Ever since ChatGPT was unveiled, the rise of artificial intelligence has been one of the dominant stories in the media -- and the stock market. We’ve witnessed members of Congress question Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, about the potential promise and threat that AI may pose to humanity. We've also seen that the stock market believes in the promise of AI with investors buying stocks of Nividia, Meta, Microsoft and Google.
We’ve seen the threat of AI before in the MCU, of course, with the introduction of Ultron and the Vision in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Both Ultron and Vision represented contrasting visions of the future about AI. As confirmed by Collider, it now looks like the highly anticipated second season of X-Men '97 will also be jumping on the AI story bandwagon with the introduction of Danger, the sentient and physical manifestation of the X-Men's infamous "Danger Room,"
The Danger Room is synonymous with the X-Men - their famous and very sophisticated training room buried deep beneath Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. We’ve witnessed it in the earliest iterations of the X-Men on TV including on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends and the 1989 X-Men pilot episode.
After Professor X used Shi'ar technology to upgrade the Danger Room, it developed sentience and became "alive." Like the “daddy” issues that Ultron had with Tony Stark in Age of Ultron, Danger had similar issues with her perceived creator after Professor X attempted to imprison her.
Danger first appears in Astonishing X-Men #9 (2005). If you take a closer look at the most common grade on the CGC Census, a 9.8, there is very little sales data which indicates very little market demand for this issue up to this point in time.
For example, prior to the "comic boom" of 2020-21, there were only five publicly recorded sales of a 9.8 (all on eBay). All of those sales were $24 or under. Interestingly, this book didn't reach its all-time high sale of $150 until February 2023 well after the comic boom had ended and we had entered a bear market.
The sales data reveals that the current entry point for purchasing a 9.8 is quite low. If you’re patient and willing to look for this book during public auctions, you can likely purchase a 9.8 for less than case costs (i.e., the cost of shipping and grading). For instance, the last sale of a 9.8 where we know the final sales price was a mere $19 on eBay. It sold on March 17, 2024.
This is a great price and I personally would enter at this price point (obviously, you should do your own research). You could look for raw copies to buy and sell, but there’s a good chance you can just buy a 9.8 and have the seller incur the grading costs.
Another factor to consider is that there are likely tens of thousands of potential 9.8s out there in the wild. If collectors begin submitting this book to CGC in large numbers, the value of a 9.8 would likely diminish substantially due to excessive supply.
