Hello. I signed up again here because of this thread. Around 20 years ago by now I used to post here, and some months ago I tried to find my old posts but couldn't, it was somewhere around '02 - '04. I can't remember my s/n or my e-mail at the time. So I just went ahead and signed up again. On to the point. I am CONFIDENT that comic books (use your pre-exiting discretions!!!) are a good investment. Better than most. I don't buy into the demographic argument, even though I recognize it's allure. It's something that appears to make sense on the surface, but doesn't really make sense when you consider the underlying INTRINSIC reasons WHY comic books and some other collectibles hold value and appreciate. The argument is like saying antique shotguns are only going to fall out of favor because kids today don't go hunting for duck on Saturdays. Doesn't matter. Antique shotguns are not going down in price. Not now, not in 20 years. The stock market is a scam now. It's blown up way beyond any sort of reasonable valuations. The metrics and fundamentals we used in the 90's and before are all gone. Quants and high-speed networks programmed by computer geeks and AI ruined the stock "market" and mistrained anyone under 45 who can't even remember what a real stock market was. PHYSICAL is where it's AT.
Not scams like crypto, either, that scam is done. Just because it rocketed doesn't mean it wasn't always a scam with benefits, that's what it was and is. But what it will never be is PHYSICAL... and the crypto geeks and the stock market sharks are already into comic books and other alternative "hard asset" commodities, whatever they may be, as the dollar has no future, the greed of the bankers and politicians knows no bounds, and sound financial policy is not coming back. This is why the dime box became the quarter box/ became the 50 cent bin/ became the dollar bin/ and will become the 2 dollar bin. Nothing you can't hold in your hands is really real, and yours. Anything can happen. A natural disaster or war could wipe out the stock market and the crypto and houses and land. You know what it also means? LESS COMIC BOOKS. Higher values for the ones that survive. They can mine gold, mine silver, and mine FAKE crypto, but they can't mine pre-code horror, and they can't mine Claremont's X-Men run.
I'm in my mid-50s. Here's my active collecting years: 1975-1985, 1993-1995, a wee bit around the turn of the milennium, then NOTHING - even sold about half my best books in '07...(much to my regret), and now, back into it. Here's how... all of a sudden I was watching You Tube and I came across a video. That's all. I MISSED the COMIC BOOM and it was late '22 when the boom was coming to an end, I was SPEECHLESS. The next day I started digging out my collection and getting back into things regularly and understanding the comic market as it exists today. We saw the fair-weathered friends and spec hunters and pumpers leave. But they will be back. It might be 7 years but there's going to be another RALLY... what's most surprising is how RESILIENT our values have held during a time when the superhero movies are in disarray, the big two are terribly managed, and over-slabbing caused a disgorgement. But we're getting over the hump... it will take another 1-2 years to reach the denoument of this post-comic boom stabilization phase.
PHYSICAL. DESIREABLE. MARKETABLE. NOSTALGIC. NEAR-LIQUID. OFF THE BOOKS ( in many cases). TRANSPORTABLE.
You can whittle down, focus, reduce, but should not divest now. I would sell all the stocks and crypto to buy tangibles. You remember what happened to records when CD's came around, and even cassettes and 8-tracks and VCR are worth something now. The LP's I sold and the Rolling Stone mags (early '70s) I shouldn't have. These things are pure Americana. The comic book age, even if it ends after 70-80 years doesn't matter. The young still love the stories and the tv shows, and online. This means they UNDERSTAND why comics are valuable. They don't have to like sitting there reading them, but if they watch/play an augmented/virtual reality Batman, and their granddad gives them a stack of Batman comics from 100 years ago they know God and Man aren't making anymore of those. Much of what you can buy or score at half-off today's already soft market is a 100% gain just waiting to be had. In the meantime, enjoy the hobby....
