With 2025 nearly in the rear view mirror, the comic book collecting market appears to be at a crossroads. The past five years have been a wild roller coaster ride defined by the pandemic and speculation-fueled "comic boom" of 2020-22 which was then followed by the post-boom bear market of 2023-25.
What will 2026 bring for the comic book market? Well, here are four of the biggest stories of 2025; and I think at least some of them might be pointing towards a more promising outlook for 2026.
1. Absolute Batman took the comic book world by storm in 2025.
As my colleague Doug recently wrote in this blog, "Absolute Batman is now the zeitgeist comic for the 2020s. It has resonated with fans in a way that we haven’t seen in years." You can observe the "zeitgeist" he refers to in GoCollect's data; in spite of a steadily increasing supply of CGC 9.8s, the 30-day average sale of $352 is more than 100% greater than the one-year average of $156:
2. In 2025, a CGC 9.0 sale for Superman #1 shattered the previous record for the most expensive comic book of all-time.
Just over a month ago, we witnessed comic book history when this top-of-the-census CGC 9.0 copy of Superman #1 sold for a record-setting $9.12 million on Heritage Auctions on November 22:
The previous record was set in April 2024 when a CGC 8.5 Pedigree copy of Action Comics #1 sold for $6M. This Superman #1 sale absolutely obliterated that sale by over 50%.
You may remember that, just two months prior, this autographed Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant double Logoman card became the most expensive sports card of all-time selling for nearly $13 million on August 23, 2025. Less than three months later, on November 18, 2025, Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer" sold at Sotheby's for $236.4 million setting a new world record for the most expensive modern artwork ever sold. Two days later, on November 20th, a Frida Kahlo self-portrait sold for $54.7 million, setting a new record for a female artist.
At the very top of the collectibles market, there was clearly huge amounts of new money flowing in during Q4; what does that portend, if anything, for the rest of the collectibles market in 2026?
3. PSA entered the comic book grading market in 2025.
One of the most prolific brands in the entire collectibles industry for more than three decades, Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) made the leap to grading comic books in 2025. Even with the existence of CBCS, the comic book grading market has been cornered by CGC for years; it had become something like a monopoly. PSA's decision to enter the comic book grading market presents CGC with its first real competitive threat in years.
It's still too early to tell if PSA will take a significant amount of market share from CGC, but, over the long-term, it should be a good thing for PSA and CGC to compete for our dollars. And there's a limited amount of evidence that PSA can compete with CGC on the secondary market. For example, just last month a PSA 1.5 copy of X-Men #1 sold for $3,383 on eBay; a few weeks later, a CGC 1.5 copy sold for approximately 33% less. Did you know about this sale?
Was this sale a fluke or emerging trend? We may know for sure in 2026.
Speaking of the future, PSA's parent company Collectors is closing out the year with an acquisition announcement surrounding Beckett and the future of CBCS, so we'll be sure to follow this story as it unfolds.
4. The Modern Age CPI produced a 3.27% return in 2025.
No one may have written a story about the ROI of the Modern Age CPI, but this is important -- for the first time in several years, a segment of the comic book market produced a positive annual return.
As we all know, the past few years have been painful for the comic book collecting market according to GoCollect's CPI. We've been stuck in a long-running bear market with declines of greater than 20% from all-time highs in most segments. For instance, since the Silver Age CPI reached an all-time high of 2,095 on June 26, 2022, it has fallen over 23% to 1610 as of December 14, 2025. These declines haven't showed any signs of slowing down with the Silver Age CPI being down 6.45% YTD.
Still, there are some signs that we're nearing the bottom. For instance, not all of the CPIs had negative returns for the year. It may come as no surprise that the Golden Age and Pre-Code Horror CPIs had small, but positive returns for the year -- the rare and highly sought after key issues aggregated in these two CPIs will go up in pretty much any market.
There are some surprises in the data though. For instance, the Modern Age CPI returned a respectable 3.27% in 2025, above the rate of inflation for the year, and outperforming all of the other CPIs. It outperformed the Bronze Age CPI, for example, by nearly 10% YTD.
Much of this was driven by the heavily weighted appreciation of non-Marvel comics like Invincible #1, The Walking Dead #1, Something is Killing the Children #1, and Detective Comics #880. If you're a comic book investor, parking your money in the most significant (non-Marvel) key issues of the Modern Age was a bet that paid off in 2025.
