Set Description:
Synopsis: This is a complete set of 100 unrestored books with a minimum grade of 9.4. Overall, 88 out of our 100 books are 9.8s and 11 books are 9.6s with just a single 9.4, our #1. Of the 12 non-9.8s in this set, 11 have white pages and six come from pedigree collections (three Pacific Coasts, two Curators and one Rocky Mountain).
Background: The Avengers were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and debuted in September 1963 in The Avengers #1. Labeled "Earth's Mightiest Super-Heroes," the original Avengers consisted of Iron Man, Ant-Man, Hulk, Thor and the Wasp. Captain America was discovered trapped in ice in Issue #4, and joined the group after they revived him.
Marvel initially published the Avengers bi-monthly through issue #6 (July 1964) and monthly thereafter through issue #402 (Sept. 1996), with spinoffs including several annuals, miniseries and a giant-size quarterly sister series that ran briefly in the mid-1970s.
Writers of the first series included Roy Thomas, Steve Englehart, Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, David Michelinie and Roger Stern. Artists included John Buscema, Tom Palmer, Neal Adams, George Perez, John Byrne and Steve Epting.
While the line-up often changed, the Avengers were always an all-star ensemble cast of established superhero characters from the Marvel Comics universe. Unlike other Marvel teams like the X-Men or FF, members of the Avengers usually operated individually, but occasionally assembled as a team to tackle especially formidable villains.
Lee and Kirby reportedly created the Avengers to start a new line of books and to cross-promote Marvel Comics characters. Their thinking at the time was that an Iron Man fan might buy an Avengers book because Iron Man appears in them, and in turn take an interest in Thor, who appears in the same book as Iron Man's friend and comrade. The cast usually featured a few highly popular characters who had their own solo books, such as Iron Man, alongside a number of lesser-known characters who benefit from exposure, such as Quicksilver or Hawkeye.
The Avengers have appeared in a wide variety of media outside of comic books, including several different animated television series and direct-to-video films. Beginning in 2008, they were adapted in a series of movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, culminating with The Avengers in 2012, The Avengers: Age of Ulton in 2015, The Avengers: Infinity Wars in 2018 and Avengers: Endgame in 2019, which ended with the deaths of Captain America, Iron Man and the Black Widow. Those movies remain four of the top 15 grossing films of all time.
Avengers versus the X-Men: While these two super groups both started in September 1963, I have always found the relationship between the books and movies to be rather fascinating. There are admittedly far more X-Men movies than Avengers movies, but many more movies featuring Avengers members than X-Men. Of course, the Avengers have been owned by Disney and part of the MCU, while the movie rights to the X-Men were owned by Fox, until they were reunited by the acquisition of Fox by Disney. The four Avengers movies and many of the related movies like Black Panther have been huge, with 10 of them surpassing $1 Billion at the box office. By contrast, all the X-Men movies lag not just the MCU, but many DC movies as well. And yet, despite the Avengers’ far greater cinematic success, the X-Men books are more valuable than their Avengers counterparts. For example, while there are roughly the same number of Avengers #1 9.4s and X-Men #1 9.4s, the registry points awarded to an Avengers #1 9.4 (132,000) are actually less than those given an X-Men #1 9.2 (180,000) and just slightly more than an X-Men #1 9.0 (120,000).
I personally always thought that movie success had a strong influence of the value of comics, so how does one explain the fact that the X-Men title is so much more valued by comic collectors than the Avengers? It is certainly not a function of the census, as, if anything, Avengers books in high grade are rarer than their X-Men counterparts. All I know is if I were starting a collection today and choosing between the Avengers and X-Men, from a financial standpoint there has to be far more upside in the Avengers.
Our Collection: I actually still own a couple of raw Avengers #1s, at least one of which I bought from the drugstore on the square back in Oxford MS in 1963. Of course, those raw books are just readers, as I never knew about preserving them when I was a kid. But this run has long been a favorite. Strangely enough, despite the success of the movies, these books are still some of the more affordable Marvels.
When I started back collecting comics in 2000, the Avengers title was one of the nine Marvel titles I collected. In 2020, we finally achieved our goal of having all 100 issues in 9.6/9.8. However, in 2021, we traded away our #4 9.6 in exchange for a much rarer book, which completed another set. From a value standpoint, it was a terrible trade, but we have always been more collectors than investors and figured we could probably always find another Avengers #4 9.6, even if we ended up paying more. We finally acquired another Issue #4 9.6 in February 2024, bringing this set back to being a complete 9.6/9.8 collection, albeit with one restored book, but we won’t dwell on that minor negative LOL.
Then in April 2024 we replaced our restored #1 9.6 with an unrestored #1 9.4, so that our set is no longer a complete run of books with a minimum grade of 9.6, but it is a complete run of unrestored books with a minimum grade of 9.4.
It is hard for me to say that this is the best Avengers set in existence, since a set could pick up 112,000 registry points on ours by having a #1 9.6 and a #4 9.8. Still, those two books together total only 284,000 points, while our set currently has over 389,000, so at least it’s not a dead certainly like the case with Flash, where the Showcase #4 9.6 outscores our entire 251-book set, which only contains a 9.2 copy of Showcase #4. I still cannot get over the fact that those two steps are worth more than our 250 books, where over 240 of those books top the census LOL. I have to think there is probably a better way to score sets than our current model.
We have perhaps an unrealistic goal to find all 9.8s from #10-100, so if you have a 9.8 we need, specifically Issues #13, #14, #25, #28, #29, #35, or #43 and are interested in converting it to cash, please e-mail us or contact us via the registry and we will get right back to you ASAP.
Current Stats:
100/100 Books
88 9.8s-All Highest Graded
11 9.6s-2 Highest Graded
1 9.4
64 WP
31 OW/W
4 OW
1 Cr/OW
2 Single Highest Graded
90 Highest Graded
10 Second Highest Graded
28 Pedigrees
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