Official Market Crash Thread: Part Two!

[blowout]

do you have to?

[murph0]

Maybe just for a little bit..hopefully he won't make his permanent home here

 

Brian

[comicinvestor-migration]

CI do you or did you collect coins and cards. Over what time period did the coin market finally crash and where is the coin market now.

 

1) Yes, though more towards sportscards.

 

2) There is no set time limit, but more a pattern of events that take place in any graded commodities market. The last phase before full melt-down is rapidly increasing prices on older (1960's-70's) ultra-high grades (CGC 9.8 in this case).

 

This is taking place (not to mention the previous items are all ticked off like clockwork) and it's time to settle in for a perfect storm.

 

This is the natural evolution of a graded market, and CGC comics could no more escape it, than you or I could stop breathing.

[snizzenfixit]

Over what time period did the coin market finally crash and where is the coin market now.

 

The coin market did not "Crash" what happened is what will undoubtedly happen with the comic market. Coins ran at a nice steady pace, Third party grading came along, and people saw it as a way to prove that their coin was a most desireable investment. Investors bit and bought. Investors soon learned that the "New Blood" was the only ones paying the big bucks. The Investors bailed out and the market levelled back out to where it should have stayed all along. To me a "Crash" implies that the product drops in value, to significantly below a reasonable price. This never happened. What happened was the product values soared to previously unheard of highs.

 

Phil

 

 

[delekkerste]

CI do you or did you collect coins and cards. Over what time period did the coin market finally crash and where is the coin market now.

 

Fueled by buy recommendations from retail brokerage firms like Merrill Lynch, investment grade coins spiked to ridiculously high levels in 1989/1990 and then collapsed about 60% between 1990 and 1995. That's not graded coins, that's raw. That's the equivalent to if the 2007 Overstreet guide showed NM prices only 40% of what they are today. So don't tell me raw books/collectibles always go up and are immune from long-term downturns. They aren't. Unless the comic collecting hobby undergoes a miraculous renaissance (don't hold your breath), at some point lack of interest from the next generation will cause raw prices to fall, irrespective of talk of economic conditions or speculative bubbles/crashes.

 

Unfortunately, I loaned my copy of Robert Prechter's book "Conquer the Crash" to someone, but check it out. I believe there is an updated chart or two of coin price indexes which show that prices have not recovered much and remain well below those 1990 levels (most art prices are also below their peak 1989/1990 levels despite the tremendous wealth created over the last 12 years, even despite the stock market crash).

 

As I stated in another post, this isn't pessimism. It's realism. There's a difference between saying "the sky is falling" and saying "those dark clouds look ominous - might want to look into getting an umbrella."

 

Gene

[delekkerste]

To me a "Crash" implies that the product drops in value, to significantly below a reasonable price. This never happened. What happened was the product values soared to previously unheard of highs.

 

Phil, what kind of Orwellian logic is this? A crash is defined as a sudden and severe downturn. We can debate how sudden is sudden and how severe is severe. But whether we go from ridiculously overvalued to just overvalued, reasonable, undervalued or extremely undervalued is irrelevant. Anyone who bought at those inflated prices lost real money, whether the current price is just "reasonable" or "undervalued".

 

Gene

[blowout]

it seems that these crash threads run around in circles with people misinterpreting other peoples views on what a crash actually is.

my take is the del and CI are talking about a crash in the cgc market, not in the comic book market as a whole. and for sure this has happened, others argue about price corrections to overstreet levels, which is crazy in itself as cgc books have never been selling at overstreet levels. prices on cgc books started high, got higher and now are coming down rapidly.

the comic book market as a whole is not crashing (although high grade raw books have gone up then down in the short term to supply the cgc demand) but the cgc high grade market most definately has/ is.

[delekkerste]

the comic book market as a whole is not crashing (although high grade raw books have gone up then down in the short term to supply the cgc demand) but the cgc high grade market most definately has/ is.

 

Well put, Blowout. But, I reserve the right to believe that raw books will eventually follow (I doubt raw books will "crash", but rather erode or fail to experience meaningful appreciation over time).

 

Gene

[Guest]

you are not going to pick up true high grade comics from the local comic shop, unless the dealer has had a case of the book stored out back for 25 years.

 

Correct, blowout. They are in well-cared-for collections. And CGC has chased some of these from hiding. All the same, they are not overly 'common' when looking at overall collector HG demand, overall book populations, and that subset of owners who are holding until death.

 

Despite they 'commonness' of ASM 9.4/9.6s from 150-200, a 175 9.4 sold today for $47, so the floor is not totally gone on these 'common' books.

[Mutantcollector]

Much has been said about how that the many multiples of guide being seen today on high grade comics was never seen before CGC. The simple reason for that is that there are more collectors collecting high grade comics and those collectors are becoming even more pickier.

 

Why are more collectors collecting high grade comics now and not before?

 

Before CGC it was much harder to collect high grade comics. First if you were really picky, you could only purchase comics you viewed in person because you couldn't expect others to grade as strict as you. You also would have a much harder time finding the comics you wanted because the comics were simply not available, they were in the back of comic stores or in collections, not being sold. Then if you found a really high grade copy of a comic you want how much of a premium would you be willing to put on it when the majority of other collector's weren't putting premiums on high grade comics. Also when you buy an ungraded book there is a chance that you may miss a flaw that the buyer is not disclosing or the chance that the book has been altered. CGC has made buying comics safer, so people are willing to spend more on them then before.

 

Before CGC you could overpay for a few high grade books from a run that you would never be able to complete in high grade. Now you can overpay for a bunch of books and complete a very high grade run of your favorite comic.

[murph0]

Bit of a side bar here, but when and where did you see an ASM 175 CGC 9.4 go for 47 dollars? Just curious as most 9.4's I've seen don't go above 35 dollars.

 

Brian

[Guest]

Agreed, but I just find it amusing sometimes when the crackheads start debating relative scarcity, which is kind of an oxymoron with Silver, Bronze and Modern comics.

 

The enjoyable part of the debate is deciding where the scarcity line is drawn condition-wise. Yeah, there are tons of Bronze books out there - in 9.0/9.2 condition. Above that, and especially at the 9.6 level, I think the perception of how many copies are out there is overestimated.

[Guest]

murph0 - sold today at about 5 p.m. (7est). A completed auctions search tomorrow will show it.

[murph0]

Interesting, must've been an oddity imo..as I've seen 9.6's go for around that price.

 

Brian

[Guest]

Yeah, that's around the level I'd thought 9.6s were at as well. Although there's not much to be said about one auction, it is worth watching to see if this is just an oddity.

[Guest]

Yeah, that's around the level I'd thought 9.6s were at as well. Although there's not much to be said about one auction, it is worth watching to see if this is just an oddity.

[snizzenfixit]

Phil, what kind of Orwellian logic is this?

 

To me a "Crash" implies that the product drops in value, to significantly below a reasonable price. This never happened. What happened was the product values soared to previously unheard of highs.

 

This is my opinion, and you have yours. This is what I consider to be a crash. If you have another interpretation then post it. I don't consider a settling of prices, after a RELATIVELY short period of artificially elevated prices a crash, Otherwise I would have to think that the gasoline market in the US crashes on a fairly regular basis.

 

Phil

 

 

[Joanna]

The price of Chips Ahoy cookies recently crashed at the supermarket. They were getting $3.50 a package and then suddenly, without warning, they were 2 packages for $4.00. I immediately sounded the alarm, but the other shoppers (their carts full of sand in which to hide their heads) told me to look at the Oreos -- all selling for 10c more than the previous week -- and then shouted that I should "Quit the Chicken Little talk."

 

I left the cookie aisle a broken woman.

 

-- Joanna

[delekkerste]

This is my opinion, and you have yours. This is what I consider to be a crash. If you have another interpretation then post it.

 

Phil, my definition of a crash came from a dictionary:

 

Crash (n):

A sudden severe downturn: a market crash; a population crash.

 

I didn't pull this out of my @$$. Maybe some of the posters on this Board wouldn't have such a virulent reaction when they hear the word "crash" if they simply looked up the meaning of the word in a freaking dictionary or took a course in remedial English. Just mention the word "crash" and some people start raving about "Chicken Little" and "doom and gloomers" like a drunk with Tourette's Syndrome.

 

If we are going to start debating "opinions" regarding the definition of words, what's next? In keeping with the Orwellian theme, will you be telling me next that "Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others"???

 

I don't see any qualifiers in that definition about valuation, "reasonable" prices, pre-CGC levels or anything else coming into play. The ONLY relevant question is whether prices went from point A and fell to point B. The answer is an unequivocal YES for most CGC books, as has been well documented. We can debate around the edges about certain keys, Golden Age, raw books, pre-1966/1968, but to call what we have seen in most CGC books, particularly non-key Bronze and Moderns, anything but a crash is highly disingenuous. Any talk of "settling back" to reasonable levels, pre-CGC price levels or Overstreet levels is IRRELEVANT.

 

I don't consider a settling of prices, after a RELATIVELY short period of artificially elevated prices a crash, Otherwise I would have to think that the gasoline market in the US crashes on a fairly regular basis.

 

I have not seen gasoline prices (or Chips Ahoy cookies for that matter) rise 1000% and then fall 90% like we've seen with some "hot" CGC books, so this example is also IRRELEVANT. And while you may be a newcomer to CGC, I have been there from the beginning when every 9.0 and 9.2 would sell for multiples of Guide and have seen prices go from the ridiculous to the sublime and back again. This boom & bust isn't a market phenomenon that started and ended a couple months surrounding either side of the release of the Spider-Man movie - it's been going on for 2 or 3 years now.

 

Gene

[The_Man_Of_Steel]

Hello Gene, I looked up the word "Crash" in the Webster's American Family Dictionary, and found that there are 22 definitions for that word.