Hamlet

They were saying the exact same thing about real estate in 2006.

There is a tendency for people to assume that past behavior predicts future results in investing, and it is an incredibly dangerous tendency. It leads to people piling into investments just because they have gone up in the recent past, which is one of the most dangerous ways to invest.

When people think that they can't lose, they are almost always making a very dangerous investment without knowing it.

Maybe I'm missing something. All the main books have been steadily increasing in value. They have never dropped in value except maybe certain high grade outliers. Yet people say comics are no kind of investment.

If 5 years ago you bought

AF15

ASM1

FF1

Hulk1

Avengers1

 

I guarantee today they are worth more.

 

Where's all this very very very very very very very very risky comics as investments?

Time will tell how sustainable it is. I'd be curious to know how many people own multiple copies of this books as an "investment".

How much supply of this book will come onto the market at the first hint of weakness?

One thing I will always remember is the sales thread here where someone was selling a dozen or so copies of Showcase 22. That's a tougher book than AF15 to find, but obviously it wasn't really that tough a book to find.

People have been accumulating AF15 for many years thinking that it can never go down in value. However, it isn't a scarce book at all.

I wouldn't be stunned to see its price get cut in half if the momentum moves to selling instead of buying.

 

A rational market at work, as insane as it seems. The window on "affordable" unrestored low-grade AF15s at under $10K is closing quickly, and buyers are pulling the trigger on this Grail before it's out of reach like a key GA book.

Honestly, I suspect the prices you are citing are probably rational relative to each other.

When a comic has a print run of 1.7 million, and pretty much all of them are saved, it's going to be very hard for it to get expensive, no matter how much demand there is for it. Everyone who has the slightest interest in Spawn can easily get a copy or ten, and the dealers with long box after long box of the book will just pull out another couple dozen to sell.

On the other hand, even a little demand for the other stuff will drive up prices somewhat, since there aren't that many of them, compared to the Spawn #1.

I think its all pretty silly, but you can say that about most of the "hot" books right now. I think that most of the money chasing "hot" books is going to be lost by most of the people doing the chasing in the next couple years. A few people losing a little of that money on weird preview stuff instead of FF45 isn't all that important, IMO.

Yeah that's more directed at the Spawn silliness. Someone will pay $50 for a Malibu Sun or $30 for a Rust #1 and the Spawn #1 itself is barley worth $3-$5. And it all happened after people on this forum starting talking about how 'rare' it is and that it's the first actual appearance.

 

This Preacher Direct Currents is in the early stages.

I have a Crowley with no stamp, which seemed a little strange to me.

Is that unusual or are there a fair number missing stamps? Or perhaps some stamped internally?

I haven't cracked the slab to look for a stamp inside.

It's a Captain Midnight 17.

I love Crowley file copies.

The in house stamp to me just rocks. As soon as you see the marking, there is no denying it came from the Crowley collection, & to know the book was one of the first of the production run and it was handled only once or twice in its life makes it twice as cool.

I must have missed this. What movie hype is driving SA 205?

 

I've been looking for a decent copy of Strange Adventures 205 for a bit. If I do find an appropriate copy I will likely be fine in purchasing it despite the fact that it will all but likely be marked up as a result of the movie hype.

I guess that it depends on how bad the stuff actually is, and what else you have going on. If someone didn't have a job or family commitments, and had an empty spot to put it all, I can think of worse things to mess around with.

Going through boxes of comics is entertaining, even when it is pretty much drek.

I think it would make sense for a group of folks to buy and split up without looking at anything. 15-20 longboxes of this stuff would be a lot more fun than 170, IMO.

Can't imagine why anyone would touch this with a 10 ft pole.... unless they want to start a bonfire and need kindling anyway.

I know who Pauly Shore is, but that doesn't make him A-list.

 

Back on point, Iron Man is an A-list hero. My sister grew up in the 70's, and was not exposed to comics beyond the Wonder Woman tv show, and still knew who Iron Man was.

It's not that I would bet against a Deadpool movie being successful.

I would bet against a successful Deadpool movie driving the value of NM98 any higher than it already is in the long-term.

I think a very successful movie is required to even maintain these current prices.

Back to the original topic. I never said Deadpool would be a big as IM in the movies. I just noted that IM wasn't a household name before the movies. Guardians of the Galaxy wan't much of a name in the comics before the movies. Just saying I wouldn't bet against Marvel and Disney on any upcoming movie.

I've read some ToS, IM1, some BA issues here and there, and a bunch of 80s ones.

The Tony Stark character was never particularly interesting in the comics. He was just some rich guy with pretty much no personality, IMO. RDJ changed that in a big way.

The other advantage is that the technology looks much cooler in the movies than it ever looked in the comics, IMO.

When I saw the first Ironman movie, I loved it because it re-imagined the character in a much better way than the comics ever did, IMO.

Really? How many Iron Man comics have you read, and from which time period?

But why choose a flavor-of-the-month book to begin with? RR#1 is almost unreadable. Movie hype is the only reason anyone is remotely interested in it, and that won't last forever.

Pick something enjoyable that isn't currently hot if you are on a budget, rather than a book that only has interest purely from speculation.

Sometimes (most times) it has to do with finances. I don't have hundreds or thousands to spend on high-end keys, so why not a nice copy of an affordable #1 or 2nd appearance? The IH 271 Rocket Raccoon is awful looking in my opinion, so I'd rather have a Rocket Raccoon #1 that looks more like the movie character (speculation?) than the IH 271 version. I can also get a nice copy of Doctor Strange #1 or Black Panther #1 waaaaaaaaaaaaay cheaper than an ST 110 or Fantastic Four 52.

 

BIG bucks are what people are ponying up for those GA/SA issues. If you're a big baller and can get those, then kudos. Not everyone is on the same playing field when it comes to money.

I think something to keep in mind about Ironman is that it translated to movies better than just about any other character, and that RDJ's performance actually made the character better than it was in any of the Ironman comics I've read.

When I saw the first Toby Maguire Spiderman, I loved it because I felt it captured the spirit of the Spiderman comics.

When I saw the first Ironman movie, I loved it because it re-imagined the character in a much better way than the comics ever did, IMO. It generated interest among comic collectors for a character than was really 3rd tier before the movies.

That is going to be a tough thing to duplicate, and buying a NM98 because you're expecting a Deadpool movie to generate even more interest from collectors that are already extremely interested in getting a NM98 is a bad bet, IMO.

I think your observations are interesting and worthy of consideration. But it's also worth noting that Iron Man has long been a fairly popular comic book character - among comic book readers and collectors.Not Spider-Man popular, but a consistent seller for Marvel and perhaps the best overall performing 1968 Marvel first issue. Yet he was virtually unknown in the larger culture until Robert Downey Jr made him a household name in 2008. Now Iron Man can lay claim to the iconic term and the franchise is a tent pole for Marvel/Disney. Heck, RDJ is the actor that single handedly has forced Marvel to pay the other actors better for Avengers 2 and the other superhero sequels. He flatly said he wasn't making any more movies where he got paid astronomically better than the other actors in superhero suits - and Marvel decided they couldn't go forward successfully without Iron Man and RDJ.

 

Will a movie do the same for Deadpool? We won't know until the day. But if Marvel can make a franchise out of the strange collection of 3rd stringers in comics that called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy, I wouldn't bet the rent money against the success of a Deadpool movie.

Pretty low feedback seller.

Wow, I would say the bubble is leaking, if I wasn't looking for a Black Label I would of been all over this, what a price...

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111533567169?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I agree. I sometimes think it would be interesting and tough to try to put together a high-grade (say 8.0+) non-pedigree run of and EC title.

As a novice to collecting ECs (only a handful graded, all lower grade), and about 200 raws, I'm almost more impressed when I see a non-Gaines File Copy in the 9.0s and up. Just seems like it would be much more difficult to have someone pluck it off a newsstand back in the day, and keep it in that nice of a shape.

 

I definitely plan to get one from each of the major pedigrees as my collection grows, but I still am impressed by the higher grade non-Pedigree books I see...

If people don't play nice, I'll try to move my discussion about CPI with RMA to this thread too, and everyone will have to read about the price of milk in 2001.

Yeah, there are FAR worse boards out there.

 

It's generally a very civil place here, although people tend to read way too much into emoticons . . .

 

(for example)

Well, I made it through about half the episode. It's pretty awful. I'll power through the rest later.

I get that they have to lay some groundwork, but its just a mess. There is absolutely no subtly to it. I kept flashing to scenes from the Evil Dead whenever someone was possessed.

Unless it gets a lot better, this isn't going to last long.

Their handling of Dr. Doom ruined both movies for me. I didn't actually hate them otherwise.

Which source material?

They appear to be modelling the movies off of the Ultimate Spiderman books. Everything originates with Oscorp in those as well.

It's a C+/B- movie to me. Better than the first reboot, much better than the 3rd Tobey movie, but not as good as the first two Tobey movies.

I agree..Emma was great and Spidey scenes are great.

 

I can't get over the fact all villains come from Oscorp, Peter gets bitten at Oscorp, his Dad worked for Oscorp.

 

It's so far from the source material it makes me ill. Plus, why do they have to tie everything to Oscorp in a little bow? Sickening.

 

I even thought about buying the Blu Ray last night and passed on it.

 

Ugh!

I love this kind of stuff. You can get some great deals on non-key books if you aren't looking for high grade and you have a wide selection of titles you are interested in.

One of my collecting goals is to get complete runs of the "secondary" DC silver titles like Atom, Hawkman and Aquaman. If you're willing to take mid-grade, you can do it for less than an average of $5 per book. It just takes time to find mid-grade copies, and comic cons are the best way to find these mid-grade books at inexpensive prices. But for these 3 titles, as well as a bunch of others (Jimmy Olsen, Justice League, Lois Lane, Teen Titans, Flash, etc.) I'm down to the point where finding mid-grade copies is really hard.

 

Well, these dealer had a bunch! For example, I got 9 Aquamans, 6 Atoms, and 4 Hawkmans. I'm within spitting distance of completing these titles, I'll be concentrating on them the rest of the con and SD to try to finish them off.

 

I wonder how many copies of these RMA already has

I was going to add "I bet RMA gobbles these up at $1 a pop and goes for the nicer ones at $2 a pop and he's no dope" but I know how you don't like to have words put in your mouth.

My understanding is that they generally get just over 50% of the domestic box office.

If they only get 25% of the international box office then they probably aren't doing great with this movie.

If they get 25% of the International Box Office and 100% of the U.S. Box Office, that puts the revenues at $325 Million.

I would give the movie a B-. I much preferred Toby as Peter Parker, but this second movie was an okay presentation of Ultimate Spiderman.

I liked it more than the first ASM, which I felt was sub-par, say a C-.

I'd be curious to know how valuable the international revenues are compared to the domestic revenues. I know that the studio generally gets a smaller cut of the international revenues, but I've never seen good numbers on how much smaller.

Is this movie successful because of those revenues or not?

They were also selling five of the six "Kraven's Last Hunt" books for 3/$1. They were missing the first Amazing for it, but they had two copies of all of the others. There were a ton of Marvel Tales under 100 in there as well (mid grade). I bought the ones that reprinted ASM 121 and 122 because they have some interest now.

Honestly, though, the later McFarlanes have not been selling for much around here. I've seen them at the last several conventions for about $2/each, and they haven't appeared to have been selling. I probably wouldn't have bought them for more, since I already have more than one copy of the ones they had.

3/$1 is ridiculous for those unless they're in tatters. i can put them out at my yard sale and get $1 each for that stuff in VG.

I'm starting to think that a lot of the McFarlane Spideys are currently in the category of undervalued. I've been seeing them in bargain boxes more and more. I pulled a few out of a 3/$1 box at a little convention yesterday (a 307, 313, and a couple of the later ones).

The dealer I bought them from runs a LCS around here. I asked him about it, and he said that he had so much of that stuff that he just needed to get rid of some of it.

These were books I felt were wildly overvalued when they originally got hot, but now I'm finding a fair number of them in $1-$2 boxes around here. I'm generally not one to buy books purely for resale (my wife and I call it buying a chore), but at 3/$1 I couldn't help myself.

Bid $1

Ask $3

 

Well, if you are going to put yourself out there and offer a whole dollar each...

 

I wasn't the one who first valued them at $1....and the offer is for all of them.

 

How many buyers do you know who will do that...?

 

Nice business casual is usually plenty professional looking to my mind.

Haha, sounds like a guy in IT. If you're dealing with clients, it's important to look professional.