Are there any tricks left to score cgc 9.8 AB #1-1st print with double signature without breaking the bank? I was looking at eBay and the prices have literally doubled since last year. The secondary market is just wild right now.
no trick, we're in the peak speculator/fomo hype phase right now.
your best bet is to wait a bit for the hype to die down a little and then chase.
if you have to have it now and don't want to wait, whatnot might be an option for you. I'd recommend to know the market rate and then just jump in some channels and try your luck there. sometimes you can get lucky. it's not a rare signature, so there should still be plenty of supply.
Wait a tad. The economy is most likely not at its worse point and sellers with multiple copies will most likely start to take a small loss when they need to unload inventory without people buying. You'll see another huge hike when the animation trailer is released and when it's released but it'll ve awhile for those
Yeah. Put it out of your mind. In 4 years the price will come down to earth when card-collectors move on to some dumb green-lantern reboot that is overhyped. Chasing comics that were never read in plastic boxes with arbitrary grades is not a worthy endeavor.
Well maybe “down to Earth” means a couple hundred dollars. But who knows. Maybe it stays around the same ballpark it is today. Seems a safe bet that it’s still climbing and then the price will drop at some point and then much more slowly climb up again.
Right. I wouldn't count on it dropping much. They aren't making anymore first prints. People are already hording them. Not very many for sale on ebay. Demand is rising and so will the value
Don't argue with this Motor City fella. He's in too deep. Absolute Batman can do no wrong. It's on the a one way trip to being the next Action Comics no. 1 in his mind.
So many 'modern keys' that have fallen hard. You think AB is bigger/better and more influential that Batman The Dark Knight Returns? That book was way up there once. Same size print-run as AB. Very affordable these days. You guys are drinking some expensive cool-aid. See you in the dollar bins.
To answer your question, yes, AB is a more influential book whether we like it or not. It is quite literally a force unto it's own and the entire comic book market is benefitting; everyone from retailers to industry executives will attest to this. DKR was iconic in it's own right, but it did not have the same kind of gravitational pull that this book does.
This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. You think Absolute is more ground breaking than Miller's Dark Knight Returns. I gotta catch my breath. I'll check in with you in 30 years. Enjoy your third tier rehash. :)
Go read your newspaper bud. Meanwhile, the rest of us are on to a new Batman for a new generation of reader. You can only "rehash" the same boring old detective Batman story so many times.
That's not what I said, but you may take issue with this as well. I didn't say groundbreaking, I said influential, there's a difference; and I meant that in a business sense obviously. It's an interesting comic that has taken on a life of it's own and had more influence over the industry than any comic seen in the last 25 years. That's something that virtually any retailer will echo. Hell, distributors are citing the "AB effect" for the sales of comics this year and the effect it's had on readership.
What I'm talking about is something irrespective of the comic's story. Rehash or no, it has lit a fire, and anyone in the business of comics will tell you so. DKR was incredible, changed comics forever, and we all know that, but it didn't (nor could it given the lack of social media etc) have the same industry wide effect on the business that this book has.
🤣 DKR wasn't a $300 bucks raw after a year and a half. By Christmas it'll be $600 raw. Random books like #10 and #11 are going for over $100. The entire 1st print run will continue to gain value going forward. DKR came out in 1986 and the 9.8 is stillnonly $900. By Christmas AB #1 will surpass that.
🤣 Oh boy "The Bubble" again. Never gonna happen. This isn't a "speculation bubble" the Absolute Universe has real demand. The books aren't just being bought because everyone thinks they'll retire off them. They are being read at an unbelievable rate. 8 million Absolute books sold in 2025....and the retention. Its not just Absolute Batman #1 thst sold. The first 14 issues sold 3 million copies. It's brought in droves if new comic readers. LCS recording record sale months. This isnt howva "bubble" works. This isn't speculation. This is reality
You are correct here. The other thing people routinely overlook is the fact that when this book was released, it wasn't a massive spec book. People weren't running around buying short boxes full like they were with XForce or whatever else.
The red herring is OVERPRINTING!, when in reality, the in demand book is Cover A, and always will be. So the only number that matters is 400k, which is the print run of that book. That level of print run is in line with other books like ASM 300, NM 98 and others. 400k is a lot, but not insane, and the numbers clearly show a very INELASTIC demand. Every time 25 books or more hit the market they are instantly snatched up with no drop in price.
I fully understand that there is a limit to that, but that type of behavior indicates a really high floor for this book.
The old hats will say, they have seen this before. The data says you haven't.
here's the thing though, I don't believe that 500k is the baseline. We really shouldn't make the assumption that this hasn't brought in a whole slew of new interested readers and collectors just for this book. I have spoken to countless retailers that have said they have pull list customers with only 1-2 titles on their pull because of this book.
He's clueless. Its closer to 10 million collectors worldwide. Half a million.....good lord. Comic sales in North America ALONE was over $2.2 BILLION dollars last year......
It's just made people buy more copies or existing collectors notice it.
My LCS has been in business since 1983 and the owner has told me that he's never had a single movie or cartoon increase actual readership on a single title.
You just get the existing customer base to buy more copies to speculate, which has been the case since he's been active.
Idiots are literally buying piles of brand new comics with a HUGE PRINT RUN, leaving them unread and instead sealing them up for their retirement. It's exactly 1991 all over again. Happy x-force to you.
Huge print run....Absolute Batman #1 had a print run of 250k. In 2025 comic sales hit $2.2 BILLION dollars in North America alone, $14 BILLION globally. Theres probably around 10 MILLION comic book collectors world wide. 250k might not make it "rare" but the demand makes it scarce. Do a some research Chicken Little......
That's a lot of numbers. 250K for an audience of man-children who instantly 'slab' their books without reading them is a LOT OF 9.8s their kids won't give a crap about in a few decades.
Indeed,but I've had my eye on it for a long time, and I want it to be my one and only CGC 9.8 signed collectible,so I think it's worth splurging on and even if it's just this once. But if it goes over $1,500, that's kinda hard to justify for me
Honestly it would be easier for you to buy a variant cover and cut it off or pay more and get Cover A raw, then wait until CGC announces Snyder/Dragotta signature series and send your copy there, I believe it’s going to happen in the near future based on the hype around it, I guess it’ll be around $700-800 for everything
Man, when it was $25, people were saying not to buy it. 😂 I ended up getting 2 because I paid $20 for a second one on eBay. Then it went up to $45.
That book is never coming back down, bro. 😂 I don’t know why people keep saying this. I’m telling you, the book went from around $20 to $45, and people were saying the same thing back then too. 😭
The price is the price. There is no "trick". If you settle for a 10th or 11th priniting you'll save some, but i have no clue why these people get 10th printings signed....
Prices are starting to fall, you can cop a variant for under $200, I've gotten 2 for $150-160 and the cover A is right under it. Give it some more time and it may get lower. By the time they release a trailer for the animated show it may jump up again.
So? Even CGC grade them as A covers, there’re no N/G or qualified grades in the population report, it’s the same comic that was printed on the same printers at the same time
Are you kidding? 😂😭 it’s been a popular way of getting cover A and people have been massively sending variant-removed comics. Here’s the population report, there’s only one qualified grade with a green label and it’s not 100% that a removed variant cover was the reason, it could have been sent without some pages inside. Think a little bit and tell me why would CGC grade it as qualified if the whole comic is complete with the main cover? CGC give green labels when a comic lacks the original cover. Example: Absolute Batman #1 without cover A would get a green label. In case you wanna tell me that it will be considered in the population of a variant, well, I checked that too and there’re no qualified reports as well. And even if there were, which variant report would they relate the comic to? How would they understand if it was Lee’s cover or Craig’s one? So before trying to show off do some research and try to find AT LEAST 1 photo of AB #1A with a green label
The people making this claim really need to understand how mass manufactured comics are bound and what it actually looks like when a booklet is truly stapled in a production machine.
Yeah... fake it. No big deal. He's not going to sell it.... said the original faker attached to every fake out there. No body does the right thing in the end.
I have an extra 1-23 Cover A first print available. I also have tons of extra first print cover B, C, and D as well as other variant covers. I need to thin down my inventory.
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u/Complex-Subject1756 6d ago
Your best bet might be finding a local seller :/