CSBG Archive
The Economics of Captain America #25
- by Brian Cronin
- in General
- 21 Comments
It has been less than a day since Captain America #25 came out, and already we are seeing an interesting study in economics being played out on eBay.
The comic was released Wednesday in North America with two covers, one by regular series artist, Steve Epting, and one by artist Ed McGuinness. The book carried a $3.99 price tag.
In the last month or so (as I noted awhile back), Marvel has been telling retailers, “Trust us, order a lot of this comic,” but understandably enough, with comic books being unreturnable and all, and nothing more than a “trust us, it will sell a lot” to go on, most comic book retailers did not bet their mortgages on Captain America #25 being a huge seller. The result was that the book was relatively under ordered. I use the term “relatively” because the book was ordered a heck of a lot more than a normal issue of Captain America, and Marvel had limited advance reorders available even after Civil War #7 was released. So it’s not like there were not a lot of this comic made. Still, for the most part, after the story about the events of Captain America #25 were reported in the New York Daily News (and picked up by most every news agency out there), most comic book stores found themselves in a position of limiting purchases of the comic to one copy per person, and many stores, even with this limit in place, sold out before the day was over.
This, then, drove people to the online salesmarket, eBay.com. And what occurred today (and is currently occuring) is amazing.
As I am writing this, there is an auction for both covers of Captain America #25 that has eight hours left on it. The current bid price? $92! And that is with eight hours to go! For fun, you should click on this link eight hours from now and see what the end sale price was.
What’s interesting is that the ending prices earlier in the day were considerably lower, with the average price for a single book being about $15, and $30-40 for the pair of covers. The sets that are ending later today, though, are tending much higher – in the $60+ range for the pair, and $30-40 for the individual covers.
In addition, there are some enterprising souls who are selling the Wizard LA John Cassaday variant a little bit ahead of time. I won’t link to them, as I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but a simple search should bring them up.
An amusing seller “trick” is the amount of sellers who are selling specifically the McGuinness cover, promoting it as a “Variant cover.” As you all may know (and I’ve written about before), variant covers are big right now in connection with comic sales. The Civil War Michael Turner covers, which retailers were allowed to order one for each X amount of the regular cover ordered (ranging from 1 for each 20 to 1 for each 15, I believe), were quite popular. So the term “variant cover” has taken on the connotation of “rare.”
Well, in this case, the Ed McGuinness cover, while termed a “Variant Edition,” was printed at the same exact print rate as the Steve Epting cover. However, since it has on the cover “Variant Edition,” eBay sellers are not being dishonest, per se, when they advertise the book as the “Captain America #25 Ed McGuinness Variant Edition.” But you have to imagine that there are eBay buyers out there who are seeing “Variant Edition” and are thinking of the “rare” connotation.
Finally, as a comparison with the hoopla over this comic book, I cannot help but draw a comparison with a baseball card from this year’s Topps. In case you did not hear, Derek Jeter’s 2007 Topps card featured a photoshopped picture of both President Bush and Mickey Mantle in the background (Bush in the crowd and Mantle in the dugout).
After the story appeared in the news (in the New York Daily News, oddly enough) in Late February, the card quickly skyrocketed from selling in the single digits to selling for prices like $317, $305 and $316.
However, a quick glance of recent sales of the card show sale prices like $30, $33, $30, $28 and $27.
Therefore, if you are interested in a copy of Captain America #25 and cannot find one at your local comic book store, the odds are that your best time to purchase a copy off eBay would be not in the next couple of days. Have faith that the hype is driving the market price up a bit too high.
And remember, “Variant Edition” does not always mean scarce!
21 Comments
Bryan
March 8, 2007 at 3:43 am
Thanks for explaining the variant cover aspect of this issue. When I bought my copy yesterday, I picked up what was the last one with the cover of the hand draped on the newspaper; the remaining six or so were all the “variant edition”, and I couldn’t figure out why there were so many of those because I’m one of those dopes who would’ve thought variant=scarce. I just ended up buying the one with the cover I thought was better.
Michael
March 8, 2007 at 5:33 am
It’s up to $105 now.
Man, Barnum really had no idea, did he?
Matt D
March 8, 2007 at 6:36 am
Well I sure missed the boat yesterday due to the really crappy DC weather.
I could have paid for a vacation if I had picked up a few extra copies.
thekamisama
March 8, 2007 at 7:04 am
I just told people yesterday that if they wanted to “read” the book. I was sure a special reprint would be out in a few weeks.
Then I told them if they wanted to “invest” in the death of Captain America, I had a stack of black bagged ‘Death of Superman’s’ to sell them.
Ken Raining
March 8, 2007 at 7:43 am
Well, that’s exactly what I thought would happen. No pre-warning to retailers, so the issue is underordered, then a sudden surge of interest making the book “hot” and “scarse”. It really does feel like the ’90′s again, doesn’t it?
That guy might as well just burn that hundred bucks.
wizardmi
March 8, 2007 at 9:11 am
Looks like life imitates art, Wizard is having a bonanza selling these books in every variation(http://wizarduniverse.stores.yahoo.net/cap25.html) [disclosure I work for Wizard] Capitalism is the American way, and at the end of the day that’s what Cap fought for!
Paperghost
March 8, 2007 at 9:24 am
Its a good job he wasn’t called Captain Commie then.
MarkAndrew
March 8, 2007 at 10:16 am
Geez. Speculation is sort of evil.
But if I’d have bought ten of these, I’d have a thousand bucks. *sigh*
Alan Brown
March 8, 2007 at 1:02 pm
“Looks like life imitates art, Wizard is having a bonanza selling these books in every variation(http://wizarduniverse.stores.yahoo.net/cap25.html) [disclosure I work for Wizard] Capitalism is the American way, and at the end of the day that’s what Cap fought for!”
Yeesh.
Wizard is probably the worst of the worst for ripping off the uninitiated/foolish with overpriced slabbed, signed and variant comics.
Notwithstanding that Cap was a fictional character, intimating that what he stood for was the worst brand of rip-off capitalism is a bit difficult to swallow.
Sam Hobart
March 8, 2007 at 2:35 pm
As an aside, if you’re willing to wait a week you should be able to get a copy of either cover from your local retailer. Marvel apparently anticipated that retailers were going to miss the boat on this one so they kept a fairly large number of copies in reserve until the news hit, allowing us to order at that point for arrival next week or the week after (depending on the vagaries of Diamond’s shipping schedules). I can’t wait to see what copies of this will be going for in just 7 days.
Martin O
March 8, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Winning bid: 152,50 dollars.
152,50 for a single comic book. That was published yesterday. In which everyone knows what happens. 152,50!
Isn`t that, like, a little insane?
Brian Cronin
March 8, 2007 at 4:44 pm
By the by, the above auction ended up closing at $150.
Yikes.
Apodaca
March 8, 2007 at 9:26 pm
“Isn`t that, like, a little insane?”
Probably more just stupid.
Like that sentence I just wrote. Damn.
MarkAndrew
March 9, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Well, prices are down.
They’re now hovering at 20-30 bucks for both covers. Still a goodly amount of money, but not insane. The regular cover issue is going for 6-8 bucks.
bill
March 9, 2007 at 4:45 pm
wonder if my copy is going to be worth anything in the future
Zarathos
March 9, 2007 at 8:20 pm
Wow, thanks for the heads up about the Jeter baseball card–that’s hilarious!
Dwight Schrute
March 11, 2007 at 7:25 am
Some people are VERY stupid
David Willis
March 22, 2007 at 12:00 pm
I am a big comic book fan who loves to read the stories and not get comics just to make a huge profit off of them. It sours me to see people buy comics like Superman #75 or Captain America #25 and sell them for ridiculous prices. Most comic book stores do this too. Of course, they are in business mainly to make a profit; but it turns me off completely off of buying from these stores anymore. I wait until prices go down or 2nd printing comes out. I am awaiting Civil War to come out collected in TPB so I can avoid paying high prices for them.
Rare Book Store
October 7, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Welcome and well done! Sunday I was of the opinion that The Economics of Captain America #25 was a really good concept. But after reading more about Rare Book Store, I\’m not so sure… What do you think?
MarkAndrew
October 7, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Our spam is getting weird.
astronomius
December 14, 2008 at 7:34 am
“Capitalism is the American way, and at the end of the day that’s what Cap fought for!â€
i know what that statement means, but i’d never say that.
after reading Cap stories for more than thirty years, i’d say that Steve Rogers was an individual always fighting for the rights of the individual, NEVER in touch with the rest of the world.
Steve Rogers carried a trunkful of clothes, a shield and rode a motorcycle much of his days and didn’t buy into the “American Dream” as consumer culture defines it, never into collecting “stuff” and never knew when he’d go to war again.
Steve Rogers did not fight for consumer culture. He fought for what he believed, for the right to be whatever we wanted to be, and in that way the Civil War was a losing battle because the people in charge sold everybody out
as far as Cap #25, you know the familiar cycle; consumers lose interest, the hype dies, the prices go down and then we’re onto the next new thing.
thanks for allowing me to comment.
b.