There are few certainties when it comes to the value of vintage comic books, but usually a well-preserved comic will always increase in value as the years go by. Yet that was not true of a key Silver Age Marvel comic that recently hit the auction block at Heritage Auctions but somehow sold for less than a version with exactly the same grading that sold back in 2017. Although it still commanded a substantial $134,200 last week, a copy of The Avengers #4from 1964 fell short of a $143,400 sale of an identical comic almost a decade ago. For anyone considering their vintage comic collection to be an investment for the future, this is an unexpected reminder that even when the quality of a graded comic is maintained, there is no guarantee it will be worth the price you paid for it.
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Several versions of this comic have been up for sale in recent years and the price people have paid has been wildly varying. The latest sale of a graded CGC NM/MT 9.8 copy – one of the highest graded copies to exist – mirrors the exact grading of the one sold in 2017. However, the recent sale was slightly higher than another 9.8 graded copy sold for in 2023 ($132,000) and significantly higher than a $108,000 sale in 2024. Compared to that low point, the most recent sale is a much better result and more in line with the kind of value increase that has been seen across many vintage comic books in the last several years. Yet, the price boom of the 2020s appears to have some gaps, and this Avengers comic sale is one that just managed to slip through.
A Sliver Age Cornerstone Comic
Comic book collectors are obviously not able to be present at every single auction, or have the available funds to purchase some of the highest priced items when they do attend. With Heritage holding almost weekly sales of comic books, vintage movie posters and classic toys, it is not surprising that sometimes spending an extra $10,000 to secure a purchase may not be possible. That does not mean that the significance of the items being sold is diminished by a dip in sale price, and it is hard to ignore just how important The Avengers #4 is when it comes to Marvel Comics. The issue is pivotal for being the one that brought Captain America out of years of suspended animation, both in the story itself and in the history of the character’s appearances on the page. The issue just makes it into Overstreet’s list of the Top 50 Silver Age Comics, landing at number 46 in the countdown.
All of this should mean that this particular comic with its 9.8 grading is a huge deal when it comes to auction, especially considering only seven copies have ever achieved that level and no have been graded higher. The near-flawless preservation of a 62-year-old comic is something that is only going to be a more and more rare occurrence, and there are certainly not going to be any additional copies popping up unless someone has a really big box in their attic with no idea what they are sitting on. While this sale is a surprising $10,000 downgrade, on a different day, with the right people in the mix, this could have easily achieved the amount it earned 10 years earlier or gone even higher.
The 7 Best Avengers Comic Book Stories of the 1970s, Ranked
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