Please educate me on the mid-ninties comic crash

[valiantman]

(I think Bloodshot 6 was the tipping point. It was released and a rumor went around that a brand new Valiant character appeared there, which didnt pan out. )

 

That's correct... Bloodshot 6 and 7 were exactly six months after Superman #75,

which brought tons of people to comics who had no possible chance of hanging around.

 

Valiant is really two different discussions... "with Jim Shooter, pre-1993" and "without Jim Shooter, 1993 and later".

 

As others have mentioned, the era with Jim Shooter was known for quality books and print runs under 100K.

When Jim Shooter left, you had even the "worst selling" Valiant titles with print runs over 250K.

Cases of "investment" 1993 books sat in the back room of comic shops.

 

Bloodshot 6 and 7 were the first appearances of Ninjak, who got his own title a little later,

but it was already "too late" to jump on the Valiant bandwagon.

 

Superman #75 and Bloodshot #1 came out on the same day...

most of these discussions generally point to what the industry was like

before and after that one day, not just for D.C., but for everyone.

You can generally use that single day to divide Valiant as well.

 

November 18, 1992.

[slym2none]

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.

 

And then Darkhawk stole that idea, ripped it right off from DC.

 

Anyone remember the Malibu comic with the "bullet hole" in it? That could have been neat, had it been an actual bullet hole...

 

 

 

 

-slym

[kevnaminute]

Still have my copy of Eclipso somewhere....

[Ogami]

(I think Bloodshot 6 was the tipping point. It was released and a rumor went around that a brand new Valiant character appeared there, which didnt pan out. )

 

That's correct... Bloodshot 6 and 7 were exactly six months after Superman #75,

which brought tons of people to comics who had no possible chance of hanging around.

 

Valiant is really two different discussions... "with Jim Shooter, pre-1993" and "without Jim Shooter, 1993 and later".

 

As others have mentioned, the era with Jim Shooter was known for quality books and print runs under 100K.

When Jim Shooter left, you had even the "worst selling" Valiant titles with print runs over 250K.

Cases of "investment" 1993 books sat in the back room of comic shops.

 

Bloodshot 6 and 7 were the first appearances of Ninjak, who got his own title a little later,

but it was already "too late" to jump on the Valiant bandwagon.

 

Superman #75 and Bloodshot #1 came out on the same day...

most of these discussions generally point to what the industry was like

before and after that one day, not just for D.C., but for everyone.

You can generally use that single day to divide Valiant as well.

 

November 18, 1992.

 

Well said. And of course by then, customer fatigue had already set in over Spider-Man 1 and X-Men 1 (both with 1 million plus runs) just 12-18 months earlier.

[1Cool]

I tend to think that the near complete collapse of comic books as a collectible (comic shops offering people a low flat rate on a comic book box full of book - you pick the books) had to be contibuted to E-Bay. People point to the over-production of books (which did not help) but the lower print run books took a complete dive along with the over-produced ones. Once people found they could only get $1 on e-bay after spending $3 at their comic shop a month earlier - the pyramid came down. Take away e-bay and go back to the local comic shop format with wizard hyping everything under the sun - the gravy train would have gone on for a while.

[1Cool]

I remember walking into my LCS after buying a nice run of current X-Men books for $0.20/book and asking the owner how he can compete with these prices. he shook his head and muttered soming about E-Bay being the end of his business. I think the poor guy went under a year later. This was in 1999 or so.

[valiantman]

I tend to think that the near complete collapse of comic books as a collectible (comic shops offering people a low flat rate on a comic book box full of book - you pick the books) had to be contibuted to E-Bay. People point to the over-production of books (which did not help) but the lower print run books took a complete dive along with the over-produced ones. Once people found they could only get $1 on e-bay after spending $3 at their comic shop a month earlier - the pyramid came down. Take away e-bay and go back to the local comic shop format with wizard hyping everything under the sun - the gravy train would have gone on for a while.

I remember walking into my LCS after buying a nice run of current X-Men books for $0.20/book and asking the owner how he can compete with these prices. he shook his head and muttered soming about E-Bay being the end of his business. I think the poor guy went under a year later. This was in 1999 or so.

 

That's pretty late... 1999... I believe most guys would put the "crash"

in the 1994 to 1995 timeframe...with the rampant problems occuring in 1993.

Too early for an EBay influence.

 

I agree that EBay has had a huge impact on the "speculation factor" for all collectibles, though.

Once the "initial hype" wears off, EBay quickly corrects any overspending that may be occurring for collectibles...

far quicker than the pre-internet market.

[the blob]

the crash had already occurred by 1999, but that ebay scenario described killed off a bunch more comic shops that had been able to survive. i know my friend was still making enough money in 1998, but by 1999 ebay was sucking away his back issue business (and, as noted, it wasn't purely on price..he told me once how one of his customers was so thrilled to have bought some run for 75 cents a book and, basically, the same books were sitting in his 25 and 50 cent boxes already) and that was what broke the camel's back. cutting his sales in half probably cost him another $200-300 a week and that was it.

[MrBedrock]

I tend to think that the near complete collapse of comic books as a collectible (comic shops offering people a low flat rate on a comic book box full of book - you pick the books) had to be contibuted to E-Bay. People point to the over-production of books (which did not help) but the lower print run books took a complete dive along with the over-produced ones. Once people found they could only get $1 on e-bay after spending $3 at their comic shop a month earlier - the pyramid came down. Take away e-bay and go back to the local comic shop format with wizard hyping everything under the sun - the gravy train would have gone on for a while.

I remember walking into my LCS after buying a nice run of current X-Men books for $0.20/book and asking the owner how he can compete with these prices. he shook his head and muttered soming about E-Bay being the end of his business. I think the poor guy went under a year later. This was in 1999 or so.

 

That's pretty late... 1999... I believe most guys would put the "crash"

in the 1994 to 1995 timeframe...with the rampant problems occuring in 1993.

Too early for an EBay influence.

 

I agree that EBay has had a huge impact on the "speculation factor" for all collectibles, though.

Once the "initial hype" wears off, EBay quickly corrects any overspending that may be occurring for collectibles...

far quicker than the pre-internet market.

eBay has had exactly zero influence on my stores' retail new comic sales.

But we have never catered to new issue speculators. If someone comes in and asks for investment advice it is very hard to, with a straight face, point them to the new issue rack when there are golden age and silver age books in the shop. Some folks still want to dump their dough into new books with the hope that their kids' college tuition will be paid for. But those people are generally too impatient and/or unaware to even use a computer, much less eBay.

[the blob]

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.

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

 

I did not get back into comics in a substantive way until 1993, so, luckily, I basically missed the bulk of the speculation and saw the start of the aftermath and never got caught up in the hype of new books, though I did get into SA and cheap BA, which is what I enjoyed previously when I collected.

 

The question is what happened with GA, etc. after the crash and, honestly, I think people started viewing it as a much more solid collectible than the new stuff for obvious reasons.

[the blob]

eBay has had exactly zero influence on my stores' retail new comic sales.

But we have never catered to new issue speculators.

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

 

how the heck do you know if you're losing potential sales to people who say "F-it, I'll pick these up for 25 cents each next year on ebay"?

 

While I don't think that way re: ebay, I certainly think that way in terms of the likelihood that I will see a lot of those rack books in the dollar (or less) box at shops or local shows and, to a certain extent, ebay has helped influence that (of course, those boxes existed before ebay, so maybe not)

[sckao]

eBay has had exactly zero influence on my stores' retail new comic sales.

But we have never catered to new issue speculators.

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

 

how the heck do you know if you're losing potential sales to people who say "F-it, I'll pick these up for 25 cents each next year on ebay"?

 

While I don't think that way re: ebay, I certainly think that way in terms of the likelihood that I will see a lot of those rack books in the dollar (or less) box at shops or local shows and, to a certain extent, ebay has helped influence that (of course, those boxes existed before ebay, so maybe not)

 

Uh.. He probably doesn't care about those potential sales per se... He's probably looking at his month to month totals (and by year). Remember, comic retailers have to order in advance so they're basically guessing each month based on that month's sales and previous months' sales. (And if there's a gimmick, special anniversary issue, or whatnot.)

 

I'd say most people who buy new issues monthly tend to want to READ those issues ASAP. Otherwise, they'd wait for the TPB or for it to appear on eBay (As noted.)

 

READ vs SPECULATE

 

 

 

[the blob]

i buy out of the dollar box with a goal of reading a lot of this stuff. speculating on dollar box moderns is sort of a waste of time. i figure on a good day I might be able to re-sell them for what I paid after having had the pleasure of reading them. personally, while i'm not big on TPBs (and paying almost cover price of the individual comics for a reprint), I do like to read comics in 6 - 12 month chunks at a time if there's a story arc in question. ok, i did buy a few of the fables TPBs and the Watchmen one.

 

sure, his month-to-month sales are probably as good or better than 1999/2000 and the start of ebay, but that was a bottom for the new comic market anyway. i have no doubt that the ability to buy a run on ebay for well under cover price most of the time has a negative impact of comic shop sales. how much of that reader market is impacted? i have no idea. i guess that yeah, the minority are like me and do not have to read things ASAP as they come out.

[MrBedrock]

how the heck do you know if you're losing potential sales to people who say "F-it, I'll pick these up for 25 cents each next year on ebay"?

 

I consider new comic sales as new issues sold for full price within a two month window of publication. Anyone who is willing to wait until a comic shows up on eBay for .25 probably wasn't buying new off the rack to begin with. I have never, (really, never) had someone say "cancel my subscription box, I'm buying on eBay now." In fact I have never had someone come in and look at the new issue racks and say, "darn, I already got that on eBay."

[tth2]

I tend to think that the near complete collapse of comic books as a collectible (comic shops offering people a low flat rate on a comic book box full of book - you pick the books) had to be contibuted to E-Bay. People point to the over-production of books (which did not help) but the lower print run books took a complete dive along with the over-produced ones. Once people found they could only get $1 on e-bay after spending $3 at their comic shop a month earlier - the pyramid came down. Take away e-bay and go back to the local comic shop format with wizard hyping everything under the sun - the gravy train would have gone on for a while.

I remember walking into my LCS after buying a nice run of current X-Men books for $0.20/book and asking the owner how he can compete with these prices. he shook his head and muttered soming about E-Bay being the end of his business. I think the poor guy went under a year later. This was in 1999 or so.

 

That's pretty late... 1999... I believe most guys would put the "crash"

in the 1994 to 1995 timeframe...with the rampant problems occuring in 1993.

Too early for an EBay influence.

 

I agree that EBay has had a huge impact on the "speculation factor" for all collectibles, though.

Once the "initial hype" wears off, EBay quickly corrects any overspending that may be occurring for collectibles...

far quicker than the pre-internet market.

eBay definitely came well after the crash had already happened. You didn't need eBay or the internet to tell you that the so-called hot books were worthless. All you had to do was hang around any LCS and see some "smart investors" come in and try to sell their "hot books" to the LCS, and the owner wouldn't take them at any price, let alone the Wizard price that the investors were asking for.

[joe_collector]

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?

 

Nope, overall prices dropped considerably through all Ages, and demand fell considerably. Once the heat was off the hobby, a lot of $$$ fled for the hills, especially the specs and Johnny Come Lately's.

 

But that said, a premium copy of a key issue could still sell for a very good price, but overall prices were lower and continued to drop into 1998-99. Even many keys were dropping by that point...

 

... which is when the hobby powers-that-be concocted the idea of graded comics and CGC, as a method of extending its lifespan and making a small fortune on their existing stock and collections.

[Bronty]

well 98 99... that's not my recollection. I remember good material still doing OK in that period. Could be a regional thing. Didn't feel any different than 95-97, that I can remember. Although those years were the first years ebay really caught on... maybe an ebay effect on secondary material?

[joe_collector]

EBay definitely had an impact, but we keep coming back to this illusionary "good stuff" argument, which I assume would mean that a NM copy of FF 1 would still sell for a high price - of course it would.

 

But I'm referring to the health of the OVERALL SA/BA markets, when it was dark times in the 95-99 time period, and trying to portray it otherwise does an injustice to forum members who really want to know the deal.

 

A significant portion of the comic community left or went into hiding, cons were scaled back, moved to smaller locales or canceled outright, a large percentage of LCS's closed down (including some long-standing stores), the initial EBay glut drove prices into the ground, and even some of my mail order sources went under. I had an incredibly hard time finding anything comic-related (quality boxes, boards, bags, Mylars, etc.) for awhile there in the late-90's.

 

I was still actively buying BA through the "dark ages", as usual, and it was a field day, with me picking up stacks of books at flea markets, antique shows and online - no one seemed to want these anymore, and it was more like the standard "distress sale" and sellers were getting out. Comics were dead cold and I can remember one antique show in Belleville or Trenton, where a guy was surprised I wanted to buy his 20-cents Marvels at 25-cents a pop - I must have seemed like a guy who walked out of a time machine. And let's not even get into the deals on EBay.

 

It was bad news, and without the artificial (and inevitably temporary) CGC, EBay and funny book movie stimulus, the hobby would likely be near-dead with only the true collectors like me, greggy, Jimbo, etc. still around picking up books.

[Flaming_Telepath]

EBay definitely had an impact, but we keep coming back to this illusionary "good stuff" argument, which I assume would mean that a NM copy of FF 1 would still sell for a high price - of course it would.

 

But I'm referring to the health of the OVERALL SA/BA markets, when it was dark times in the 95-99 time period, and trying to portray it otherwise does an injustice to forum members who really want to know the deal.

 

A significant portion of the comic community left or went into hiding, cons were scaled back, moved to smaller locales or canceled outright, a large percentage of LCS's closed down (including some long-standing stores), the initial EBay glut drove prices into the ground, and even some of my mail order sources went under. I had an incredibly hard time finding anything comic-related (quality boxes, boards, bags, Mylars, etc.) for awhile there in the late-90's.

 

I was still actively buying BA through the "dark ages", as usual, and it was a field day, with me picking up stacks of books at flea markets, antique shows and online - no one seemed to want these anymore, and it was more like the standard "distress sale" and sellers were getting out. Comics were dead cold and I can remember one antique show in Belleville or Trenton, where a guy was surprised I wanted to buy his 20-cents Marvels at 25-cents a pop - I must have seemed like a guy who walked out of a time machine. And let's not even get into the deals on EBay.

 

It was bad news, and without the artificial (and inevitably temporary) CGC, EBay and funny book movie stimulus, the hobby would likely be near-dead with only the true collectors like me, greggy, Jimbo, etc. still around picking up books.

 

(thumbs u

 

For those who didn't live through it, this is about as close to the truth as you're going to get.

[mrwoogieman]

EBay definitely had an impact, but we keep coming back to this illusionary "good stuff" argument, which I assume would mean that a NM copy of FF 1 would still sell for a high price - of course it would.

 

But I'm referring to the health of the OVERALL SA/BA markets, when it was dark times in the 95-99 time period, and trying to portray it otherwise does an injustice to forum members who really want to know the deal.

 

A significant portion of the comic community left or went into hiding, cons were scaled back, moved to smaller locales or canceled outright, a large percentage of LCS's closed down (including some long-standing stores), the initial EBay glut drove prices into the ground, and even some of my mail order sources went under. I had an incredibly hard time finding anything comic-related (quality boxes, boards, bags, Mylars, etc.) for awhile there in the late-90's.

 

I was still actively buying BA through the "dark ages", as usual, and it was a field day, with me picking up stacks of books at flea markets, antique shows and online - no one seemed to want these anymore, and it was more like the standard "distress sale" and sellers were getting out. Comics were dead cold and I can remember one antique show in Belleville or Trenton, where a guy was surprised I wanted to buy his 20-cents Marvels at 25-cents a pop - I must have seemed like a guy who walked out of a time machine. And let's not even get into the deals on EBay.

 

It was bad news, and without the artificial (and inevitably temporary) CGC, EBay and funny book movie stimulus, the hobby would likely be near-dead with only the true collectors like me, greggy, Jimbo, etc. still around picking up books.

 

(thumbs u

 

For those who didn't live through it, this is about as close to the truth as you're going to get.

 

Same. Local shows where I lived, and there were several of them, just stopped. LCSs went under like no one's business.

 

I bought full runs of some valiant titles on ebay for the $.01 opening bid sometimes and paid shipping only.

 

It was bad times.