How to Determine Which Comics Will Grow in Value |
| Every properly kept comic book will maintain or grow in value over time. The trick is to pick the titles with the highest growth potential. |
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Steps: |
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Read Wizard Magazine, which lists the top-100 selling comic books every month. The top sellers are indicators of which characters are hot at the moment and which creative teams are popular. |
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Buy first issues when possible. |
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Buy variant covers. Sometimes, to promote or hype sales, comic book publishers will publish a variety of covers for the same issue. |
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Know your creative teams. Good writers and artists are popular no matter what title they work on and bring value to the book. |
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Look for new and different material. Most non-superhero books don't do that well, but the interesting ones shine through and gain in value. |
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Get to know your retailer. The comic shop makes its livelihood predicting the market. |
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Tips: |
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If the X-Men are selling well, then the other X-titles will be doing good business. That's an indication that these titles will bring in more as back issues over time. |
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Value is tied to popularity. If you try to unload your Batman collection just before the next Batman movie comes out, you'll be able to cash in on the hype. |
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The Preacher and The Invisibles are as non-mainstream and as odd titles as you'll ever run into on the newsstand, but they are quite popular and valuable. They share the same writer, Grant Morrison, and his intelligent, creative and skewed vision. His name guarantees an increase in back issue prices for those titles. |
