FF Price Surge....what will the Guide say?

[fantastic_four]

But it this wasn't the prevailing behavior of buyers and sellers, at least to my recollection.

 

Yea...because there haven't been enough NM GA/SA books for the prevailing number of buyers and sellers to ever have a chance to start that trend in a widespread way to bring it into the vein of popular knowledge as a common occurrence. GA/SA in NM are barely out there to be found.

 

 

I believe this all started with your contention that the OS Guide should have seen the latest 'wave' of over-guide prices coming years ago. I still contend that very few people saw this trend coming...many of those who would claim now to have seen it coming five years ago are simply rewriting history to suit their present circumstances.

 

The Guide shouldn't have seen the latest extremely high multiples, no, probably not--certainly he couldn't have forseen the volume which have sold for multiples the last few years. It's possible the Internet has influenced that as well, and there's no easy historical comparison to the effect it has had. I do expect Bob, Gerber, Gary Carter, and the gang knew there was a chance it might happen since it happened in cards and coins and they had all been talking about wanting certification in their publications for over a decade since those other hobbies had it.

 

However, they did know it went for more than guide. Not the same multiples we see today, but they knew the guide was low. And they knew many books that are actually VF were being sold as NM and that this tendency for a seller to overgrade made it difficult to determine what the real market value of an uncommon NM comic really was.

 

Wait, something just occurred to me...could that be the reason the NM price column has always been low? There was no way to really tell what was NM and what wasn't, so he hedged his bets? Not just to save the ignorant masses from panicing when they see the peaks and valleys, but also because the margin of error in grading created enough uncertainty to accurately determine the value of an uncommon NM comic? So instead of over-reporting the prices, he under-reported in case people were overpaying for restored or overgraded books? Something's making sense there all of a sudden, let me dwell on that a few days...

[lou_fine]

I remember having to pay over guide for most of my GA books back in the late 80's and early 90's during a supposedly down market period.

 

What planet were you living on then?

 

1988-1993 was the period where prices rose the most (yes, even more than CGC), and marked the transition from "1st issue speculation" to the current "first apprearances/key issues madness" environment we have now.

 

The time to compare would be 1980-86 and 1995-97 or so, if you're talking about "down times" for back issues.

 

JC;

 

Living on the same planet as you, but probably with just a different viewpoint. I guess I should have qualify my statement by saying that it was a down period for the Golden Age market during the late 80's and early 90's.

 

Yes, you are exactly correct in saying that 1988-93 was a hot period for comics from the Silver Age and Modern independents such as Valiants. The GA market lag the other parts of the comic book market and had their massive catch-up period from 1994-96. Like the stock market, not all sectors are generally hot at the same time. The trick is to buy when your particular sector is down.

 

For example, I was able to purchase Mile Highs in the late 80's for only 2X guide, although I must admit none of these were key character books. I was also able to pick up high grade pedigree copies of key books such as All-Select #1, Cap #3, Wonderworld Comics #3 for less than 1.5 guide during 1991/92. The funny thing is that I think some of the dealers were busy selling off their GA books so that they could use the money to wheel & deal in hot books such as Harbinger #1 and Rai #4 at around a hundred dollars a copy.

 

I thought my pedigree copy of Wonderworld #3 at $1,250 and All-Select #1 at $1,650 was a much better deal. No idea where Harbinger #1 and Rai #4 is right now, although both WW #3 and AS #1 sits around the $10K range in guide now. Actually, the GA market was so hot in 1995 that a couple of East Coast dealers were offering me $10K for my copy of All-Select #1 when it was guiding for only $2,200 at the time. Still thought they was crazy when they said that they had buyers lined up at $15K. Would have sold it then except that I was not willing to use the money to buy other GA books at such high prices, especially since I consider All-Select #1 to be the classic Shomburg Timely cover.

 

Actually, the current market in 2003 reminds me a bit of the early 90's. This time the Silver Age and Bronze Age markets are red hot along with the Modern CGC 9.8's+ and the GA market relatively quiet. It wouldn't surprised me at all if you see a similar catch-up period for the GA books within the next few years.

[garthgantu]

Wait, something just occurred to me...could that be the reason the NM price column has always been low? There was no way to really tell what was NM and what wasn't, so he hedged his bets? Not just to save the ignorant masses from panicing when they see the peaks and valleys, but also because the margin of error in grading created enough uncertainty to accurately determine the value of an uncommon NM comic? So instead of over-reporting the prices, he under-reported in case people were overpaying for restored or overgraded books? Something's making sense there all of a sudden, let me dwell on that a few days...

 

Let us know when you've decided whether the OS staff is a bunch of ostriches, foxes, or wise old owls....I'd certainly prefer to think of Overstreet as looking out for the interests of the average collector rather than helping fuel "the man's" money-minting machine...

[joe_collector]

Actually, the current market in 2003 reminds me a bit of the early 90's. This time the Silver Age and Bronze Age markets are red hot along with the Modern CGC 9.8's+ and the GA market relatively quiet. It wouldn't surprised me at all if you see a similar catch-up period for the GA books within the next few years.

 

You are likely correct, as my motto is "buy what you like, and buy where they ain't". This is especially true as "comic book crashes" are similar to stock market ones, where the burned gravitate back to the "blue chip" or safer (GA) investments.

 

Anyone who follows the herd from one overvalued area to another is certain to get burned.

[fantastic_four]

This is especially true as "comic book crashes" are similar to stock market ones, where the burned gravitate back to the "blue chip" or safer (GA) investments.

 

Does anyone know how the Silver Age market changed after the Modern books decreased around 1993? I've heard one or two people say it remained strong, but I haven't heard it enough to be sure yet.

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

Does anyone know how the Silver Age market changed after the Modern books decreased around 1993? I've heard one or two people say it remained strong, but I haven't heard it enough to be sure yet.

 

Silver was still strong, and Gold was beginning to warm up after a long slumber. Wasn't 1993 the year of the record-setting White Mountain AF # 15 and FF # 1 sales at auction? I think many speculators woke up to the fact that old books were far better investments then the Valiant and Death of Superman garbage.

 

 

[fantastic_four]

Silver was still strong, and Gold was beginning to warm up after a long slumber. Wasn't 1993 the year of the record-setting White Mountain AF # 15 and FF # 1 sales at auction?

 

Yea it was...I was just thumbing through the June 1993 Sotheby's last night and looking at those. The NM AF 15 sold for $39,100, the VF/NM FF #1 sold for $27,600, and interestingly an unpedigreed VF+ (one grade of 81, another of 90) Spidey #1 sold for $9,890. DEFINITE multiples of guide there, with the unpedigreed Spidey 1 being a surprise...it wouldn't sell for significantly more than that figure even today, and even less if CGC gave it an 8.0.

 

Overstreet guide NM prices for the three books in 1993 were $7,000, $7,200, and $6800; that's about 6 times guide on the AF15, 5 times guide (adjusting a bit since it's lower than NM) on the FF1, and at least double if not triple or quadruple guide on the Spidey #1. Amazingly, the 1994 Overstreet prices shot WAY up to $20,000, $12,000, and $13,500! That looks to me like Overstreet responded directly to what the market was doing after the Sotheby's sales...could it be he later felt he made a mistake with those and that's why he's been slow to raise the prices once CGC drove the market nuts? I wonder how the Silver market was from 1994 to 1999? I can't remember--didn't he actually lower the price on AF15 or Spidey 1 sometime in the late 1990s, something he rarely does? I seem to remember reading some text on that in one of the Guides, can't remember which one.

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

DEFINITE multiples of guide there, with the unpedigreed Spidey 1 being a surprise...it wouldn't sell for significantly more than that figure even today, and even less if CGC gave it an 8.0.

 

This can't be..don't you know that CGC brought multiples to the marketplace?

 

Seriously, as for the market during 1994-1998, I was only on the outskirts, but Gold became red hot and silver did cool a little (just a little though).

[cvttrdr1-migration]

While your point comparing collectibles is mostly valid,i've worked in the market 25 yrs now,i'll point out one major difference.In the stock market,there are always going to be some stocks that people are willing to gravitate to in bad times,MSFT,IBM,JNJ to name a few,theres also the issue of alternate investments,i.e.,the bond market,currencies,commodities.Unless i thought i could sell my comics and go into coins or stamps or even pez dispensers and protect my money until the time came along to switch back into comics in something resembling a fair and orderly manner,which i don't believe is possible,then i'll just continue in comics and wait for things to get better after a downturn. The early 90's was a speculative bubble in collectibles with companies issuing anything they could as fast as they could. Then,people bought in quantity for speculation. I'd bet a pretty large quantity of books went unread,unlike GA or early SA comics.Cards were another area of rampant speculation. How many Shaq rookies did someone need anyway?

[lou_fine]

Overstreet guide NM prices for the three books in 1993 were $7,000, $7,200, and $6800; that's about 6 times guide on the AF15, 5 times guide (adjusting a bit since it's lower than NM) on the FF1, and at least double if not triple or quadruple guide on the Spidey #1. Amazingly, the 1994 Overstreet prices shot WAY up to $20,000, $12,000, and $13,500! That looks to me like Overstreet responded directly to what the market was doing after the Sotheby's sales...could it be he later felt he made a mistake with those and that's why he's been slow to raise the prices once CGC drove the market nuts? I wonder how the Silver market was from 1994 to 1999? I can't remember--didn't he actually lower the price on AF15 or Spidey 1 sometime in the late 1990s, something he rarely does? I seem to remember reading some text on that in one of the Guides, can't remember which one.

 

Remember, what may have seem like a big jump from 1993 to 1994 should be tempered by the fact that Overstreet was still doing MONTHLY Silver Age updates during this period. So what may seem like one big jump was actually made up of twelve smaller incremental increases in price. The same thing happened to the Golden Age books when Overstreet started doing quarterly updates for Gold back around 1994 - 96. It's hard sometimes to tell what came first, the chicken or the egg. In other words, was OS reacting more to the market or was the market reacting to the increased frequency of the updates. Probably a bit of both.

 

Went back and looked at the old OS guides. Basically SA sat without making any moves from 1996 through to 2000. The 1996 OS prices for AF #15, Showcase #4, AS #1, and FF #1 were $27,000; $25,000; $19,000; & $18,000. The 2000 OS prices for the same books were $25,000; $25,000; $18,000; & $19,000. So basically prices sat and did nothing for a 4-year period until CGC and Greg Manning (predecessor to Heritage) came along in 2000. The 2001 OS prices for the same books took a big jump to $35,000; $32,000; $25,000; and $24,000.

 

Will this pricing history serve as a portent of what is to come?

[supapimp]

so is this a record price for FF 16 CGC 9.2 CR/OW ?

[murph0]

Well using a few people's idea of what C-OW paged copies should go for (did I hear someone say they should only be worth a fraction of OW copies??) it definately would be

 

Brian

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

I don't know about one with CRM/OW....but Bob's # 16 in 9.2 (OW/W) disappeared off his website about a week ago...and it was priced at $1,750.

 

Frankly, that copy on eBay didn't look too bad (bright colors, no evidence of tanning, etc.), and I wish I could've brought myself to bust out the credit card. But, I was a good boy.

 

I believe Clobberintime bought a similar copy with CRM/OW pages for somewhere near $1,200 earlier this year.

[supapimp]

i thought that copy on eBay was sweet! the corners were sharp and i couldn't even really see any spine stress on the FC either. maybe a good candidate for a resub a few months down the line.

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

the corners were sharp and i couldn't even really see any spine stress on the FC either.

 

The front appeared nice, but it was miscut, and the edges on the back cover had some overhang damange (top and bottom I believe).

[supapimp]

the corners were sharp and i couldn't even really see any spine stress on the FC either.

 

The front appeared nice, but it was miscut, and the edges on the back cover had some overhang damange (top and bottom I believe).

 

i didn't checkout the BC, but the overhang was a topic of conversation here earlier today. overhang usually equals no TRIMMING.

[fantastic_four]

so is this a record price for FF 16 CGC 9.2 CR/OW ?

 

Yes, at least at public auction. Clobberintime paid $1011 for his in January 2003; it also had cream/offwhite pages. Since a 9.0 offwhite copy of #16 just sold a month ago for $989, I would have to assume the cream pages affected the final price on both of these 9.2 copies.

 

Mark Wilson sold a CGC 9.2 copy on ebay over two years ago for somewhere around $800 or so, but that copy had cream/offwhite pages and a label note of "manufactured with one staple only." When I used buy-it-now on his CGC 9.2 copy of #22, he offered the #16 to me directly for $625...wish I woulda taken it, but ah well, I thought that between the cream pages and the missing staple it wasn't worth full market value, and at the time, I had no idea what market value was for that issue since you rarely see it for sale. I did know he had bought it from All-Star auctions in mid-2001 for $533, and I think that knowledge affected my decision not to buy it.

 

Three CGC 9.2 copies in the history of e-bay might not sound like a lot...but it sure is compared to most other FF issues in that same range!!! It's starting to almost seem COMMON compared to the rest!

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

It's starting to almost seem COMMON compared to the rest!

 

Agreed. That's one of the reasons I held off bidding on the copy yesterday; my ship will one day come in on that issue!

 

Of course, betting against that hth-1977 guy was another good reason to steer clear.

[fantastic_four]

Agreed. That's one of the reasons I held off bidding on the copy yesterday; my ship will one day come in on that issue!

 

On the other hand, other issues have seemed common in the past as measured by availability from national dealers and public auction, but later they dried up entirely. Best example I can think of is #14--in 2001, about 8 to 10 were up for sale in 9.0 or better. I was holding out for 9.0s to fall to no more than 1.5x guide before I bit on that issue, and because of that, I missed the boat! This year, NONE, except the one on Bob's site. Last year, almost none. Guess they're all locked up in collections now.

 

Since from late 2000 to early 2002 I almost never saw #16 up for sale, it's entirely likely the available supply may now be gone for another 6-18 months...guess we'll see!

[joe_collector]

The minute the FF movie was formally announced as "in production" you could almost hear potential sellers sliding their CGC copies back in the box.