Comics UK

I have been following ebay sales of first issues of certain comic titles for some time now, and thought it might be interesting to share my findings.
1) SMASH!: first Odhams issue in VG condition but without free gift sold for £122 a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly, auction results on philcomics website says that the first issue of Smash in VG condition (no free gift) sold for exactly the same amount of £122 a year ago. A VG copy with free gift went for £420 over a year ago.
2) WHAM!: a VG copy of the 1st issue without the gift sold for £83. A G+ copy went for just £27 more than two years ago.
3) POW: a G/VG copy without a free gift sold for £11 a year ago.
3) Buster: a very good copy of the 1st issue (no free gift) sold for £170 buy-it-now style this last weekend; it was only up for a few hours and had only 5 views when it ended. A year ago a copy in VG- condition sold for £142.

I find prices of comics interesting, someone should do a web site Similar to this record site that gives you the values of vinyl what they sold for if anyones interested in records.


http://www.popsike.com/

You missed the £133 for a Fine Victor Issue 1... I thought there was supposed to be a recession on?!*

Not first issues, but still of interest.

I watched ebay auctions for a small collection of early Beano and Dandy comics, and here are the results for those who might be interested:

Dandy 55 and 56, both being X-mas issues, fetched £101 and £122 accordingly; Issue 57 sold for £171, issue 60 - for £89, issue 63 - for £95 and issue 89 - for £79.

Beano was more interesting to watch because the issues on offer were from the first 20. The high bids were as follows: No. 22 (X-mas number) – £236, No. 21(X-mas number) – £414; No. 20 – £103; No. 18 – £230; No. 17 – £270; No. 16 – £270; No. 15 (Firework number) – £470; No. 14 – £220; No. 13 – £313; No. 11 – £387; No. 10 – £365; No. 9 – £466; No. 8 – £386; No. 7 – £339; NO. 5 – £313; championed by No. 2 at £2,251 with 7 competing bidders. For comparison, Beano No. 2 sold for £3,025 in the recent Compal auction in November.

The dealer put up decent quality pictures on ebay; I hope the lucky winners won‘t mind me showing a couple of Beano covers here. The covers are of issue No. 2, followed by No. 15 (Fireworks) and in keeping with the season‘s mood - Nos. 21 and 22, X-mas numbers.

I bought that Pow! number 1 for that price on ebay...it was me..

I should love to get Sparky No1 (I'm a massive Sparky fan!) and Nos 3 & 4. The earliest I got on E.Bay was No 6 for £7 in fine condition! I got No2 on 26 Pigs site for £25 though it was without gift and good to Very good condition!

Anyone know how difficult it is to find Sparky's with Free gifts still intact? Issues No 1, 2, 3, 35, 36, 60, 61, 86, 87, 140, 141, 211, 212, 261, 262, 315, 316, 403, 404, 500, 501 & 502 all were `Free Gift` issues between Jan 1965 to Aug 1974.

Those Beano's look in really good condition better then some comics I've bought from the 1970's.

steelclaw wrote:Those Beano's look in really good condition better then some comics I've bought from the 1970's.

I thought they looked pretty tatty personally, suffering from "spine roll" etc. Which brings up the question: what minimal condition would people here consider acceptable for an old British comic?

The worst condition comics I've bought were a few issues of Comic Life from eBay. I didn't realise how bad they'd be when I bid on them but they were literally crumbling apart when I received them. (One fell in half when I opened it.) I wouldn't have bothered if I'd seen them beforehand, although luckily they only cost a couple of quid each.

Normally, if a comic hasn't been well looked after I won't buy it. Slight yellowing is inevitable and acceptable, ditto for staple rusting and creases where tabloid comics have been folded in half, or slight nicks to book edges if they're very old, but anything worse than that and I'm not interested. That might sound unrealistic but I've managed to obtain a decent collection of great condition comics, and I've always handled new ones with care. What's your criteria folks?

Lew

As far as I am concerned, my requirements for UK comics condition-wise tend to depend from whether I have the comic in my collection or not. If I am looking to fill a gap and realize that a comic has some flaws, I would probably still buy it because my priority is a complete run. I would probably upgrade it later if I get a chance to. When I go for upgrades, the priority is complete page count (including any posters, pull-outs, coupons), followed by no writing on puzzles, etc. inside (I wouldn’t mind an address written neatly on front or back), followed by good spine, edges and staples. Quite frequently all those things come as a package, but I would rather buy a lower grade copy than regret having missed the opportunity. Free gifts are nice to have but they aren’t my priority (although I couldn’t resist buying those that came with Smash! No. 1 and 2 a couple of weeks ago off a dealer). The downside of the strategy is that one probably spends more that way and ends up with quite a few doubles, but ebay is always there to dispose of them.

klakadak-ploobadoof wrote:

I see some things never change! They were doing a Christmas issue with another one on sale before Christmas Day in their first year, and they do the same thing nowadays.

I don't generally care too much about the condition either, to be honest as long as it's clean and the story pages are complete (ie ads can be cut out , a bit of pen scrawling on the pages etc) - covers can be missing in somes cases even the odd story page - but obviously that all depends on the price. I collect a lot of Dan de Carlo stuff and its getting harder to get the 1964- 70 issues in good condition for a sensible price. In my younger days I was much more into the condition (especially on my US comics Neal Adams, Toth etc stuff). Now I jus tlike to have the books Im after - Some UK comics can be a mes sall the same - saying that I keep my comics in good nick but thats collectors for you.

Lew Stringer wrote:
Normally, if a comic hasn't been well looked after I won't buy it. Slight yellowing is inevitable and acceptable, ditto for staple rusting and creases where tabloid comics have been folded in half, or slight nicks to book edges if they're very old, but anything worse than that and I'm not interested. That might sound unrealistic but I've managed to obtain a decent collection of great condition comics, and I've always handled new ones with care. What's your criteria folks?

Lew

Rusty staples aren't acceptable to me - they leak through the pages and could damage other comics you store them with; plus, they look disgusting! I think it's important that sellers clearly highlight this major fault. I won't go for dog-eared pages, cut-outs, anything but the slightest browning, or big rips either (and I'm not keen on fading!).

I like things to look pretty much as good as new, clean and complete, and have bought lots of comics from over the decades which do. I'd always assumed that if something isn't just about excellent condition it's probably not of much interest to most collectors and wished that sellers would realise that (you do see a lot of seriously tatty items on Ebay that would be better off binned than sold).

Well not all books should be binned lol Although I am a collector I (as noted above) would be happy (for a sensible price) to buy "tatty" comics I'm not into mint editions (although if one was there for similar price to a tatty one I would go for that) so there are really two (at least) markets: folk that collect the mint (or as good as they can get ) items and folk like myself that are happy to buy "tattier" version just to have it to complete runs or to read look at the artwork etc- although I totally agree sellers should be note rusty staples, minor rips etc if asking premium prices that is annoying when that happens - So anyone with tatty books they dont think they would sell let me know you never know (mostly US 60s early 70s though)

Digifiend wrote: I see some things never change! They were doing a Christmas issue with another one on sale before Christmas Day in their first year, and they do the same thing nowadays.

Naturally! Who wants to buy a Christmas comic after Christmas? This has been the case with most comics for as long as I can remember.

Raven wrote: Rusty staples aren't acceptable to me - they leak through the pages and could damage other comics you store them with; plus, they look disgusting!

Just remove them if they're too bad. That's what I do. Fortunately most older comics never had staples anyway.

(By "older comics" I mean pre-1960s. Anything post 1980 still seems "recent" to me. )

Lew

My criteria for comic condition is: readable. Because i care about the stories above all else, and certianly above how much i might theoretically get for them! Also the comics i like are generally pre-1940 anyway, so i can't be all that picky, i might never see one for sale again!