Cheap comic books to speculate: Hellfire club and X-Force
With no big undervalued keys in my sight at the moment, I am turning to some cheap speculation picks. These will not make you hundreds of dollars in profit. In fact, you will be lucky if you can get $20 for each copy. However, they are super cheap to pick up so for the flippers out there, you might want to see if these picks make sense for your comic book buying and selling.
#1: Hellfire club
We all know Hellfire Club is coming to the small screen but most of us are ignoring the specs because X Men #129 is already an established key due to Kitty Pryde and Emma Frost’s first appearance being in the same issue as well. Fortunately, I did a little digging and there might be something there that everyone has missed.
One thing very clear from the announcement is that the setting is somewhere in the past. In other words, this is not the Hellfire Club that we are familiar. Given such settings, there is only one logical choice and the book below is it.
The first issue came out in the Nov 1999 and has a print run of 44k. If you look at Wikia, you see there are many first appearances in this book. Most of them are actually the founding members of the Hellfire club and are strong candidates for what the studio will likely be using. In fact, issue #2 (print run of 40k) is also worth picking up as there are more first appearances in there as well.
However, I have mentioned in my earlier post that movie/TV news is losing its effect on the comic book secondary market due to too many characters on screen. This might be the case here. Even if my guesses are correct, there is no way I can guarantee that folks will be rushing out to buy this issue.
Having said that, I am quietly confident this will at least be a USD20 book during some time in the future. Whether it can go higher or sustain its prices is anybody’s guess.
#2: X Force
The next pick is on the X Force team. If you are in the G+ community, you already know this but for first time readers, it is worth to explain why I bought this issue.
With the rollout of the X Men Universe, it seems that X Force is inevitable, especially if Deadpool does well. Many collectors/speculators agree with this sentiment, which is why you are seeing interest in New Mutants #100, even though it is a heavily printed book at 400+k copies available.
However, there are actually a few incarnations of X Force, with different concepts and themes. The one in New Mutants #100 is basically similar to X men with different team members and a lot more guns. Another incarnation of the team is actually the Black Ops team, pioneered by Cyclops when he was in charge of the X Men. The aim of this black ops team is to take out threats with deadly force before they become serious.
This black ops incarnation is a popular one. In fact the wildly popular Uncanny X Force is based on this same black ops concept. If the movie uses this version of the team, then there might be opportunity in picking up the first of this black ops X Force. So, where is their first appearance? The answer is in X Men #493.
Unfortunately though, this is heavily printed book (around 102k) that will see very little returns even if there is interest. The ones you should aim for is these 2: a 1:15 variant (6.8k copies) as well as the second print (7k copies). I especially love the latter because its cover show the first version of the Black Ops X Force on the cover.
Conclusion
So, there you have it. 2 cheap comic speculative picks that will not break the bank but will likely not give you the big bucks as well.
