Gold Key Series during 1990's Craze

[FormerReader]

We all know what happened to early Valiant issues after Unity. I never collected the Gold Key issues until just recently. How did the market react to the early appearances of the Gold Key characters i.e. Magnus #1 (1963), Dr. Solar #1 and Four Color #596? Did these issues ever see any renewed interest by readers or collectors?

[battlepark]

It was a different time because there was no internet comic sites or ebay. I remember with my local store never had the old stuff like that, but I remember some of the price guides saying those books went up in price. But to be honest I had no interest in reading the old stuff back then...

[nycjadie]

You know what's funny, I can't recall seeing many in the marketplace. I used to sell at shows then too, as a teenager. There weren't many in circulation in Seattle at the time, but the guide prices did go up. Honestly, I question a lot of pricing pre-Internet. We all relied on Overstreet so much, and they relied upon a small handful of large dealers to report prices. I have witnessed SEVERAL instances at shows where dealers recorded sale prices for Overstreet that were higher than the actual sale. For example, book was priced at $50 and sold for $40, the dealer would record the sale at $50 for price guide purposes. One time, I saw an employee argue with the dealer about how that would skew the results and was dishonest. The dealer said, fine, I'll do it myself.

I've seen a lot of interest in my key V1 slabs. All of the key VEI character books in 9.8 seemed to have at least doubled in price. In some cases, they have tripled. EW 4 has quadrupled.

I don't see the same for GK books this time around, but I'm always looking for high grade copies. Those seem to be the hardest. I bought a low grade GK Magnus 5 last week for.......$1.

[kjjohanson]

You know what's funny, I can't recall seeing many in the marketplace. I used to sell at shows then too, as a teenager. There weren't many in circulation in Seattle at the time, but the guide prices did go up. Honestly, I question a lot of pricing pre-Internet. We all relied on Overstreet so much, and they relied upon a small handful of large dealers to report prices. I have witnessed SEVERAL instances at shows where dealers recorded sale prices for Overstreet that were higher than the actual sale. For example, book was priced at $50 and sold for $40, the dealer would record the sale at $50 for price guide purposes. One time, I saw an employee argue with the dealer about how that would skew the results and was dishonest. The dealer said, fine, I'll do it myself.

I've seen a lot of interest in my key V1 slabs. All of the key VEI character books in 9.8 seemed to have at least doubled in price. In some cases, they have tripled. EW 4 has quadrupled.

I don't see the same for GK books this time around, but I'm always looking for high grade copies. Those seem to be the hardest. I bought a low grade GK Magnus 5 last week for.......$1.

I bought a 3.0ish Solar #1 for about $20 a few years ago.