Comic Book Speculation

Bought: $15.24 Sold: $40.00 Fees: $0.00 Profit: $24.76

This is a comic book, one that came out in March. More specifically it is The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #5, variant cover. There is a whole market for comic book speculation, and while I do read, and buy, comics, I do not partake in comic book speculation. It is, like any speculation market, often as good as guessing, and not a sure thing by any means. That being said, Chris reads a lot of comic book speculation blogs and will sometimes make suggestions. When this issue came out he told me that it was limited in quantity, and that it was expected to increase in value. Variant comic covers are a very weird thing - stores can only order them based on how many copies of the comics they order overall. These are worked out in fractions, so 1:20 or 1:50. Meaning that if the store orders 20 copies of the comic, they can order 1 copy of the variant, or if they order 50, they can order 1 copy. The smaller the ratio, the rarer the book. It means that only big shops can order the variants, and if the comic is not that popular, in such that almost no store would be selling 20 copies of it, the variant cover is that more rare. It gets even more complicated by the fact that comic book stores are required to put in their orders 8 weeks in advance of comic release dates, so orders are not always based on demand (if a comic starts to get really bad, people stop buying it, but the store didn't know it was going to get bad so kept ordering), and furthermore, variant covers are often not ready 8 weeks out, so stores are ordering them blind not knowing what they will look like. Rarity alone is not enough to make a variant cover valuable, it also needs to be visually appealing or by a popular artist, or ideally both. All said, it is not a market that one wants to wander into unprepared, and really is a crap shoot. Chris is quite good at keeping me abreast of various speculations and usually I listen but don't buy into it, but this time he was quite adamant and so I listened. I spent $15 on a comic book, which is 3-5 times the usual cover price for a comic book. I put it on eBay for $50 and sat and waited, and watched as the number of copies for sale dwindled until I was one of only 3 left. It was unlikely more would hit the secondary market any time soon - it would require a buyer who just spent a lot on it to decide they wanted to sell it. Mine was price higher than any others - most people were asking $30-35, but I was content to sit and wait until I was the last one and wait for someone desperate enough. But then last week someone posted on Kijiji asking if anyone had the cover to sell. I decided that selling it locally for $40 and avoid the fees and hassle of shipping would bring me to about the same profit and less headache. He complained about the price but finally agreed when he realized there was none cheaper on eBay (after you factored in shipping) and he wasn't likely to find it anywhere else. So, I more than doubled my money on it, and I am happy. That being said, I am still going to leave comic speculation to Chris.