The market has been a flurry of excitement and speculation for comic collectors and investors.  While character speculation can be hot and cold, real or imagined, it ultimately takes sales and market action to determine the full effect of a rumor.  One of the characters getting a lot of buzz on the street, along with some market movement, is Spider-Woman.  A few comics featuring the character's several iterations have been great for collectors in recent months.  Are we going to be treated to Spider-Woman in a Sony or a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) offering?  And more importantly, will it help prices soar even further?

Copies of Marvel Spotlight #32, which features the first appearance of Spider-Woman, were hitting record sales with every offering in a 9.8 grade.  As each copy sells, I often wonder if that will be the last one that will be offered for a while.  Inevitably, another 9.8 white page copy hits the market and sells within a record range (most copies are settling in the $1500 range, but a record sale over $1700 has been recorded).  It looks like the census is not only high, but it may be growing.  Typically, that is destructive to any price gains and the higher supply typically drives prices down.  However, Spider-Woman seems to be defying conventional economic wisdom...but for how long?

Many of the Marvel Spotlight titles and Marvel Premiere titles are highly collectible and are often scarce in the higher grades.  When investigating the census numbers, you will make a startling finding of Marvel Spotlight #32.  It seems to be heavily loaded at the high end (9.8 grade) with 139 copies listed.  For some perspective, 9.8 graded Marvel Spotlight #28, from the same time-frame and which features the first solo Moon Knight story, has only 64 copies on the census.  Moon Knight has, of course, been named in the MCU and we should see the value of his key books continue to make strides as a new audience is introduced to him and he slides out of the "cult" character and into the mainstream.

Spider-Woman #1 is also seeing market action as the prices push upward, steadily increasing with each offering.  Fair Market Value (FMV) for this book currently sits at $200 and copies have pushed to nearly $300 for a 9.8 graded copy.  Again, although loaded on the census at the higher grades, there appears to be enough of a collector base to make this comic grow.  A close eye will be needed though because too many copies exist to support the price growth.  A similar fate may be shared by Secret Wars #7, which features the first black-suited Spider-Woman because it has shared a similar success in value gains driven by rumor and speculation that has yet to be fulfilled.  It will be exciting to see what becomes of Spider-Woman, a character that was hastily developed to protect her naming rights and has been an underdeveloped property ever since.  Is she going to be worth development in a movie or is all this speculation for not?

Do you feel Spider-Woman has a role in the MCU or Sony movie universe?  Would she be better served as a supporting character or a lead?  Drop your comments and join the speculation!

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