Canadian Price Variants and the CGC Census (2026 Update)
The CGC Census reported percentages of CPV books for Marvel and D.C. Comics in the 1980s is currently 2.8% and 3.1%, respectively ...
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Canadian Price Variant Articles, CPV Market Reports & Mini-Guides
Browse CPV Price Guide articles, Canadian Price Variant market reports, Type 1A price variant education, CGC census research, GPAnalysis updates, publisher mini-guides, videos, and contributor commentary from price guide collaborators and outside contributors.
Articles and reports represent the views of their individual authors. Use the controls below to browse by date, author, or category.
82 articles and reports
2026
Canadian Price Variants and GPAnalysis.com (2026 Update)
The 2025 average CGC sales prices for books with both CPV and regular sales have reflected multipliers as follows — CGC 9.8: 2.5x · CGC 9.6: 1.6x · CGC 9.4: 1.5x ...
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Low Pop for Value CPVs
I approached the question of CPV rarity as a value to population ratio among high valued CPVs and ranked our guide universe by this metric. Here's the resulting 50 lowest pop for value CPVs ...
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Archie Phase Three CPVs: Eric Rom Cracks the Case
For years, the post-1997 Archie CPV trail looked like a handful of stray Sonic examples. Eric Rom followed the clues to a pattern much bigger than a few random books ...
Read article »2025
CGC Signature Series: Astonishing Cover Price Variant Rarity
A collecting angle which can add absolutely astonishing levels of rarity to a cover price variant and is activated by the collector themselves: the addition of CGC Signature Series ...
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Top CGC Grades For Top Canadian Price Variants
After all these years, it finally happened: Saga of the Swamp Thing #37 now has a CGC 9.8 on record, leaving only three of the top ten CPVs lacking 9.8s — Batman #423, Blip #1, and Vampirella #113 ...
Read article »2024
Remembering Bill Alexander
Heaven has a new super hero. Goodbye for now ol' friend ...
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Light Musings of a Native CPV Guy
For what it's worth, I'll spill a couple things I've noticed over the last few years of searching out CPVs in the wild and at cons. These are my observations and YMMV ...
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A Guide to CPVs Featuring Industry Experts Sulipa, Holland & Virone
If you went to the comic shop and you bought your books and you put them in a box and you kept them in a closet, you haven't done something special, you've done the common thing, you've done what everybody else did ...
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Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) and GPAnalysis.com (2024 Update)
The year-to-date 2024 average CGC sales prices for the top 100 books with a CPV have reflected multipliers of: CGC 9.8 - 2.9x; CGC 9.6 - 1.8x; CGC 9.4 - 1.5x; CGC 9.2 - 1.4x ...
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Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) and the CGC Census (2024 Update)
The CGC Census reported percentages of CPV books for Marvel and D.C. Comics in the 1980s is currently 2.8% and 3.0%, respectively ...
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Eleven CPV Picks I Absolutely Love
Like I've been saying, last issues are where it's at and this gem is no exception ...
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ChatGPT Explains Why You Should Collect Canadian Price Variants (CPVs)
Marrying these two worlds together — the generative AI world and the actual human expert world — perhaps will amplify the message, making even clearer the collectible appeal of CPVs ...
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LEGO/DC Bionicle Comic Series Canadian Price Variants
As a comic collector, and specifically a variant collector, I silently set aside extra copies of the Bionicle comic line which coincidentally have cover price variants ...
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From "F.O.M.O." (Fear of Missing Out) to F.O.L.M. (Fear of Losing More)
2024 has been a banner year when it comes to scandals with a 3rd party grading company known as CGC, which still sting investors and collectors to this day ...
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The Overstreet Guide to Grading Comics, Sixth Edition
Published within the pages of The Overstreet Guide to Grading Comics, Sixth Edition, Jon's newest article updates his 2010 epic about different kinds of variants (which to date marks the longest article ever published in the Overstreet Price Guide) ...
Open PDF »2023
From Pandemic Boom to Bust in Comics
In reality all sales prices appear to be returning to what they once were in January of 2020 right before sales prices went nuts ...
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2023, A Period of Adjustment
The market for CPVs doesn't look to have been as drastically affected as the comic market overall ...
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2023 PNJ Comics Canadian Price Variant Market Report
Prices came crashing down hard and fast on 99% of the comic book market ...
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Marvel UK Price Variants: My Part in Their Downfall
A rare book with a nice acquisition story. It doesn't get much better than that ...
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Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) and GPAnalysis.com (2023 Update)
The year-to-date 2023 average CGC sales prices for the top 100 books with a CPV have reflected multipliers of: CGC 9.8 - 2.3x; CGC 9.6 - 1.8x; CGC 9.4 - 1.7x; CGC 9.2 - 1.4x ...
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Canadian Price Variants (CPVs) and the CGC Census (2023 Update)
The CGC Census reported percentages of CPV books for Marvel and D.C. Comics in the 1980s is currently 2.7% and 3.0%, respectively ...
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Newly Added CGC First Appearance Label Credits
Five important issues CGC changed, plus three they should ...
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Is It Time to Stop Looking and Start Buying?
I cannot tell you how many times I track books I want to buy and later discover that they settled in the USA ...
Read article »2022
Charlton Canadian Price Variants (CPVs)
They're not the easiest set of variants to collect and some appear to be quite scarce. I love Charlton myself, so will be slowly picking off those remaining books until I hopefully one day complete the set ...
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X-Factor #38 $1.00 Cover Price Variant
Even though this is a Type 1B price variant, "thinking Type 1A" is how I actually found one myself ...
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Jon's Views Prevailing (Again)
Long-time readers may already be familiar with Jon McClure's once-"controversial" stance on the Tattooz inside of Amazing Spider-Man #238, with Jon advocating that their absence should not cause an "INCOMPLETE" label ...
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Newsstand (And in Turn Canadian Price Variant) Awareness Is Exploding
Now is a great time to buy key CPV books in high certified grade at incredibly low bargain prices ...
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Canadian Price Variants: Thoughts & Perspective
The comparison that comes to mind, at least for me, is that in the middle of the chaos, the CPV market turned out to be the CD of the investment market as opposed to openly traded stocks ...
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2022 PNJ Comics Canadian Price Variant Market Report
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 ...
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UKPVs: The Persisting Public Perception That Seems to Defy Demonstrable Data
The disrespect is real. But why? ...
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Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice
With all the recent talk of a planned sequel for the Beetlejuice movie this line of six issues is likely to have the biggest potential rise in value of all the 90's Harvey comics that they released ...
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The A, B, & C Titles Among Canadian Price Variants
In many cases, that is the deciding factor in my opinion: the availability of certain books, regardless of their significance, is the driving factor in their value ...
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Harvey CPV Price Guide (2023 Edition)
This year I've provided guide values for each of the Harvey CPVs ...
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Whitman 1984 CPV Price Guide (2023 Edition)
Since these are KIDS comics, very few exist in 9.0 or better, with Almost NO Copies Yet Graded by CGC ...
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What Should I Buy This Year?
A growing segment of the collecting community is discovering the desirability and true scarcity of CPV's and now they want to own a piece of the pie ...
Read article »2021
The Hottest CPVs of 2021
I've always felt Spidey and Star Wars are the two easiest CPV's to find, as it should be, as these were immensely popular titles during that time. But in high grade, most of the Star Wars CPVs are still extremely elusive ...
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CaptCan Comics 2021 CPV Market Report
We have become known for our selection of Canadian Price Variants & intend to continue expanding our CPV inventory ...
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CPVs: The Even Rarer Newsstand Choice
I attribute a lot of the growth in our guide's website usage to one of the ...
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CPV Market Report: Year In Review
The gap between certified 9.6 and 9.8 books in what they sell for, is still continuing to grow wider and wider. At comic book auction houses, I have noticed that some certified 9.8 graded copies of popular key books are sometimes ...
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2021 Canadian Price Variant Market Report
Much like the rest of the comic market I believe we're seeing the threshold begin to lower in terms of what constitutes an acceptable grade. Collectors are realizing that there are some CPVs that are out of their price range in the higher grades ...
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Canadian Price Variants And Overstreet's Top 25 Copper Age Comics
I predict with confidence, if the economy holds up, Key CPV's will break many more records given that new collectors as well as seasoned ones, not yet into this space, develop a better understanding of their true potential ...
Read article »2020
Collecting CPVs for Profit
The CPV window was open for a considerable period of time and encompassed an incredibly fertile period of game changing imagination and innovation in the industry. There are so many keys to choose from during this era, a more detailed examination is called for ...
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Welcome to CPV Price Guide #4!
In today's age of an endless supply of 'manufactured-rarity' retailer incentive variants we could choose to take home, many of which collectors are asked to shell out $25-$50+ to own, it is so nice by contrast to have a universe of 'naturally-occurring' Type 1A price variants within the world of 1980's (and 1990's) newsstand comics ...
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Market Report + Dell and Archie CPVs 1951-1959
It appears there has been a big noticeable increase in demand for newsstand edition comics versus direct edition comics especially with certified 9.8 grade comics published from 1979 on ...
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Amazing Spider-Man #238 Remains the King of CPVs
This year we saw unprecedented sales, some of which were record highs and others that are so consistent that they firmly established the fact that mainstream collectors have accepted and embraced CPVs as an unquestionably legitimate part of the hobby ...
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My Take on the Market 2020
Bob Overstreet used to preach the slow and steady approach, which I'm not a huge fan of, when a book goes up and is trading for a higher amount, my feeling is that the book should show significant upward momentum in my survey. But unlike Bob who rarely went backwards on values, we are a small unit who still are early enough into this where we can make corrections where need be ...
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From a Seller's Perspective...
I started classifying comics as CPVs about 12 years ago. At first, I was surprised to see that roughly 80% of all my sales were predominantly from fellow Canadians. Now that CPVs are more mainstream, I would estimate that about 65% of my CPV sales goes to the States and this percentage continues to rise ...
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Where Have All the Cartoon Books Gone?
The demand for Gladstone, Archie and Harveys are still in its infancy. The growth potential in CPV values for these 3 publishers is massive in my personal opinion especially given that most 30-40 year olds are familiar enough with most of the properties to feel comfortable and nostalgic enough to begin investing in them ...
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Get Them Now or Chase Them Later
Given the fact that regular newsstand copies for key Copper and Modern age books are now selling at multiples to their direct edition counterparts, I strongly believe and predict that KEY CPV's in the highest grades are presently under-valued as newsstand price variants because they are the scarcest of the first printings ...
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PNJ Comics 2020 Canadian Price Variant Market Report
People need to remember the distribution channels for these books was not speciality shops with owners wearing white gloves carefully laying them out for the fine art crowd to come and carefully handle. These books were stuffed into unforgiving newsstands and spinner racks in convenience stores and grocery stores with employees unloading them with the same care as tossing tin cans of corn onto a store shelf ...
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Overstreet Price Guide #50 Full Market Report
I have long argued that Type 1A variants of all eras would climb in interest due to scarcity ...
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Whitman 1984 Canadian Price Variants
These are Quite Rare in High Grade, with 9.2 copies worth $75.00 or more each ...
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The Story of the Wawa Collection
When he opened the door, Craig and I were speechless ...
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Harvey Canadian Price Variants
Everyone knows about Marvel's 35¢ cover price variants from 1977 (Type 1), but few know that Harvey published 35¢ Type 1A cover price variants in 1974 ...
Read article »2019
CPV Census: Most Actives Table
A lot of the big DC Canadian Price Variant comics are shockingly hard to find compared against Marvel ...
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Notable Sales, Archie "Phase 1" CPVs, and Widening 9.8 Premiums
CPVs, and Widening 9.8 Premiums By Bill Alexander — ...
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Fun, Frustration and General Observation
Regardless of which perspective one may have about CPVs, there's no doubt and no denying that they're becoming a greater force in the mainstream of comic collecting ...
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First-To-Market CPV Keys Seeing Exceptionally Strong Sales
If you can achieve being first to market with the highest certified copy of even a semi-key book you can almost set your price ...
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CPVs Are Hot on ICE
Can you believe, with how hot this book has been, that it's now been almost 4 years since an Amazing Spider-Man #238 CPV has sold in 9.8? ...
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2019 in Review
Once a niche topic, CPV discussion has exploded on comic forums everywhere in the last few years ...
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State of the CPV Market
It's interesting to see well known collectors who never fully got into Canadian Price Variant comics now entering the space paying big bucks for top graded key issues ...
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The "Quebec Effect" on the Supply of CPVs
The Quebec Effect definitely would have had some noteworthy directional impact on the "big picture" rarity characteristics for Canadian Price Variant comics ...
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Australian Price Variants ("APVs")
Marvel published these awesome Australian Price Variants in the 1990's, encompassing keys like New Mutants #98 & ASM #361.
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CPV Discussions In Overstreet #49 Market Reports
Excerpts of OPG reports from Conan Saunders, Jay Halstead, Marc Sims, Jim McCallum, Dr. Steven Kahn, Steve Ricketts, Ben Nabonog, Joseph Fiore, Tim Bildhauser, Brock Dickinson, Jon McClure, Paul Clairmont, and Doug Sulipa.
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Archie Canadian Price Variants
Sharing Sal's research into Archie Canadian Price Variants of the 1980's and 1990's.
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Applause to CGC Now Labeling Type 1A's as "Canadian Price Variant", "Australian Price Variant", and "UK Price Variant"
Starting May 2019, CGC now dignifies our Type 1A's with price variant labels!
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ThunderCats #1 True Canadian Price Variant vs. 75¢ "Logo" Copies
Angelo and I investigate the ThunderCats #1 situation.
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Top Comics Published By Month
A month by month exploration of issues published during the CPV window.
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Archie Canadian/Pence Price Variants and the Betty's Diary #36 Mystery
We're all used to single-price Type 1A's, but Archie published these cool dual-priced Candian/Pence copies!
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Gladstone Canadian Price Variants
Sharing Sal's research into Gladstone Canadian Price Variants of the 1980's and 1990's.
Read article »2018
Pence Price Variant Issue Guide (Marvel & DC)
An introduction and issue guide to U.K. Price Variants published by Marvel & DC.
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Record-Breaking 2018 Sales for Canadian Price Variants
2018 saw many record breaking and high end sales for Canadian price variants in the hobby ...
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Price Variants and the International Collector
One of the main styles of collecting comics, that is growing in popularity, is assembling what is referred to as a set ...
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A Common-Sense Approach To Understand Canadian Price Variant Scarcity
Here is a simple and very common-sense approach to understand the scarcity of Canadian Price Variant comics ...
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Canadian Whites and Type 1A Variant Perspective
I would advise collectors in Canada to zoom out and keep the 'big picture' in mind when it comes to Type 1A variant scarcity ...
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A Short History in Comics: 35 Cent Cover Price Variants and Various Reminiscences
It's been a fun and challenging ride so far, and I think it's just getting started for Type 1a Variants, so sit back and enjoy the fireworks ...
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Two Ways to Win Update
When collecting any given key comic book issue, it is better to have two ways to win, than just one ...
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Canadian Newsstand Cover Price VARIANTS 2018-2019 Market Report
Canadian Newsstand Cover Price VARIANT editions, were easily our #1 bestselling VARIANTS of the year ...
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Comic Book Table Talk: Predict, Invest, Collect!
Introducing my personal method when investing: I call it my ' Comic Score Card ' ...
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Applause To CBCS's New "75¢ Canadian Price Variant" Labeling
CBCS beats CGC to the punch, changing their treatment of Type 1A price variants to now carry price variant labels!
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2017
CGC 9.8 Census Comparison: 1970's Keys vs. 1980's Keys
A fascinating comparison, looking into the CGC census data.
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"Canadian Edition" vs. "Canadian Price Variant"
2017 article laying out the case for why grading companies needed to change their labeling to "Canadian Price Variant".
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95¢ and $1.00 DC Price Variants: How Do We Know What They Are?
A fascinating phenomenon inside the indicia pages of these DC price variants!
Read article »Looking for even more articles?
The Articles page above features selected CPV Price Guide articles, market reports, and mini-guides. For a deeper archive, visit the companion Rare Comics Blog article index, organized into APVs, CPVs, UKPVs, Newsstand Comics, and General Comic Topics.
Browse the Rare Comics Blog archive »