Why bet on a single character, when you can get three for the price of one? Such is the opportunity offered by DC Comics Presents #26, which has the first appearances of Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire. Few other key comic books contain the first appearance of so many major superheroes.

This aspect has caused the market for DC Comics Presents #26 to undergo more ups and downs than a rollercoaster. Here we seek to examine the book’s past performance to determine its future prospects for financial investment.

 

 

DC COMICS PRESENTS #26 (1980)

In a flashforward vision, Robin is thrown into the middle of a battle between the New Teen Titans and an interdimensional alien. This appearance of the New Teen Titans was not only the first appearance of the “New” team name, but also the 1st appearance of its key members Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire.

The overall picture of DC Comics Presents #26’s sales for the last few years is below. This includes the book graded in CGC 9.8, which represents the top 15.6% of the census.

While the overall trend in the value of DC Comics Presents #26 has been upwards since early 2016, it has experienced more peaks and troughs than most key comic books; a very distinct zigzag pattern. Each upward swing was caused by movie or TV news; specifically: April 2014 Ray Fisher was cast as Cyborg, March 2016 Batman v Superman was released in which Cyborg’s solo movie was teased, August 2017 Teagan Croft was cast as Raven and Anna Diop cast as Starfire. The final upswing in late-2018 was the Cyborg casting for the Doom Patrol TV series. A zoomed in graph of this market behavior is below:

After each upward movement in value, the book does indeed decline in value in the subsequent months without fail. Despite this repeated up and down behavior, the interesting thing is that each peak is higher than before, and so are the troughs. To put it simply, the zigzag trends upwards.

 

THE BOTTOM LINE

This one is a difficult one. Without any of the movie or TV news, it would appear that the value for DC Comics Presents #26 trends downwards; evidenced by the decreasing sales values between events. With this in mind, the advantage from having not one but three character 1st appearances has so far generated enough news frequency to push the value up. These upswings have been in magnitudes large enough that the aforementioned downward fades do not completely wipe out the added values.

The risk comes in when the music stops. At the moment, all three characters of Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire are utilized across the various visual mediums. Any future upswings will depend on entirely on a new casting of the characters. Again, so far the frequency of such occurrences has almost been like clockwork; only months apart each event. Furthermore, there doesn’t appear to be any aversion to having multiple iterations of the same character at the same time. The original planned Cyborg solo movie with Ray Fisher has since been cancelled, but it wouldn’t be surprising if it re-enters into WB’s plans. Perhaps even Raven or Starfire will get their silver screen debut before that.

Overall, the trend has been upwards, but the growth rate isn’t the most attractive. To collect the book at a more favorable price, it’d be best to wait until the bottom of a trough.

  • DC Comics Presents #26 (CGC 9.8) - HOLD

 

“Sometimes I think I am just a machine that believes it's a kid named Victor Stone.” – Cyborg