Cracked Comics Value

[Rachelle Kun]

Thereis no formula for determining the value of a restored book. Generally speaking, the higher the grade the lower a percentage a restored copy brings versus an unrestored copy of the same grade. For instance, a 9.0 restored X-Men 1 recently sold for $7,500. An unrestored 9.0 sold the same month for $40,000. That is far, far less than 1/2. It's about 19%. A 9.2 that was trimmed sold just a week ago for a little under $1400. A 9.2 unrestored is a 50K book. That's 3% of unrestored.

But in the lower grades - 2.0-4.0 - then 1/2 to 2/3 is common.

Comicquant's estimate of value is as good a guestimate of value that can be made short of selling it at an auction. The last recorded unrestored CGC 7.5 sold for $11,000. Your best recourse is returning it or the seller giving you a bunch of your money back.

No idea who the seller is....and it doesn't matter in terms of eBay and PayPal siding with you (they will) But this is professional, highest quality restoration. Difficult to detect. Unless the seller had the work done themselves, most likely they had no idea it was restored. So they are likely just as disappointed as you...

I think there was an article in an Overstreet Guide a few years back on what restored comics were worth, but in today's market, they are worth whatever someone pays. X-men #1 has many graded copies out there that have been restored. The way I see it, if you want a nice key book that's been restored and you're planning on keeping it, I wouldn't worry about the investment aspect of it. You get a really nice book at a reduced price. In this case the buyer paid unrestored prices is what I gather.

You would have to do this with the CGC "Walkthru" price tier, right? I don't see any other way that you'd get a book back from CGC in time to meet the paypal or ebay return deadlines. And then, after paying the higher tier rate you find out it shouldn't have been submitted under that higher rate! Frustrating.

Restoration depends on extent and quality. I think grayzr is being generous with 1/2 amount. More like 30% or less in my opinion. Your book had professional restoration, so that would definitely yield more money vs an amateur doing the work. Some restoration can be reversed, but the cleaning can't. I guess you can always soil the book some, but it probably wouldn't work.

If you have chosen our screening service, we will decide which comics are appropriate candidates for pressing. Those comics that are determined to be appropriate candidates will be pressed. Screening fees are charged in addition to the pressing fees except for Walkthrough tier, where the screening fee will be waived if the services are performed. If we believe that the comic is not an appropriate candidate for pressing, you will pay only the screening fee, your comic will not be pressed and it will either be returned to you or transferred to CGC for grading if so designated.

I assume you got this information from GPA. It was an error. I just looked into this and the supposed 9.2 restored X-Men #1 that sold in April 2017 for under $1400 was actually a restored 2.5, according to the actual CGC number paired with this listing (when you look it up on the CGC website). I alerted GPA of this and Andy investigated and removed the listing, repositioning it as a 2.5 (which makes total sense price-wise). The CGC number in question is 1465443003.

The only restored 9.2 X-Men #1 now showing on GPA is one that has been sold multiple times for substantially more than $1400. It does seem that lower-grade restored copies go for a larger percentage of unrestored copies than higher grade restoreds. But 3% is insanely low and if that ever happens then the buyer got an absolute steal, especially for grades so high that there are only a handful (okay, a few dozen) copies in the world that look that nice, restored or not. I'd say 10% of unrestored value is about right (for now), whereas those in lower grades would be more like 35%. That's just what I'm noticing.

Cleaning out the closet in a spare bedroom, came across a box of old comics I bought decades ago and had forgotten all about. Most are bagged and boarded, I guess basically "NIB". Image, Valiant, Marvel, Malibu, DC, Darkhorse, etc - a lot from the early '90's when Image first started up.

Where would be the best place to get an idea of the value of them? I don't expect any of them to be worth very much, but in the world of collectors, who knows? I'd rather sell the whole lot at once and not hassle with trying to get the best price for every single one...but also don't want to get low-balled by somebody who's going to turn around and flip them for a fortune.

Put 'em on eBay? Amazon? IDK.

I'd check out what some of the popular titles sold for on eBay to back up any comic book shop valuations. I've found some comic book shops to undervalue things for their benefit. However, some also offer credits for old comics on trade-in to use for what they have, which is a good deal, IMO.

P.S. - I might have some interest in early '90s Marvel and Image.

Comic stores can be hit or miss. I was trying to get just a feel for "do I need to REALLY take care of these, or just make sure they are bagged, boarded, and stores properly?" for literally 7 comics and the owner flat out said "are you gonna pay me for my time?"

during the speculator boom of the 1990s there were printed price guides, I'm sure they're all online now. Get a rough idea of the values from there and try to lump them all together for a little below that to get rid of them quickly.

If you just want them gone, don't expect to get top $ for them. Shops and other resellers will buy whole collections for cheap with the hope there may be a few gems in there that will pay for the time it takes to dig through them. The shops I've been in somewhat recently are already buried in collections they've bought and don't really need more books.

I was a store manager at a comic book shop back in the early 90s. I also have boxes of comics in my attic... I haven't looked at any of them in decades now and just need them gone to clear out my attic. Some of them have some value but most of them don't, so the value of the collection averages out.

I had a similar situation for BB cards a few months ago. When I bought them in 1990, they were the top of the line brand at the time. Now the playing card/comics stores are not interested. And when I look at the sales on various internet sites, the work for the rather small sales prices made me just donate them.

One other item to note: The 1990s was inundated with speculators, which led to high print runs for comics and baseball cards. In this prime example of supply and demand, there are still a lot of supply for these comics and cards. However, there are some buried gems.

I agree that this time period was the first big boom in speculation. Most of the "made to be collected" issues ar not going to be worth anything special at this point. I have a few copies of McFarlane's Spider-man #1 that I happened across at a non-premium price during the frenzy. At one point they were probably worth $50 each but they printed about 80 billion of them in a dozen variants and I can't imagine they are worth more than cover now, even in their factory wrappers.

Sometimes a movie will increase the value of the source comic. When the first The Crow movie came out, the value of the original J.O. Barr comics shot up in value - especially since being an independently published comic, it was not published in huge numbers. The pending re-boot movie might increase demand, but it's hard to say. I'm sure retailers will give them a value bump but whether or not people will actually buy them is a different story.

Oddly enough, the #1 of a book is often worth less than the #2 or #3 issue. That was definitely the case for the original GI Joe comics of the early 80s. That was the first comic book I started collecting as a young teen and I kept buying them through the entire Marvel run. I think I might have bought the first few Image issues, but I don't remember.

I have a ton of the Image stuff from that era, chromium, lenticular, hologram, all the bells and whistles lol. I had a bunch of stuff signed in person at Wizard World, but they didn't really do CoAs at the time. I probably have a couple gems in there, but I'm sure most if cover price at best.

Yeah, the #2 issue value is weird. I had a hard time finding second issues of Gunsmithcats and Oh My Goddess back in the day. Probably over paid. Wonder what they are worth now.... Dark Horse Manga was my jam in the 90's

No kidding. And to think I gave away all of my Star Wars and GI Joe stuff in the late 80s when I was in high school. And I had quite a bit of it, including a complete AT-AT. My GI Joe figures were pretty rough as I figured out you could take them apart and swap around the legs and heads to make your own figures.

Click on any Comic Book Series to see a Issue list and their current value. From there you can also add a Issue to your collection or wishlist. Go to any Issue detail page to see current prices for different grades and historic prices too.

Our Comic Book pricing algorithm then determines the value for each Issue for each grade. You can see historic prices for every Issue so you know which Comic Books are increasing in price and which are dropping.

3a8082e126