Hamlet

It’s worth $2 to me to read and own a SA comic in decent shape. I have to hunt to find books like these at $1-2 - Most dealers have them priced much higher (say $4-$6). I assume they must occasionally sell a few or they wouldn’t keep dragging them to the shows.

And you’re also all stocked up on those late Miller Daredevils we were talking about in the other thread 🙂

I had a book that I had a really rough raw copy of. I got a CGC 9.0 of it in a ComicLink auction. The problem is, I don’t really get much enjoyment out of the slabbed copy, but don’t want to burn the value by cracking it out. So I’m on the lookout for a good deal on a nice F/VF raw copy. Then I will have three copies of the book and will probably never get around to selling the extras.

I consider it good for the hobby that there are still great books that are available to collect at a “buying purely for entertainment” price point. I bought the whole Miller Daredevil run as a lot on the boards for about $150 a few years back. They weren’t high grade ( 158 and 168 were about fine, the rest varied from VG to VF ). I had a blast reading them for the first time, with no worries about whether I was going to leave a finger print on a 9.6 copy. Can’t afford to collect the Byrne X-men? His runs of FF, Alpha Flight, and Superman are awesome and were still cheap last I looked. The Simonson Thors are all still pretty cheap with one notable exception.

On the other hand, I love pulling books like these out of cheap boxes for my collection, when I don’t already have them. There are also some books that I pull out of these boxes when I see them because I am speculating/hoarding. I also own a lot of VG+ cheap SA DC ( late 60s Jimmy Olsen, Superboy, Adventure, Lois Lane, etc ), because I couldn’t pass up a 12 cent cover priced book in decent shape for $1-2. It will all make great convention stock when I retire. 🙂

Yes, but you are really good at it and are able do it in volume. I would need to learn how to scan and list books effectively and start making trips the post office. For the number of books I’m going to find in the 2-3 conventions per year I make it to, it really doesn’t make sense. You are also ignoring the cost of the books in that example. We were talking about buying the books for $2. That makes the net $1.50, which is a lot less exciting. I’m betting you aren’t bothering to pull late Miller Daredevils out of $2 boxes. I’m betting you have so much of that stuff from collections you’ve bought for the keys that you consider them pretty much free.

Yeah, the problem with paying $2 for a $5 sale is the shipping work and cost. Unless you are setting up at shows, how do you sell a $5 book so that it is worth the work/expense? The later McFarlane Spideys have had the same issue for me. I was buying them for two dollars until I realized that I was just buying myself a low-wage chore that I will always be too lazy to actually do. Sometimes I justify it with the idea that I am building convention stock for after I retire, but that is really just me enabling my hoarding nature. 🙂

The Sleepening

That is certainly a likely possible scenario. One question I have though is who has been buying the big keys lately, and what are their reasons for buying?". I wouldn't bet money that matters to my lifestyle on those keys maintaining these new higher values going forward. I think there are an awful lot of those books in the hands of people that are more interested in their price movement than any nostalgic feelings they have for the books themselves. There is a danger that those people will quickly lose interest and sell if the market softens. Add to that people who have overextended themselves buying these keys - they could end up forced to sell if the general economy hits a rough patch, which would probably accelerate the selling by the first group. I'm not saying that that is going to happen. I'm just saying that it could, and anyone buying books with 5-digit price tags should be prepared for that possibility.

Well, I was able to find and buy nice clean VG-Fine copies of later SA run books of FF, Thor, Strange Tales, ToS, and TTA for $5-10 ten years ago. Now it seems like they are more like $10-20. That is a bigger increase than inflation over that time. Plus, the number of "keys" has increased quite a bit. It would have been a lot cheaper putting together a run of FF from say 30-80 ten years ago because many of the now key books weren't considered keys back then. Back then, FF 36, 45, 46, 52, and 67 weren't really considered keys in any meaningful sense.

What fascinates me is that neither of these books were really sought after 9 years ago. I bought nice VG copies of both on the boards for $5 each. Granted, that was a very good deal at the time, but still. Did everyone suddenly become big Warlock fans, or is this all potential movie hype? I suspect it is some of each, because they are both cool books, but I'm not sure I trust the run-up to be sustainable long-term. Kind of like the run up for FF 45. That book went from run book to hot key a few years ago, and has settled down at about half the peak, which seems rational. It's an important book that was ridiculously undervalued for a long time, but it got hyped a little too much. Of course, the peak is only obvious in hindsight.

Yeah, I don't think run books are doing badly, all things considered. They just look like no one wants them in comparison to the hot keys.

7.5-8.0 Ditko Spideys are easy to find, but expensive to purchase.

Except that this isn’t really true. Two books with the same CGC grade can vary fairly widely in market value.

I don’t think comic movies are going to disappear, but I can’t believe the market will support 5-6 tent pole superhero movies per year indefinitely.

Disney is going to produce this stuff until people stop paying to see it. I’m not sure how long that will take, but I’m starting to think they are going to have to dial it back at some point soon. I’m actually getting tired of the movies. I finally saw Endgame last weekend. It was fine, but I got bored in the middle. It was too long and frankly a lot of it was similar to past movies. If I am getting bored, when is the general public going to lose interest?

I just mailed off a small batch of raw books to MyComicShop for the first time. From what I have seen, they seem like a good spot to auction fairly low-dollar SA/BA/CA keys if you don’t want to do the work of scanning/shipping them ( and I sure don’t ). I sent stuff like ASM 252, 316, FF 67, Marvel Premiere 1, Marvel Feature 1, Thor 337, etc. Nothing all that high dollar, mostly $50-100 books. Stuff that would be a pain to sell and ship individually, but worthwhile to ship as a group to them. From what I can see, their grading is very tight, but people have figured that out and seem to bid appropriately. Hopefully it goes reasonably well 🙂

This is one of my favorites.

It’s actually a pretty cool book. I have a mid-grade copy that I scanned and was going to sell a few years ago, probably for about $10-15 at the time. I read the book before I listed it, and I really liked the Starlin art, so I decided to hang onto it. At current prices though... 🤪

You have to compare the McFarlane Spidey's to what we were dealing with on Spiderman for the few years before he came along. I started collecting ASM with issue 260 ( good ), and 261 ( good), but it was rough going for a few years after that. My friends started making fun of me for sticking with the title. Luckily, I was building my collection with back issues as well, which were quite a bit better. Would you rather have these instead of a McFarlane Spidey--

With the recent rise in prices, I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I think you have to answer a few questions for yourself- 1. Why do you collect? 2. What is core to your collection, and what are books that bought because they were good values that you aren't really attached to at current prices? 3. What effect would the money have on your life? I'm of the opinion that with prices as high as they are, if the money is something that would be meaningful to you, now is a great time to sell. Could prices go dramatically higher? Yup. Could they go dramatically lower? Yup as well. No matter what people tell you, comics are a very risky thing to put large amounts of money into. There is nothing magical that prevents comics from going down to the prices they were at two years ago. Do this thought experiment-- If the book was damaged and you got an insurance payment for its current market value, would you go out and buy a replacement? Or would you do something else with the money? If you wouldn't consider buying it at today's price, IMO you should consider selling it. You'll want to take the work and costs of selling into account of course. And you will want to avoid trying to guess what the market is going to do for books that are core to your collecting. For example, I think ASM 13 has been pumped up by movie hype. If it was all about money, I'd have sold my copy right before the movie came out. If the comic continued up, oh well, I made plenty of money. If it dropped back down, I could buy it back if I thought it was cheap again. However, ASM is my primary collecting focus. I'm always going to want to own a copy of that book, unless it gets priced to the point where it doesn't make sense to own given my finances ( see AF15 ). That $1200 for my CGC 6.0 isn't an amount of money that changes my finances that much. On the other hand, I've collected a lot of books because they were cool for the price point that are now dramatically more expensive than when I bought them. I'd rather have the money, and I wouldn't be in the market for them at anything approaching current market prices. They are now many multiples of what I paid for them, and they aren't core to my collection. I feel like I should be selling them. Of course, its work to sell comics, and I don't like work, so they may just continue to sit in the boxes in my spare bedroom.

Nobody I knew would order from those ads because the only grade listed was "VG or better" We were a lot less picky about grades then, but we still were not willing to buy VG books at NM prices.

Do you add up their value in Overstreet to make you feel good about buying them too?

My technique is to go through dollar boxes looking for books that I think should sell for at least $3. I buy them and put them in boxes in my house. Every once in a while, I look at them and consider selling them, but decide that it would be too much work. I follow the comic market carefully, so that when a book I bought cheap pops due to a movie/TV announcement, I can go look at it, decide that I will scan and list it soon, and then get busy and forget about it.