Expert: Brian G. Philbin - 11/21/2009

Question
I have about 70 DC comic books from April - August 1980. The majority have never been read.  My question is whether there is any value to these comics.  I have Superboy, Batman, Scalphunters,  Unknown Soldier and many other titles.  Except for yellowing pages most of the comics are in good condition.  

Answer
Hi, and thanks for your question!

While we don't provide values here, we can provide you with the best tools available to obtain your answers on your own.

Firstly, you will need to ensure that your comics meet a particular grade prior to being able to assign any value whatsoever. Be aware that comics buyers examine comics as if they were a rare jewel and will be extremely finicky about the grade.

Also, remember that grading can be subjective, which is why third-party graders have come into the marketplace.  One way of improving your skills is to try your hand with E-Bigs, an online grading tool that can provide some visual guidelines to grading your books at:

http://www.e-bigs.net/freetool.php

Be aware that using this tool does not guarantee that you will be able to grade your books without any argument from another collector, but it will certainly provide you with a third-party reasoning for your grade, which you can then refer to when discussing the reasons for your grade.

With regard to value, the "Bible" of pricing is Gemstone's Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and the next most reliable resource for most information is Comics Buyer's Guide (CBG).  You can pick up a copy of Gemstone's Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide in any bookstore (or at least look through it to find information on these books and their values). You may also find an Overstreet Guide at your local library.  Currently, you can also find a useful price guide in CBG, which has recently switched to magazine format and is very entertaining beyond it's guide.  That publication doesn't provide a full price guide every month, so you'll likely need to purchase a few months' worth of that one to find values on your books.

There is also an online price guide (though I prefer Overstreet) at:

http://www.comicspriceguide.com/

There are many ways of finding general comics values - the online site above has the advantage of being online, free and a quick general ballpark for many of the older items listed in determining Market Value.  However, Overstreet and Comic Buyer's Guide have a greater network and larger samples for mathematically determining their estimates and are generally more reliable.

However, a price guide is, quite simply, a guess at what the current market will bear nationwide. You can actually find this out by monitoring eBay.com for a few months and finding a similar item in order to get an idea of what value it might hold to collectors.

"Market Value", of course, is a retail value - meaning if you owned a comic book store, this is what you would likely be able to ask for the books and expect to be paid if you had a buyer.  This is a price that would not necessarily be expected to be attained in, say, a typical eBay auction.

If you decide to sell your comics, it's important to find the right audience, so - outside of eBay - check out other auction sites that specialize in comics, like ComicLink.com or comics.ha.com.

Hopefully, this provides enough information to get you started.  Let me know if you have any further questions!

Pax, harmonia,

Brian G. Philbin