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Official Market Crash Thread: Part Two!

Started by comicinvestor-migration,

379 posts in this topic

kiltman

kiltman

Posted
Posted
WHY DID WE CHOOSE TO BUMP THIS THREAD? IT IS KIND OF IRONIC HOW THE FIRST POST ABOUT A SUPPOSED "CRASH" IS DATED FROM 2002 AND HERE WE ARE IN 2005 WITH RECORD PRICES STILL BEING PAID FOR BOOKS.

 

I BOUGHT MY TOMB OF DRACULA #1 CGC 9.4 IN 2003 FOR $325 AND THE SELLER TOLD ME HE WAS SELLING BECAUSE A MARKET CRASH WAS COMING

 

I COULD SELL THAT BOOK RIGHT NOW FOR $350 EASILY....

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THE_BEYONDER

THE_BEYONDER

Posted
Posted

ALLCAPS attempts to compensate for his limited rhetorical weaponry through the extravagant use of capitalized words - something netizens refer to as SHOUTING. Sure, a sprinkling of capitalized words can add some zip to a thrust, but they should be used sparingly. Even worse from a tactical point of view, too much shouting alerts other Warriors to the opponent's verbal WEAKNESS and emotional EXCITABILITY.

allcaps.jpg

 

 

 

 

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Aces

Aces

Posted
Posted
Uh,

 

very sorry....

 

did not mean to offend any one...

 

Nah, you just offended Beyonder. But that's ok...he's easily offended. grin.gif

 

 

05815547774.265.GIF

 

 

blush.gif

 

I guess the Avengers sent the Beyonder an email in all CAPS? poke2.gif

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OldGuy

OldGuy

Posted
Posted
I KNOW THAT IS A JOKE-BUT YOUR MISSING THE POINT-THE MARKET DIDN'T CRASH AND IT IS NOW 2005....

 

Apparently you missed the point. The fact that the market hasn't crashed is precisely why this thread was bumped. makepoint.gif

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comicworm

comicworm

Posted
Posted

there is no crash-name a supposed bubble in world history that lasted almost 6 years and is still going strong....

 

a lot of people compare this market to the coin market and I can relate because I also collect coins-that market never did crash-I still have coincs that I bought during the supposed peak and I can sell them for twice the amount I paid, when people/collectors/speculators warned against doing so

 

I made a lot of money in the graded coin market and still collect-it is a fun hobby/business, but it is also hard to compare to the comics market-because there is no such thing as a restored coin-there are "cleaned" coins-but they are very easy to spot...

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Arkham

Arkham

Posted
Posted
WHY DID WE CHOOSE TO BUMP THIS THREAD? IT IS KIND OF IRONIC HOW THE FIRST POST ABOUT A SUPPOSED "CRASH" IS DATED FROM 2002 AND HERE WE ARE IN 2005 WITH RECORD PRICES STILL BEING PAID FOR BOOKS.

 

I BOUGHT MY TOMB OF DRACULA #1 CGC 9.4 IN 2003 FOR $325 AND THE SELLER TOLD ME HE WAS SELLING BECAUSE A MARKET CRASH WAS COMING

 

I COULD SELL THAT BOOK RIGHT NOW FOR $350 EASILY....

computer_keyboard.jpg

 

I'm glad this thread was bumped just so I could enjoy this post alone.

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Bosco685

Bosco685

Posted
Posted
I agree. I'm through with this thread. Crash or no crash, it's collecting as usual for me & I'm sure many of you too. Bottom line: Crash = Lower prices for most books; this is a good thing for us real collectors. This is a collectibles hobby, the specs will come & go, prices rise & fall, sometimes you get burned, & other times you make money.

 

Cheers,

 

Bachelor of Comics

 

Well said!

 

:applause:

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Bosco685

Bosco685

Posted
Posted

I was backing up my PC the other day and happened across an article I saved on one of the big crashes. Unfortunately, his site was taken down or I would just post the link.

 

=========================

 

In the mid-80's, a self-published black and white comic book done by two guys who nobody had ever heard of caused one of the widest industry panics the comic market has ever seen. They were Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and they published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #1.

 

They were doing a better-than-average attempt to parody the state the comics industry was in at the time, where mutants ruled the charts (not unlike today) and ninjas seemed to be behind every bush (The Tick made light of the same market fad in the same time period; everyone had noticed it). So they published a short, awkwardly-produced magazine-sized comic, and on a lark decided that the best advertising they could get would be a story run by the Associated Press newswire. So they submitted a press release about their comic to AP. In one of those bizarre slices of serendipity which occasionally drift into the comics arena, it was a slow news day, and AP thought "what the hey" and ran the story.

 

Newspapers around the country ran little filler stories about the two guys who self-published a cute funny parody magazine about mutant turtles. Parents and kids around the country thought that sounded fun. So they all went to their local comic store and tried to buy it. Not surprisingly, nobody had any copies - who would advance order an untested B&W comic? (Conventional wisdom at the time was that ONLY color books sold, Cerebus notwithstanding).

 

So the instant nationwide demand opened the floodgates. TMNT #1 had huge second and third printings (eventually ending up with something like 8 or 9 printings), and orders on subsequent issues shot through the roof. Stores were flabbergasted but kept selling the books, mystified at what had made people want it so bad. And first prints of TMNT #1 were going for $200 or more - the print run on the book had only been about 2,000 - and more than 20 times that was now in circulation. Counterfeits began cropping up - the Turtles were HOT. Which fed two dangerous forces: publisher greed/arrogance and retailer anxiety/greed.

 

Publishers looked at TMNT's success and said "What the heck?!? A bunch of stupid turtles? WE could do that! Heck, our story about another superhero team (or about the postapocalyptic future, or about walking dinosaurs with guns, or about penguins with swords) is TONS better! Let's just publish the puppy! Black-and-white is where it's at, man!"

 

Retailers, meanwhile, were scared silly. They had caught a lot of BS when they had been caught without any TMNT; the public had castigated them for not carrying what it wanted - publishers had castigated them, too, saying "See? We told you our books would sell if only you would order them." And so they were scared into carrying everything. Absolutely EVERYTHING - because most retailers had no idea of what made the TMNT hot; they looked at it and saw black-and-white, and couldn't discern the difference between TMNT and Malibu's original "Dragonring".

 

The slightest demand for a b&w book now caused prices to skyrocket, since print runs were almost universally low - or rather, there were very few available copies floating in the market. So (for example) when Elfquest readers discovered Barry Blair's "Elflord" and said, "Hey, that looks good - I think I want a copy", prices began shooting up on Blair's book (#1 was at $20 or more at one point), and the same thing happened with dozens of titles.

 

But meanwhile, since retailers couldn't tell what to buy (they had no idea why any of this stuff was in demand, so they ordered most everything equally), and since they had to order 2 or 3 months in advance, usually sight-unseen, [garbage] started pouring in. Tons of [garbage]. Palletloads of [garbage].

 

First were the outright ripoffs of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There were the Adolescent Radioactive Black-Belt Hamsters (not bad), the Mildly-Microwaved Pre-Pubescent Gophers (pretty bad), the Geriatric Gangrene Jiujitsu Gerbils (bad), the Pre-Teen Dirty-Gene Kung-Fu Kangaroos (no, I am NOT making this up), and so forth.

 

And then the rest came. Everybody and their brother had heard about the incredible success of TMNT - the latest "get rich quick" scheme (like the "Valiant/Image Speculation" in the early 90's) was to self-publish a black-and-white book. Easy, doesn't cost much, and instant money comes back!

 

Retailers were ordering like madmen, attempting to order absolutely every book out there (prior to this, there hadn't been many books; it was not only possible for stores to carry literally everything, it was standard) in sufficient quantity to satisfy demand if people started asking for it. Some retailers were trying to "hoard" the comics, ordering dozens or hundreds of "extras" so that "when it got hot and was $200 a book, they'd make a killing." This falsely inflated print runs, and publishers kept publishing.

 

So outright vanity press publications like "The Quadro Gang" got published, and substandard work like "Dragonring" made it to the market in sufficient numbers to make the publishers noticeable profit - so they print a further issue, and so forth.

 

This only lasted a few months before stores were so bogged down with unsold black-and-white product that many either went out of business or stopped ordering ALL black-and-white books. Retailers by and large still couldn't discern between Usagi Yojimbo and Quadro Gang, so rather than pick and choose, they dropped EVERYTHING that was b&w.

 

Which saved many of their butts, but brought ruin upon a number of b&w publishers. You see, the "instant acceptance" in the market in those few months for black and white books was something that had not happened before. Prior to 1982, black and white books were stigmatized - they had a much harder hill to climb to even be distributed than any other books. So when the market opened the floodgates to the b&w boom, a number of good publishers joined the fray.

 

Mark Martin self-published a few issues of his wonderful Gnatrat stories before the bust sent him home bankrupt. Dark Horse suffered through after a first (1985) year of wonderful sales on DHP, had lean times ahead as sales were uniformly lackluster until Alien came along. Usagi Yojimbo squeaked out of the bust with his tail between his legs - luckily, he had Fantagraphics behind him. Malibu had a neat little series called "The Rovers" that died in the flames; Aircel, Eternity, Amazing, Wonder Color, and Malibu ended up dying and being bought up by a desparate former distributor, Scott Rosenberg (who merged them all together into the "new" Malibu), Glenwood Distributors crashed and burned (sitting on warehouses of unsold b&w), and so on and so forth.

 

From 1987 until somewhere around 1993, retailers were in general suspicious of any new black-and-white book. They'd all lived through the boom and bust, and had very little faith that any b&w book could sell. And they had the experience to prove it. When Bone first came out in 1992, it wasn't the lack of quality that kept its sales below 2,000 for almost every issue - everyone who read it loved it. But it was a new black-and-white, self-published. Instant anathema for retailers, who simply would not risk money on a book which (to their minds) probably wouldn't sell and would end up in the quarter box where they still had the Pre-Teen Kangaroos.

 

It was Image's opening of the market in general (shattering the "two-company" viewpoint of many retailers) and Bone's solid success that made retailers take a second look at b&w books in 1993. But where in the 80's retailers felt pressured into "pre-guessing" what titles would be hot, the once-burned store owners this time began ordering only those books readers were actually asking for. And readers by and large figured out which books were good and which they wanted to keep reading, and slowly, ever so slowly, the True Birth of the independent black and white comic has occurred.

 

Last year Jon Warren asked me how this wave of independent black and whites is different from the 80's - he honestly wanted to know, having finally picked up the vibes that this was different. I told him two words: "It's Good." This wave is being fueled from the publisher out - great artists and writers are putting out great work and retailers are reluctantly carrying it; this results in a healthier and more stable market than anyone at all putting out a book to "make a buck" and retailers eagerly snapping them up ( and all) in an attempt to guess the next "hot" book. In a sense, what is around today which is most like the Boom & Bust is the current "bad girl" craze. Publishers going for a quick buck, never mind the story, while retailers feel like they "have to" order them because they'll sell - before too long this bubble will burst too and stores will have unsold piles of "Avengelyne" and "Double Impact" and "Jugular". But even so, this bad girl stuff is very small potatoes compared to the huge Black-And-White Boom & Bust.

 

Things are definitely different now, but mainly in terms of the health of the industry and the quality of the work. The skepticism of the retailers in general is the brake on the wild craziness; the rest of the industry has not introduced significant barriers to b&w comics. It is almost as easy now to self-publish your own black-and-white book as it was in the mid-80's. But now, your sales will be determined by the quality of your book and the draw of your story - NOT by frightened retailers attempting to outguess the market or by readers desperately searching for something, ANYTHING different. A stability has appeared in the market, which is rewarding quality work without being too generous with the less-well-done books.

 

Interestingly enough, though, there are a number of retailers around who lived through the 80's and are still gun-shy. It's hard to blame them; they nearly lost their shirts in the B&W Bust of 1986, and they naturally feel animosity toward the subgenre which nearly cost them everything. And some of them still can't tell Bone from Double Impact from Quadro Gang. So there's still a struggle to be recognized as a source of quality comics...but indies are winning more ground every day.

 

 

Mark Thompson

Cold Cut Distribution

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