Hamlet

I recommend buying 1000 $10 books.

1 minute ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

What is greed...?

No, it's not what the idjit OIiver Stone put in the mouth of Gordon Gecko.

Greed isn't the desire for more and more...that's gluttony. Greed is simple: it's an extension, and expression, of jealousy. The idea that someone else has or gets something that YOU think THEY don't deserve (and which, of course, you DO.)

THAT is greed.

"What? Cindy got a new bike, and I only got a box of Legos?? That's not fair!" 

That's greed. 

And how is that expressed in markets when things are going up? 

"I'd better buy it quick before it goes up more and I'm left behind".

When a market is going down, it tends to turn to fear-

"I'd better wait to buy it until it is done going down".

If a person can override those impulses and do the opposite, they can avoid a lot of market pain.

4 minutes ago, revat said:

I agree, but what would cause EVERYTHING to go down dramatically in value at the same time?  I'm just having a tough time seeing the trigger.  I can see a given hot comic leveling off or decreasing, but what would cause a precipitous drop in a whole market, or even a segment of the market?  Again, not saying we can go up forever or that we're not due for some correction on some books or segments, just that I don't see any reason to get any major bubble bursts.  I don't think very many people are getting ridiculously overextended into speculation.  The really expensive variants now have fairly low print runs, and the much older keys are also pretty limited in terms of print run, and have collectors at every grade.  So people who have been waiting to buy those at lower prices will snap those up when prices decrease at 5 to 10% or more.  And yes they could level down even lower, but that would take a lot of time and I think a lot of those comics enter collections and stop moving.  Its not like stocks, which are purely financial instruments.  A lot of the comics go into collections and don't come out, especially for comics that people pay a lot for.

I think you are underestimating the effects of fear and greed on people's buying decisions.

People are excited to buy things at a small discount right now, because they are pretty certain that things will continue to go up.  When prices start falling, people get scared and pull back.  They don't provide that floor in prices that seemed rock solid.

What will trigger it?  Who knows?  What triggered the stock market crash of 1929 or 2000?  What triggered the drop in gold prices in the 1980s or over the last 6 years?  Or the drop in comic book prices in the 90s?  Its hard to pinpoint, and its never just one thing, just as bubbles aren't caused by just one thing in the first place.

Note that it might not be a fast decline.  Bubbles can take years to deflate.  And, on occasion, the higher prices are sustained and it turns out not to have been a bubble.

However, I wouldn't count on all of those buyers coming in and supporting prices if we have a sustained decline.  They will probably have moved on to the next hot thing that currently going up at that time.

1 minute ago, revat said:

I'm not saying the market can't go down, I just believe that the factors in the comic market won't lead to any type of significant crash.  Which isn't to say the market won't level off or drop, even significantly.  There's just to many people willing to buy at 90 cents on the dollar for keys, and 25cents on the dollar for drek, and those people can be found IMMEDIATELY on the internet.  That's the other thing, right now we're talking about many separate segments of the market which operate almost independently, whereas they weren't so diversified before.

in the old days, you went your LCS for nearly everything - new issues, back issue fillers, KEYS, older comics.  So if your LCS failed because they bought too much image and Jim Lee Xmen, all of those other things got sold off cheap too, destroying the whole market.  Now there's specialized dealers who specialize, and specialized buyers, but also dealers can make decisions on the fly too to prevent crashes, by tracking the data (their own and on larger scales), and buyers and sellers have immediate access to the whole world.  Its just too big of a market that really, and it really isn't affected by external forces like politics, natural disasters, or tax rules.  And very few things would cause a whole class of buyers to fire sale IMO.

What is causing almost all key books to rise in unison?

People are always excited to buy stuff at 90 cents on the dollar when it is going up.  Typically, those people disappear when something is going down in value.

19 hours ago, revat said:

but consider the REASONS things are bought and sold in terms of comics and collectibles.  People buy them for OTHER reasons than financial, and any given market is more opaque to your average consumer.  The stock market is full of MILLIONS of people who do nothing but trade and research stocks all day.  How many comic investors have such perfect knowledge?  And yes any 1 or 5 comics can crash at the same time, but what would cause ALL of them to crash? Wouldn't the money just move to something else?  Wouldn't there be cushions of ebay buyers letting you down gently instead of a massive crash?  Except for the dumbest of speculators who would have failed anyways? And how many people buy 10's or hundreds of a given comic that if the market for that comic crashed they'd be broke?  It just doesn't happen anymore.  So yes, the occasional dummy might get crushed from time to time, but what would cause a major chunk of dealers/sellers/flippers to get crushed at the same time?  I just don't think its possible any more with the internet.  Which is not to say any individual can't make a string of bad decisions and lose money, just that I don't think it can easily be system wide.  I think that scenario only occurs in the event of a CGC scandal.

Have you not gone through a bubble before?

As prices rise, it pulls in people who are mostly just interested in buying stuff while it is going up.  All it takes for those people to start selling is to have the market correct a little.

In the normal give and take of a healthy market, those people coming into and leaving the market are no big deal.  However, in bubble markets, those people have driven prices so high that when they lose interest, the market price drops dramatically.

People have seen pretty much all comic keys go up consistently and dramatically for a long time.  A large percentage of the market now believes that they can essentially buy comic keys without much risk of long-term loss.  That has driven them to buy many more key books at a much higher cost than they would in a normal market. 

When people re-learn that comic keys can go down as a group as well as go up as a group, the people who bought books primarily as speculation will start selling instead of buying.  That is likely to cause a fairly dramatic change in values of most key comics.  Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it is fast.  Sometimes the market recovers, and sometimes it doesn't. 

The end of a new bubble is always just a little bit different than past bubbles, but when people are buying something while the price is increasing dramatically and assuming that it won't ever stop increasing, it almost always ends very badly eventually.

18 hours ago, shane1956 said:

Until I start seeing some actual evidence of these 10,000 or so FF 48's by way of a portion showing up on the census I'm calling nonsense. We've all heard the "stories" but not a single person has shown us a nice group photo of these mysterious "stacks". Simple logic would suggest that where there is money there is someone wanting to make it. If there were 10,000 copies out there I think a few more would have surfaced in CGC holders by now. 

Until then, the reality is this book is going to rise given it's importance. I paid $4600 U.S last month for my 9.2 copy. Would I pay it this week? Absolutely . Would I ever sell it for a penny less unless stuck with some unexpected circumstances? Not a chance.

Friends , the market is set on this book. 9.2 and higher is $4500 and up at the moment. Good luck finding one of those other 10,000 copies . Let me know if you uncover big foot in the process. 

I would add that compared to the art world the prices paid for these books is  insignificant. There are so many buyers with money who are willing to pay hard cash for key books these days that the age of getting keys in high grade at low prices are long gone. The hobby has evolved and has started to get credibility with outside collectors. People like myself exist . I view it as art. I display it as such. 

 

Frankly, a 9.2 for $4500 makes a little more sense than a 7.5 for $2000.  While 9.2's aren't rare, there are a heck of a lot less of them than 7.5s.  Even books that were saved with some eye to preserve condition may not have been stored well enough to be a 9.2.

But there are a ton of 7.5's out there raw. 

I specifically bought a 7.5 back in the day because it's a nice looking book, but not so nice that it was attracting "investment" money.  A few hundred bucks for a decent-looking copy of such an important ( and cool ) book seemed like a good deal. 

I have a hard time justifying hanging onto it at current prices though.  I just don't think this is sustainable.

5 minutes ago, grayzr said:

Yes there are alot of FF 48s out there but in 7.5 I'm not sure if there are 10s of thousands. (you probably mean all copies)

Thar said, eBay shows less the 10 sales in the past 3 months graded CGC 7.5

Currently to date there are 4633 total graded by CGC, only 314 are in 7.5

I'm not saying this book is rare but it is certainly not as common as dirt.

What boogles my mind is how low end raw copies in the 1.0-4.0 are selling for 250-600$ and risings.

I have always felt that this book was under valued but how high is it going to go?

If Mr.Radd becomes a part of the MCU get ready to see some really nutty prices.

Yes, I meant all copies.

There are about 1250 CGC copies certified in 7.5 or higher, which seems like a decent number of copies.

Yes, the low end copies are just as nutty ( or worse, given how super common this book is in low grade ), but at least those dollar amounts can be managed by the bulk of people as entertainment expenses.

I felt the book was undervalued when I bought it.  I don’t now.  Now I’m thinking that I’d rather have the money than the book, and I’m feeling that way about more and more of my collection.  

I was looking at GPA for some of the books I own and it looks crazy to me.  The last sale for an FF48 in CGC 7.5 is $2000.

That is just nutty.  I think I bought the book about 10 years ago for $350 or so.  

It a cool book, and a major key, but there are probably 10s of thousands of copies out there. It’s not hard to find in grade.  Who is buying all of these books at these levels?

I rarely go thru the effort to actually sell any of the books I buy, but I think I need to get off my butt and cash in on some of these.

I saw it last night.  I thought they did a very good job.  I'd put it below the first Avengers, but above all of the Thor movies and the 2nd Guardians of the Galaxy for sure.

I like that the villain had some depth to him.  He has the same complexity that I always liked about Magneto. 

The themes of the movie are not as simple as they usually are in comic movies. 

It's clear that I'm never going to be able to buy a copy of FF52 for a reasonable amount after this

My original LCS in Lacrosse WI sold coins, sports cards, and Commodore 64 computers and games.

FF 52.  I just can't bring myself to pay more for one than I paid for my FF 48 a few years back.

12 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

Nothing was really "huge" at that time. But there was nothing small about Web's print run/distribution. It wasn't Uncanny X-Men, but neither was it significantly smaller than ASM.

Do you have a source for that?  I can't imagine that there were many people who bought Web of Spider-man that didn't buy ASM, but I would expect lots of people did the reverse.

I was a pretty dedicated Spidey collector, and I remember questioning whether Web was worth getting.

I'm not saying I would expect it to be a tiny print run, but I would expect ASM to be significantly higher.

On 10/4/2017 at 9:18 AM, Kevin76 said:

Nope, it just is. People need to remember that this era was considered junk for years, thrown around in back issue bins with the other misfit comics only for people to realize "hey...wait a minute...:  

I would imagine the print run for this wasn't huge.  I bought all of the spider man titles off the stands at the time, and I remember Web of Spider-man being mostly terrible from both an art and story standpoint.   I remember my friends suggesting that I could probably get by without this series, and I never really could argue against them  

I'll have to take a look at my copy and refresh my memory of this issue.

10 hours ago, Comicdave said:

Are there some common printing defects for this book? Why is it tough in grade? It's not a black cover.

We'll see if it is tough in grade in a year or two, now that it is on people's radar.

I would have never imagined that people would pay a big premium for this book, but now that it has a little visibility, we'll see how many copies start appearing.

There are currently 14 9.8s, which is actually quite a few more than a typical Web of Spider-man issue for the time, since typically no one bothers to submit them. 

If people are going to treat Tombstone as an important character though, 14 is tiny.  Web of Spider-man 1 has almost 1000 in 9.8, for example, since there has been sustained demand for that book, and it was speculated on from day one.  I don't remember anyone caring much about Tombstone when he came out (or anytime before this, for that matter).

It will be an interesting book to watch over the next couple of years.  Is there actual sustained interest in Tombstone, or is this just short term speculation that will move on to something else next year?

26 minutes ago, Comicdave said:

Is book tough in grade or did someone really need this book? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Web-Of-Spider-Man-36-CGC-Graded-9-8-NM-MT-1st-App-Tombstone-Marvel-Comics-1988-/182700441889?hash=item2a89cb8121:g:XyUAAOSwbD1Zgz87

There are five sales at over $300 this year in GPA.  Even the 9.6 and 9.4 sales are in the 70-100 range.

That seems like an awful lot for this book.

I think there are going to be a lot of submissions for this book if this keeps up.

11 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

I wasn't referring to teachers. I was referring to the parents who use digital devices as babysitters.

It's not a teacher's job to establish behavioral patterns. That's on the parent.

My youngest daughter was reading at the age of about 3 and remains an avid reader to this day.

Kids are VERY smart these days as they are exposed to much more with the world at their fingertips, but the social skills being developed and embedded into kids these days are not the same because there is a large reliance on digital interaction and not personal interaction.

Also, my statements are not meant to be a blanket statement for all parents. It's meant for those who rely on digital devices to raise their children. It may or may not be a majority but from my experiences based on kids in the neighborhood there are MANY of them.

I think you are overstating the amount this has really changed.  I remember people talking exactly the same way about my generation ( Xer ) because we watched a lot of TV and played video games endlessly. 

Heck, for the generation before that, comics were the thing that was supposedly rotting their minds.

For my kids, it is Netflix/YouTube and some Frozen version of Gemdrop. 

On summer days, I remember as a kid that my mother sometimes had to push me out of the house because I wanted to spend all day playing with my Atari 2600.  Back then, good parents pushed their kids outside at some point, and I see nothing that makes me think its different in any meaningful way today.

2 hours ago, VintageComics said:

The problem with reading is a lack of patience.

Today's society is founded on a lack of patience.

Children are brought up to not be patient.

If you want children to read, putting comics in front of kids will not teach them that.

Parents need to limit access to digital devices and teach kids how to be patient, how to read, how to play the long game, how to learn to earn gratification through that long game.

We're currently raising a society of socially inept, isolated children that are being baby sat by social media.

 

You must be dealing with different kids than I am.  When I was a kid, schools didn't even start trying to teach reading until 1st or 2nd grade.  Kindergarten was nothing but shapes and colors and numbers.  I didn't learn multiplication until the 3rd grade.

My daughter's preschool started trying to teach her to read and write as soon as she could sit still enough.  She came out of kindergarten being able to read simple books.  She just entered 1st grade, and she is probably at least a year ahead of where I was.  They are teaching her multiplication already.  Her classmates are doing similar things.

I think these kids are pretty smart and accomplished compared to the kids I went to school with.

FYI-- My daughter and I read a lot of Marvel Unlimited on the iPad together.

57 minutes ago, Silver Surfer said:

I'm curious to know who this dealer was with the Archie #1 because if its the same operation then you can pretty much guarantee that it has undisclosed restoration or whatever you want to call it. 

The guy with the Archie #1 is a small local dealer here in the Midwest.  I don't get the impression that he is someone who would knowingly sell a book with restoration.  However, I also don't have any idea whether he knows how to spot restoration.  I am not someone who knows much about restoration beyond checking for bleedthru from a sharpie color touch job.

Regardless, there is no way I would ever buy a book that big raw.  Actually there is no way I would ever buy a book that big period ?

53 minutes ago, 143ksk said:

I'm having a hard time imagining any of the dealers who set up at that sort of show having an Archie 1...

I don't remember his name, but he's at that show all the time.  He's an older guy with glasses and thinning hair ( like that narrows it down ? )  He's a nice guy and I buy a few books here and there from him.

I definitely thought of you when I saw that book.

I was honestly stunned that he would bring a book that big to that venue.  

4 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

How did the dealer who owned the book react?

As a potential buyer of the book, obviously I would appreciate the head's up.  As an honest seller of the book, I would also appreciate the observation so that I didn't inadvertently take advantage of a buyer and so that I would have a chance to go back to whoever I bought the book from if I didn't know it was restored when I bought it.

He was fine with it.  He seemed a tiny bit annoyed, but I think that was simply because he obviously didn't think that there was any restoration or he would have called it out initially. 

Everyone pretty much agreed that he was probably best off submitting the book and  sending it to one of the auction houses.

I got the impression that he was really just showing the book off, since it was not a venue where a book like that was likely to change hands. 

I was at a small, local convention last weekend, and I noticed one of the regular dealers had a nice looking raw Archie 1 on his wall.  I said something along the lines of "Holy cow, is that an Archie 1".  He pulled it down and took it out and started showing it to me and a couple of other people who were nearby.  It was a nice looking book (very rough guess 4.0 with nice pages, which for that book is pretty darn nice).  One of the other dealers watching chimed in that it looked like the staple had been replaced.  I think he was probably right, since it was very bright and shiny, and there was a tiny bit of discoloration at the centerfold that seemed like it would have had to come from somewhere else, but restoration is not something I am particularly knowledgeable about, so who knows. 

How do people feel about the other dealer chiming in?  I think it is always good to have people keeping an eye out for restoration so that people know what they have or are buying, but I can see it annoying the first dealer to have someone talking down their book.  It's not like anyone in the room was real likely to buy a raw Archie 1 regardless ( or a certified one for that matter ), but I could see it creating hard feelings between dealers.

Does anyone have an strong feelings about this?

44 minutes ago, mattn792 said:

Cost -- 3 AM wake-up, two hours standing outside on a frigid December morning in Afghanistan, and a shakedown by the Secret Service.  But if you don't know this celebrity, you need to read The Onion.  Like right now.  Seriously.  Go!

The Onion spoofs of him are a national treasure.

On ‎7‎/‎1‎/‎2017 at 10:22 AM, piper said:

FF4 over ASM4. (I own both)

I own the Spidey but not the FF4.

FF4 is the more important book by far, IMO.

On 6/27/2017 at 9:10 AM, Michelangelo said:

I would think that a successful LCS has a turnover of new material - back issues/wall books included. That's because they make money off of what they have (by not charging 5x the FMV) and they can recirculate those funds into buying new collections, etc.

It's all about cash flow. You've got to keep the cash moving to accumulate new and fresh inventory. When customers know that the inventory changes over regularly, they're more inclined to stop in often. I know I would.

To keep a wall book on the wall for 2-3 years because you've over-inflated the price doesn't make for a successful business. You end up with money tied up in inventory you can't move and customers lose interest.

I think a dealer has to balance speed of turnover with the difficulty they have replacing inventory.  I think most LCS seem to err by having prices too high and rarely turning over books.  It's hard to judge for certain however, because I have no way of  knowing if they get offered decent collections very often.  Some of them could probably lower prices a decent amount and still be able to buy replacement inventory at a good buying Con though.  

One local shop actually appears to have the opposite issue.  Their prices are very good, so they don't have much in back issues to sell.  They appear to deal with this by getting clearance trades, toys, and other inventory.  They turn stuff over fast, but they might do a little better raising prices to get a little more out of material that doesn't walk thru the door every day.

2 hours ago, grebal said:

A couple of thoughts of maybe why FF has so lost it's roots.

With most successful comics I've noticed a good blend between the 'soap' parts, and the story/sci-fi parts of.  Peter Parker had his love life and Flash Thompson, DD had his Froggy and Karen, etc.

Imo, with FF they lost sight of the soap part of FF that used to keep the story together and interesting - the core family aspect.  I never minded the substitute muscle for Ben Grimm, like Thundra or Medusa or as things went on She Hulk etc., because the family aspect remained central to story. 

And poorly depicted some characters and villains - e.g. Doom is a good character that's been poorly handled in the movies and blundered with the Reed-Sue-Victor love triangle or overdose of teen angst.

For FF most of the storylines/villains tended to draw more from sci-fi and monster, than the usual comicbook fantasy (galactus eating worlds, annihilus/negative zone, watcher), which might not translate as well to film.

Anyway, the movies s u c k e d pretty bad, and the FF comics in the 90s and last decade that I've skimmed through also were pretty mediocre, as I recall.

I actually thought that the first FF movie would have been okay if they hadn't butchered Dr. Doom.  They did such a bad job with him that it really destroyed the movie for me.  I thought the rest of the casting and general acting was fine.  Maybe not stellar, but good enough for me to have enjoyed the movie.

I'd love to see a "Doom Rising" movie of the FF annual 2 origin, but that would require them making a good FF movie introducing him first, and I  really don't want to see another FF origin movie.