The Popularity of Giant-Size X-Men #1

This book is simply blowing up. The Giant-Size X-Men #1 has multiple appearances of X-Men: Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird,  and second appearance of Wolverine, first Wolverine in X-Men team by the book.  This is technically Wolverine's third appearance after his first appearance in Incredible Hulk #180, and his second appearance in Incredible Hulk #181. Regardless, it is extremely popular and is obviously a solid Bronze Age key to purchase.

Anecdotal Evidence

This book recently was put on sale at my local comic shop in raw format, with an estimated grade of 9.0 per CGC. The result? After posting on a social media website, taking a dozen interested calls, a buyer showed up under four hours later and paid $4500 for this Bronze Age beauty. Once it was put online the phone never stopped ringing. What is driving the demand for Giant-Size X-Men #1? What kind of return can we expect from this Bronze Age key?

Giant-Size X-Men #1

This book is the first appearance of the new X-Men. Basically, by creating this team it launched the popularity of the X-men and a certain furry, frenzied, hairy creature (Wolverine) to dominate the stardom of comics for about two decades. This book was created by the strong creative team of Chris Claremont, Len Wein, Roy Thomas, Arnold Drake, and Linda Fite, whoo! The pencil team is Gil Kane, Dave Cockrum, and Werner Roth. This book was published in 1974.

Giant-Size X-Men #1 is the first appearance of Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, Thunderbird, and the first Wolverine in the X-Men team. As already mentioned this is actually the third appearance of Wolverine, not as indicated by previous CGC  slabs the second appearance. That said, this book as a key is nothing less than a top Bronze Age book.  What trend returns has this X-Men key received over the last year?

Catalyst

The catalyst for this X-Men book and multiple other books all of whom have thousands upon thousands of X-fans is the recent purchase of Fox by Disney. After years of the X-Men doing the same movie over and over again, we finally might get something new. Perhaps a new approach with Disney to remake the X-Men franchise in a more modern style. Will it be good, bad, or simply ugly; who cares? It will be different and therefore the keys for this team are rising in value, not the least of which is Giant-Size X-Men #1.

Conclusion

To understand where a book is going and if it is worthy of investment or even rank speculation you simply have to look at the entire mosaic. The "big picture," so to speak. The pieces of this particular puzzle are the catalyst in the form of rebuilding the franchise, the rarity of this book in near mint condition, the popularity of the characters, and the general uptick or "all boats rising" of the comic book market where prices keep going up, up and up.

Bottom line Giant-Size X-Men #1 is a major key of the Bronze Age and is continuing to rise at a 40% clip year over year in near mint/ mint condition. Even the lower grades are almost all green for return trends, green as in greenbacks baby! You don't need to have some latent mutant power or adamantium skeleton to buy this Bronze Age key, just sell the car and get ready for some "uncanny" results.

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