On May 7th, 2014, the popular ABC sitcom Modern Family aired an episode entitled "Message Received." In this episode, Mitchell Pritchett and Cam Tucker are in the midst of their wedding planning and they have realized their elegant tastes have left them several thousand dollars in the hole for their dream wedding and they need to come up with some fast cash.
While Cam's solution is to sell a belt buckle he inherited from his grandfather that belonged to Wyatt Eart (Spoiler Alert: it didn't), Mitchell decides it might be time to sell a valuable comic book he has held onto for 30 years.
Apparently, when Mitchell was in elementary school, he traded a Dan Marino signed football for a very nice copy of Amazing Spider-Man #3 (just go with it). He has kept it since that time but thinks selling it might be the key to getting the money they need for the wedding.
Mitchell Pritchett and his Amazing Spider-Man #3 (ABC/Screenshot)In the episode, Mitchell states over and over again that the comic is "worth $5,000!" We know a lot of variables about this book, so we can do some fact-checking here. We know the issue and date. We know the condition (Mitchell states it is "near-mint"), and we know the time of the episode (May 2014). Was Mitchell right about the value? What about if he held onto the book? Using the GoCollect sales database, let's dive in and take a look.
Amazing Spider-Man #3 in 2014
Assuming the events of Modern Family take place in real-time, we need to go back in the database for more than nine years to look at the value of this book. Let's look at it from a couple of different angles. If we assume that his book is more of a NM- (a CGC 9.0) instead of a NM (CGC 9.4), then we have a slightly larger selection to work with.
There are 43 registered CGC blue and yellow label books on the CGC census. Looking back to 2014, there are zero recorded sales of the 9.0 grade. However, the most recent sale recorded was in August of 2013 when a copy sold on eBay for $5,300. So, if the writers really meant NM- instead of NM, they were right on the money with their line that the book was worth $5,000.
But if they really meant NM, we have to reevaluate. There are just 10 registered blue and yellow label copies in a 9.4 grade. While none of these were sold in 2014, the most recent sale of this grade before the show aired was in 2011 when the book sold at Heritage Auctions for $22,705!
If, in fact, Mitchell is right and his book is a NM copy of one the most iconic villain introductions ever (Doctor Octopus!), they are looking at a book worth more than four times what they first thought.
Potential Issues With the Book
Right away, the savvy comic book collector will notice the major issue with valuing this book at $22,000 or $5,000 or at really any amount. This is a raw copy. You can see from the screenshot above that it is clearly not graded and is in a plastic bag. To make matters, we see a few moments later that this comic did not even have a backing board inside the bag.
(ABC/Screenshot)If that wasn't enough, we actually see where Mitchell was storing the book before he retrieved it. When he goes to his dad's house to get the book, he climbs up into the attic. That means for likely multiple decades, this classic book was stored unsealed, unboarded, and in a non-climate-controlled Los Angeles, California attic. The heat and humidity alone would likely knock this out of NM contention.
Of course, all this is a moot point because of what Mitchell does next. After getting wrapped up in an actual spider web, Mitchell drops the book out of the plastic bag and into a nearby puddle. The book is soaked, falling apart, and all value at that point is completely lost.
(ABC/Screenshot)But what if Mitchell had been a knowledgeable collector? What if Mitchell had graded the book at its NM value around the time CGC went into operation and kept the book until 2023?
What Would the Book Be Worth in 2023?
Just over one year ago, Heritage Auctions had a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #3 in one of its lots. On June 19th, 2022 that book sold for a whopping $44,400. That means that in an ideal world, Mitchell's $22,705 NM book from 2014 would have doubled in value in just eight short years. Even a copy in CGC 9.0 sold for more than $18,000 at Heritage earlier in 2023. That's more than a 300% increase from the $5,300 value that the NM- copy sold for back in 2013.
Was it a good trade Mitchell made back in elementary school? Absolutely. Dan Marino signed footballs with a Certificate of Authenticity are only selling for around $200 right now on eBay. Dan Marino is still around and signing footballs these days, but the days of discovering ASM #3 copies in good condition may very well be behind us. With such limited supply of a high-grade, classic book, Mitchell's comic book will likely always carry more value than a Marino ball.
But if we're talking about reality here (or as much as you can with a television show), Mitchell likely destroyed much of the value of the book when he stored it unsealed, unboarded, and in a blazing hot attic for years. Even before he dropped it in a puddle, this book might have been looking at a grade in the 3.0-5.0 range?
That's still worth much more than a Marino-signed football, but the lesson here is always to take care of your collectibles!
