GoCollect Blog: Weekly Silver, Bronze, and Copper Spec: Spectacular Spider-Man (weekly-silver-bronze-and-copper-spec-spectacular-spider-man )

So much of comic book collecting and investing nowadays is dominated by modern books. With the endless variants, store exclusives, and first appearances of ultimately insignificant characters, many investors, especially those who prefer older books, often feel ignored and left out of the conversation. Fortunately, we here at GoCollect are here to help!! Every week, I am going to provide speculation recommendations for silver, copper, and bronze age books for a chosen topic. This week, we are going to talk about the Wall-Crawling Webslinger, the Spectacular Spider-Man!

When I was writing the first Silver, Bronze, and Copper Age Spider-Man spec article, I was a little disappointed that all of the books I had chosen were from Amazing Spider-Man. Spidey is an incredible character with a deep bench of great stories outside of his primary series and my article did not do a good job capturing that. So I decided to write a second, companion article that would exclusively feature non-Amazing books. I hope you enjoy!

Silver Age: Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1

This book sort of slides in by default, as it is the only non-Amazing Spider-Man book during the Silver Age, but it is still a good investment. This book marks the very first time Spider-Man held down a second title and the first time a book was titled Spectacular Spider-Man. This makes it a significant artifact in Spidey's overall publication history and thus worthy of consideration.

Spectacular Spider-Man Magazine #1 definitely has a highly volatile FMV, so more risk-averse investors will probably want to look elsewhere. In higher grades, there is quite a lot of money to be made in buying the dip, but just as much to lose if buying at a high. Lower-graded books, meanwhile, have risen fairly consistently, but at a drastically slower pace. If you buy this book, be prepared to wait for the right price.

Bronze Age: Spectacular Spider-Man #107

It can be pretty easy to find a comic with a great cover, a first appearance, or a great story. Millions of comics are published every year. It is a lot harder, however, to find a book like Spectacular Spider-Man #107, which has all three. This book marks the first appearance of the Sin-Eater, who kicks off the acclaimed Death of Jean DeWolff storyline here by murdering the eponymous police captain. The storyline is one of the most celebrated Spider-Man stories out there and could easily be made into a great film someday.

Prices for this book have been rising fairly consistently over the years. CGC 9.8 copies currently have an FMV of $250, as opposed to $75 just seven years prior.

Copper Age: Web of Spider-Man #32

This book is part four of Kraven's Last Hunt, generally considered to be one of, if not the greatest Spider-Man stories of all time. The cover art by Mike Zeck is iconic and still stands as one of Marvel's most homaged covers. It is rarely a bad idea to invest in good storytelling and Web of Spider-Man #32 is certainly an example of good storytelling. Furthermore, the upcoming Kraven The Hunter film may leverage certain elements of the eponymous character's most famous story. Should that come to pass, this book would almost certainly see a spike in value. Due to the tremendous significance of Kraven's Last Hunt in the Spider-Man mythos, this book is unlikely to lose value and even stands poised to gain more value over time.

Prices for this book have been dipping recently, but are still higher in nearly every grade than they were 7 years ago (that is as far back as GoCollect's data goes for this book). The current FMV for a direct edition CGC 9.8 is $350, while for the newsstand edition the FMV is $575. For every other grade, the direct edition FMV is higher.

Conclusion

That's all for this week folks! Let me know what you thought and if you have any suggestions. Next week, we tackle Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the Avengers!