2022 PNJ Comics Canadian Price Variant Market Report

By Paul Clairmont, Overstreet Advisor and proprietor of pnjcomics.com, October 2022

“It was not easy to predict what would become more expensive because conventional economics didn’t drive pricing in collectibles during the pandemic and especially in a niche area such as Canadian Price Variants.”

My experience was that prices were all over the map this year, as illustrated from my sales results (below). There was no consistent formula that would help to forecast what a book would sell for. I would set a price and see if it worked or not. Some of the factors I took into consideration were:

• Competition: Were there any other books in the marketplace that I had to compete with?
• Condition: The higher the grade the higher the price.
• Supply and Demand:Were there a lot of copies available to choose from?

Annie #1 CPV has very few high-grade copies available, but little collector demand.

For example, a copy of Annie #1 CPV has very few high-grade copies available yet the price for a graded 9.8 is relatively low as there is no demand. On the other hand, a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #252 has an abundance of Canadian Price Variants and there is no shortage of supply, even in high grade, yet the prices are through the roof and I would say, even overpriced for the amount of copies available. But the market has spoken and although there is plenty of supply the prices kept climbing.

Amazing Spider-Man #252 has an abundance of Canadian Price Variants available but massive demand.

The prices have now started to soften in the latter part of 2022. Now this is actually due to economic factors such as rising interest rates and a worry as the dollar doesn’t buy as much as it did at the beginning of the year.

The last thing I would like to address is some confusion about rarity or scarcity of Canadian Price Variants. I see some people like to refer to some sellers as hucksters when they are promoting the notion behind scarcity of CPV’s. There are certainly many sellers that don’t get it and you can see this from the descriptions the sellers make in their listings. Although uncommon, the true rarity is finding CPV’s in high grade. If a seller is trying to say a book is rare and then asking a ridiculous price for that book while it is only in VG (4.0) condition... that is often misleading and not true. The book is usually not actually rare. Finding that same CPV in true high grade is rare. So don’t be fooled by the way some sellers misinterpret the facts and twist the logic.

Noteworthy Recent CPV Sales at PNJ Comics

— Paul Clairmont

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