Okay, sorry, but I could not resist throwing in some kind of pun in a post about out of print Star Wars graphic novels, right?
So the Force is strong in these books – but more importantly for us, the secondary market prices for some of these books is strong and only getting stronger. In this post I will be touching on both the earlier Dark Horse Universe of Star Wars books as well as the more recent Marvel foray into the Star Wars Universe of collected editions.
THE DARK HORSE YEARS
So more than a few years ago I became aware of the demand that was out there for the out of print Star Wars graphic novels published by Dark Horse Comics and that there were a lot of them. There were books featuring characters from the various films, books featuring brand new characters set in the existing star Wars Universe and even books featuring characters made popular by video games set in the star Wars Universe. The funny thing was that much of this material was still readily available to anyone willing to do some digging on their local comic shop shelves.
I also remember when I used to walk into any comic book shop and I would see those smaller Star Wars Omnibus paperbacks that Dark Horse was putting out at the time and think to myself, ‘Oh you guys are just like Ewoks: small and cute and not really worth paying attention to.”
If only I had known.
If only I had known that these small, cheaper books would appeal to a large number of Star Wars comic fans and that they would sell well and soon be out of print, and that Dark Horse’s attitude towards going back to print on them would be basically, ‘meh, thanks – we’ll pass’. By the time I had clued in on this fact, the books were already becoming a very scarce commodity and often when I did find them on a store’s shelves the condition of the books was less than ideal. Just a quick aside here: the Dark Horse Star Wars Omnibus format might have been a successful seller but it did not lend itself to longevity. If you publish a small, thick paperback and give it flimsy card stock covers, your main focus is obviously not shelf life.
THE MARVEL YEARS (2015 to present)
So, jumping ahead a few years to today, if there are still quite a few of these OOP Dark Horse Star Wars graphic novels floating around out there you would expect that I keep an eye out for them whenever I am on the Hunt, right?
Actually, not so much.
Here’s the thing. A few years ago, Marvel Entertainment reacquired the rights to publish Star Wars comics and this included the rights to all of that older Dark Horse material. To date, Marvel has made some serious inroads in satisfying the demands of Star Wars comics fans by reprinting much of the Dark Horse material. It was piecemeal at first, but now more and more of that older stuff is being reissued in an oversized paperback format. As this happens, less and less of the original Dark Horse books are still relevant to someone selling on the secondary market because Marvel has now made much of this previously OOP material available to fans at a much lower price. This actually leads me to another one of my Pro Tips!
*OOP PRO TIP: People paying up for out of print books on the secondary market are almost always readers and NOT speculators. Once the material they want to read is back in print they will have no reason whatsoever to pay higher prices for it.
So I just finished sharing a pearl of my seller wisdom with you and then realized that I actually have a caveat to offer up: sometimes a book that used to be worth a lot of money but then became less valuable because it went back to print can become valuable again when the reprint goes out of print.
Wah? Bare with me here, I will explain. A few years ago the paperback, Star Wars: Darth Maul – Son of Dathomir was published by Dark Horse, and when it went out of print the prices for it soared on the secondary market. Well, a couple of years ago, Marvel decided to get that book back in print again (I suspect that it had something to do with the brief Darth Maul cameo at the end of the Star Wars Solo movie) and prices for the original Dark Horse paperback (unsurprisingly) tumbled. Fast forward to late 2019 and a World in which the Marvel reprint had also gone out of print and we saw prices on both editions of the book start to climb back up again. A textbook example of fans paying up to read the material. As of this writing however, the Marvel edition appears to be kind of-somewhat-maybe back in stock and so prices have dropped once again for this book. Hey kids, who wants to go for a ride on the Darth Maul roller coaster?!?
Another possible example of this exception to the rule could be the paperback, Star Wars: Tag and Bink Were Here. For a while there, this oop Dark Horse trade was an easy sell at prices well above cover because of the demand for this collected edition of the lighthearted Star Wars Universe-based miniseries from star Wars fans. As soon as Marvel re-released the collected edition as part of their Star Wars Universe imprint, demand for the higher priced Dark Horse edition dropped off a cliff on the secondary market. Now however, it appears as if Amazon does not have any copies of the current paperback edition available for sale – in fact Amazon is not even providing a listing for the paperback edition, just the kindle format of the book. This is likely a glitch in Amazon’s listings which I will get into in a little more detail in the next section, suffice to say, this omission has likely revived interest in the Dark Horse edition… at least for now. If the Marvel paperback edition makes its way onto Amazon with a listing then it might see a spike in price as well. It’s hard to say really. (oh, and FYI, I have seen a paperback copy of the Marvel reissue with my own eyes so I know that it exists – although it was released in a thick comic format instead of a regular style trade so maybe it just doesn’t make the cut for Amazon?)
Actually, now that I think about it, I am starting to notice a surprising number of examples of that caveat with these more recent Marvel Star Wars Epic collection books; there is already a handful of them that look to be out of print with prices noticeably starting to rise up above cover. The following is a list of some recently published (as in just the last couple of years) Star Wars Epic Collection trades that are either already going for way above cover or look to be on their way there in the near future.
Marvel Star Wars Epic Collection
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Old Republic Vol. 1 – 
I consider this book to be another ‘ghost’, in that I have only been able to lay eyes on a copy of this thing in the Wild just once – yep, that’s it, just once. I guess a publication date of 2015 means that there has been enough time for rabid Star Wars fans to buy up all of the copies but I still find this books scarcity to be somewhat surprising. As of the time of me writing this, there appears to be no copies of this book available for sale on Amazon – not even a dog-eared-former-library-copy-with-highlighter-marks-throughout ‘Used – Acceptable’ cop! When s copy does next show up for sale on Amazon you can expect it to list for a pretty penny (or tens of thousands of pennies more likely). I also consider this book to be a ghost for another reason: a glitch in Amazon’s listings. If you search for this book on amazon you will have no trouble finding the kindle listing for it, but you will be unable to find a listing for the paperback version of this book; no matter how you conduct your search – whether you click on the “format” tab within the kindle listing and look for the paperback edition there or even choose to limit your original search results to just the ‘paperback’ category, you won’t find it. (and yes, I have really really tried to find this book’s paperback listing) The only time I was able to get a listing for it to show up was when I had that one copy of it to sell and tried to create a new listing for it and, lo and behold, Amazon then decided that they did in fact have a listing for it after all. I suspect that for whatever reason, Amazon’s system only considers the paperback to exist when there is a copy listed for sale otherwise it defaults to a, ‘I don’t remember that book ever being published’ mindset. I’ve seen this before on Amazon and it is one of the reasons I am beginning to consider the big A the land of a thousand glitches…
Anyway, when I listed a NEW condition copy of this book a few months ago it sold very quickly and sold for a very nice price, so just keep your eyes open for it.
Star Wars Epic Collection: Rise of the Sith Vol. 1 – Okay, this is another weird one. Currently there are no NEW condition copies available on the Amazon marketplace and the USED condition copies (the best of which is only a “Used – Very Good” copy) start at over $250 for a copy! I am not going to assume that this is a price point that a Star Wars fan is willing to pay for a clearly used copy of this book but I suspect that this is not too far off the price one would be willing to pay for a shiny NEW condition copy. This is the kind of realization that motivates me to keep an eye out for a shiny new copy of a book.
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 1 – At the time of my writing this there are no NEW condition copies of this volume available for sale on amazon and the USED copies are all over the place in price. It is a safe bet that the next new copy that gets listed on there will be going for quite a bit more than cover. Maybe someone reading this will be the one to list that next new copy, eh?
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The New Republic Vol. 4 – This book has only one NEW condition copy available on amazon as I write this and it is going for more than cover.($56) I expect that the next new copy will be going for significantly more when it gets listed – possibly even nearing the $100 mark.
Star Wars Epic Collection: Infinities – Back in the day, the Dark Horse Omnibus that this volume borrows from heavily (Star Wars Omnibus: Infinities) reached some decent prices and this book looks like it is just a couple of cheap copies away from starting to do likewise.
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: Legacy Vol. 1 – This is an example of an Epic Collection book that has gone oop and is selling for just over cover on Amazon right now but I have seen prices on it bouncing up and down a bit too.
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: Legacy Vol. 2 – Similar to the above volume, this book is going to cost you more than cover now and looks ready to keep going up in price on the secondary market.
Star Wars Legends Epic Collection: The Menace Revealed Vol. 1 – This is another example of a volume that is at prices around cover and looks like it might be going up soon.
So there you have it: five years after Marvel went back to press and started reissuing classic Dark Horse Star Wars material (albeit often in a different format) we are starting to see the possible rise of another era of out of print and in demand Star Wars graphic novels worth hunting down (just like Rebel scum) for the secondary market. All we need is one more publisher to come along and we could have ourselves a whole different kind of Star Wars Trilogy!