Pricing back issues without a price guide
Every comic seller gets asked what a book is worth, and the honest answer is that it is worth what somebody paid for the last copy in the same shape. That is the whole method. This page is about finding that number, and what to do when it does not exist. It is not a price guide, and nobody can price your copy without seeing it.
Demand is the loud half. Supply is the half that decides
Comic prices can move fast. A new book can become the one everybody wants in a week: Absolute Batman #1, out in October 2024, had DC telling the trade press by November that it was just under 400,000 copies across its printings. A movie announcement can do the same to a book that was in a dollar box the month before.
But 400,000 copies measures how many people wanted it, not what a copy is worth. A book everybody bought is a book everybody has. (DC's figure was also disputed at the time: Bleeding Cool counted Ultimate Spider-Man #1 higher.)
It comes down to supply and demand, and sellers watch demand because that is the side with the news. When a Spawn movie finally comes out, it is unlikely to move most early Spawn: Spawn #1 alone reported about 1.7 million copies in 1992. Demand can double against a number like that and there are still more copies than buyers. It runs the other way too: a book with a small print run does not need much news to move.
Grading is an opinion, and yours is one of them
Your grade sets the price band before anything else. Overstreet and CGC use the same ten point scale, 0.5 Poor to 10.0 Gem Mint; what people disagree on is what a given number requires, and two careful people will not always land on the same grade.
So photograph what you are grading and describe what you see, so a buyer is agreeing with your pictures rather than your adjective. The photography guide is the other half of this: a spine tick that shows in your photo is a conversation you already had, and one that does not is a return.
The question that changes the price most: is it a key?
A key is a comic the collecting community considers important: a first appearance, a first cover, an origin, a death, a creator's first work. Keys carry demand that ordinary issues from the same run do not. If you stop to think about one comic in a box, stop on the one you suspect is a key.
Secret Wars #8 is a good example. Collectors chase it because it is where Spider-Man's black suit comes from. Be exact in a listing, because this is where people argue: the costume's first published appearance is Amazing Spider-Man #252, cover dated May 1984 and on sale at the end of January 1984, and Secret Wars #8, on sale that August, is where the suit's story is told. Marvel Team-Up #141 carries the same May cover date and has its own defenders. Both of the main two are keys, but not the same key, and a buyer who collects this material knows the difference.
The glut, and what to do with it
The early 1990s printed comics in numbers nothing before or since has matched. People still want those books, but nobody has to buy yours: a buyer has fifty copies to choose from and takes the cheapest one in the shape he wants.
Do not extend that to the whole two decades. Print runs collapsed after the mid 90s crash and stayed down. By the mid 2000s a quarter of a million copies was a headline, and plenty of 2000s books are hard to find. Price a 2004 book like a 1993 book because both are "modern" and you will leave money on the table.
Two things work on glut books: price them to move, and bundle them. A lot sells when the singles inside it will not, and you ship one parcel instead of nine.
How to find the number
For a comic you are not sure about, it is five minutes on eBay:
- Search the series, the issue number, and the year if the series has been relaunched. "Spawn 1 1992" beats "Spawn 1".
- Filter to Sold items. Asking prices tell you what sellers hope for. Sold prices tell you what buyers paid.
- Read the grade on each sale, not just the price. A 9.4 and a 6.0 of the same book are two different products.
- Throw out the top and the bottom. The high sale was somebody who needed it, and the low one was a mispriced auction that ended at 2am.
The sold filter only goes back about 90 days. For a common book that is plenty. For a scarce one it can be an empty screen, and an empty screen is not a worthless comic: it means a thin market. Terapeak, inside Seller Hub, looks further back.
Two or three sales are not a market price, just two or three data points. Pick a number you would be happy with and let it sit. Thin markets are where sellers lose the most money, in both directions.
What Point and Sell does about pricing
Nothing here sets a price on your comic. It puts evidence next to the price box, and you choose:
- Your own sell-through. Give it your eBay listing reports and it shows what happened to your own stock: "Your history for Dark Dominion: 9 listed, 4 gone (44%, sold or ended), gone at a median $3.99." Gone means sold or ended; two reports cannot tell those apart. It needs three listings of a series, else it falls back to your publisher and decade, which needs ten.
- A key-issue check. It names a comic whose key value is at least three times your price and at least ten dollars above it, so a key in a box of dollar books gets flagged. When the volume is unclear, usually because the row has no year, it says "verify volume". When it knows a quarter or fewer of a batch's series (four or more), it says so, because no flags then means nothing was checked. A quiet screen is not an appraisal. It also lists up to eight rows it had no evidence on, highest priced first.
- A price opinion, off by default. Turn it on in Settings and each row gets a chip marked OPINION estimating what that comic typically sells for. It is a general sense of the market, not a sale, and it never changes your price.
Try it on a box · More guides for comic sellers
Sources
Absolute Batman #1's figure is DC's own claim, reported November 2024, of just under 400,000 copies across all printings. Spawn #1's 1992 figure of about 1.7 million copies is Comichron's: 1.25 million to the direct market, 200,000 to newsstand and 250,000 to multipack repackaging. The black costume dates are the published on sale and cover dates for Amazing Spider-Man #252 and Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #8. The 90 day limit on eBay's sold filter is eBay's. The pricing advice is my own practice, not a rule.