Trading cards are big business right now, with auctions for both moderns and vintage cards from various genres and franchises reaching new eye-watering heights. While a rare Pokemon card recently rocketed to a near-record breaking $5 million sale, an auction featuring a set of 68 classic Marvel Comics trading cards from 60 years ago did not raise quite the amount you might expect. Heritage Auctions holds frequent sales of classic and modern trading cards, and one such auction saw a complete set of the 1966 Donruss Marvel Super Heroes set being sold for $48,750 including buyer’s premium. While on the surface this may seem like a huge sale price, especially when considering this set is one of the earliest examples of Marvel trading card releases, it become a little less impressive when breaking this down to just over $700 each.
The 1966 set stands as Marvel Comics’ first attempt to get into the trading card market, bringing their colorful characters to a whole new audience at the peak of their comic boom. One thing of note with these cards is that they did not play into the same dramatic style of the comics, but instead brought the likes of Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, and the X-Men into a more playful arena. The images are set as gag cartoons with funny captions or a space for collectors to add their own speech to an empty bubble. The humor of those cards is something that has become a huge part of Marvel’s appeal, especially within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the many movies and TV shows that have expanded the range of the franchise into the biggest in the world.
In collectors’ circles, there are several factors that can add or detract from the amount someone is willing to pay to own certain pieces of vintage memorabilia. Trading cards and comic books that have been officially graded can often garner much higher sale prices, but depending on the grade given, it can also keep the prices within a more reasonable level. That is partly why this collection does not carry a much higher value, as despite it’s complete line up of very old cards, the gradings have a wide range from PSA 4 through to a pair of PSA 8.5 cards. That broad sweep of gradings is certainly what held the set back from hitting the kind of phenomenal amounts seen in several recent auctions, and puts the set very much in line with, say, a 3-4 graded Amazing Fantasy #15 would fetch as the debut of Spider-Man.
Of course, as time goes on and these cards become even older, there is only ever going to be one outcome for future sales. Whatever price these cards hold now, it is almost guaranteed that the price will increase the next time they are sold. In the last five years, trading card collections have rocketed in price, and although it is Pokemon that usually leads the way others collections from Marvel and modern card games like Magic the Gathering have seen the amount of money needed to acquire the most sought after cards becoming something that only the wealthiest collectors can afford. This does not mean that the children these cards were originally aimed at cannot still be part of the hobby, as there are rare cards out there to be found in the wild. It is just probably worth accepting from the start that there will be some cards and collections, whether vintage or modern, that it is near impossible to own.
