Gilda

As an individual issue, if it's in VF or better condition, that one's worth about a dollar, maybe two. I bought the full run of 1-113 about two years ago for less than $100. Ignore comics buyers guides; they're greatly inflated, and tend to give the price you might have to pay a comic shop. It's like high blue book; you'll never get that selling it as an individual issue.

eBay is the biggest marketplace for comics nowdays, so whatever it's worth on eBay is what it's worth. The BIN for .24 is the equivilent of a penny sale. Mainstream books from the big two post 1980 are usually dumped on eBay for anywhere from a penny to a dollar in VF condition. The seller makes his money on shipping costs. Notice that the seller is charging $3 for shipping and handling. Sending that in a plain manila envelope media mail will cost about a dollar. Subtract out the shipping and you're actually paying $2.25 for the book and $1 for shipping.

As a general rule, books from the 80's on tend to sell for about $1 each individually or in full runs. Random collections go for less than that.

Saving it for a decade or more very likely won't increase it's value any. That only happens if there is something significant that happens in that particular issue, such as a character that later becomes popular is introduced.

Take for example, Incredible Hulk #181. Hulk wasn't a top selling book at the time, so the order for 181 was standard. The story wasn't the least bit important, featuring a routine battle between the Hulk and a foe of the month, intended as a one shot.

This character likely would have disappeared into obscurity, a trivia item for geeks, if not for what happened a few months later. In the summer of 1975, Len Wein took on the task of revamping a book that was selling so badly it had been in reprints for a couple of years. He took this little known character and made him part of a new international team. After the first three stories, he left the book and after a one issue fill in, Chris Claremont started writing the book, which he would write for the next 17 years, turning it into a phenomenon that now dominates Marvel Comics, and the character would become one of the most popular, and lately, overused, characters in comics.

The character I'm talking about is of course, Wolverine, and the nearly dead book revived by Len Wein and developed by Chris Claremont was the Uncanny X-Men. Those issues, Hulk 180-181, X-Men Giant Size #1, and Uncanny X-Men #1, are all now worth several hundred dollars each, solely because they represent the beginning of something big.

And don't be fooled by #1's. Any new #1 from the big 2 hasn't been a big deal in decades. Before the 70's, when comic collecting first starting becoming poplar, comics were oftne considerd to be consumables, like newspaper comics. You read it once or twice, and gave it away or tossed it. This is what makes Silver and Golden age comics valuable. They were produced in enormous numbers, the best selling golden and silver age books having a circulation of a half million each month. But they weren't cared for, carefully handled, or preserved, and were printed on cheap, high acid newsprint, making them fragile.

Today, this is rare, and the time to sell is when a low run book suddenly becomes hot. Marvel didn't anticipate that it's new NYX book would be a big hit, so it got a low print run. It was just one of about 15 X-Books at the time, and didn't feature a hot new artist or writer, so it wasn't given a big push or a big run. Then a new character was introduced in #3, a teenage girl with claws that popped from the back of her hands, X-23. Soon, rumors that this girl might be related to Wolverine popped up, and suddenly, the book was hot, and everyone wanted a first print run of NYX 1-3. #3 goes for about $30-40 currently. It will undooubtedly go down.

This is the hot comic phenomenon. When I first started reading comics in the mid 80's my first favorite, New Teen Titans was a "hot" book. A #1 went for $13, a lot more than my parents were going to spend. Now it's a side note, going for maybe a few dollars.

Comics, like everything else, tend to depreciate over time relative to inflation unless they are Silver Age or earlier, or early work from someone who later becomes big. Robert Kirkman's early Invincible and Walking Dead issues are now worth a many times cover price.

Most comics, however, depreciate like a new car. The moment you get that $2.99 or $2.25 comic in your hot little hands, it's suddenly worth about half what you paid for it.

Basic rule of thumb: Most modern comics are worth about a dollar an issue in VF or better condition unless they're hot for some reason.

I'll have to disagree with Suave. A collector's market is the best time to sell; the higher the demand, the more your collection is worth. A year ago a collection of Young Justice was worth maybe $50 for a full run of 1-55. Today it's three times that. Why? Mainly because of the popular Teen Titans cartoon. About two years ago, DC wanted to capitalize on the popularity of its Justice League cartoon by using the Teen Titans, a team of mostly sidekicks. The problem was that the original Titans were all grown up, and their book, The Titans, wasn't very good.

The cartoon was to feature the original New Teen Titans Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Cyborg, Raven, and Changeling. This was the team from the comics heyday, in the 80's. All those characters were still around, but some of them were grown up with new identities, and there was a new Robin and Wonder Girl, and no Kid Flash. DC was hoping that the cartoon would draw fans to the comic, but was afraid they'd find unfamiliar characters.

There was a sidekick book out, called Young Justice, fearturing new versions of Robin, Wonder Girl, and Superboy, and a junior version of the Flash, Impulse. This was fairly close to the sidekick version that would be in the cartoon, but it had the wrong title, and the character names didn't all match up well.

So it was decided to end Young Justice and The Titans, neither of which was selling well, and scramble the teams up a bit, and relaunch them as The Outsiders for the grown up sidekicks, and to start a new Titans book called Teen Titans, featuring the characters with the same names as the cartoon. The newest Robin and Wonder Girl, were made Teen Titans, Impulse quickly renamed Kid Flash and given a new costume, and Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, and Changeling brought back. With the exception of Superboy, they now had a comic with a team that had the same names as the cartoon.

Comic readers came to recognize that Young Justice was the real precursor to Teen Titans, so it became a relatively hot property. And all this because of the cartoon.

There are rumors of a LOSH cartoon for next year. If it comes out, and is the same quality as JLU, you better believe the early issues of the current Legion run will become a hot property. But that's a big if.

Bottom line: That version of the Justice League, though quite good, will never get a cartoon or a movie, and the creators never became hot writers (though again, they are quite good), so that book will likely not keep up with inflation, no matter how long you keep it.

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