Silver Age Comic Book Price Index 18-Month Performance

The values of key Silver Age comic books have steadily risen since the beginning of the decade. I've created the SCPI (Silver Age Comic Price Index) to give serious collectors a more accurate view of the state of the market.

This report covers the last 18 months of the SCPI. For a look at the comic books included in the SCPI, go here .

From January 2007 through July 2008, the SCPI has risen from 1410 to 1611. This represents a 14.2% increase over 18 months.

By design, the starting value of the SCPI in 2002 was exactly 1000. Therefore, the July 2008 value of 1611 represents a total increase of 61% in key Silver Age comic book values over the last six and a half years.

Returning again to the graph of the last 18 month period. The SCPI rose 12.6% from January through December 2007 and has only risen about 1.5% during the first half of 2008. While 2007 was a very strong year for the SCPI, 2008 is sluggish so far. This is may be due to the weak economy. It may also be due to a lack of movies for the "Big 3" Marvel titles in 2008.

The table below shows the net increase of each issue included in the SCPI over the 18-month period. Notice that the three top performers (Tales of Suspense and Invincible Iron Man) are all related to Iron Man! While I will refrain from assigning a cause-and-effect relationship, I will point out that in summer of 2008, we enjoyed the release of an Iron Man movie which greatly exceeded expectations. 'Nuff said.

click on table to enlarge














Other titles that are doing well include Captain America, the Incredible Hulk, Avengers, and Strange Tales. All of these titles may be helped by current and future film projects. After the end of the Iron Man movie credits, there was a teaser about "the Avenger project" which touches on both the Avengers and Captain America. June 2008 saw a second Hulk film.

The SCPI is weighted by relative market share. Therefore, just as the "Big Three" Marvel titles of Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men together make up more than half of the Silver Age market share, they also make up more than half of the weight of the index. The performance of each of these titles over the last 18 months within the SCPI is shown in the table below.

Both the X-Men and Fantastic Four performed well enough in 2007 but are relatively unchanged so far in 2008. However, future movies Magneto, Wolverine and sequels to Fantastic Four may help to boost the popularity of these titles.

Key issues of the Amazing Spider-man continue to do well. Like Superman, Spidey doesn't seem need a great movie in the current year to keep interest alive among his dedicated collectors. Spidey is forever!

CycleGirl

Silver Age Amazing Spider-man Index 2002 - 2007

I'm several weeks late with this. I guess Christmas this year was a little busier than I expected. Oh well, better late than never!

In this article, I'm introducing the first title-specific index. The most successful title of the Silver Age - The Amazing Spider-man. The graph below shows how selected key issues have increased in value from 2002 to 2007.


The 7.6% rate of return of the Amazing Spider-man keys is a bit less than the return for the overall SCPI (which is just under 9%). Spidey hasn't appreciated at a breath-taking pace over the last five years, but the reader should note that key issues of Amazing Spider-man were already very highly valued in 2002 when GPA started collecting data.

One of the most interesting aspects of the ASM index is the unevenness of price gains. There appears to be a bit of a boom and bust characteristic to prices. After a rapid price increase during 2003 and 2004, the years 2005 and 2006 saw almost no change in average price.


In a previous article, I reported that 2007 was shaping up to be a great year for the SCPI (Silver Age Price Index). Clearly, with a 10.7% increase in 2007, Amazing Spider-man participated in the overall trend.

The table below shows the issues used to construct the index. All issues are given the same weight in the composite index.


The best performing issue was ASM #1 in CGC 4.0 (Very Good) condition. The second-best performer was ASM #39 (First John Romita cover and art).

Just in case you think that I only care about the numbers, here are two of my favorite Spidey covers! I love everything about the cover of #39. The gorgeous blues, Goblin on his glider and Spidey in real trouble!



Then there is the wonderful split-panel cover of Spidey #59. I love the way Romita has used the similarity in shape between MJ's right arm and Spidey's two arms to connect the images.

Well comic fans, I hope that you enjoyed this article and feel that it was worth waiting for.

In future weeks, I'll update the SCPI to include all of 2007. I also intend to create indexes for Fantastic Four and X-Men. Please let me know what you think. The best place to comment is in the thread on the CGC boards.

SCPI Performance 2007 Through September

In the previous report, the SCPI was shown to have risen 39% from 2002 through 2006. Just in case you've forgotten, here's that graph again.

As I explained in the previous article, Silver Age keys increased in value rapidly in 2003 and 2004. Then, in 2005 and 2006, the market experienced modest growth. By December 2006, the SCPI had risen to 1388 points. This represents a 38.8% increase from the 2002 value.

The graph below shows the SCPI from January 2007 through September 2007. By September of 2007, the SCPI had risen to 1534. This is a 10.5% increase over the 1388 level of December 2006. With three months to go, 2007 is shaping up to be a very strong year for Silver Age keys!

The next graph shows the September 2007 SCPI value in relation to the composite going back to 2002. At the current pace of growth, we can expect 2007 to be the best year since 2004 when the SCPI rose 15.5%.

Finally, the table below shows the relative price change from January through September 2007. Notice that out of 32 issues tracked in the SCPI, 27 issues gained in value while only 5 issues decreased in value.


So far, 2007 has been a great year for Silver Age keys. In early December, I'll publish and update which will cover the SCPI through the end of November. In the meantime, I will be working on indexes for specific titles. The first will be Amazing Spider-man which I intend to put together before the end of this month.

See also:
SCPI Performance 2002 - 2006

Should I Invest in Comic Books?

Are comic books a smart investment choice? In general terms, the investment returns on collectibles is inferior to that of the stock market and real estate. Sure, they have grown in value over the years, but for your serious money, there are better places to put it.

My advice: fund your 401k and Roth IRA every year; buy mutual funds and real estate! Those ought to be the foundation. Don't think that comic book investing is going to make you rich. I wouldn't recommend that anyone have more than 10% of their net worth invested in collectibles. I personally have between 2 and 3% of my net worth in comic books and I consider that a large amount.

By way of clarification, what I am calling "investing" is the practice of buying something of value, holding it for a time, then selling it for a capital gain. The change in value as a function of time is the investment return. Other means of making money on comic books such as buying and then reselling (a.k.a. flipping) soon afterwards is not what I'm calling "investing" on this site. That is more of a dealing or trading activity rather than investing.

There is an excellent Investopedia Article on the pros and cons (mostly cons) of investing in collectibles.

For me, comic books ARE a kind of investment, but not a particularly serious one. I look on it as a "mad money" investment. I truly believe that by buying wisely and holding for a long time, that my books will grow in value. I’m even optimistic that they’ll do better than inflation. That being said, I am well aware that my books might not grow in value at all. I'm certainly not counting on their growth to fund my retirement or my kid's college educations. I have other investments for that. You should too.

I buy comic books because I've loved them for a long time and because they are valuable. And it's not just the art, the stories, and the lore of comic book history that fascinates me. It's also the way that they have increased in value over the years. It's fun to think about how you could have picked up an Amazing Fantasy #15 for a few bucks back in the 60s or 70s and now have something worth more than a house. That's cool. It's also cool to pick up a book and say "This is the 2nd highest graded of this book and it's worth over $500..." Do I hope that the same book will be worth $1000, ten years from now? You bet I do!

The fact that key and/or high-grade issues are recognized by the collecting world as having that kind of value adds to their mystique and prestige. The possibility that they may continue to grow in value adds to the excitement and fun of the hobby. I do look at my Silver-Age books and allow myself to hope that they will grow in value the same way that Golden-Age books grew in value between the 80s and now. However, if they don't, I haven't invested more than I can afford to lose. Besides, I'll continue to enjoy owning them. They will always have value to me.

Buying these rare, key books, is a way for me to celebrate the financial success that I've attained over the years. Back when I was a struggling college student, I was certainly aware that there were books worth thousands of dollars out there in the world. I knew that I couldn't afford them, but even at that time, I thought "how cool it would be to be able to own comic books like that!" Now that I can, I'm lovin' it!

While investing in comics may be worse than investing in stocks, mutual funds or real estate, it is arguably a better investment than gold, the lottery, day-trading, cars or any number of other places you could put your money. Just because it's not the best investment for your money, it is far from the worst. If you get personal satisfaction from owning the books, the investment returns are a bonus.

If this essay resonates with any of you, let me know.

Elements of this post originally appeared in a discussion on the CGC boards that you can read here

See also

About the Author (at the end I tell you where my money is)

What Comic Books are Included in the SCPI?

The following principles were considered when selecting comic books for the SCPI index.

1) Select books that are frequently traded. This provides more data. Also, these issues have greater relevance to the market since they represent what more collectors are trading.

2) Select key issues. This tends to create the same list of candidates as the first criterion. Key issues have much higher numbers in the CGC census and thus generate more trades.

3) Select books that have values in the range of greatest relevance to "rank and file" collectors.

This last criterion requires explanation and I'll admit, that some decisions that I made were arbitrary.

In the post What is your most valuable Silver Age Comic book worth?

I shared the results of a survey of Silver-Age Collectors with regard to their ten most valuable Silver Age books. The results are shown below. As I explained in the previous post, there is a large population of collectors whose "best book" is worth $401 to $3000. Similarly, these collector's "next 9" most valuable books had an average value of $201 to $2000.


Based on these results, it seemed the most practical to choose issues for the index with values in the range of approximately $200 to $3000. In fact, the actual samples, as shown in the table below span a range that slightly exceeds these bounds.


A study of the table above shows that the issues selected span the range of $177 to $3311. Of the issues selected, 68% are worth less than $1000. I did this in order to best represent the typical "top 10" of the average collector from the survey (with a median value of $700).

So many times, I've read about the phenomenal increase in value of a near-mint Action #1 or some other "Premier" comic book. I chose to steer away from this with the SCPI. I hoped to create an index that represented "middle class" or "rank and file" collectors. Besides, I suspect that every Premier collector with a few books worth $30k and up also has books worth in the SCPI range of $200 to $3000 in their CGC boxes or file cabinets. Finally, from a practical point-of-view, those Premier books are traded too infrequently to be useful within a price index.

By tracking the middle to high-value books, I'm believe that I have made an index that is relevant to the majority of collectors. Let me know what you think!

SCPI Performance 2002 to 2006

The SCPI is the Silver-Age Comic Price Index. It is a composite of prices for 32 frequently traded key Silver-Age books.


From 2002 through 2006, the SCPI grew 388 points or 38.8% This is an average of approximately 9% per year. The period from 2002 through 2004 saw growth of 295 points, while the period from 2004 to 2006 accounted for only 93 points. In other words, prices rose steeply for the first two years, then grew slowly for the next two years. Note: in another post I will show that 2007 is looking strong so far.

The issues that contribute to the SCPI are weighted so that the higher market share titles make up a larger part of the composite. The graph below, shows the SCPI again, but this time you can see the contribution of the various titles.


All of the "big 3" Silver-Age titles, ASM, FF and X-Men rose in the 4-year period. However, as a percentage of their 2002 values, Amazing Spider-man rose a little less than Fantastic Four or X-Men. This may be due to the fact that by 2002, ASM were already far more expensive than comparable issues of the other major titles. For example, between 2002 and 2006,

• ASM #14 in CGC 7.5 rose from $727 to $1011 (39% gain)
  
• X-Men #12 in CGC 8.0 rose from $199 to $314 (57% gain)

These issues both represent important first appearances by major villains (Green Goblin and Juggernaut) they are also similar in grade and age. However, in 2002, the ASM was already valued at 3.5 times that of the X-Men issue. Perhaps the other titles were catching up a bit with the already impressive growth of ASM prior to 2002.

This observation may lead a speculator to a somewhat contrarian stance. That is, invest in the titles that are currently out-of-favor because they have the most potential to grow. Indeed, the table below shows the SCPI issues ranked by market performance.

Top performers included Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense. However, before you rush out and buy every minor title key, consider the dismal performance of Captain America, Daredevil, Incredible Hulk, and Batman. Like stocks of larger companies, more popular titles deliver consistent, but less exceptional performance. Lesser-known titles offer the potential for higher gain but with more inherent risk.

Contrary to popular opinion, some of the best performing books are in the low or mid-grades. Keep in mind, however, that these low and mid-grade books are "super-keys" like TOS #39 in 4.0 (first appearance of Iron Man). I don't know if a typical Silver-Age book in 4.0 would have experienced this kind of growth.

In conclusion, Silver-Age key issues have shown a healthy increase in value since 2002. Furthermore, while the gain has been more than inflation, it has not been so rapid as to be obviously unsustainable.

See also
What Comic Books are Included in the SCPI

Why Create a Silver Age Comic Price Index?

About the Author

this is a place-holder for an article to be published in the next few weeks