Hamlet

On 12/16/2022 at 8:46 AM, ft88 said:

Fantastic Four  140 141 147 150 VF lot for $25

take
 

On 12/12/2022 at 8:25 AM, THE_BEYONDER said:

It’s an odd thing indeed.    Rather than wish for lower prices, one should be thankful prices are high so they can sell the books they don’t really need to pay for books they actually want.   You’re not really getting a deal on a HULK 180 if the 181 you already own is crashing as well. 

I think there are a huge number of collectors that rarely sell books. 
 

I just bought another copy of Rom 26 out of a dollar box because Galactus is cool.  
 

I don’t think I’ve ever even actually read the book, but I see a nice copy of it in the dollar box and it comes home with me.

On 12/7/2022 at 2:46 PM, the blob said:

it is always time

I haven’t been finding nearly as much quality drek in the cheap boxes as I was a few years ago. The price point of everything has been higher in the last couple of years.

On 12/6/2022 at 10:02 PM, the blob said:

so many. i have been aging them like a fine cheese.

 

I ended up with a bunch of copies of Thor 338, because MCS was selling it for like $3.65 for a 7.5 ( which from MCS are generally pretty nice copies).  It was probably a $10-15 dollar book on Ebay at the time, so every time I had an order I would add all of the Thor 338s they had.  They have it priced correctly now.

Of course, a $15 book is actually work to sell.  It doesn't make sense to consign to MCS, and I'm too lazy to sell it on Ebay.  So I've just got my stack of Thor 338s now. 

On 12/6/2022 at 7:17 AM, g-man said:

was watching secret wars #1 cgc 9.8 (direct)....went for $307 on the link last night. Good price. 

5 years ago it was a $100 book.  Is there any reason that book should be more than say $150 now?

The prices for stuff like this was an incredible bubble over the last couple of years. 

Are there really a lot more people wanting a CGC 9.8 copy of this for their actual collection than there were 5 years ago?

On 10/28/2022 at 1:33 PM, Nick Furious said:

I would expect the FMV floor for blue-chip books like that to be about 25% over FMV at the end of 2019 (10% from inflation and 15% from sustainable increased collector demand).  I don't know where they are now, but I anticipate prices over the next 6 months to approach that bottom without going below.  I suspect they will stay there for a while.     

I think that that is a reasonable base case.  I do wonder if there is actually a sustainable increase in collector demand though.  I sometimes wonder if looking back 10-20 years from now, Avengers Endgame will mark the peak in comic book interest, and that we might see a sustained downtrend in collecting interest going forward.

Viewed as a group, all of the movies leading into Endgame, culminating in Endgame itself is something unprecedented in movies, and we probably will never see anything like it again.  I can’t help but wonder if people will lose interest in a stagnant market.

It all boils down to price, personal preference, and how important the speculative side of collecting is to you.

Are you buying a book that you are intending to resell?  Then unless you are getting a very good upfront price, you may have difficulty selling the book later, as the buying pool for restored books is smaller, and people tend to see the upside of them as more limited.

On the other hand, if you are buying a rarer book for your collection that wouldn’t make sense for you financially at unrestored prices, then I think restored books can make a lot of sense, depending on what you prefer as a collector.

If you personally don’t mind color touch ( any other particular kind of restoration), and you aren’t planning on selling a book, it makes a lot of sense to consider the savings from a restored book.

Just make sure that you are comfortable with the book and the price.

On 11/22/2022 at 6:25 PM, Dr. Balls said:

The previous speculation craze - driven by the huge success of Marvel movies that began around 2010/2011 - was also quite cool, as practically everyone caught a piece of the action, not just the blue chip collectors. 1st appearance values spiked with rumors of movie appearances. Man, it was great: buying a $10 book and flipping it for $30 a month later because a character was going to be in a movie still two years away was awesome fun. Drek chasing and box diving at your LCS could net you a book that everyone else had missed for a nice flipping opportunity. I've been collecting comics for 35 years, and nothing topped that era for the amount of fun I had doing research, buying, selling and upgrading.

It didn't make me a millionaire, but man - it was a bangin' time to be a comic collector.

I wonder sometimes how many people will get severely financially damaged if prices have a large drop and don’t recover for a long time ( if ever).  How prepared are larger dealers with deep inventories for an event like that?  Have major dealers reduced their exposure to a downturn by thinning down their inventory?
 

I wonder how many people overextended themselves at last years prices and what they will do in an extended downturn?
 

I have so many books that I bought for X that now sell for 10+ times X that I wonder what happens to the people who bought at 10X if the price drops back down to 2X?
 

For me, it is just money I didn’t gain by selling.  I would never have considered buying at the higher prices because my comfort with my finances wouldn’t permit it.  I just wonder if the people buying at 10X just make enough money that they are comfortable with it, or if a lot of them might be in some financial trouble if things go badly?

On 11/21/2022 at 2:50 PM, F For Fake said:

It's certainly better than it was for the last couple of years, but one does have to wonder if it won't go even lower!

I pretty much stopped looking at stuff a couple of years ago because the prices got so silly.  I haven’t bought much outside of dollar books for a long time.  I’ve started following some of the MCS auctions recently.  Still a little high for my tastes, but at least a few things are starting to peak my interest.

On 11/21/2022 at 2:45 PM, F For Fake said:

That makes sense. The items that I had in the auction were books that hadn't moved on consignment. So I wasn't expecting much out of them, just wanted to clear some inventory and figured I'd take whatever store credit I could get out of them. But if the winners never pay, I guess I'll relist as consignment at a significant discount.

I've not bought anything through their auctions before, but will have to add it to my rounds. I've been getting a lot of cheap stuff on CLink lately, I'm assuming a result of the market being down, and the holidays approaching. Bad time to sell all around, it would seem, at least for the cheap drek I traffic in.

Are you telling me it’s time for me to start buying cheap drek again? 😀
 

On 11/18/2022 at 5:06 PM, Larryw7 said:

The whole comic book movie and TV market has become completely over saturated. I'm really losing interest in everything.

Yup.  I’m a comic book guy, and I’m tired of comic book movies.  I don’t think this is sustainable.  

Part of the problem is that nothing is ever going to match the buildup and payoff of all of the movies all leading into Endgame.  When looked at as a whole, those movies starting with Iron Man and ending with Endgame are one of the greatest achievements in cinematic history.  Nothing is ever going to match that again in the superhero genre.

I still watch some of the newer stuff, but none of it is must see, and for the most part it is all stuff I’ve seen before.  How many of these movies can be entertaining once you’ve seen 20+ movies just like it?
 

On 11/14/2022 at 2:13 PM, thehumantorch said:

Unfortunately there are deadbeat buyers.  I've sold about 50 books through mycomicshop and had 2 fail to pay.

I’m betting that beats the results of most Ebay sellers.  

On 11/14/2022 at 2:04 PM, Ryan. said:

I thought the buyer only had 3 weeks to pay.

They occasionally get deadbeat buyers.  I had one book that never got paid for and MCS eventually released it back to me so I could re-list or re-auction it.  
 

On 11/14/2022 at 11:24 AM, zosocane said:

Seems that the broader comic investment market is finally catching on to classic Raboy covers.  Classic cover and notoriously tough in higher grade.

They aren’t exactly easy even in lower grade. 
 

Collecting Marvels is mostly about being willing to spend the money.  Collecting Raboys is mainly about being able to find the books at all.

On 10/31/2022 at 7:01 AM, thunsicker said:

As long as you paid the taxes on its increase from 50¢ to $3000.  My point is simply that if you consider comic collecting a hobby (something that money goes into) then you aren’t down anything.  If you consider comic collecting an investment you definitely are down from what your comics were worth.  My 401k is down about 18%.  But definitely above where I got in.  Does that mean my investments haven’t lost value?  Of course not.

When values increase as much as they have, the line between hobby money and investment money gets blurred.  I put hobby money into my comics, but now the value of my collection is enough that if I was treating it rationally I would be selling it.  Inertia is powerful, though, so I don’t end up selling much.
 

On 10/31/2022 at 12:12 PM, cigars&comix said:

Forgive me if there is a discussion on this already, you can just point me to it if there is...

Ive been selling books since 2018 and correct me if Im wrong, but Im seeing a downward trend in prices especially on major keys.

I just did comps on FF 48 49 50 from last year to this year and there is a significant decrease in overall value. Great for the buyer, not so great for the seller.

Any thoughts on why this is happening? And will this continue into 2023?

This is happening because the price increases from the last few years are not sustainable.  Is there a reason that these books should cost 10 times what they did 10 years ago? 
 

Stuff that goes up extremely fast for no real sustainable reason tends to have ugly downturns as well.

On 8/15/2022 at 10:46 AM, Orgasmic said:

Diner episode was the standout for me

I was surprised by how much I liked David Thewlis as John Dee, since I don't remember liking those sections of the comics very much.  He did a really nice job of engaging my interest.

I'm fine with all of the casting, but he is the only actor in the show that I thought was actually better than the original source material.

On 7/22/2022 at 12:13 AM, KirbyTown said:

Hi! They announced this feature in their 2/22/22 weekly newsletter:

"I'm pretty proud of this--there's a lot going on behind the scenes to make this possible. We are confident in our own offerings and know that you'll continue to purchase tightly-graded and fairly priced comics from us, but if you find a good deal from an eBay listing that fills a hole in your collection, by all means go for it (and we'll earn a small percentage of the sale). We can't have everything in stock all the time, and no inventory is bigger than eBay's. Just remember to exercise caution when you're buying unslabbed comics on eBay, since many eBay sellers are much looser with their grading than we are here."

I hope the above answers your question; I'm not an agent of Lone Star, only stan them ❤️

That pretty much sums it up.  Thanks!

It looks like MyComicShop has added an Ebay tab to each comic’s listings that shows the copies of that book that are currently listed out on Ebay.  I haven’t been looking at much recently so I have no idea how long it has been there.  I just noticed it.  That’s an interesting feature to have included- I would think most sellers would be reluctant to link to a venue that is probably one of their biggest competitors.

I wonder if they’ve got any agreement with Ebay about the sales that get generated by the traffic they send to them?
 

On 5/30/2022 at 10:17 AM, shadroch said:

 

Someone mentioned how people with dollar boxes always seem to be the busiest.  Is that your goal at a show? To be the busiest, and work the hardest?  To sell a couple thousand dollar books to reduce inventory you shouldn't have bought in the first place?  That is a way to make money but is it the best way for you ?

 

Honestly, this seems like the main reason to set up at a show these days.  For the more expensive books, why bother selling at a show at all?  Just ship them off to MCS and sell them without the hassle of getting off of the couch.

I rarely buy expensive books at a show these days.  The prices aren’t generally great on wall books, since they are hard for the sellers to replace.  I buy the under $10 books that don’t make sense to buy with shipping factored in.  To me, shows are about leaving with stacks of inexpensive books.  The keys can all be easily bought and sold online, so why bother setting up at a show to sell them?

On 4/24/2022 at 3:26 PM, Randall Dowling said:

I'm not in here to get into this but if one took calculus, one would know that what @JC25427N is saying is precisely correct.  And so also is your definition of a circle.  Both things are true.