Posted in: Comics | Tagged: cgc, golden age

The Stock Exchange – Golden Oldies

Published Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:00:41 -0600

This week, the focus is on the Golden Age, where we had quite a few interesting sales this past week to report in our look at sales from the week of November 14-20.

First up, we have a gem from Fiction House, Wings Comics #56. Fiction House had evolved from a pulp publisher in the 1920s into a comic publisher by the end of the 1930s, and they served as publishers for some of Jack Kirby's earliest work. While their titles might not be well known, their creators were amongst the best of the era, with work on titles that served as the comic book successors to their pulps, with Wings Comics following the pulp Wings. Sales of graded issues of Wings Comics have been extremely rare, and this purchase of a CGC 8.5 copy is the only recorded sale of a graded copy of #56. At $158.41, that's a nice bargain on what is certainly a hard series to find in high grades.

Another nice bargain from this past week in CGC 8.5 is this issue #14 of the Spirit, Volume I. The last recorded sale in this grade was back in 2006, selling for $633. That one happened to be from a pedigree collection, the Crowley Collection, but that pedigree shouldn't be worth almost $200, as this sale was for just $450.

At the same time, a similarly graded #19 also sold, also for $450. On a much higher end of the spectrum, a beautiful 9.8 copy, from the Edgar Church/Mile High collection, sold earlier this month for $6,274.

When one thinks of EC Comics, one of the first titles to come to mind, if not the first, is Tales from the Crypt, and what EC character is known better than the Crypt-Keeper? None, which is what is so surprising about this sale of Tales from the Crypt #33, the origin of the Crypt-Keeper. Graded 8.5 by CGC, this auction on November 18 finished at just $440, $82 less than a similarly graded copy just earlier this year. This is one of the key horror comics from the EC era, so congratulations to the winner on a very nice bargain.

Despite having some of the top names in the Golden Age in their stable – Jerry Robinson and Mac Raboy being the two most recognizable names – Spark Publications was not long for the world, opening in 1944 and shutting down just two years later with a total of 15 superhero comics produced: two issues of Atoman, eight issues of The Green Lama, and five of Golden Lad. One of those two issues of Atoman just sold online, with an amazing CGC 9.4 copy of #1 selling for just $1,258.33. I say just there because a 9.0 copy sold three years ago for more, at $1,501. Pedigrees don't matter here either, as while the 9.0 came from the Edgar Church/Mile High collection, the 9.4 came from the Rockford collection. The Robinson cover alone makes this all worth it.

Returning to Fiction House, there was a sale on November 14 of a copy of Jumbo Comics #70 graded 9.0 by CGC. Jumbo was the premier title in the Fiction House line, featuring beautiful Good Girl Art on Jumbo's Sheena, Jungle Queen feature. This sale was just the third-recorded sale of a CGC-graded copy of #70, and the highest grade of the three. Unlike the other sales mentioned thus far, this sale showed an improvement in price compared to similar sales from this series. Looking at issues #68 and #69, both have a recorded sale in CGC 9.0, and both of which were from a pedigree collection (Davis Crisppen), unlike the #70, yet they went for significantly less than the $391 #70 fetched, with #68 selling at $227 in 2007 and #69 also selling in 2007 for $275.

We should have at least one superhero book make the list, so to close things out this week we have a CGC 9.0-graded copy of Master Comics #87, featuring Elvis Presley's favorite hero and inspiration, Captain Marvel Jr. Only two copies have sold in this grade, with this one selling for $140, a slight markdown from last year's $155.

Next time you read this feature, the auction for the highest-graded copy of Action Comics #1, CGC 9.0, to go on sale will be wrapping up. Currently, the bidding is a tad over $1.3M, but with ComicConnect.com having just sold one at CGC 8.5 for $1.5M, I expect this price to go up dramatically as we close in on the deadline. You can check out the auction, and throw in a bid if you are feeling saucy, here.

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