Please educate me on the mid-ninties comic crash

[ft88]

Eclipso 1 came out with that stupid purple gem cover and that's when I hung up my comic book spurs for a decade.

 

Ed

[MisterX]

Thanks, everyone!

 

So, I'm getting the impression that the Bronze Age had yet to really take off as far as demand went (with the perennial exceptions of the Blue Chip titles, I suppose), while GA and SA books sold steadily to die-hard collectors at OSPG prices. Is that right? Or were dealers forced to discount books to sell them in a "ghost-town" environment?

 

Personally, I wasn't really interested in collecting SA and BA back issues until fairly recently, even though I've been reading and collecting comics for nearly twenty-seven years.

[G.A.tor]

wait a minute.....wait just one derned minute.... there has been a comics crash

[VintageComics]

wait a minute.....wait just one derned minute.... there has been a comics crash

 

Yeah, they crashed into your living room and can't get out.

 

 

[Rommin]

Eclipso 1 came out with that stupid purple gem cover and that's when I hung up my comic book spurs for a decade.

 

Ed

 

Ugh...I remember that one.

[r100comics]

The UK had a comic book price guide around that time, run by a guy who owned a large postal comic selling company, think they called themselves Stateside Comics. They had a big plan to put a comic shop in every virgin music shop. around the mid 1990s the price guide stopped, the company disappeared & the virgin comic stores never happened.

 

Well, apart from the eight that they were running, obviously.

 

And that would be Duncan McAlpine, who now writes for the BBC. A bit more lucrative, I think. He's also got one of the most sublime GA collections anywhere.

 

One of the reasons why the British price guide ceased was that it became increasingly redundant with more and more folks shopping direct with the US and the whole notion of ND, and the premium prices paid over surrounding issues, became moot.

 

Duncan bought the Windy City Batman 1 from me. NICE book!

 

Duncan once told me he owned an unrestored Detective Comics #27 around F+ / VF-.

[1koko]

The UK had a comic book price guide around that time, run by a guy who owned a large postal comic selling company, think they called themselves Stateside Comics. They had a big plan to put a comic shop in every virgin music shop. around the mid 1990s the price guide stopped, the company disappeared & the virgin comic stores never happened.

 

Well, apart from the eight that they were running, obviously.

 

And that would be Duncan McAlpine, who now writes for the BBC. A bit more lucrative, I think. He's also got one of the most sublime GA collections anywhere.

 

One of the reasons why the British price guide ceased was that it became increasingly redundant with more and more folks shopping direct with the US and the whole notion of ND, and the premium prices paid over surrounding issues, became moot.

 

Duncan bought the Windy City Batman 1 from me. NICE book!

 

Duncan once told me he owned an unrestored Detective Comics #27 around F+ / VF-.

 

[tth2]

So, I'm getting the impression that the Bronze Age had yet to really take off as far as demand went (with the perennial exceptions of the Blue Chip titles, I suppose), while GA and SA books sold steadily to die-hard collectors at OSPG prices. Is that right? Or were dealers forced to discount books to sell them in a "ghost-town" environment?

No, BA had already taken off in the early 90s and really never looked back. My recollection is that HG copies never really softened when SA did during the 1995-1999 period. Of course, this was just going from dirt cheap to just cheap (although at the time the prices being charged for BA keys seemed outrageous). I don't think anyone could have foreseen the explosion in BA prices after CGC, particularly in the last few years for the uber-HG books. Certainly Dan Greenhalgh didn't, which is why he dumped most of the Winnipeg BAs on Doug Schmell in the mid-90s for next to nothing because he couldn't be bothered to grade and sort them.

 

I can't really speak for GA, as I didn't follow the market at the time. SA softened during the 1995-1999 timeframe, but having said that, uber-HG copies could still command more than Guide. The Mass books were priced well above Guide, as were the PCs, which sold like hotcakes once the quality was confirmed. When Western Penn copies came on the market every now and then, they sold quickly at above guide.

[VintageComics]

So, I'm getting the impression that the Bronze Age had yet to really take off as far as demand went (with the perennial exceptions of the Blue Chip titles, I suppose), while GA and SA books sold steadily to die-hard collectors at OSPG prices. Is that right? Or were dealers forced to discount books to sell them in a "ghost-town" environment?

No, BA had already taken off in the early 90s and really never looked back. My recollection is that HG copies never really softened when SA did during the 1995-1999 period. Of course, this was just going from dirt cheap to just cheap (although at the time the prices being charged for BA keys seemed outrageous). I don't think anyone could have foreseen the explosion in BA prices after CGC, particularly in the last few years for the uber-HG books. Certainly Dan Greenhalgh didn't, which is why he dumped most of the Winnipeg BAs on Doug Schmell in the mid-90s for next to nothing because he couldn't be bothered to grade and sort them.

 

I can't really speak for GA, as I didn't follow the market at the time. SA softened during the 1995-1999 timeframe, but having said that, uber-HG copies could still command more than Guide. The Mass books were priced well above Guide, as were the PCs, which sold like hotcakes once the quality was confirmed. When Western Penn copies came on the market every now and then, they sold quickly at above guide.

 

Another important point that you noted Tim is that high grade vintage books always seemed to fetch over Guide prices. Even non ped books would fetch strong money in pre CGC days if they were true high grade books.

 

(thumbs u

[Not*Sure*]

I just couldn't get over some people's excitement about that eclipso cover. I would be like "Genuine Plastic Gem?" C'mon..genuine plastic? I forget which issue had the bullet hole cover that was also a big speculative sales leader in my area. "Can you get me 20 of them bullet hole tyvek covers?"

[Flaming_Telepath]

The UK had a comic book price guide around that time, run by a guy who owned a large postal comic selling company, think they called themselves Stateside Comics. They had a big plan to put a comic shop in every virgin music shop. around the mid 1990s the price guide stopped, the company disappeared & the virgin comic stores never happened.

 

Well, apart from the eight that they were running, obviously.

 

And that would be Duncan McAlpine, who now writes for the BBC. A bit more lucrative, I think. He's also got one of the most sublime GA collections anywhere.

 

One of the reasons why the British price guide ceased was that it became increasingly redundant with more and more folks shopping direct with the US and the whole notion of ND, and the premium prices paid over surrounding issues, became moot.

 

Duncan bought the Windy City Batman 1 from me. NICE book!

 

Duncan once told me he owned an unrestored Detective Comics #27 around F+ / VF-.

 

He did. (thumbs u

 

Amongst a few other copies.

[Wrightson fan]

I like to think the proliferation of horrible "bad girl" books played somewhat of a part in the debacle that was the 90's new book market.

[the blob]

while GA and SA books sold steadily to die-hard collectors at OSPG prices. Is that right? Or were dealers forced to discount books to sell them in a "ghost-town" environment?

-----------------

 

no, but "half-off" was not quite as rampant. honestly, i don't remember it being such a ghost town at the cons in NYC. yes, i do remember dealers being very willing to work with you if you were dropping a few hundred at their table. also, on the sharper stuff, cgc standards had not come into play, so yeah, you had a lot of VF books being marked as NM and then after a "discount" perhaps being sold at VF prices.

[the blob]

The UK had a comic book price guide around that time, run by a guy who owned a large postal comic selling company, think they called themselves Stateside Comics. They had a big plan to put a comic shop in every virgin music shop. around the mid 1990s the price guide stopped, the company disappeared & the virgin comic stores never happened.

 

Well, apart from the eight that they were running, obviously.

 

While at university in early nineties I used to buy back issues and moderns from the Virgin store in Nottingham.

 

Had quite a reasonable selection and I thought it was quite a clever way to make comics easily available to the teen market.

 

the virgin store near me in NYC sold new comics too.

[alwaysbronze]

same thing happened to sports cards

[the blob]

honestly, i think one big problem was trying to price comics as collectibles. clearly there was a premium being added to the price, i don't think their prices doubled in the years between 75 cent cover prices and $1.50 cover prices (and what was Image's excuse for high cover prices?).... but once these new comics were not really considered collectibles (which became pretty apparent in around 1995-1996), the comic cos kept that pricing premium in there and began losing more buyers/readers. not to mention the talent got big pay increases based on million copy print-runs that flowed from "collectibility" and it's hard to push down wages once they've been established.

 

seriously, didn't jeff bagley or some third stringer get paid 6 figures to do a robin mini-series or something?

 

mind you, i'm not against talent getting paid if they increase sales.

[Mio]

I think most of the comics printed then had lousy stories. There were more speculators and 'collectors' of variants buying multiple copies and I don't think many dedicated readers came out of it. Without a real base of readers, and when speculators realized their books were worthless, things fell apart... That's what it looked like to me, anyway.

[aardvark88]

There was 1 summer around 1991 or 1992 when you could not give GA away at SDCC. Everyone and his neighbor just wanted SA which was going up every month in Comics Value Monthly, bi-monthly Ostreet Updates and later Wizard mag Valiant overhype.

[Bronty]

yeah I remember that time well.... the overstreet bi-monthly update era Where the early silver all had "+ H" beside them. The "H" was for "hot"

[Not*Sure*]

There was 1 summer around 1991 or 1992 when you could not give GA away at SDCC. Everyone and his neighbor just wanted SA which was going up every month in Comics Value Monthly, bi-monthly Ostreet Updates and later Wizard mag Valiant overhype.

Somewhere around here I have a SDCC Tshirt from that year. For volunteers "No pay all glory" or something like that. Yes the SDCC is not the quiet little show any more. I knew the fun was over when I saw the line for people to see Halle Berry one year..*blah* I want to go to see artists and maybe a few old comic book related TV /movie stars. I do NOT want to wait in line for three hours to meet some A list celeb.