You are so right, Jim! Huge difference between scarcity of silver-age marvel keys vs DC. Thanks for this public service announcement 🙂

I really enjoy your channel and your passion for the hobby. I've been a collector, off and on, for decades and have had a lot of fun collecting the facsimiles for the key comics from both DC and Marvel. I enjoy being able to read the stories and not have to pay thousands for them. It has doubled my monthly comic habit trying to own keys for the characters that I love. Great video!!!

I never even heard of DC when I was a kid. All stores sold Marvel only. Even book stores and flea markets only had Marvel. My first Batman was the Superfriends and the animated series.

Agree wholeheartedly with the fact that DC Silver Age keys (in decent condition) are harder to find than Marvels.

There was a boom in collectors in late 1964 and early 1965 who caught the Marvel comics fever looking for back issues. So more got searched for and picked up...and collectors started to put back multiple issues. DC comics weren't desired as much, had more titles, etc. And weren't searched as much either. When I started collecting in mid 1970s nice Marvel Comics were readily found...picked up multiple copies of DD, XMen, Avengers#1s etc. DC copies of that period were usually not in as good condition wise and not as many to find. The print runs I think may have been higher in mid 1960s for Marvel Comics also.

"And a lot of people like to collect all the Silver Age villains for Batman." - And I raised my hand. LOL My Batman 121 is one of the 4 restored 4.0's. CGC says slight color touch on the cover, but in the 30 years that I've owned the book (bought for only $40), I've never seen it, even with a black light. Been thinking about sending it in for restoration removal for some time now.

I'm spitballing here, but you think it's because Marvel books were purchased more often by older kids / teens, who managed to take better care of their books, while DC stuff was bought by younger kids who thrashed them (or got them thrown out by parents)? Circulation numbers between the two companies was roughly the same, so it's not like there were fewer DC books in the world than Marvel ones.

Late 50s DCs are very tough in 9+s

Great video Jim! Enjoyed this one.

When I was a kid most of my pharmacy's comics were DC Comics. Adventure Comics, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen were the best for me then. I'm collecting minor keys in Marvel and DC right now. :) Good video

I collected both DC and Marvel in the 70s. Collecting Marvel was so appealing since you could get full runs so easily. DC titles were frustrating because some titles needed more than 400 issues to complete a run - and issues before 1964 were tougher to find in good condition...😒

Very interesting! I'd like to see the number actually printed/produced for each. Did early Marvels really have higher print runs than silver age DCs? Or did collectors make a greater effort to keep the Marvels in good condition?

SA DC is harder, yes. But so much more fun to collect than SA Marvel, IMO. I hope these books remain relatively cheap so I can get my hands on them. I feel like it has all the ingredients to boom soon.

I suspect there are less DC silver age books on the census bc DC books are not as sought after and not worth a ton compared to marvel. I am sure raw copies exist but there isn’t enough incentive to get them graded.

Trying not to generalize here, but for some of those dc titles I feel like there would also be less demand than for marvel titles, creating a bit of a balance .. but ya, generalizing!

You think that's hard. Try collecting only books in 9.2 or higher. Been looking for the same high grade FFs for so long I just quit.

Its because DC is so bad that most of them got thrown away lol....DC has Batman and Superman and their sidekicks and thats it