I’m saying “key” in the sense of a Key comic. First Full Appearances, Cameos, Deaths, new weapons, etc…
I only buy store variants of “key” comics. That’s my rule and it serves me well.
Great conversation. That’s what I love about this forum. Thanks for chatting!
If that’s what you believe, I think we are all wasting our time here.
Venom 3 was a $30-60 raw book for the year prior to Covid.
That would put it consistently as the probably the highest performing cover A over a long period of time.
Knull has been a “key character” since his debut.
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This is why they use loose terms like “limited to” and so on… It’s such a vague definition and nothing stops them from coming back to say, oh, well, it was limited last week but this week we got 500 more… they’ll never tell you how many are truly printed or available.
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Yes, Knull has been key and or hot since his debut. This recent surge is just the character gaining more traction in the market.
From my prospective it’s crazy watching people pay $1000s for moderns that sat around at $10-$20 dollars for years. I don’t question anything anymore I could of retired off of buying NM Forever People #1s for $10 so I know I’ll eventually hit a book in big multiples that will fetch these insane prices it doesn’t even have to be a book I care for.
I think the same thing about bitcoin… unregulated currency that you can lose just as fast as you obtain cause someone rips off one of those virtual currency banks and then nothing can be done about it… since, well, it’s all make belief anyways… 
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Agree completely. The modern market is insane right now and we are due for a market correction eventually.
Especially for characters that really have done nothing.
I’m guilty of it myself, I spend way too much each Wednesday, but the smart money is in Bronze and Silver keys.
I found someone selling Ultimate Fallouts #4 and Young Avengers #1 for $18 + shipping this week and he had three copies of each so it’s all in the eye of the beholder and whose well researched.
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Also saw a 8.0 ish raw Hulk #181 go for $750 but that got cancelled.
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Yup. I picked up 4 copies of the Miles hip hop cover for $2 each when it was at its peak a month or two ago.
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The modern craziness for the incentive variants has also helped the store variant market.
Definitely. It’s also why these firsts are so crazy right out of the gate for not a lot of reason.
And the store variants that are popping, are related to the same new characters.
How many will we care about in 3-4 months? Let alone a year.
Remember how hot Naomi was last year? Who cares about her now?
Markets don’t work like that, at all. Economics 101. Supply and Demand. It’s not Supply and Demand and Time, lol. If they took longer to sell, then they would be cheaper than $15, lol. Time is only a factor when it comes to determining the value. But, I digress.
I’ve sold 7 copies of Batman Adventures Continue #2 for $15 average in the past week. That’s 350% ROI.
I have a single copy of the Momoko limited trade same issue. I can’t move it for 100% ROI.
And that’s a hot book with a hot artist with a popular character on the cover.
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It’s true. And it’s ironic because the two types kinda eat each other. Ratios are devalued by the excess supply caused by store variants, and store variants are devalued by their ratio counterparts as competition in the market. Weird world.
I sold my BA #2 Momoko Trade dress within 19 minutes of listing it. $26 nothing special but made the Virgin a $15 buy for me.
Half the battle is listing in the right place. For preorder store variants I sell on eBay for store variants in hand I sell on mercari. Because eBay gets over saturated once books are in hand sometimes I get in trouble selling preorders on Mercari but they have no supply of store variants so it works out pretty well.
I went back and forth on which one of the set I should put up for sale…then after looking at how much I spent in the past few weeks in comics decided to go with the one that would make me the most money back.
I prefer trade dress 90% of the time with these fancy covers anyway. I don’t my get the obsession with virgin variants…most have this large area of “non-art” where the trade dress is supposed to be…and therefore the art is unbalanced relative to the cover size. It really bothers me.
Now some get them signed in that open space…which can be cool.
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Good luck finding anybody who is going to take someone to court and prove how many copies of any given comic book exist.