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I finally looked up the actual print run numbers for the first X-Men #1
Found a deep dive article on a collector's site saying only about 200,000 copies were printed in 1963. Has anyone else seen a different figure that changes how we view its rarity?
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evanr792mo ago
That 200,000 figure elizabethblack mentioned is a good starting point, but the real key is how many survived. Most of those went straight to kids who read them to pieces, folded them in bike spokes, or tossed them out. The number of high grade copies left is probably in the low thousands, maybe even less. That survival rate, not just the print run, is what makes a high grade copy so crazy valuable today. It's a miracle any mint copies exist at all from that era.
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nathan2891mo ago
Wait, are you telling me people actually folded these things into bike spokes back then? That's crazy to think about, like they had no idea they were wrecking something worth a fortune decades later. I guess that's why a beat up copy is still a hundred bucks while a mint one goes for thousands, the difference is all about what survived.
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