Wonder Woman #160 (1966)

 

1st Silver Age appearance of the Cheetah and Dr. Psycho

I have a pick to share that I haven’t seen discussed in the past year or two on any of the various blogs or forums discussing such things.  Accompanying this pick is an analysis/comparison of the values of "1st Silver Age" appearances of characters vs. their "1st (Golden Age) appearance".

Wonder Woman #160 is the first Silver Age appearance of both the Cheetah and Dr. Psycho, the Number One and a Top 10 Wonder Woman villain.  We all know that Warner Bros has big plans for Wonder Woman, with a solo film (not 100% confirmed but likely) for 2017 and a big role in Batman v. Superman: DOJ and two Justice League films.

The first reason the book is a sleeper is simply because its significance is not broken out from the issues around it in the price guide (values of this and surrounding issues are the same) and from what I can tell this pretty much agrees with actual sales.

Secondly is the rise in value of Wonder Woman #6 (Cheetah’s first appearance) in the last few years.  There was a landmark sale of a 7.5 in 2012 for $5975, since then sales have not been as high as this but well above what they were before.

Here is an estimate of 8.0-grade fair market values using GPA data for WW 6 vs. 160, as compared to the 1st / 1st S.A. appearance of three Batman villains: Penguin, Riddler, and Scarecrow.  FMV for Wonder Woman #6 is far out of sync with guide (almost 4X guide) compared with the other characters (column G).

Should there be a correlation between the values of a characters first S.A. appearance with their first overall?  It stands to reason that there would be and this piece is predicated on this.  A character’s popularity transcends age and income brackets; the G.A. collector will desire the earlier book while the S.A. collector wants something in their price range and collecting category.

You can see from column O that the FMV of WW 160 is only 1.82% the FMV of WW 6 while for the other books it is around 5%.  (Scarecrow seems to be an outlier, which points to the undesirable cover of World’s Finest 3 and the title being outside the interest of the Batman/Detective collector.)  If the ratio were more around 5%, the FMV of WW 160 would be $356 in VF making it more than 50% undervalued.

Percent of WW 160 to #5 (1st Psycho) FMV is higher (7.14%) when compared with first Cheetah, but since Cheetah is the dominant character we can essentially throw out the Dr. Psycho data (as cool as the character is).  The fact WW 160 also contains the first Silver Age appearance of Dr. Psycho is an added bonus that should make the book that much more desirable.

When looking at first S.A. appearances, I also like to check how long the character spent out of the spotlight.  I feel the stagnation of Avengers #4 has to do with increased familiarity by collectors of 1950s-era books and the fact the Captain has many previous appearances.  The last Golden Age appearance of the Cheetah was Wonder Woman #28 (March 1948) which is a relatively long time out of the spotlight.  For Dr. Psycho it is Wonder Woman #18 (July 1946).  This makes WW 160 only the fifth appearance of the Cheetah (following WW 6, Sensation 22, Comic Cavalcade 11, and WW 28) and the third full appearance of Dr. Psycho (from what I can tell).

I have 4 copies of this; the highest is a VF+.  I wanted the slabbed 9.4 that was auctioned in September but I put my money into other books.  There are 22 graded copies according to the census.

In summary, there are many reasons WW 160 is undervalued even before any hint of a DC cinematic universe.  A compounded increase in value will depend on Warners’ plans for the characters.  Also have a look at Wonder Woman #163, first S.A. Giganta (a personal fave) and Baroness von Gunther.

If this book was already on your list, hope you may have learned a little. Looking forward to reading along.