The G.I. Joe comic book franchise is a curiously interesting one. The reason I say this is because for nearly forty years, it has benefited from a cross pollination of fans of both the G.I. Joe toys and the 1980’s cartoon series who have seemingly transferred their love for the franchise over to the comic books. If you are considering buying and selling OOP G.I. Joe graphic novels then you need to know that there have been three major publishers of G.I. Joe comic books over the last 35+ years, Marvel Comics, Devils Due Publishing and IDW. Marvel published G.I. Joe comics from the early-1980s until 1994. During this time Marvel published just a few collected editions of its material, including a thicker comic format collection of the G.I, Joe and the Transformers mini-series, a collected edition of the first few issues of its G.I. Joe Special Missions series and a collected edition of its G.I. Joe: Order of Battle mini-series.(which was basically a G.I. Joe version of the popular Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe series) When you check out the current prices of these books on sites like Amazon, you might see some high prices but personally, I have never really made much off of these books in the last few years (even in stated NEW condition) whenever I listed them on Amazon so don’t let some of those higher prices fool you because you might find your books sitting around for awhile if you try and list them at similar prices.
Devils Due took up the franchise from 2001 until the end of its licensing agreement with Hasbro in 2008. During this time Devils due released several trades and a couple of them saw higher prices for awhile once they went out of print. Now however there is not too much demand for the older DDP trades – likely because the bulk of the DDP material has been collected in trade format by IDW over the last few years. That being said however, you should keep your eyes open for both the G.I. Joe: Declassified trade paperback and the G.I. Joe vs The Transformers Omnibus hardcover since they both still list for decent higher prices.
As previously mentioned, the most recent publisher of G.I. Joe comics is IDW. IDW acquired the G.I. Joe comic license in 2010 and has been publishing G.I. Joe comic books ever since. They have pumped out a large number of collected editions, many of which have gone in and out of print. (especially the Classic G.I. Joe series of trades) My short take on the IDW graphic novels is that the line of Classics books are easier to move when they go OOP compared to the collected editions of the original IDW material when they go OOP.
My deeper take on the IDW G.I. Joe books is that I believe the fans of the IDW line of G.I. Joe books are not all fans of the same thing. While I believe it is likely most fans of IDW’s G.I. Joe publishing efforts are to some extent fans of the classic Marvel G.I. Joe comic series which has been reprinted by IDW in its entirety, I do not believe that a similarly high percentage of them are necessarily fans of the original IDW G.I. Joe series. This belief of mine is supported by what I have seen with my own past sales of OOP IDW G.I. Joe graphic novels.
What I have found is that sales of the OOP G.I. Joe: Classics series of books are much more consistent with (in most cases) more predictable price points in comparison to the OOP G.I. Joe books featuring material created more recently by IDW. When I list a copy of a G.I. Joe: Classics trade, I have a rough idea of what I can likely expect it to fetch on Amazon for a stated NEW copy based in part on my own past experiences selling copies of those books before. With the original IDW material books however, it is not so predictable.
It’s like this: when you look at the lowest priced NEW copy of a Classics trade on Amazon, you have rough idea of the ballpark price you are working with – sure the lowest priced copy might still be a bit higher than what most G.I. Joe comic fans are willing to pay for a copy of that book but it is likely not too far off. (this is assuming that there are actually several copies of a given book available for sale in the marketplace and not just two or three) The same cannot be said for the IDW original books. More than once I have had NEW copies of an OOP IDW modern G.I. Joe trade listed on Amazon at a price well below the lowest competitors price and… the listing has just sat there collecting digital dust. Again that being said, there are a few IDW trades featuring original material that I think are worth keeping an eye out for:
- G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero Volume 15
- G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero Volume 16
The above books are currently out of stock and are only available on Amazon through third party sellers who are offering stated NEW copies at prices much higher than cover so they could both be worth listing if you happen to come across a NEW copy at your local comic book shop for cover price. I would have included the G.I. JOE: Cobra Civil War Compendium paperback on that list since the cheapest NEW copy is currently listing on Amazon at over double cover but since the entry price on that one is hefty $50 I decided against it – but who knows? It could start to heat up and be a worthwhile pick up for a reseller at cover price in the future. As for the Classic G.I. Joe series of books, I recommend browsing through the listings on Amazon to see which volumes are currently out of stock from Amazon and only available through third party sellers and judging from that which ones are likely going to be worth the effort to list. One that seems to always be worth picking up at cover price is Classic G.I. Joe Vol 15, which collects the last few issues of the Marvel comics run. That volume always seems to be going for well above cover up on the mighty Amazon.
I don’t mean to brag but the last couple of times that I found a copy of that particular book, I was fortunate enough to find it in the discount section of a store. It would also not actually surprise me if I were to go and browse the listings for the Classics trades again in a week or two from now and find some other volumes listing for even more than volume 15 above just because the Classics line of books seems rather volatile to me and primed to explode in price; a couple of years back IDW seemed to be letting these books go in and out of print, now they seem content to just let the whole series slowly go out of print and stay there. That is always a good thing for a reseller.