Unity diamond tpb CGC 9.6 sale price

[nycjadie]

Since we're talking about the price guide, Greg, are there plans to update? I noticed that there are quite a few recent books that aren't on there. Is it just lack of time?

We are all sucked for time. Enthusiasm for the new books as well, I imagine. Seems to be waning during COVID.

[greg]

Since we're talking about the price guide, Greg, are there plans to update? I noticed that there are quite a few recent books that aren't on there. Is it just lack of time?

We are all sucked for time. Enthusiasm for the new books as well, I imagine. Seems to be waning during COVID.

The CGC sales are updated weekly, from a data feed that GPAnalysis provides.

Ebay sales are a different monster, since Ebay has recently turned their sales data into a "for profit" wing of their company.
What's more is that raw books are their own kind of monster, since there's no way to know conditions and sellers who truly own very high grade raw books but don't use CGC are quite rare. The number of sellers who have 7.5's they call "Near Mint" (or "I'm not a grader so don't get your hopes up") is pretty high, and the Ebay data (even if you paid for it) doesn't tell you which is which.

As a result, the CGC sales are up-to-date and the best source of information on books with significant value.
The missing books from the database are due to a lack of time and a lack of information.
As far as I can tell, no one has a list of every variant for every Valiant book and honestly,
I don't even care anymore about variants that weren't available to all comic shops.

Jim-Bob's Exclusive Timbuktu-Con variant (and "virgin" variant and black-and-white sketch variant)
isn't something that should matter to anyone except Jim-Bob and the people who went to the Timbuktu-Con.
If it was just that one variant, sure, let's put it in the database, but there are hundreds(?) of those.
Figuring out what was the missing 13th variant for a random Valiant book when there are
3 standard, 8 store exclusives, and 1 convention edition just seems like something
I might want to do sometime around the year 2040, but not much sooner.

I guess I'm just grumpy that Valiant hasn't produced a single regular issue worth $3.99 that isn't a variant since... when? Divinity #1?
I don't really know. Can anyone think of a Valiant book that's "worth more than cover price" in the regular edition?
It's not just Valiant doing it. There are about ten Marvel and D.C. books from the past ten years that have value in the regular edition.
How many thousands of issues are worthless as regular editions? Most of everything printed is now worthless if it's not a variant.
That might be an exaggeration, but can anyone even name ten regular editions that matter since 2010 without checking somewhere else?
Ultimate Fallout #4, Detective #880, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, probably whatever Miles' #1 issue is... then... uh... yep. I thought of three I could name, four if you count my vague description of Miles #1.

I'm not proud of the industry at all right now... and it really makes me appreciate my early Valiant books more.
Nothing compares to the original Valiant nostalgia I can still feel, and we'll be reaching 30 years very soon.

[corey]

Geeze you could kill a man with that slab....

Lol

[IMJ]

The CGC sales are updated weekly, from a data feed that GPAnalysis provides.

Ebay sales are a different monster, since Ebay has recently turned their sales data into a "for profit" wing of their company.

Are you talking about that analytics service they offer to sellers? Terapeak Research, I think.... It is a cool service, but I understand completely how frustrating that is to the endeavoring guys who have sought out eBay sales data for good uses for 20 years now....

I don't even care anymore about variants that weren't available to all comic shops.

As a point of conversation, I could go both ways. I'm not a fan at all of those generic shop variants where they just print a shop name on a billboard or whatever. But some of the best looking variants for some niche titles (like Titan Comics Blade Runner book) have been single shop offerings.

I wanted to give that nod to how some shops use those variants, but generally speaking this is something I've talked about for years. YEARS. Maybe.... I dunno 12 or 13 now. All of the variants simply padded monthly sales and sucked the current audience dry. That good will is drying up, if not already gone. I don't mind variants, but they are a publishing methodology now over having a reliable publishing line of content.

Every hobby that was once a cheap way to spend time and enjoy something has become a boutique market. Every hobby. It makes more sense financially to embrace one or two comic characters at this point and simply put together some kind of amazing back issue collection, even if some silver books cost a few grand than it does to continue forward with a lot of this.

And all of that is even before the social justice backlash which even the most obtuse among us have to admit is there.

Figuring out what was the missing 13th variant for a random Valiant book when there are 3 standard, 8 store exclusives, and 1 convention edition just seems like something I might want to do sometime around the year 2040, but not much sooner.

You'd probably feel differently about it if the story content was captivating, interesting or enjoyable. Probably.

I guess I'm just grumpy that Valiant hasn't produced a single regular issue worth $3.99 that isn't a variant since... when? Divinity #1?
I don't really know. Can anyone think of a Valiant book that's "worth more than cover price" in the regular edition?

I'm glad to hear you say this publicly.

Ultimate Fallout #4, Detective #880, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, probably whatever Miles' #1 issue is... then... uh... yep. I thought of three I could name, four if you count my vague description of Miles #1.

Maybe the Riri Iron Man issue. Maybe. I'm an Iron Man guy for God's sake and I can't even remember what issue it was, let alone what we call the volume after all of the relaunches. It's a Bendis book. It has Titanium Man on the cover and there was an Apocalypse variant. There are a couple more I could scrape out of the barrel, but I'd have to work hard for it and I just don't care. And that is the real problem.... not caring anymore and it's not from outgrowing the content. It's from the content generally not being so hot at all.

Donny Cates Thor book is truly an enjoyable read. Truly. It feels good to say that. The new Iron Man book by Cantwell and Cafu is the best the book has been since the Knauf's were on it after the Ellis Extremis run.

I'm not proud of the industry at all right now... and it really makes me appreciate my early Valiant books more.
Nothing compares to the original Valiant nostalgia I can still feel, and we'll be reaching 30 years very soon.

In another thread somewhere someone tried calling out opinions that put Valiant down. But see, this the truth of Valiant comics. Minus a few interesting things here and there, the publishing as a whole is a let down after Unity. The end. There was a spike of cool stuff in 2012. In a blanket statement, that's about it.

I'd still love great and fun things from Archer and Armstrong, the OG Shadowman and X-O and I wish we had the connectivity in a Universe to make it captivating with the likes of Solar and Magnus.

[nycjadie]

Since we're talking about the price guide, Greg, are there plans to update? I noticed that there are quite a few recent books that aren't on there. Is it just lack of time?

We are all sucked for time. Enthusiasm for the new books as well, I imagine. Seems to be waning during COVID.

The CGC sales are updated weekly, from a data feed that GPAnalysis provides.

Ebay sales are a different monster, since Ebay has recently turned their sales data into a "for profit" wing of their company.
What's more is that raw books are their own kind of monster, since there's no way to know conditions and sellers who truly own very high grade raw books but don't use CGC are quite rare. The number of sellers who have 7.5's they call "Near Mint" (or "I'm not a grader so don't get your hopes up") is pretty high, and the Ebay data (even if you paid for it) doesn't tell you which is which.

As a result, the CGC sales are up-to-date and the best source of information on books with significant value.
The missing books from the database are due to a lack of time and a lack of information.
As far as I can tell, no one has a list of every variant for every Valiant book and honestly,
I don't even care anymore about variants that weren't available to all comic shops.

Jim-Bob's Exclusive Timbuktu-Con variant (and "virgin" variant and black-and-white sketch variant)
isn't something that should matter to anyone except Jim-Bob and the people who went to the Timbuktu-Con.
If it was just that one variant, sure, let's put it in the database, but there are hundreds(?) of those.
Figuring out what was the missing 13th variant for a random Valiant book when there are
3 standard, 8 store exclusives, and 1 convention edition just seems like something
I might want to do sometime around the year 2040, but not much sooner.

I guess I'm just grumpy that Valiant hasn't produced a single regular issue worth $3.99 that isn't a variant since... when? Divinity #1?
I don't really know. Can anyone think of a Valiant book that's "worth more than cover price" in the regular edition?
It's not just Valiant doing it. There are about ten Marvel and D.C. books from the past ten years that have value in the regular edition.
How many thousands of issues are worthless as regular editions? Most of everything printed is now worthless if it's not a variant.
That might be an exaggeration, but can anyone even name ten regular editions that matter since 2010 without checking somewhere else?
Ultimate Fallout #4, Detective #880, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, probably whatever Miles' #1 issue is... then... uh... yep. I thought of three I could name, four if you count my vague description of Miles #1.

I'm not proud of the industry at all right now... and it really makes me appreciate my early Valiant books more.
Nothing compares to the original Valiant nostalgia I can still feel, and we'll be reaching 30 years very soon.

I hear you, Greg. I'm one of those completionists, and we will grow over the years. I think we are at an all-time low. However, we will proliferate, all 5 of us, and we will care about all those variants. All 5 of us.

[IMJ]

I hear you, Greg. I'm one of those completionists, and we will grow over the years. I think we are at an all-time low. However, we will proliferate, all 5 of us, and we will care about all those variants. All 5 of us.

I can imagine the feeding frenzy when future Valiant is 99% digital and as a special they release four copies of a book in print between the five of you.

Wolves.

[greg]

The CGC sales are updated weekly, from a data feed that GPAnalysis provides.

Ebay sales are a different monster, since Ebay has recently turned their sales data into a "for profit" wing of their company.

Are you talking about that analytics service they offer to sellers? Terapeak Research, I think.... It is a cool service, but I understand completely how frustrating that is to the endeavoring guys who have sought out eBay sales data for good uses for 20 years now....

No, they had a data feed method for Ebay developers that I used for 7 years. They shut it down. Now it's available from Ebay, but only if you pay.

I guess I'm just grumpy that Valiant hasn't produced a single regular issue worth $3.99 that isn't a variant since... when? Divinity #1?
I don't really know. Can anyone think of a Valiant book that's "worth more than cover price" in the regular edition?

I'm glad to hear you say this publicly.

To be fair - the original Valiant didn't produce a regular edition comic worth more than cover price after 1992 either... until after they stopped publishing and "final issue" became a thing.

I'm not proud of the industry at all right now... and it really makes me appreciate my early Valiant books more.
Nothing compares to the original Valiant nostalgia I can still feel, and we'll be reaching 30 years very soon.

In another thread somewhere someone tried calling out opinions that put Valiant down. But see, this the truth of Valiant comics. Minus a few interesting things here and there, the publishing as a whole is a let down after Unity. The end. There was a spike of cool stuff in 2012. In a blanket statement, that's about it.

I'd still love great and fun things from Archer and Armstrong, the OG Shadowman and X-O and I wish we had the connectivity in a Universe to make it captivating with the likes of Solar and Magnus.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy Valiant --- I do --- but this topic is a discussion of the price guide and updates.
What is there to update? Variants have some value but it's hard to say what that value is unless the books are CGC graded... in which case, they're in the price guide from the GPAnalysis feed.

There are some more recent books that aren't in the database yet, but what do they represent? Any cool first appearances? Any heartbreaking deaths?
Not as far as I can tell. The books missing represent random issues of titles or mini-series that haven't been all that important. They might be important some day. For all we know, there's a surprise first appearance in some book for a character that will get their own title in the future. Valiant has done that surprise character scenario since the beginning, but at this point, it's hard to say what's missing from the database that really matters in the Valiant universe.

Meanwhile, I still get a little jolt of energy when I see Rai #3 or Harbinger #1 from 1992. There are others, but they represent "original energy" from when I started collecting Valiant and couldn't find, much less afford, those books.
That energy is why I started ValiantComics.com in 1999.
Adding the later 1990s Valiant books wasn't necessary back then - they were all dollar books.
Adding Acclaim wasn't necessary back then - they were all 50cent books.
They all got added to the website and price guide years after they were printed, but there weren't even five variants for any of them.
A dozen variants happen all the time now - a dozen different ways to own "nothing special" and convince yourself it's a "special variant" of nothing.

The market has spoken for 20+ years and there are valuable books from every year of Valiant's existence,
but very few are "just regular Valiant books" after the first couple of years.

Most books with more-than-cover-price value are order-this-many-and-get-one-copy-of-a-limited-variant-that-is-a-rare-version-of-nothing-happens-in-this-book, and I just can't get excited about that.

[Chiclo]

For all we know, there's a surprise first appearance in some book for a character that will get their own title in the future. Valiant has done that surprise character scenario since the beginning, but at this point, it's hard to say what's missing from the database that really matters in the Valiant universe.

It is hard to imagine that this crowd has it together enough to do something like that. These aren't folks that understand Valiant or how Valiant has done things in the past.

[greg]

For all we know, there's a surprise first appearance in some book for a character that will get their own title in the future. Valiant has done that surprise character scenario since the beginning, but at this point, it's hard to say what's missing from the database that really matters in the Valiant universe.

It is hard to imagine that this crowd has it together enough to do something like that. These aren't folks that understand Valiant or how Valiant has done things in the past.

Neither were the people at Marvel, but "baby Nathan" became Cable whether that was the plan or not.

[Chiclo]

For all we know, there's a surprise first appearance in some book for a character that will get their own title in the future. Valiant has done that surprise character scenario since the beginning, but at this point, it's hard to say what's missing from the database that really matters in the Valiant universe.

It is hard to imagine that this crowd has it together enough to do something like that. These aren't folks that understand Valiant or how Valiant has done things in the past.

Neither were the people at Marvel, but "baby Nathan" became Cable whether that was the plan or not.

Point taken.

[IMJ]

Neither were the people at Marvel, but "baby Nathan" became Cable whether that was the plan or not.

I would love to see a creator make sense of the jumbled mess of agenda in these books and then pull a seed that weaves a magnificent character development or story. Guys like Busiek & Bendis are good at that.

I hear you, Greg. I'm one of those completionists, and we will grow over the years. I think we are at an all-time low. However, we will proliferate, all 5 of us, and we will care about all those variants. All 5 of us.

Some of our guys here are clearly "ride or die" with Valiant. Which is awesome, and I have my things where I'm like that as well. I'd say that I am a Valiant hardcore, but not a "ride or die". But then again there are several "ride or die" guys that posted here for years and have just disappeared completely. Yet I'm still here talking about the publisher as a "simple Valiant collector". Make no mistake, no one has assaulted my "fandom" or tried to call me on my "collecting loyalty" here at all - I am only coming back to this as a balancing act for the points I am making here.

It is hard to imagine that this crowd has it together enough to do something like that. These aren't folks that understand Valiant or how Valiant has done things in the past.

And so with that said I think readers can be drawn back in through a simple, solid publishing line with classic-style stories, no variant push to pad sales, and no full-frontal assault-style social agendas. Occasional commentary? Fine. Occasional morality play? Alright, cool. Regular, diverse cast that unfolds organically? I'm in. But what doesn't draw readers in is publishing books that correlate to some @$$hole creator's Twitter agenda while they virtue signal their way into a heaven they publicly state they don't believe in. That's a problem three factors deep.

But, like Greg said - this thread is about price guide updates. And so I'd like to add that you'd see at least some degree of pricing action from the publishing initiative framework outlined above, as opposed to the stale pricing action we are seeing from Valiant publishing right now, IMHO.

[kjjohanson]

Since we're talking about the price guide, Greg, are there plans to update? I noticed that there are quite a few recent books that aren't on there. Is it just lack of time?

We are all sucked for time. Enthusiasm for the new books as well, I imagine. Seems to be waning during COVID.

The CGC sales are updated weekly, from a data feed that GPAnalysis provides.

Ebay sales are a different monster, since Ebay has recently turned their sales data into a "for profit" wing of their company.
What's more is that raw books are their own kind of monster, since there's no way to know conditions and sellers who truly own very high grade raw books but don't use CGC are quite rare. The number of sellers who have 7.5's they call "Near Mint" (or "I'm not a grader so don't get your hopes up") is pretty high, and the Ebay data (even if you paid for it) doesn't tell you which is which.

As a result, the CGC sales are up-to-date and the best source of information on books with significant value.
The missing books from the database are due to a lack of time and a lack of information.
As far as I can tell, no one has a list of every variant for every Valiant book and honestly,
I don't even care anymore about variants that weren't available to all comic shops.

Jim-Bob's Exclusive Timbuktu-Con variant (and "virgin" variant and black-and-white sketch variant)
isn't something that should matter to anyone except Jim-Bob and the people who went to the Timbuktu-Con.
If it was just that one variant, sure, let's put it in the database, but there are hundreds(?) of those.
Figuring out what was the missing 13th variant for a random Valiant book when there are
3 standard, 8 store exclusives, and 1 convention edition just seems like something
I might want to do sometime around the year 2040, but not much sooner.

I guess I'm just grumpy that Valiant hasn't produced a single regular issue worth $3.99 that isn't a variant since... when? Divinity #1?
I don't really know. Can anyone think of a Valiant book that's "worth more than cover price" in the regular edition?
It's not just Valiant doing it. There are about ten Marvel and D.C. books from the past ten years that have value in the regular edition.
How many thousands of issues are worthless as regular editions? Most of everything printed is now worthless if it's not a variant.
That might be an exaggeration, but can anyone even name ten regular editions that matter since 2010 without checking somewhere else?
Ultimate Fallout #4, Detective #880, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, probably whatever Miles' #1 issue is... then... uh... yep. I thought of three I could name, four if you count my vague description of Miles #1.

I'm not proud of the industry at all right now... and it really makes me appreciate my early Valiant books more.
Nothing compares to the original Valiant nostalgia I can still feel, and we'll be reaching 30 years very soon.

I'm the same way with all of the store variants. Even if stores sold them at cover price, the shipping costs to get them has put me off most of them. So I'm only considering a "complete" collection to include books that were available where I shop.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean my question to be criticism, since this site is not a job but a labor of love. I was just curious since a few times recently I've checked out the guide to see if I missed if there was a recent incentive (since they're starting those up again) that I may have missed.

I have a hunch that Bloodshot 10 (and maybe 9) could end up being worth a premium, but we'll see how that works out. As far as Marvel goes, Strange Academy, Thor, Venom, Captain Marvel, Ms Marvel, and various Star Wars books all go for a premium for the regular editions. There are a good number of Spider-man issues as well (first Ant-Venom, new Kraven, Red Goblin, etc)

[kjjohanson]

For all we know, there's a surprise first appearance in some book for a character that will get their own title in the future. Valiant has done that surprise character scenario since the beginning, but at this point, it's hard to say what's missing from the database that really matters in the Valiant universe.

I'm not putting this in spoilers, because it doesn't really reveal anything about the story, and there have already been news articles about it, but if you're not reading the current Bloodshot series, at the end of the latest issue (#9), Bloodshot gets a transmission from someone claiming that PRS is back. The next issue (due out in January I think) will introduce Wiggans and KT, characters from the Bloodshot movie that haven't been in the comics yet. 9 I guess is technically a brief cameo (voice only) of Wiggans. 10 will probably be the book to get if these characters stick around long term and they make another movie. No incentives advertised for the issue, so it looks like it's just the A and B covers, and the pre-order edition.