2000AD No 2 sells for ?365.00

[Tarantino]

I was bidding recently for 2000AD related merchandise on ebay and was amazed to see that 2000AD No 2 in mint condition with the free gift went for a final bid of ?365.00. Also number 1 in mint condition went for ?230.00. Both final bids were on 20th March 2002. So look after your collections everyone, they are worth a small fortune.

[Wake]

Do you mean ?134 for Prog 1 with Space Spinner?

I hope for the seller's sake that the Prog 2 really is in mint condition, since he didn't give a photo only repeated assurances and I would value it at closer to ?150...i.e. about what prog 1 sold for.

Link: Prog 1 auction

[Tarantino]

There were two Prog 1's with free gift and one of them sold for ?134 and the other's final bid was ?230. I don't know how to do the link that Wake did, but it was bought by the same person who paid ?365 for number 2. I suppose they are worth what someone will pay for them, but both of those comics are very hard to find in mint condition due to the poor quality of paper that they were printed on and especially hard to find with the free gifts.

[roystead]

What *is* the big deal about having the free gift come with the comic? Why does that add c?100 to the value?

I mean, does the person who pays, effectively, ?100 for a plastic frisby then tear off down the park and play "catch" with his dog/small child/drunken mates(*)?

And, if not, what's the point of having the firsby at all?

And don't even get me *started* on toys which can never be removed from their boxes and *played with*. I mean, the whole raison d'etre of a toy is to be played with - if you don't do that, you probably offend some kind of sky spirit or the toy's "ka" or something...

Roy

(*)Delete where inapplicable

[Tarantino]

The whole point of the free gift is that 90% of kids did tear of down the park and throw the Space Spinner (Frisby) into the pond on it's first flight, they also stuck the bionic stickers on their arses and thought they were Steve Austin, hence there are not many to be found, therefore they are now valuable and probably worth over ?100 each. Lucky for some!

[roystead]

Yeah, I know that - they're rarer than ones without the free gift.

Rarity alone doesn't dictate value, though - that's a function of the perceived value. Supply & demand, right? Fer'instance, a 2000AD prog 1 with "Martin" written on the cover in red biro by a newsagent in Birmingham (example chosen at random) is rare, but has no perceived value over and above that of a comic with "Fred" written on it.

So the supply is low, but there still has to be a demand for that to push the price up. And the demand has to be pretty strong for "with free gift" to put 200% on the value (prog 1, from a dealer, is ?50 - with the free gift it's ?150. Same happens in a free auction on, eg. eBay - with free gift is around ?100 more than without).

So that piece of plastic is worth more than the comic itself *even though it will not be played with*.

Which still leave the question of: Why? Why does the addition of a (by definition, useless) "free gift" add ?100 to the value of the comic? Why does that demand exist. Unless.

Nah. But...Unless...Is it just collecting for collecting's sake? Little to do with the comic, but just a round-robin of people who have agreed (informally, and without collusion) that "rare" equates to "valuable"?

Or is it a vicarious thrill thing - that this comic is *exactly* as it was when released? How about a signed copy, though? Signed by - oh - Pat Mills, say, but with no free gift. Would that be worth more or less, do you think, than an unsigned copy with the free gift?

It still comes down to the twin questions:

Just how much is that free gift worth? (On current evidence (eBay, dealers), twice the value of the comic it came with); and

Why is it worth *so* much?

Roy

[Wake]

A copy of Prog 1 with any name on would be very rare, because the name means the comic was reserved by the newsagent for someone and who's going to reserve a title they've never read.

As a collector, I'm prepared to pay very little extra for a signature. This is even truer now, since I've seen people collecting signatures for free at comic conventions with the sole purpose of reselling the item for an added profit.

Prog 1 with Pat Mills signature? What's to stop someone taking their copy of prog 1 to Pat Mills at a convention and asking him to sign it now in 2002. For this reason I would value such a copy at, say, ?60 instead of the basic ?50.

Free gifts on the other hand, are something I am interested in...though luckily for me I've never had to fork out the full extra premium for them. Perhaps it is collecting for it's own sake...but that's a hobby in itself. The free gifts from the first 3 progs are the icing on the cake to a 2000AD collection. Is it stupid for a plastic disc to be worth ?50-?100? Well at least the Space Spinner wasn't manufactured with that intention, as opposed to the inbuilt rarity and supposed value of 'chase' trading cards. There's a guy on Yahoo trying to sell a set of 4 black 'death dimensions' Judge Dredd cards (from 1994/95) for ?38 and another trying to sell the same set for ?83.50. I still have a couple of spare sets of the same cards, but would sell them for ?10 per set.

Why is it worth SO much on eBay? That simply boils down to the ratio of the number of people looking to the number of times it appears on eBay per year. The dealer price reflects the auction price. Probably ?365 is a glitch because the bidders didn't know what prog 2 had sold for in the past...or it may be that the number of people looking (on eBay) has just increased.

The biotronic stickers are worth more than the space spinner because as least some people may have played with the spinner back in 1977 and not lost it in their neighbour's garden whereas the stickers pretty much have to be unused.

I'll stop rambling now.

Wake (2000AD reader, collector and curator)

[esoteric ed]

This price does seen rather extreme for Issue #1

I have Issue 1 bagged with the Space Spinner(slightly scratched) and I "had" Issue 2 with a "spare" set of biotronic stickers! don't know how I came by these, I think I perhaps got two copies as a kid, I was into that sort of thing way back then.

My Issue 1 was reserved, but I think I got to the local agent so early that Saturday morning that he didn't have time to mark it up!

Ed