MyNameIsLegion

@Phicks

Well, Matt pressed books for us before submitting them to CGC in 2006. If that was your first incorrect assumption I’d let it slide. Your Roy-splaining about the printing process is comical, as I’ve forgotten more about the printing process in the last 30 years than you presume to know by several orders of magnitude. Again, not your fault that because you’re into comics you’re not the SME on the methods of production you think you are. Lots of that on message boards and you’re hardly unique. But to compare printing on virgin paper on a printing press to the application of heat and moisture and pressure to a printed comic with the cover and staples and glue where applicable already assembled years or decades after its original production with little knowledge of the conditions the book was subject to in the intervening years is naive at best. The simple fact that some press-able defects are only temporarily ameliorated and need to be graded and slabbed in a timely manner before they revert to their original state of imperfection proves that pressing is indeed an artificial treatment of the comic that is pure trickery that is hardly benign. How many times are you willing to repress that book if it’s so benign? Its not Botox. Its wood pulp, it’s not going to get better with time, and you might have just shortened that time to pass it off as a higher grade. Assuming most of the Promise Books went through a cursory pressing, even as we speak some of those 9.4 and 9.6s are shrinking back to the 9.0 and 9.2s they always were. I’m hardly bitter though, I’ve never lost money on a slab. Nothing printed in the last 55 years was ever worth slabbing to begin with. What a colossal waste of money better spent on genuinely rare artifacts like comic art.

you said it wasn't money squeezing trickery and then proceeded to describe exactly that. Matt Nelson himself, the head of CGC, what did he do before that? Provided a service to pre-screen and press books. He charged a fee (part of the money squeezing) pressed the books (the trickery) at a time that there was much handwringing on these boards about disclosing pressing at all, network of disclosure or whatever it was called, and soon a clandestine practice was all the rage and it was a race to find books with money to be squeezed out of them quite literally with a t-shirt press. What did CGC do? They thought and thought, and studied, hemmed and hawed because they couldn't definitively determine if a book was pressed or not, so they gave up and leaned into it. If you can't beat'em join'em or in this case, hire'em to do it better for CGC and make it part of their service. Now CGC is reaping the benefits of the squeezing. no conflict of interests there eh? Sure, the verdict is still out what the long term impact of pressing will be. That Action #1 may be a brittle cracker in 20 year, but pray to god no one ever feels compelled to crack that slab ever again because there's only diminishing returns from here on out if you do and everyone knows it. I daresay no-one is ever going to crack those Promise Books unless they actually have a negative association as a whole for being over graded and a generic 9.6 might just be better if you are willing to gamble it's not a 9.2.

just take my money.

for $@0!

no, I don't think EVERYONE bought them on spec. But I do believe a great many were, more than most given the perfect storm of timing and money in the market. I also believe those that don't regard themselves as speculators bought more and spent more than they would have otherwise, caught up in the hype. That's just human nature. 290+ books is a pretty good sample size as a matter of fact. Pollsters would kill to get those kinds of numbers. NOBODY bid on this blindly without thinking about the eventual ROI. I say eventual quite deliberately as opposed to potential. Eventually all of them will be resold, most in the next 20 years. (I'd wager the median age of the buyers skews to the mid 50's or older.) Anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves and everyone else. Even if they don't sell it in their lifetime, their heirs will. But no one on the GA board is talking about it today now are they? And no one commented on MaterChief's post from Dec. 1st that MJY linked above. Nope, nothing to see here, let's stop talking about it.... Even some recent Original Comic art has been flipped for a loss recently - and original art was considered far more blue chip than slabbed comics, almost immune to market forces. The next 2 years are gonna be verrrrrry interesting. The question is, where are we now in the chart below? (I find this guy marginally annoying but I do like to FFWD to the graphs he shows and turn the sound down.)

umm, most of the last few years was crack, press, sub and flip to buy more to do the same, movie hype, slab and flip buy more books to hold and flip on the next movie hype, etc etc. Some, likely many. did it to fund their own personal keepers, but that's pretty fluid too- upgrades, sell the lower copy, etc. SA Keys and Bronze Movie hype are taking a 65%-90% hit as a result. Whoever was left holding the bag and didn't get out was hosed. All that extra cash flipping Ms. Marvel and Eternals drove up prices for GA and Pedigrees and high Census too. It's all going down, the question is how much. Those holding Promise Books have lost 30-60% of their value. They may never live to see that break even, which means yes, they won't keep up with inflation. 3 GA Pedigree 6 figure Batman books just took a 60+% hit. The GA board is eerily silent on this, because they DO NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS.

now a 64% loss. Ouch.

Gee, I wonder why....

#176 was the cliff. I was generally disappointed with #175, and felt that whole Jason Wyngarde story to be a big nothing-burger. I also felt that the Paul Smith run, in retrospect heralded a lot of bad 80's fashion that only got worse with JRjr and why I quit X-Men for a few years until Silvestri/Green. I"d peg #167, the return from space to earth and meeting the New Mutants to be the true leveling of the run before the onset of diminishing returns. It's the perfect jumping off point and my nostalgia for the run thereon is almost non-existent.

hey man, we got a buncha new one's when Mike started that I shared and campaigned for that have spruced up the joint considerably from the static list that hadn't changed in a decade!

@CGC Mike could we have this instead?

I'm only worth $75 bucks to CAF (just renewed this week) Maybe if we all pitched in $5 extra we could buy a one year ban for Los Bros. Crowd-funded banning, could be the next big thing.

I had Giordano ink this random Deadman pinup I had picked up years ago by Tom Morgan done in Neal Adams style. Giordano did a fine job.

Now that we have math, money and pop-culture in this thread where’s @delekkerste🧐 I need another “doomer” or more accurately Gen-axer

That’s a valid question, some things were not hobby’s that became collectible. Like MCM furniture or uranium glass, while stamps, coins, matchbooks, trains, those were hobby’s that were “pursued” for pleasure until they were collected for profit. Comics seem somewhere in the middle. They certainly have done better than old National Geographic magazines! It’s also hard to pinpoint because collecting is mostly a post-war sign of middle class affluence by and large and many things became hobby’s to pursue with disposable income in a relatively short time frame. Your age and interests relative to that era (Silent Generation, Greatest Generation, Boomer, old Gen X really make it fuzzy. My contention is that Gen X is the end of that contiguous shared experience.

this reminds me, when it come to tangible assets of course there is no guarantee they hold their value much less keep up with inflation. I frequently watch Antique Roadshow reruns that show the estimated value from a range of shows from 2005 -2018 and then they show the updated value for 2023. So many things have gone down or stayed flat, and and it they stayed flat from 2007, well you lost money due to inflation, about 3/4 in fact. My wife and I play the game of if it went up or down and by how much, and I'm probably right 75% of the time. The trend I see is mostly generational, as those items were of cultural or practical importance to one generation, they peak after 50-75 years and then they drop off. American Comics are well passed their shelf-life date. We've spent the last 25 years with a moribund medium of cross-overs, reboots, death and rebirth, re-hash, gender and race swaps, and 17 different series that have Infinity Gloves, Garters, Gauntlets, Gum-ball Machines, and Garden Gnomes. What filled that void? The little device in your pocket (no not that one, the other one) and a side order of Manga.

I'm not sure how to interpret this comment. It's because comics, via CGC have been so thoroughly commoditized new and existing collectors have been priced out to a large extent, while the hobby, and I do say hobby, we forget the emotional appeal of the comic was what originally assigned value to the eventual commodity you speak of is contracting rapidly in terms of creating new comics, new stores for comics, new readers, new future collectors. That's not sustainable in the long term. Sure, Bob makes Money, and if that's all you care about it, that's fine, but at some point you won't make as much, and you won't have a business to pass on to anyone, but hopefully you banked enough on the way down. But for many of your customers, many of the books you sold to them will not be worth as much, and they will get sold at a yard sale if they even make it that far. You will argue this point vehemently of course, but do you actually believe it to be true?

but seriously, yeah, reading most of the responses from many of you that appear to also be Gen-Xers we see things as they are, maybe a little on the glass empty side, but far closer to the truth of the matter. I'm not saying I'm gleeful or happy about it. We sell books at a few shows a year, and set up at OAF-Con, we used to do Comicpalooza when we had 30-40K books in our inventory. We've paired that down considerably in the last 10 years, and we have just finished a year of consignments with MCS that I've been pretty happy with, to move non-key books and we sold off a lot of filler to MCS that was taking up space that we were just never going to turn fast enough at a local show to make it worth hauling and storing. I've started the somewhat painful process of editing down my personal collection which is not terribly large at all, as I stopped actively buying comics 20+ years ago for myself and only collect original art. At the same time, in recent years I've processed by parents and grandparents "estates". That experience has really opened my eyes to how much of what we hold onto is of little to no value($) or utility to anyone else, and a bit of an emotional boat anchor to ourselves and family. don't be blinded by nostalgia. guilt, or the past. As a cohort, Gen-Xers are the very last of a kind, non-digital natives, and it is difficult to live in both worlds with objectivity. Everyone debates: "this generation is different, or this is a cycle, we all end up in the same place at a certain age, yadda yadda". No. This different. Millennials and Gen-Z are different animals from us and our parents. the old rules and assumptions do not apply. I don't need all these comics, records, DVD's, CDs, books, photos, that take up 75% of the space in my house that is non-furniture or kitchen appliances. It can all be digitized and consumed in a handful of devices not much bigger than a deck of cards. THIS IS UNPRECEDENTED in human history as generations transition through time. If I come to the uncomfortable truth that I don't need all this "stuff" (queue up the George Carlin routine on "stuff") well you can be damn sure the younger generations don't want it. they might like a few samples here and there as novel decorations, but they're not going to fill their shelves and closets and garage with it. They simply can't afford to. thanks for suffering my rambling doom-speech comrades!

Comics have contracted as a medium for the last 25 years. That's an indisputable fact, measured in terms of units sold, print runs, number of outlets for distribution, pay scale for creators, following much the same contraction of all printed periodicals. Most have folded, consolidated, or converted to some online or hybrid format. I specifically said Superheroes. They are a fraction of the market and a shadow of their past glory. People have been talking about comics dying on this forum for 20 years because that's exactly what's been happening. CGC and slabbing was a sign of that decay. The money shifted to the collectibility of the artifact, and not the entertainment value of the artifact itself. then it commoditized the graded plastic case, and the comic itself became an afterthought. Superhero comics largely dominate this market, this very niche market, Meanwhile, on the same forum boomers grouse about how NYCC should be called Anime-Con or Manga-Con given how much of the focus was not on American spandex heroes. That's where this has been headed for 20 years. Large corporations like TW and Disney bought the IP for Marvel and DC not because they want to be the comic book business. They couldn't care less. What made them attractive properties is their media licensing potential. Where else can you buy that much IP that cheaply to get an entire universe of characters and stories for pennies? No, authors or artists or families or royalties or expensive deals like Lucas for Star Wars or Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. Newsstand distribution died 15 years ago, Direct sales outlets are drying up, what few brick and mortar bookstores still exit don't' carry comics. They carry Manga. Does anyone truly believe superhero comics can have an indefinite run? Because a relative few select copies in certain grades with certain serial number or pedigrees have sold as collectibles? Ask yourself, with any other collecting niche in the last 75 years, how many remain after their original purpose, utility, or entertainment value has expired or contracted. Collectibility is a function or nostalgia. Nostalgia is function of time and demographics and culture. BLB, Pulps, Westerns, Trains, Davey Crocket Coon-skin caps, Cap Guns, The Lone Ranger, Tarzan, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse, Plastic models, stamps, Hot Wheels, Captain Action, The Phantom, the Shadow, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Classics Illustrated, Bottle Caps, Matchbooks, The Science Fiction Book Club, Arrow Heads, Coins, Rick Blaine, Tom Corbett, Tom Swift, Li'l Orphan Annie, Shirley Temple, The Green Hornet, Blondie (Not DH!), most comics strips period. all these things are fading or gone. They were produced over 50 years ago, used and consumed, enjoyed and then remembered fondly by their fans and sought after for a time (See Rule of 25) Superheroes and related comics enjoyed a pretty good run to the extent that they could expand into other media like Radio, TV, Toys, Records, Books, etc. Big Budget Movies was the biggest, most lucrative prize of all, and we got that in the last 20 years. Now the bloom has faded, and that's reflected in the tanking SA and BA slabbed keys market. Disney is pulling back the number of shows and size of budgets because the ROI is not there. that's not show business folks, that's just business period. People are ready for something else. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Taylor Swift, whatever. In the meantime, if you think that AF#15 in 3.5 is still gonna be worth 35k in 15 years, well good luck. If it is, you just lost about the same amount.