VintageComics

I'm a Gen X'r born in 1970 and I would NEVER purport to see the truth better than any another generation. If anything, I can admit I was WRONG. I just don't know at this point when the light will fade, but this is FAR too convenient a time to build a case that the sky is falling is during the single greatest asset correction in world history with record inflation, record energy prices, record number of wars yada, yada, yada. This is quite literally an unprecedented time in modern history and you can't draw hard and fast rules around this unprecedented time. That's about as subjective as you can get (and I am not trying to sound condescending). Actually, I do and have for years. I've for YEARS griped about how when the market gets too hot it's not good for the hobby. The movie bubbles, the asset bubble of 2021 - I spoke out against all of those things and everyone knows I have. But MOST won't. They'd rather play the game disingenuously.

People worry more about how the demographic will affect their hobby than the rest of the world. Kind of silly because if you really think about it we're headed into catastrophic waters based on demographics and things like health care in the West that may collapse Western civilization but nobody cares. But when it comes to comics we all care. I've been on the "demographic is destiny drum beat ever since the economy collapsed in 2007-8. That was my late 30s and it was about the time I REALLY started paying attention to the world. Before that I was too busy raising kids. The most powerful minds in our hobby have been discussing "demographic is destiny" in the Gold is $500 thread in the WC for over 15 years now and not a SINGLE ONE has been fully accurate. Along the way you hit a few wins but over all, human nature is such and variables are so myriad that nobody will ever be able to predict any market with precision. Nope. NOTHING is indefinite. Not even death, IMO. But most people who have already factored in the demise sound exactly like the people who did the same 5, 10 and 20 years ago on this very forum (or 50 years ago if you're that old - because that's how long people have been talking about comics being too expensive in my lifetime). Imma say at some point it's all going to go away, but literally NOBODY knows when. These are the same posts that I've been reading for 20 years. I even GENUINELY believed the collapse was going to happen in 2010 as we were waiting for a massive credit crunch post 2007-08 and even told my partner at the time that. Didn't happen. No person is able to predict the future no matter the field: stocks, weather, comics - anything. I'm done trying to predict, especially after reading about the same thing over and over for 20 years from 100s of boardies. It's a fool's errand.

Anybody who understands business and economy understands this. You can tell who is invested in their argument. I remember 15 years ago when people starting pumping stocks on here when the Marvel movies took off. It was ridiculously obvious who had a vested interest and who didn't. You may as well call the Movie Forum the Comic Book Stock Exchange because IMMO that's the main reason it's become so popular.

We have a pirate on our team? So, a little voice inside my head told me to pack this just as I was leaving for Collector's Summit. True story. Now I know why.

Speaking solely about AF #15, which is what we were doing, you'd be totally wrong if you looked at the 2017 data, which was an inflated market build entirely on outliers but OK. And comics have been "dying" since this chat forum was formed over 20 years ago so it's hard to take that sentiment seriously when someone says this is the death knell and we're in the final 15 years. People have been saying it for much longer than the last 20 years. I might be a dealer but I genuinely don't care either way.

Well, the driving thing I am hyper aware about because I'm an avid car enthusiast and drive and have paid attention to people's driving habits since I got my license in 1986. As for the rest, I think I'm reasonably objective. I think each new generation these days is just willing to take less chances (which definitely reduces your ability to succeed and grow) because there are so many creature comforts available to everyone. In the past you were challenged by your natural habitat but as a general rule, life is so good and so easy these days - even with the hard times we're experiencing we are still living in the top 2% in the world, and I think people need to challenge themselves more to stay sharp and very few do. The movie Idiocracy is a reality these days.

I can't stress enough how bad things are now post 'this thing'. It's like humans devolved a 100 years and nothing works in a straight forward manner anymore. Me and my buddy Dave talk most about driving because we're avid drivers. It's like everyone's IQ dropped 20 points and now everyone functions at partial capacity. I'm ready to move to a secluded Island and leave it all behind, it's been so bad.

I actually have great experiences with USPS except for their Express service which may or may not show up on time. And the people at the USPS POs are usually very helpful as well. UPS is a different ball of wax and people in Canada HATE UPS. Had a boardie send me a document last week via UPS overnight and the thing has been sitting stationary for days now. UPS and Canada do NOT get along.

You made me do it. The long post, that is.

Where I think a collaboration would be useful is weeding out noise and that's where I'd be able to offer insight. Things like PQ and QP can greatly swing volatility. For example, I've seen perfectly centered White page books go for 2-3 times their other counterparts. That's an anomaly not a trend. Other things that can affect books are movie announcements, whether the books are exceptional for the grade (or are upgradeable - that's a big silent one) or time of year (typically, winter can be hit or miss - a month or two before Christmas there is a bit of a slump, then you may get a pop as some people get their Christmas bonuses, and then a slump post X-mas as the bills set in). Ironically, AF #15 is one of those books. If you all remember in the spring of 2017 the price of AF #15 nearly doubled in all grades in a Connect auction. It's the biggest blip on the GPA charts next to 2021, but it was ALMOST as big as 2021 was for that specific book. Several copies came to market at the same time that I thought were upgradeable and they sold for record money, which was about double the previous prices. That set the AF #15 market on fire and all copies took off. If you remember, several AF #15 copies sold for a quarter Million or so and then the market pulled back again. You can read the discussion in the AF #15 thread at the time. Everyone was worried it would pull back but it never went back to it's pre 2017 prices. This is why I believe AF #15 is a perfect test case. Who wants to build a 3 dimensional graph?

No. It's always been considered large.

But that's not a Comiclink problem, that's a FedEx problem. Shipping companies have gotten lazier lately because they got used to being lazy and I've found the standard of service to have dropped across the board. Dropping off packages without sigs and other unusual patterns are now the norm, unfortunately. Lack of accountability and laziness abounds in the greatest measure I've ever seen in 50 years.

I think you make some good points Roy. What I find to be the case is that the "first copy" in an auction tends to go for more than the next one. I believe especially if it has been awhile since the last one has come to auction. I understand there are a lot of variables, but it's just my observation What's up, man? Logic would dictate that, especially if all other things are equal and I used to believe that as well but I've seen it with my own eyes. I see very common books in grade sometimes and the 2nd book in a same auction has gone for more money at times. And it's not always just about the QP. The only things this can be attributed to when it's on common books is who is bidding. It's why if I have a 2nd copy of a book and the auction house asked me whether I want to space them out or not, I generally don't care unless it's a very expensive book and the price difference is staggering. But for very high volume books where the bidding base is large - say stuff under $1000 it really is just a coin toss sometimes and you could easily get 10-20% price swings in either direction just because someone is throwing in a bid when they have a second while putting the kids to bed or whatever. That's how it used to be for me when my kids are young. Going back to the example above with the X-men book - I wouldn't attribute it to anymore more than bad luck personally. If you go through GPA you can probably find all sorts of wacky results like this, especially on cheaper books where there is no urgency to bid as another will come along soon.

Bidders missed the first one, then chased the second copy harder. They're last few seconds bids on the first book were too light, then they upped them on the next copy. There is literally no way to tell fpr sure but yeah, logic would say that it always comes down to how many bidders are present to bid. I've had two of the same book in an auction before. Sometimes the 1st goes for far more, some times the 2nd goes for far more. I recently had a 2nd copy of the same book go for almost HALF what the first book went for but ALL previous copies went for roughly what the 2nd one went for sometimes even in the same auction. What is the most likely excuse is that it takes two bidders to tangle, and all other variables being equal if just one bidder doesn't show up, it can cause large price fluctuations.

Yep. As you scale back your lense things look less ominous. Even the people that bought high will likely be OK if they can hold. If you're a short term flipper and you got caught with your pants down, it happens to the best of people. Learn from it and move on.

You don't say!

People adjust behavior based on information. I'm sure the shipping department employees will hear about how one of them tossed out someone's expensive comic. How would you personally react to that news if you were one of those employees? I know wouldn't want to be on the hook to make that mistake again if my employer gave me that talking to. Once you're instructed about something and you do it again, in the corporate world it's often a warning and then you're gone. And if it was your son or daughter working in that shipping department, how would you want them to be handled? It might happen again, but I certainly don't think CGC wants the negative publicity so I think they will try to make some internal adjustments to try to reduce the incidence of this happening again. It'll never be perfect.

I want to mark today as a national holiday because I'm agreeing with Shadroch.

Thanks for answering a simple question with two unrelated questions. 😉 I guess a lot of people don't realize that when you are doing large volume, mistakes will happen. In fact the MUST happen unless you can walk on water. I don't think anybody here can do that. Every large scale business has percentages of allowable error built into the model. Inevitably those mistakes will make their way to the internet, blow up people's ability to scale their options to the size of the enterprise and butts will get hurt. Oh well. Life is hard.

Unfortunately, I suspect for every person who comes here with a problem there are probably 10 who don't. When people choose not to speak out about an injustice that's their choice. If people want the world to change, they need to speak up. It's that simple. Some responsibility needs to be put on the people who DON'T speak up. Since nobody is perfect that's how ALL RELATIONSHIPS WORK when you encounter a problem. You ENTANGLE to work towards solutions.

If you unpacked, graded, slabbed, QC'd and shipped 10,000,000 books how many mistakes do you think you'd make? That's 5 x 10,000,000 = 50,000,0000 opportunities for a mistake. Do you think there would be threads about how horrible Wombat is at certification?

You are making a massive assumption here. Yup, the internet is full of them. Mine are just usually more correct than other's. If YOU were in charge of the shipping department and found out one of yours threw out an expensive book, how would you handle it? Do you think CGC wants another thread like this parked on their front lawn?

Putting aside the other myriad problems wit this situation for the moment: 1. CGC tried very hard to tell Ghostzapper that he was indeed SOL. Had there been no CGC Mike to turn to, a costly trip through the legal system may have been his only other recourse. 2. As of now, Ghostzapper has $0 restitution in his pocket. He got jerked around once already, for all we know, CGC’s opening offer will be a free one year associate membership, or $200 in grading credit. I guess some people will always see the glass half empty but that's a choice and I choose not to. First, let me clarify that I've stated my opinion based on my own personal experience. I just don't post all my personal experiences on here with CGC, contrary to what some may think but I have LOTS of them. Ghostzapper messaged me as soon as he started this thread (we've dealt with each other over the years) and we've been talking in the background. So far he's reasonably content (obviously all things considered) with how this was handled, so I find it odd that the crowd isn't. Seriously, they could have just as easily have said sorry no can do. I've been shut out by businesses where they were in the wrong and there was literally no recourse left except legal, and who wants to go down that route? In regards to your ( 2.) point, it's probably best to let CGC and Ghostzapper sort this out to it's final conclusion and THEN comment on the results rather than putting the cart before the horse and quarterbacking the thing from our laptops in our underwear? (well, at least that was me last night ) This isn't Facebook. It's literally their front yard. Finally, we all understand how big corporations run and that customer service is a very disappointing thing in the internet age and that sometimes airing grievances publicly is the ONLY way to get someone to take notice. Do you think something's going to change based on what everyone already knows about how the world works? You can't strongarm any large business into accepting your value system. You can only speak with your mouth and your dollars to check something you don't like. It's one of the MAIN reasons I never wanted to do large volume in any industry I was in. I don't want to deal with the volume that comes with social media, bad actors, bad customers etc. This way I not only get to choose who I want to deal with but more importantly, I can also address every issue that may arise with much more attention and care than if I was dealing with zillions of people. I respect anyone's business choices but that's not for me. I want to do things in my life and not just wrangle with an unreasonable mass of people. I'm too old for that shizzle. When I said this was a win, win, it is literally the best case scenario UNDER ALL THE CIRCUMSTANCES as I understand them TO THIS POINT. CGC got caught with their pants down, CGC is going to be out financially for their mistake, Ghostzapper is on the road to being made whole, the shipping department learned a valuable lesson, everyone reading this thread learned valuable lessons. And just imagine if that missing magazine had resto on it, graded lower than expected or had some other thing go wrong? I just don't see the negative here. I'd be thrilled if it was me. And if anyone disagrees, as always I'm happy to change my opinion if they have a compelling point to make. Sorry to be so long winded, but I'm trying to make sure there are no misunderstandings in what I write. Your mileage may vary and I respect that.

Well, I just lost a very long post with this board software. You're all lucky that the CGC Gods are smiling on the rest of you.

Andrew, this is an example of a non-comprehensive view. If a book triples 3 years ago and then halves you're STILL ahead. Does anyone think the book is going to halve in value again?