With this summer's biggest tent pole, Fantastic Four: First Steps, less than two months away, we're seeing excitement for the film having an impact on GoCollect's Hottest Comics. Specifically, during the month of May, four of the top five -- and six of the top 15 -- hottest Silver Age comics prominently feature the Silver Surfer, including "The Galactus Trilogy," a three-issue Fantastic Four story arc from 1966 that introduces Galactus and the Silver Surfer.
From its trailers, we know First Steps will generally adapt this storyline but use a different Silver Surfer (Shalla Bal and not Norrin Radd).
Four of the Top 5 Hottest Silver Age Comics feature the Silver Surfer.
Here are the Top 5 Hottest Silver Age Comics (by sales volume):
With First Steps adapting the Galactus Trilogy, it's no surprise that the Top 5 includes the first appearance of the Silver Surfer and first cameo of Galactus (Fantastic Four #48), the first cover appearance of the Silver Surfer and first full appearance of Galactus (Fantastic Four #49) and the Silver Surfer's first solo series (The Silver Surfer #1). And, in my opinion, Fantastic Four #50 has the best Silver Surfer cover of all-time drawn by the incomparable Jack Kirby.
If you dig a bit deeper into the Hottest Comics during May, you'll see two more Silver Surfer key issues in the Top 15: Silver Surfer #3 (1st appearance of Mephisto) and Silver Surfer #4 (classic cover featuring Thor vs. the Silver Surfer).
Sales volume is up for the Galactus Trilogy, but values are trending down.
As a reminder, GoCollect's Hottest Comics rank comics based upon on sales volume and not sales prices. Sometimes there's a correlation between volume and pricing, but oftentimes not. In this case, although collectors are buying large numbers of Silver Surfer key issues (i.e., there's a significant amount of demand), that generally hasn't translated into higher values. In fact, values for Fantastic Four #48 through #50 have been decreasing over the past year:
Part of this decline in prices can be explained by the huge increase in supply of graded copies of these three issues. For instance, just prior to the "comic boom" that began in 2020, there were only 4,876 universal blue label copies of Fantastic Four #48 on the CGC Census. Today, there are 8,946 universal blue labels or an 83% increase. The number of blue labels for Fantastic Four #49 increased from 2,416 to 6,312 and Fantastic Four #50 increased from 1,780 to 4,356. So while demand for these issues remain high, supply has also increased.
These declines are not unique but reflect the broader losses in the market for Silver Age key issues in general. Importantly, these three issues have retained more of their value than the broader Silver Age Index which has lost nearly 5% of its value over the past year.
Could there be any buying opportunities here?
