spreads

Nobody under the age of 50 gives a $H$T about antique furniture. If you truly believe it's an investment, then please start checking out the estate auctions I've been too where they can't even give this stuff away.

I'll tell you what, i'll delete my post on beanie babies when you start using sentences and paragraphs. If comics are such a great investment, I have three long boxes of reader comics to sell you. All from the 40s-70s. Lots of Marvel/DC in there! You can't lose. $2 a pop!!!

MTG cards have a much stronger cult following than many comics, the top Magic cards from the early/mid nineties have exploded in value. How many 5 figure comics that have come out within the last 25 years (and I'm not counting a variant one out of 3 print run).

Yes, the top tier keys have gone up exponentially like every other asset class during these bull markets. But if you took your grandmother's inheritance and dumped that in Apple/Amazon, how much richer would you be? You live in NY, what was real estate like back then??

Oh no, Magic the Gathering? No comic from the 50s/60s has increased more rapidly than the top tier MTG cards, go lookup what a Black Lotus sells for.

Every single comic book has increased in value for 50 years?

Are you serious? Speculating taking on a political twist!

It wasn't a pure auction though, the auctioneer only initiated contact with the real buyers that showed up. And based on the OP buying other books, they presented a very strong bid. If the auctioneer felt the bids received were not the best he could have easily said no deal, and sold the books at auction like the rest of them. It was dumb on his part not piecing them out, but I think I've already mentioned how lazy some of these guys are - even auctioneers.

Just grabbed these, I might lock down the rest of what he has....seller selling home, clearing out space and had these for a very long time.

I think the ebay sales have more to do with A LOT less supply - no shops, cons, etc. than stimulus money.

Comics (over all) have risen significantly over the last decade because they have an inverse relationship with interest rates. They have not outperformed real estate, definitely not the equity classes (indexes) and arguably not other collectible asset classes (have you looked at what some magic the gathering top tier cards have done over the last 15 years?). For every example that someone claims about comics being an incredible investment, we can all find an example of something in a different industry that's performed better. Two years ago I was looking at a semi up the street from me, it sold for 188k (to a corp), maybe had 60-80k put into it, then sold six months later for 400k no conditions. Now that same property would go for about 450k. A different example, also real estate, the local recreational market in my area has been totally flat for at least 10 years. Prices on cottages have not moved at all due to a number of demographical reasons, but they offer very good investment opportunities for someone willing to do some work. There was a property for 180k that was generating between 16-20k rental over the 12-14 weeks rental period in the summer - not a passive investment by any means but you can figure out the cap rate on that. The cost and risk of borrowing has been throw out the window in a zero interest rate environment, so money has nowhere to go but into riskier and riskier asset classes. When that speculative money leaves these asset classes when interest rates start the reversing direction (it will be awhile before that happens) everything will go the opposite direction.

Ummm what? I've never heard of shaken Mylar syndrome....lol

You might not, but I see hundreds of people that do....when these guys get fleeced they usually leave the industry/hobby....

This has been discussed many times on this forum; in short I would say if you look at comics as an investment, they why not beanie babies, royal doutful figurines, pogs, funko pops, etc?

I bet you encounter lots of 'experts' when it comes to grading. This particular user, did his name rhyme with boldrover?

Please share your exceptional knowledge on how to make money with comics, so we can crown you Lord of CGC! Once you become the Lord, you get free grading for life!

There are a lot of well known pressers (on this board and elsewhere), you can easily find them. If you're submitting to CGC I use their CCS service, however, the TATs for CCS are absolutely atrocious so you need to be patient. I have a WK book at CGC right now that I sent to CCS; for me the risk of having to deal with an additional third party is not worth the added benefit of saving time. So although CGC would take a few hours for a Walkthrough book, it's taking up to 10 business days for the press. I feel like if there's ever an issue with pressing, I'd rather have a complaint vs CCS/CGC than anyone else.

You're right, I don't understand buying low and selling high having been a professional equity trader for over a decade. And then another 7 years as an institutional trader. If you want to get into a contest about asset classes, investing, etc I'm more than welcome to do that in a different forum. Maybe I'll tell you about my buddy that had 4 losing days over a six year period arbing the specialist system on the NYSE? Even though I doubt you understand any of that....

With these TATS why would anyone pay for FT?!? It's just too bad CCS is complete dog poop with theirs.....

Good advice. This industry, if you're buying items worried about the cost or your 'investment', then you really need to learn how to grade or just stick to buying graded books. I laugh every time I see local flippers buying books from Gerry Ross to grade and flip....those guys are so far out of their league they have no idea.

Great advice, thanks. Were do we sign up for your paid newsletter?

You're a person_having_a_hard_time_understanding_my_point if you think otherwise. Boomer.

Yes, water stains can be missed at times. To the OP This was an error on the dealer's part (MCS???), although it can be easy to miss. I wouldn't completely abandon raw books and grades, when I was selling books at shows I never put a grade on it. If someone was interested I would assign a grade then and there along with my rationale, the buyer could agree or disagree but we would have a discussion on it. If you're looking online, I would suggest you try this approach. Don't be afraid of asking questions and for more pics/scans.....

I love that old school ruler, can't remember the last time I saw one of those.