As we noted on Wednesday, the Amazing Spider-Man “Obama issue” frenzy escalated quickly on that home of quick escalations: eBay. Surveying the scene today, we see that there are presently approximately 1,117 listings for Amazing Spider-Man #583. 
After you get past some of the insanely inflated Buy It Now listings, which includes a $10,000 listing for a SpidermanObama domain name, you’ll see that bidding seems to be topping out at around $86 for a single, ungraded, unsigned, variant copy. One can find signed copies fetching over $125, or cleverly pre-sold packages of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd variant printings together for more. It seems that while the number of high-priced Buy It Nows have grown, they aren’t moving for, say, $500 a pop. At this point, the $80 to $90 seems to be the top end.
The top sales prices will probably cool off by next week, as people who just want any copy as a “historical document” of sorts will likely just be happy to own a 2nd or 3rd printing. The speculators have already been in, and, based on Buy It Nows, a number of them will seemingly just be holding the bag. Let’s hope they won’t need a bailout.
Update: An unscientific survey of pages seems to put Crazy Scondo’s as the eBay store with the highest number of offerings between graded, single-issue, and package deals. Crazy Scondo’s is a brick-and-mortar store in Bayside, New York, with an 11-year eBay track record. As of 1:55pm EST, they currently have 12 copies of the Obama variant for sale.
January 16th, 2009 at 11:56 am
Mine sold for $42.75. Ahh capitolism.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I only got $7.00 for Final Crisis #6 though.
January 16th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I guarantee you that this issue will drop below $50 (if not lower) within a month as I’m sure the print run on this was fairly high. The Turner sketch variant for X-Men 500 sold for more than $200; so you can imagine that 583 Obama variant probably is around 10,000 copies
January 16th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The hype will drive the market. God bless the hype.
January 16th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Remember Captain America #25 and the insane prices people were paying on Ebay for it when it came out? I think it’s stabilized around $25 or so now. But at the time, it was going for $100-200 clams. People buying this above cover price thinking it’ll be worth something are in for a rude shock.
January 16th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
$3.99 at my local comic shop. That’s right…not $50, not $35, not even $5.
$3.99. Most ethical shop owner ever.
Comics and More…Madison Heights, Michigan
January 16th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I got you beat Id…$2.99… with my 25% discount from LCS…The MOST ethical shop owner…forever!
Comic Depot…Saratoga Springs, NY.
January 18th, 2009 at 5:51 am
How freakin edited is this “response” thread?!?!?!?!??!?!?!
January 18th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
$2.99? Are you sure it’s the Obama variant cover (1st print) and not the regular cover?
Even if it is, it isn’t unethical to sell the book for $100. This is how capitalism works: the price is whatever people are willing to pay. I can sell my copy for $5,000 if I want to- this isn’t unethical. No one will buy it, but it is perfectly okay to sell it for that much.
Now, if I was selling air, gas, or something that people need to live, you would have an argument.
January 19th, 2009 at 2:12 am
I think they’re saying that a store pulling copies from the shelf so that people can’t buy them and then selling them on ebay is unethical.
January 19th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I’ve been watching a number of the biddings over the last five days. I think it’s important to note that a large majority of the auctions started at $0.99 and then go up from there. So whatever people end up paying is of their own accord.
I saw one variant go for as much as $295 on Thursday and the lowest was for about $45.00. It does seem to be cooling down now though I’ve been surprised at what some people are will to pay for the regular edition, anywhere between $25 and $50.
I will note that my local comic shop sold all of their regular copies at cover price and were reasonable about what they charged for the variants that they had.
January 20th, 2009 at 11:15 am
i got two off the first printing one sold on ebay and the other i am keeping…..i can wait to get the other cover i now what day then in at my store