CGC 9.8 grade. So how did the aforementioned slab get a CGC 9.8 grade? According to the listing description: “The person I bought this from raw, said he got it from someone who worked at Previews.” That’s just how rare the aforementioned CGC 9.8 copy is, and it’s reflected in the final price that saw three different bidders above the $1,600 level.

CALIBER PRESENTS #1 (1989)

Before the movie and the TV series existed, the Crow (aka Eric Draven) first appeared in Caliber Presents #1. He did appear in an ad in Deadworld #10 (1988), but… Wolverine. In Dec 2020, a CGC 9.8 slab of Caliber Presents #1 sold at auction on eBay for $2,125. Was it a fluke? Unlikely, it had about a dozen different bidders above the $1,000 level. Looking further back, it appears that sales prices have been trending up overall since roughly 2015. This coincides with the increase of casting rumors/news surrounding a live-action reboot that started in late-2014.

The latest substantial word on the Crow live-action reboot was in 2018. This does make the continuingly higher and higher sales over the last two years a bit surprising. As a spec book, although a reboot for the revived RocknRolla seems inevitable in the current media climate, whether as a movie or TV series, its high sales prices are a bit concerning when you compare to something like The New Mutants #98 which has an FMV of $950 for its CGC 9.8s. That being said, its sales volume is much more substantial than the other two books mentioned above.

"It can't rain all the time" – The Crow

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