Status of prices

[Looking Again]

Hi everyone,

It's been about 10 years since I last paid attention to Valiant, back around 1993 when I was in junior high. I see on this website that prices for pre-Unity books are still at a premium. Is this a recent upswing, or have prices like this been stable since the 1994 crash? Thanks for clarification

[lobo]

Hi everyone,

It's been about 10 years since I last paid attention to Valiant, back around 1993 when I was in junior high. I see on this website that prices for pre-Unity books are still at a premium. Is this a recent upswing, or have prices like this been stable since the 1994 crash? Thanks for clarification

Welcome!

Prices on premium Valiants are on seemly gradule upswing. There is some debate if Valiants are in a mini boom right now or if a real long term trend in Valiant popularity is gaining upward momentum. Members here mostly hope its for the love of Valiant and not all speculator driven, because we all known what happened in the early 90s....

[greg]

Hi everyone,

It's been about 10 years since I last paid attention to Valiant, back around 1993 when I was in junior high. I see on this website that prices for pre-Unity books are still at a premium. Is this a recent upswing, or have prices like this been stable since the 1994 crash? Thanks for clarification

Welcome to the boards!

Speaking of the pre-Unity books in particular, there is some debate about
just how many copies "crashed". The price guides (Overstreet, Wizard) said
that ANY Valiant became a $5 or under book... really? When? Where?
It's possible that a large number of collectors DIDN'T sell their
pre-Unity books in the mid-1990s because the prices were too low.
It would have made more sense just to keep them and wait.

So, it has not been possible to just walk into any comic book store and
buy lots of copies of Harbinger #1 or Solar #10 simply because the
price guides say that they are $5 books. There are nice "finds" from time-to-time,
but there's no guarantee that any pre-Unity books are still in all local comic shops.

I started collecting pre-Unity books on Ebay in 1997, which is probably one
of the earliest Ebay dates for anyone on this messageboard.
I could pick up Harbinger #0 Pink for $8 to $15 every time it was auctioned...
(maybe two dozen times in two or three years).
I actually didn't pay more than about $12 for my copies,
so I didn't win them all.

As I'm sure you're aware, the printed price guides can say anything they want,
high or low, but the reality of buying & selling can be something very different.
The price guide on this website shows the average prices paid
on Ebay including shipping, as an example of what people
have paid in order to own the books.

For the most part, prices in 2004 are still far below the "peak prices" that
were asked for Valiant books ten years ago.
Harbinger #1 with coupon regularly sells under $30 in 2004.
In 1994, Harbinger #1 with coupon was supposedly $100+.

If you have time, you can compare the prices on Comic Cavalcade's website,
http://www.comcav.com/valiant.html (clearly still using the 1994 pricing...)
to the price guide on this site...
http://www.valiantcomics.com/valiant/guide.asp

Anywhere you see that Comic Cavalcade actually has a cheaper price,
such as Chaos Effect Red or Unity 0 Red, you can be 99% sure that
Comic Cavalcade is also sold out of those issues.

Otherwise, Comic Cavalcade does have these books in stock today,
but the prices are usually (much) higher than Ebay averages.
They have preferred to sell their books for what they are worth "to them",
instead of what Overstreet or Wizard might (fictitiously) describe as the value.
(Reality is, as usual, somewhere in between.)

Feel free to ask more questions... we don't bite... hard.

[Looking Again]

Welcome!

Prices on premium Valiants are on seemly gradule upswing. There is some debate if Valiants are in a mini boom right now or if a real long term trend in Valiant popularity is gaining upward momentum. Members here mostly hope its for the love of Valiant and not all speculator driven, because we all known what happened in the early 90s....

Oh I see, so there's a recent small rise in prices. I guess I started looking on ebay the past few days and couldn't tell if I was looking at a good deal. This is even looking at the price guide in this site