At least to me, Silver Surfer #3 perfectly epitomizes the "comic boom" of 2021. I think the argument could be made that speculation related to this issue kicked off the boom in early January 2021. Confined at home for the last eight months of 2020, and hungry for new streaming content to keep us entertained during lockdowns, fans devoured WandaVision when it was released in January 2021. It was the first follow up from Marvel since 2019's Avengers: Endgame and fans couldn't stop talking about the show's easter eggs online.
Because of Mephisto's relationship to the Scarlett Witch's children, Billy and Tommy Maximoff, many prominent YouTubers, including Erik Voss at New Rockstars and Ryan Arey at ScreenCrush, speculated that Mephisto would appear in the show as its main villain. This speculation spiked demand for Mephisto's first appearance in Silver Surfer #3 driving up prices and ultimately resulting in a bubble. You can clearly see this bubble in GoCollect's sales history for CGC-graded copies of Silver Surfer #3. For instance, if we take a closer look at a CGC 7.0 (the most common grade on the CGC Census), a 7.0 reached an all-time high of $2,000 in March 2021, just as the WandaVision series was wrapping up:
Just prior to the pandemic, a 7.0 typically sold for $400 to $450. Unbelievably, just a few years later in 2024, this issue would lose nearly 87% of its value since it's all-time high.
Looking back, this $266 sale in June 2024 turned out to be bottom.
The comic book market bubble popped in mid to late 2021, leading to a steep decline in sales prices that continued through mid-2024. Looking back on the past year, it looks the bottom occurred for a 7.0 copy of Silver Surfer #3 in June 2024 with this $266 sale of a 7.0 on ComicConnect:
As everyone knows, it's impossible to time the market, but it's also possible to purchase when you see a good value even if there's a possibility that prices could continue to decline. This buyer saw a good value and pounced. Since this $266 sale, 15 other 7.0s have sold and every single one of them sold for at least $415 and one off-white copy even sold for $650 on May 31st.
And sales prices for 7.0 have been steadily increasing; the 30-year average of $650 is substantially higher than the 90-day average ($521) or the one-year average ($495).
While it's possible that a copy could sell again for $266, such a sale would have to be considered an outlier; sales have been consistently 70% to 100% higher than that amount for nearly a year. In addition, with the potential introduction of Mephisto in Ironheart, there could be another catalyst in the near future that may help to further boost the value of this book.
