I've been writing a series of blogs on GoCollect's new Collectible Price Index (CPI). A new tool loosely modeled on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a composite index that focuses on blue chip stocks. You can check out my blogs on the Big Spenders Club, Golden and Silver Age Indexes here. Today, we're going to do a deep dive into the CPI for the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age CPI consists of the 50 most important key issues of the Bronze Age.

GoCollect's Bronze Age CPI consists 50 of the most valuable (and historically significant) comic books published during the Bronze Age. Except for Marvel Spotlight #5 (1st appearance of Ghost Rider), this index includes all of the usual suspects (this is a non-exhaustive list from the index):

This is a great list of Bronze key issues to track as a collective across multiple CGC grades. I can't really quibble with any of them, but some notable exclusions from the include the aforementioned Marvel Spotlight #5, Savage She-Hulk #1, Hero for Hire #1 (1st appearance of Luke Cage), FOOM #10, and Green Lantern #87 (1st appearance of John Stewart).

Not surprisingly, the Big Two (Marvel and DC) published the vast majority (48 out of 50) of the comics included in GoCollect's Index.

Thanks to DC, over the past five years, the Bronze Age CPI has almost doubled in value.

The first thing that you notice when you view the Bronze Age CPI over a five-year period is that the CPI has actually increased in value since early July 2019. It may not feel that way since the comic book market has been in a bear market for the past two years, but the CPI has nearly doubled in value since then (631 in July 2019; 1158 today). Over the course of the past five years, the CPI reached its high in June of 2022 (nearly breaking 1,500); since then it has shed almost a quarter of its value.

Interestingly, just as it was in the Silver Age CPI, DC key issues included in the Bronze Age CPI have actually propped up the market. Some of these DC key issues have really soared in value over the past few years including House of Secrets #92 (1st appearance of Swamp Thing); Green Lantern #76 (widely considered to be the first Bronze Age comic); Batman #227 (classic Neal Adams cover); Batman #251 (classic Neal Adams Joker cover); and All-Star Western #10 (1st full appearance of Jonah Hex).

Not every DC key issue included in the CPI fared as well as the five above. DC Comics Presents #26 (1st appearances of Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire) and The New Teen Titans #2 (1st appearance of Deathstroke) experienced very significant declines over the past years; however, in general, DC has helped the Bronze Age CPI at least tread water.

Marvel has dragged the Bronze Age CPI down over the past two years.

Just as did in the Silver Age index, several Marvel books dragged the overall Bronze Age CPI down over the past two years. Marvel Premiere #47 (1st appearance of Scott Lang as Ant-Man), Special Marvel Edition #15 (1st appearance of Shang-Chi); Marvel Premiere #15 (1st appearance of Iron Fist), Giant-Size X-Men #1 (1st appearances of Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler), and Iron Man #55 (1st appearances of Thanos, Drax, and Starfox) all experienced significant declines in value across 14 CGC grades over the past two years.

When you look the aggregate values across several CGC grades for the books above, it looks like at least two of them (Special Marvel Edition #15 and Iron Man #55) may have over-corrected to me. With Shang-Chi and Starfox likely to appear in the MCU again, it might be worth taking a closer look at these books at these current price points.

What have insights have you gleaned from the CPI? Please let us know what they may be in the comments section below!