The Vulcan greeting "Live long and prosper" is everlasting to most Trekkies. This is Spock's common salutation on the series and in later movies. Star Trek debuted in 1966 and gave birth to multiple generations of fans, hundreds of hours of TV and several movies. In addition to all these successes, it also premiered in a comic book by Gold Key Publications. The first nine of these Star Trek issues are very collectible today and have cover photos from TOS (The Original Series). I believe these covers make them more valuable than the artistic covers later in this comic book series. If you like TOS you will love these first nine, they are campy, show Kirk and Spock on almost every cover and really take you back to TOS (The Original Series).
The first Gold Key cover Star Trek #1 titled K-G, Planet of Death and it shows Sulu, Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock and another key character for Star Trek: The Enterprise. It has Nevio Zaccara on pencils and inks. He was an Italian artist who only did the first two comic books. According to GoCollect the highest price paid for a mint condition (9.8) was $42,000 in October 2015. Anyone that would pay that price is one helluva fan, be they Trekkie, or Trekker. I think much like the later Star Wars comics in the late 1970s these books will continue to increase over time. But which grade has posted the highest returns? The current best grade to invest in is (9.0) very fine to near mint at positive +40.4% ROI. The last comic book to sell was in November 2018 for $1511 on Comic Link. This is a solid investment and the best pick as a grade for your first purchase of Star Trek #1.
The original Gold Key Publisher produced 61 total issues between 1967 and 1979. These are the earliest Trekkie comics (sorry I am not going to use Trekker). Then Marvel gave it a shot from 1980 till 1982 with 18 issues. Finally, DC Comics gets in the act with 56 issues covering the original series, 2 films and The Next Generation. Since these early attempts, IDW has gotten involved publishing Star Trek comic books from 2016 to 2018.
Star Trends?
This top comic from the Star Trek series Star Trek #1 has varying results some positive some negative if we take it out to max sales over the last 18 years. Therefore, I used Spock's logic and reviewed just the past year in trend returns; the results were a little more encouraging with almost all the grades showing positive returns. But logic, like all things in life takes some work and discipline to get at the truth; so, I drilled down further to the last six months and still had a drop off in grade (5.5) but given there are only three sales and think it is "logical to assume" that this is an aberration the other grades were very positive: (8.5) +44.2%, (7.5) +12.5%, (6.0) +14.7%. This comic is slowly increasing in value and shows a positive trend, beam up a copy priority one.
This is the second book by Nevio Zacarra and Star Trek #2 has the following FMV's: grades (6.0) $60, (8.0) $200 and (9.2) $525. The top value for this comic in (9.8) is significantly lower than it's predecessor at $2000. I like this book because it is cheaper and there are only 168 in the CGC Census. Which obviously means this has room to run and probably very few copies in existence. Notwithstanding some insane Trekkoid that has a closet full in mommy's basement. The overall returns are worse than the number one, which makes sense. If we go out a year they slightly improve. One standout is the (4.5) grade over the last year. It has performed with all photon torpedoes and phaser banks firing at point black range to produce positive +100.8% ROI! Great return for very low risk at about $100 to purchase; "Scotty beam me up" that profit margin. Or, as Mr. Spock would say, "Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." -Spock Star Trek
