Westy Steve

The menace book references “Men in Black” who work for the government and try to keep the info squelched. 

Hadn't notice that!  Not that I'm complaining, I like the hair and makeup styles of that era.  I'm tired of seeing women with nothing but straight hair these days...a little curl make it interesting.  To be accurate, they should be outside in curlers.  

Here’s a fun companion piece from 1967   It’s the size of a GA book  

Update:   I actually did sell this book to Dormian.  Then a few months later realize that probably wasn’t a good idea and replaced it with a 9.2 with white pages. Doesn’t have the beauty of the 9.4 but it’s a pretty nice copy and I’m happy with it.

How the hell do they not list "nudity panel" on the slab?

Hi,

I read through your blog and you've got some nice books!  I'm sort of collecting along the same lines as you, but I read all the way back to the very first blog entry here and I can't quite nail down what you're doing?  What registry are you earning points in?  Is the theme Adams books?  How does the X-men 96 give you registry points for that?  Can you straighten me out on what you're doing?

Thanks!

I get what you're saying.  It's hard.  But the thing is that most of the comics can be read on-line.  I think it boils down to the type of comics you collect.  If you collect silver age, most all of it is in reprint somewhere.  If you collect golden age, that's going to be tougher.  For me, I have a mac-Daddy Conan that I love to stare at through the plastic while I read Conan's on my laptop.  I also have a box of Savage Swords that I don't consider part of a collection...just reading material.  Is that cheating?

Here's a coin collection from a guy I know on one of the coin boards.  Great guy, BTW.  Anyway, this will give you an idea of the quality of material you can move toward with this method.  Even if you don't know about coins, you'll understand that these are quality items:  https://collectivecoin.com/lordmarcovan/5tAOUvzFOrtI8s8A7P3c

Great post.  Interesting snapshot of that time period.

Thanks for the reply.  Yes, the Xmen 94 in CGC 9.2 is an excellent "investment" based on the method I laid out.  Just constant growth in a short amount of time.

Regarding the walking dead, I think you'd have to buy too many books to be in the position where lightning would strike for you to make a big return on your lottery tickets.

With respect to Modern (or perhaps Copper), if you think about it, the TMNT #1 (1st print) is probably a great choice.  I've actually considered partnering on that book.   I guess I could sell my collection to buy one, but what would be the fun in that?

Thanks for the response.  Really...this area is slow and there is good content in this new area but don't know if it's being seen!

Anyway, I agree with some of your points, but not others. 

All I'm saying is that it makes sense to look at the rate of return on books.  In my spreadsheet, I assumed that book was worth double the cover price in the first month after it was made because people back then were like, "Did you read about this new Spiderman guy?", and the owners of the books expected some kind of "instant" profit.  But after that, barring a book popping up in value due to a movie announcement, one can calculate the rate of return on the books over the years. 

What I've found is that the better books will make 13%, the much better books can make 15 to 16%, and the grails can even make around 20%.  But the problem is TIME.  If a golden age book started at a value of 20 cents (double the cover price) back in 1938, and it grew at a rate of 13% to 20%, it's too darn expensive for me to buy today because it compounded for so many decades.

If a silver age book compounded at 13%, it would be worth about $1,000 after all this time.  I could buy books like that, but there would be so much time in between saving that this hobby wouldn't be satisfying.

But Bronze Age books growing at 13% are still around $250.  I can get one of those every month to two months and they'll look really pretty in the slab.

While I also like Copper books and Modern ones, there are two issues.  I think it's prudent to expect a proven track record, so there aren't a lot of modern books meeting that criteria.  Repeating for emphasis...Modern books need to show a proven track record....there aren't many of those.

I do like the Copper books, but you have to make sure you're not paying for the "plastic boost"....the premium that the book gets for being graded by CGC.  For example, a $200 NM bronze age book grade in a CGC slab isn't going to get that much of a premium (percentage-wise) for being grade.  But a $50 copper age book can have a 100% premium for being in the slab.  That's the only reason why I don't buy too many copper age.  (Though buying them raw in NM/NM+ is probably a great use of funds.)   Moderns also suffer from that "plastic boost", but it's worth it to buy them in the raw. 

Note:  I am talking about NM books here.  Not 9.8.  With a 9.8, you're paying for more than just the book's importance.  It's sort of a plastic premium.

For me personally, Bronze is in that sweet spot.  I can still buy higher grade books that look so dang good in that CGC slab.  And if I pay a justified $250 or more, I'm confident they've been growing at a rate of 13% or more, barring movie hype (which is hard to avoid).

You asked about risk:   Yeah there is risk.  IMHO, it's about the same risk as being in the stock market.  They've had equal number of market crashes, and the reality is that stocks don't always trade on fundamentals either.  Sometimes (like comics) it's hype.  For example, Tesla stock trades at 100 times earnings.  Essentially, the value of Tesla stock is based on the perception of how the Tesla brand will be perceived in the future or people are buying them BECAUSE ITS A HOT STOCK and not because they like the company.  Unfortunately, key comics are also heavily dependent on how people might view them in the future and whether they are HOT RIGHT NOW.  For example, Duck books are absolutely wonderful to read, but people are actually avoiding them because they are concerned about the future consumption of them.  But I like Batman because kids can find Batman stuff in Walmart so we'll have legions of people buying Batman in the future.  See what I mean?

Edit:  BTW, lately I've been spending more like $350 to $600 a book.  And by lately I mean I've bought a couple of nice ones that I'll be showing soon.  That means these books increased in value from approximately 40 cents, so they doubled an average of 10 times.  That's an average doubling time of about 4.4 years, which shows a return of about 16% based on the rule of 72s.   Stay tuned for more.

That's hilarious!