Welcome back to our blog series about the Fantastic Four CPI! This time, we’re going to take a look at individual issues in the Fantastic Four CPI to discover some interesting ones that have held their value during downtrends in the market. We’ll also see how the index has changed in the past week and which issues were driving the changes.
B-Tier Villains Represent!
Up until the past week or so, I’d been intending to write about Fantastic Four #15, the first appearance of the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, and how this issue had surprisingly been holding its value. And then a funny thing happened… it tanked. This graphic shows the sorry tale:
We can also see this by drilling down into the grades in the Fantastic Four CPI as well:
Oh, well. So much for best laid plans. That’s what happens when a high grade book sells for 26% less than its previous sale in a very visible auction. Outside of this sale, though, we do see generally upward trends, particularly in the high grades, although we have seen corrections in the mid grades. It's worth looking at some other B-Tier FF villains’ first appearances to see if they’ve fared any better during the past five years.
Nothing Is Impossible
Although he’s didn’t end up as a villain per se, Impossible Man’s first appearance in Fantastic Four #11 has managed to continue to increase in value despite market forces that would say otherwise.
Those are some impressive looking trends in the high grades. Although we begin to see more bell-shaped curves in the mid grades, the low grades and the 5.0 grade have shown positive trends. Overall, this book has seen a very positive 28% increase in its value to the index over the course of the past five years with no major downward movement.
Mining for Magic
The results haven’t been quite as positive for Diablo’s first appearance in Fantastic Four #30:
While we see some very positive trends in most of the higher grades, that drop in the 9.4 grade does give one pause until we dig a little deeper to see this:
That drop in value in the CPI didn’t represent a drop in value for Fantastic Four #30 in the 9.4 grade so much as it represented a drop in value over the past four sales, a value that was skewed artificially high by what was very much an outlier sale for this comic back in 2015. If anything, it’s been a net gain in the 9.4 grade over the past five years. The CPI is a great tool for seeing the big picture, but it can sometimes obscure details if you don’t do the research. I may sound a bit like a broken record saying this, but it always pays to dig a little deeper. It took me less than two minutes to discover what happened in this case and the tools are available here on GoCollect for anyone to do the same. Overall, we see a tidy 10% gain in value to the index for this first appearance of a B-tier villain over the past five years with, again, no major drop.
Recent Fantastic Four CPI Movement
The Fantastic Four CPI lost a point over the past week. Not a huge change, but it’s worth looking to see what sales drove the index down. Upward movement for Fantastic Four #5, Fantastic Four Annual #2, Fantastic Four #39, Fantastic Four #164, and Fantastic Four #273 weren’t enough to offset the drop in value for many of the books near the top of the index. Among the week’s losers included Fantastic Four #2, Fantastic Four #3, Fantastic Four #4, Fantastic Four #48, and Fantastic Four #52.
Black Panther’s first appearance, in particular, continues to show some disappointing trends, with multiple copies between the 8.5 and 3.5 grades showing a loss in value in just the past week. There were others as well, both in the middle of the index and toward the bottom. Two at the lower end of the index that bear watching are Fantastic Four #185 and Fantastic Four #186. Hyped up due to Salem’s Seven rumors surrounding Agatha All Along on Disney+, the disappointing reveal of the team in the show as nothing more than ghoulish phantasms has led to a sharp decrease in value for both issues.
