After many years as a safe sector of the hobby, cracks are starting to appear in the Pre-Code Horror Market. Let’s take a look at our Pre-Code Horror CPI to see what the data reveals.
Years of Gains…
Pre-code horror comics have been among the safest back issue comic book investments for the past five years. Just looking at the snapshot the Pre-Code Horror CPI provides shows us nothing but gains. That is until you look at the latest week in the CPI, the week ending April 27, 2025. You might not even see it in this image, so let’s zoom in:
This is something new – an actual drop in the Pre-Code Horror CPI. Yes, it may be a small overall drop, only 0.21%. And yes, the index as a whole may be 0.74% higher than it was three months ago. But we haven’t experienced a week where losers outpaced gainers in five years. That’s a long stretch of continuous climbs in the value of the index. So, which books are responsible for the downward trajectory?
Falling Values
No book in the Pre-Code Horror CPI dropped more in value- 10.2% - in April than Voodoo Annual #1. The drop is due entirely to the sale of one of the two top-of-census 7.5 graded copies for $12,000 in the April 24 Heritage auction. A five-figure sale is no mean feat, but when taken in context it’s disconcerting, to say the least. This exact same copy sold (in its only previous sale) for $19,200 in a January 2023 Heritage auction. That’s a 38% drop in value. The seller cannot have been pleased with this result in a sector of the hobby that’s seen nothing but gains.
Vault of Horror #12 dropped 4.6% in value in April. Again, in this case, the drop was due to one sale. However, Vault of Horror #12 has been dropping in the 8.0 grade for the past four years. After reaching a height of $14,400 in 2021, each subsequent sale has seen a drop in value, from $10,200 in 2022 to $9,600 in 2024 to $8,400 in the April 6 Heritage auction. There are copies in higher grades, but none have sold recently. This isn’t a one-week trend for this comic, but rather the continuation of a trendline that keeps pointing downward.
Two sales in the 5.0 grade were enough to drop Tales From the Crypt #20 4.6% in index value in April. One sale was for $1,020, while the other was for $1,464. With an average price paid of $1,242, that’s less than half of the $3,000 value this grade held in 2022 and 2023. It’s also down 38% from the only 2024 sale for $1,999. Again, this looks like more of a long-term trend than a one-shot drop in value. Although values appear to be up in many other grades over the past five years, it is very troubling that the 9.8 grade has bounced up and down in value and is currently dropping.
Venus #18 dropped 3.5% in index value in the last week of April, but that’s after a strong showing earlier in the year. The gain in the March 2 index was due to the sale of a 7.0 graded copy in the February 25 Heritage auction for $7,200. It was the first recorded sale in the grade, an event that typically helps a CPI to pop up in value. However, the April 24 sale of a 4.0 for $2,040 in a Heritage auction was responsible for a 55% drop in value in the grade. It’s that sale that caused the decrease in index value. The 55% drop is far more concerning than the index popping due to the first sale in a grade. Definitely monitor this book, as decreasing value in a known commodity is never a good sign.
You never want to see a jump in value followed almost immediately by a drop, as that’s typically a sign that the increase was due to someone overpaying followed by an immediate correction. After climbing 5.6% in index value throughout the month of March, Tomb of Terror #15 was down 2.8% in the month of April but the correction was far worse – a drop of 14% in the 7.5 grade index value. Here’s the story in this grade: April 2 – sale for $16,800, April 6 - $13,200, April 7 - $12,600, April 24 - $10,800. Ugh. There’s also the 2.5 grade that dropped nearly a third in value with a sale for $3,360 in the April 6 Heritage auction. This issue sports a Lee Elias cover that’s an all-time favorite of PCH enthusiasts, making this perhaps the most troubling of all the drops.
Final Thoughts
While there were some gainers in April – most notably Suspense Comics #3 up 5.3% - there were other losers in addition to those noted above: Menace #1, Voodoo #8, Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #11, Venus #17, Crime SuspenStories #19, and Shock SuspenStories #1 among them. This may be a time for caution when considering the purchase of a Pre-Code Horror comic. Could it be just a one-month blip? Yes, it could. But it could also be the start of a troubling trend. After all, nothing goes up forever.
