Prog 2 Price

[Schnarff]

Hi all

Long, long, long time lurker here.  Just read this and was amazed at the price this achieved. Not sure how to post link, but I have copied & pasted the below from Covrprice Website, Weekly Comic Report for 24th June 2022.

(SHAKER: 2000 AD #2  | IPC | 1977

By Matt DeVoe

This British weekly anthology features the first appearance of Judge Dredd. Created by John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, the character was made famous by the Sylvester Stallone live-action 1992 film and Carl Urban in 2012. Despite no current content, Dredd is an independent favorite with an increasing fan base. With that said, his first appearance hit an all-time new high sale of $11,400 for a CGC 6.5. Its high price is directly connected to how challenging it is to find, especially in the US. Due to its low paper quality, it's even tougher to find in high grade.)



Back to lurking, for now 😃

[Funt Solo]

Interesting. It doesn't say where it sold, so my natural cynicism is creeping in. No mention, either, of the inclusion of the biotronic stickers. I'd assume that would shift the price somewhat. Incomplete info., and a sub/paywall in front of the site holding the article makes this difficult to parse.

[Schnarff]

I agree. It's a scarcely believable price, although the Covrprice website (I'm a free member) has always, to my knowledge, accurately reported sold prices.

It's been recorded in another website I use (Go Collect) as having being sold on the 20th June as a CGC 6.5 and it seems to have been listed/sold via Heritage Auctions, although I an find no mention/record of the sale on the Heritage site.  The picture I've seen of the CGC 6.5 doesn't state the stickers being enclosed and the comic looks to have a small hole by the 8p.

If someone has paid that amount, then...just wow.

[IndigoPrime]

"Despite no current content" is a curious turn of phrase. As for the pricing, the most recent eBay sale for a high-quality copy was £300. One with stickers went for £473. Anyone buying a copy for over nine grand is clearly not the smartest cookie in the jar.

(Even £300 seems a lot to me. I recall buying my Prog 2 for something like 70 quid, although that was admittedly a few years back now.)

[sheridan]

"Despite no current content" is a curious turn of phrase.

Yes, I couldn't work out what that meant - for a series that has been published continously* for 45 years it doesn't appear to make sense.

* not including those weeks where Dredd wasn't published - but that means a two week gap which is still half that of a monthly series **
** and the strikes, of course.

[Tarantino]

Hi can anyone post me a link to this sale please.

Thank you.

Tarantino

[Schnarff]

Does anyone know the approx original print run for progs 1 to 3?

[sheridan]

Does anyone know the approx original print run for progs 1 to 3?

Not exactly, the first prog sold approximately 220,000 copies.  According to the habits of the time, each issue of a children's comic would be expected to be passed around the school yard, so actual readership might be in the three quarters of a million.

[Schnarff]

Many thanks Sheridan. Much higher than I thought - I was expecting under 100k copies. I'm guessing the subsequent issues then dropped off a little.  Where did you get the 220k number from?  Cheers.

[sheridan]

Many thanks Sheridan. Much higher than I thought - I was expecting under 100k copies. I'm guessing the subsequent issues then dropped off a little.  Where did you get the 220k number from?  Cheers.

Pat Mills mentioned it years ago in his blog (though I couldn't find that post yesterday but had made a note of it).  The thing about IPC's estimate on their reach I'd read somewhere else - conceivably Steve McManus' book, but realistically it could have been anywhere.

[Jim_Campbell]

Many thanks Sheridan. Much higher than I thought - I was expecting under 100k copies. I'm guessing the subsequent issues then dropped off a little.  Where did you get the 220k number from?  Cheers.

2000AD routinely sold around the 100,000 mark through most of the '80s.* Given that it was full sale-or-return back then, I'd expect the print run to have been double that. Launch issues tend to be higher still — there's no point in spending advertising money if there's no product in the newsagents for people to buy. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if the actual print run was considerably north of 250K for the first few issues (and by no means all of those 'returns' would have been destroyed/pulped).


* It had dropped back to maybe 70-80K during the Burton/McKenzie years, before a distributor change around 1990 knocked another 20K+ off that overnight and (IMO) the combination of reduced availability and the fact that the comic just wasn't very good sent it into a death spiral of haemorrhaging sales until Tharg's assistants John Tomlinson, then David Bishop, then Andy Diggle, all made some fairly herculean efforts to at least stabilise the sales figures. Andy ascended to the Right Hand of Tharg pretty much on the day the deal to sell the 2000AD group to Rebellion was inked, then handed to the reins to longest-serving RHoT, Matt Smith a couple of years later... and that seems to have turned out OK. ;-)

[AlexF]

If this sale is described as a "CGC 6.5" does that mean it's one of those comics where someone has encased it in amber so no one can ever open and read it without instantly devaluing the whole thing?
I find that part of the comics collector world mystifying - but it does seem to make comics sell for ludicrous numbers of dollars.

Although if it means people in the Year 30,000 can extract the DNA of the comic to clone it for a murderous theme park it's worth it.

[Proudhuff]

It this kind of thing that sets our nearest and dearests hearts racing, only to be dashed on the rocks of ebay.