lou_fine

Although I am quite sure that the stats are being heavily affected by the additional testing now being done by countries that did no testing before (hmm....like the U.S.A. ), the trajectory certainly does not look good to this point in time. Especially since it took something like slightly more than 3 months to get to 100,000 cases throughout the world with most of them in China, only 12 days after that to reach the 2nd 100,000 cases globally with most of them in Europe, and now apparently only a further 3 days to hit the 3rd 100,000 cases globally with most of them once again in Europe and now the United States sadly trying to crash this pandemic party in a big way to show the world who the true global leader really is .

From a financial perspective that certainly makes sense. Mitch; In full agreement with your astute assessment of the difference between the GA and the more recent SA and BA comic book marketplace going forward. I certainly don't see breakeven being reached anytime soon for speculators who paid record setting prices for highest (or near highest) graded copies of otherwise relatively common movie hype related books like FF52 at $90K, Tomb of Dracula 10 at $85K, Hulk 181 at $59K, Marvel Super-Heroes 13 at $31K+, Iron Man 30 at $15K, Eternals 13 at $4,100, etc. To tell you the honest truth though, the buyers of these books at these kinds of prices would most likely have lost money on the books anyways even without this Coronavirus, unless they were already thinking of holding them in their personal collection for several years right from the get go and even then. Now, if you are a long-term GA collector who had paid something like only $1K or $2K or thereabouts way back in the day for relatively nice copies of what are now deem to be semi-key or classic cover GA books such as Action 13, 'Tec 31, All-American 61, All-Select 1, Cap 3, etc. my thinking is that these collectors will do just fine if they simply hold onto their books for a few more years until the world recovers and the prices on these books get back to their old record valuations again.

Well, based upon my recent experience with the Mods, all I can say is that we all should probably delete these posts before the Mods get back to work in their office from their imposed lockdown.

Almost makes you wonder if these people in positions of power eventually got wind of a Military Intelligence report done up right at the beginning of January that apparently spelled out this exact same scenario which we are going through right now? Especially when in real life, it was apparently playing out as laid out in the report. Of course, we all know what happens with Intelligence reports in this current environment if it's not on TV or streamed on social media............ignored and tossed out. Maybe it's so much better to talk about comics and think that super heroes like Supes or Spidey will come onto the scene to save everybody just in time. Plus it'll definitely save be from getting another big Warning here and being booted of the boards here. So, if you don't see me posting here for awhile, you'll know the reason why.

Thing is, if you don't sell and everything bounces back (like it should - "should" being the operative word RN), then you lose nothing in the long run. IOW, if you don't need to sell your stocks, don't. Yes, SHOULD being the definite operative word here. Only problem is that it could take quite a few years as some financial advisors are telling their clients that it is a very different world that investors now find themselves in with entire countries closing down, global travel bans in place, border closures, most businesses shuttered down, huge unemployment in all sectors, etc. and nobody knows for how long. Or on the other hand, you could be like some of the so-called "highly placed lawmakers in our society" who apparently sold large portions of their equity holdings just before the Covid-19 stock market crash and are now in the "fortuitous" position of buying them back at bargain basement prices. Or if it was me, picking up key and HTF classic GA cover books at hopefully relatively lower prices.

Sad to say, unless you pulled the pin already, I imagine your position in the stock market is a whole lot smaller than what it was a couple of weeks ago.

If you can convince Kevin Feige to introduce Doc Savage to the MCU I bet a lot more will show up . +1 As with most of these relatively common Marvel BA books, if the demand ever shows up, the supply will more than go up to meet the demand. Now, if you are talking about the Street & Smith version of Doc Savage #2, that's definitely a completely different story with only 1 copy graded at CGC 9.0 or above while there's already a whopping 33 copies at CGC 9.0 or above for a relatively low demand Marvel Doc Savage #2.

It’s nice when you’re the one who makes the laws, no? Just like term limits, a ban on insider trading by members of Congress should be a no brainer. Hence, neither will ever pass. They should probably also consider putting on a temporary ban on the shorting of stocks because that is certainly not helping in terms of the volatility in the marketplace.

With what's happening right now, I am not sure how you can be so sure about this. Especially since China is apparently back to 90% of having everything running again, with their outbreak contained down to very manageable levels within a 6-weeks time period. If anything, it looks like their China 2025 Program which they thought might have been pushed back by several years, might just be moved up to China 2021 or China 2022 if America doesn't make the same kind of speedy recovery.

Yep... its a great time to lowball panicked people if you have the money to do so. Well, if I have packs of toilet paper sitting in my garage from sales in years past, would that qualify as lowballing it or paying top dollar in this new age? How many packs of minty fresh unopened packs of nice soft toilet paper for a Cap 1.

Source? Logic, for one. The US tested 77 cases while SK had tested 144,000. Not sure how true these numbers are since I heard it on a news report (fake news??) a couple of weeks ago. Anyways, the news report stated that 10,000 tests were being done a day in South Korea, while China were doing up to 200,000 tests a day during their peak before being able to get it under control. Apparently, by that time, the province of B.C. had done more testing than all of the United States combined, since they didn't believe it was real because it was happening somewhere else and not to them at that point in time.

Was juast watching the news and saw a comparison between Canada and Taiwan's response to the entire Coronavirus outbreak. Couldn't find a link to the story, but found this one instead as to how Taiwan was able to stop the virus right in its tracks: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/taiwan-reins-spread-coronavirus-countries-stumble-200307034353325.html Looks like Taiwan took it seriously right from the get go and started to flatten the curve back in January when it was first identified by China. The North Americans of course ignored all of the huge red flag warning signs with some even calling it a big hoax, and instead, kept busy driving the markets to new record highs for another 3 to 4 weeks.

I don't think that's how it works in China. I think that when China insists that the general public do something, they do it. There were probably dire consequences if you disobeyed. I guess sometimes strong autocratic leadership has its strong point, instead of treating everything as a hoax. But I guess I better not say anymore since I cannot afford another warning from the Mods or else I am off the boards here.

Not sure if real estate would work in this situation here if you have revenue property and all of your tenants are out of work and unable to pay their rents to you. As the owner of a business (i.e. the landlord), you would probably be expected to provide free rent or to postpone rent payments owing in this very unique situation.

I know that it's a completely different society and all that in terms of tighter government control and citizens listening and adherring to what they say, but it seems that China with its massive and dense population was able to wrestle this virus down to the ground and at least have it down to much more manageable levels within a 6-weeks time frame or even less. Of course, that's also because they could build entire hospitals within a 10-day time period. To the point that Chinese billionaires like Jack Mah are now sending 500,000 Coronavirus tests kits and a million surgical masks to America to help them out in their time of need: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jack-ma-coronavirus-test-kits-chinese-billionaire-alibaba-shipping-masks-supplies-to-united-states-donating/

So, it looks like they are going to have fewer Event Auctions this year then, since they are skipping the one that usually ends in March.

While you had them on the line, did any of you bothered to ask them about the start date for their next Event Auction? Or is it a case of Fishler not wanting to put all of these non-consignment books out there in this current market environment?

I’m guessing material that is warranted being offered in a featured auction could be negotiated to equality (or close to) to other auction houses. So that would include lots of 2k comics. But I’m speculating, outside of selling my collection (obviously a one time experience for me) I’ve not used auction houses It should be pointed out though that your actual one time experience with selling through an auction house was with ComicConnect and not even with Heritage.

Or will it be the exact opposite situation with potential consignors pulling their books back out from the pipeline in fear of falling prices, which would then result in a shortage in the auction marketplace?

Duh, it's leave with paid. Well, since I am now clearly paying for you to sit at home doing absolutely nothing, you can at least have the courtesy of packing up a few of your CGC 9.8 graded books and sending them my way as compensation.

My thinking is that you probably went in a bit too early and that most of your 5-figure paper profit probably came in the last 30 minutes of the trading day on Friday during that irrational frenzy. You are correct when you say the recovery in the markets has not even begun, because I somehow get the strong sense that the markets have not finished falling yet. Especially since the Fed has now shot off all of their weapons to no avail so far, and the entire North American continent is probably headed for a complete lockdown except for non-essential services before this thing gets any better. Definitely hope this scenario does not come about, but it just might since they don't want to get themselves into a situation like Italy who are probably 1 to 2 weeks ahead of us.

Very mixed, ...and premature, IMO. Moves like this leave little wiggle room for future sell-offs, and trust me, there’ll be more DOW down time before the market recorrects. To paraphrase a famous line from All About Eve, ...fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Unfortunately for most of us here, I would tend to agree with Cat-Man's point of view, as I had posted in another thread on this subject:

Yes, I think it's also fair to say that all of the books which you have listed are Marvel SA books which is just only one segment of the overall comic book market. What are the stats like for other segments of the market so that we can have a much more comprehensive picture of the overall vintage collectible comic book market? I was just over on the GA boards on the thread alking about the 2020 financial crisis and here is their answer to this matter here:

I believe Apple announced that all of their stores inside China are now opened for business again, but that they will be closing ALL of their stores outside China until March 27th: https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/14/21179542/apple-closing-retail-stores-march-27-coronavirus

Yes, it would seem that this pre-emptive in an atrtempt to calm the financial markets before they open tomorrow morning is actually having the exact opposite effect. Being viewed by the markets as a panic move by the Fed as stock futures have already hit their trigger limit on the pre-market trades.