Official Crash Watch '04 Thread

[Warlord]

This information is indeed useful. A monthly report would be greatly appreciated if at all possible. Likewise, thecomicsheet.com is an excellent website and tool for massive gathering of misc. data such as this.

 

Well, I did name this the '04 thread, not the January thread, so I plan to keep at it. We'll see though.

[thecomicsheet]

Got the low price index updated. Now both indexes are fresh:

 

TCS Indexes

 

 

[Warlord]

Got the low price index updated. Now both indexes are fresh:

 

TCS Indexes

 

 

So what pushed up the mid-price index lately? Is ASM #129 moving up strongly vs previous data points in your graph?

[thecomicsheet]

Got the low price index updated. Now both indexes are fresh:

 

TCS Indexes

 

 

So what pushed up the mid-price index lately? Is ASM #129 moving up strongly vs previous data points in your graph?

 

I haven't really noticed ASM #129 in the grade I'm following in the index (9.2) moving up very much over the last six months. It took about a 20 percent jump around June/July of last year to the $600 level and has bounced around that level ever since. The move up in the index over the last year was more a case of a very gradual upturn in the majority of the books in the index (punctuated by a steep dive and steep recovery late in 2003).

 

There were two key events that I believe affected the mid price index most over the last six months:

 

November to Christmas 2003 was Very weak. Most of the books in the index took a sudden 10 percent or more dive. And then just as quickly they recovered in the first month of this year. This was across the board, not just in a few of the issues.

 

Then there was a single auction that had an unfortunate affect on the index back in November. An Iron Man #1 in 9.4 received a high bid significantly lower than it had been receiving (about $400 lower). That one auction lowered the index by 400 points for about 4 weeks until another issue in that grade showed up. If you look at the auction (2200915328) you see the book has a big fat grease pen number on the front cover. CGC apparently doesn't take off much for that (though they did make a notation on the label), but I know I and many other collectors would not be interested in that book. I think I may delete that book from the index and repost the index. (I'm debating that. I don't want to get into the habit of picking and choosing 'exceptions' based on subjective choices. I just don't have time and I want the index to remain an objective index.)

 

I chose the particular issues I did a year and a half ago when I had data on about 35,000 auctions. I tried to pick a cross section of books that appeared to trade often enough to make them good candidates for an index. Now with 150,000+ auction records I would make some different choices. But I have not revised the indexes because to do so I would necessarily induce some personal bias into the selections. I would consciously or unconsciously bias my selections based on 20/20 hindsite to make an index appear to go up, go down, or stay the same - whatever I wanted.

 

(There are some interesting studies on biased selections in the stock market indexes. Standard and Poors in their S&P500 index makes a regular practice of dropping failing companies from their indexes and adding new stronger companies. This has a pronounced upward bias on their indexes that has nothing to do with the market and everything to do with just picking the winners and dropping the losers after the fact. To a lesser extent Dow Jones does the same thing with the Industrial average. One interesting tidbit - on average stocks that are dropped from the averages actually do VERY well in the short term after being dropped, but over the long haul they tend to do poorly compared to the companies that replace them.)

 

I am working on a new 'high priced' index and I am trying very hard to concentrate on making my selections based only on auction volume, cross-section of the market, and price as it stands now without actually looking at what the price was 2 years ago. That way I hope to be as 'surprised' as anyone when I see how it looks with all the data points filled in.

[blowout]

I am working on a new 'high priced' index and I am trying very hard to concentrate on making my selections based only on auction volume, cross-section of the market, and price as it stands now without actually looking at what the price was 2 years ago. That way I hope to be as 'surprised' as anyone when I see how it looks with all the data points filled in.

 

Sounds interesting. Keep up the good work.

[joe_collector]

I think I may delete that book from the index and repost the index. (I'm debating that.

 

I don't think that's a good idea, as it is a CGC graded book, at the grade level you use, so it's a valid indicator. If you start second-guessing the CGC grade, and using only high-QP examples, then it's no longer a CGC price index.

 

If CGC has a flaw in their grading process, then let them fix it.

[drbanner]

Thanks for the 'splanation Darryl, the stuff is quite enlightening!! If you do develop a high-priced index, will you be able to create it to mirror the time frames of the other indices?

 

Yeah, I wouldn't drop any outliers based on your interpretation (or the markets' in this case) of the CGC grade, although there may be other reasons to drop certain data points (shill!!).

[thecomicsheet]

I've decided to just leave the Iron Man #1 auction in. That way I don't introduce an element of subjectivity into the indexes. As CGC has stated several times in the past: A 9.4 is a 9.4 is a 9.4.

 

Regarding the time frame for a high price index, yes I will be able to run it back to May 1, 2002 just like the other two indexes. Thats when my data starts.

 

I may start a thread soon to discuss candidate issues and methodology. It's easy to generate a sorted list of numbers of auctions for a given issue/condition over that time period plus the last traded price in that issue/condition. I'll post that list in the thread.

 

If I base my selection solely on the volume criteria I would wind up with an index of almost all Marvel issues and mostly X-Men, Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Transformers Generation 1. I want to reach down a little further in the list if necessary to get a few DCs in the index.

[garthgantu]

Here's an article from yesterday's Wall St. Journal, that may explain some of the recent high-dollar sales of funnybooks...

 

With the Market Up,

Wall Street High Life

Bounces Back, Too

 

Chartered Jets, a Wedding

At Versailles and Fast Cars

To Help Forget Bad Times

By GREGORY ZUCKERMAN and CASSELL BRYAN-LOW

Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

 

 

NEW YORK -- A year ago, Bret Grebow, a 28-year-old who runs hedge fund HMC International, was taking cheap flights on JetBlue Airways and keeping a lid on his spending. But his fund's investment portfolio surged nearly 40% last year, and Mr. Grebow says he's confident that the market has regained its footing. So two months ago he bought a new $160,000 Lamborghini Gallardo. He says it was his first "treat" in months.

 

These days when Mr. Grebow and his girlfriend travel between his Highland Beach, Fla., home and his New York office, he charters a catered plane with a bar, paying as much as $10,000 for the three-hour flight. Last weekend he spent more than $12,000 to fly himself and some friends on a Learjet 55 to the Super Bowl.

 

"It's fantastic. They've got my favorite cereal, Cookie Crisp, waiting for me, and Jack Daniel's on ice," says Mr. Grebow.

 

Hedge-fund trader Kenneth Griffin last summer married another hedge-fund hotshot. They tied the knot at the palace of Versailles. Festivities in Paris included a party at the Louvre and a rehearsal dinner at the Musee D'Orsay. In Las Vegas last month, 10 Wall Street investment bankers dropped several thousand dollars renting a Ferrari, a Dodge Viper and a Hummer for the weekend to cruise the Strip. New York cigar shops, steak houses and five-star restaurants all report an influx of Wall Street business in just the past few weeks.

 

As financial companies start to pay out big bonuses for 2003, lavish spending by Wall Streeters is showing signs of a comeback. Behind the exuberance: a 40% jump in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in roughly 15 months and a return of big profits on Wall Street -- $15 billion or so last year, more than double 2002's profits, according to estimates by the Securities Industry Association. When the results are all tabulated, 2003 likely will be the third-best year on record for the securities industry.

 

"There was much more money spent at year-end parties than I would have thought," says Michael Holland, chief executive officer of Holland & Co., an investment firm. He says he was struck by the packed dining room recently at the "21" Club. "It's an early warning sign about the return of the extravagant days."

 

One Wall Streeter recently spent about $30,000 to rent out the lower Manhattan restaurant Nobu for 150 guests. Not far away, Tribeca Grill has seen bookings for parties by Wall Street firms pick up in recent months after a long dry spell. Giles Priestland, director of sales at the ski resort The Lodge at Vail, says one Wall Street firm has booked 60 rooms for three nights in March, starting at $495 per night.

 

Wayne Duris, general manager of New Country Porsche of Greenwich, Conn., says that on one day late last month, he shipped new Porsches that sell for up to $120,000, to two Wall Street professionals. They paid cash. Sales doubled at the dealer this January compared with the year before, he says, thanks to interest from traders.

 

James Selwa, president of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars NA, says one Wall Street pro recently was so eager for a $320,000 Rolls-Royce Phantom that he insisted on buying the Manhattan dealership's only demonstration model.

 

For those with more miles to go, the bull market is ushering in a renewed appetite for chartered jets. Todd Rome, president of Blue Star Jets in Manhattan, says that several groups of Wall Street traders chartered fully catered 737s and 727s, each with several bedrooms, to fly to warmer climes such as Florida for their Super Bowl parties.

 

"With the turn of the market, people are feeling liquid, there's big demand from mutual funds, hedge funds and even brokers," says Mr. Rome. "Starting in December, all of a sudden this business has had a facelift" with the new demand from Wall Street.

 

In recent weeks, Wall Street firms have begun paying what's expected to total $10.7 billion in bonuses -- the bulk of the compensation for most on Wall Street -- for 2003. That's almost a 25% increase from 2002, though still less than the $19.5 billion bonanza of 2000. Also fattening wallets: Stock prices of most securities firms are at their highest levels in three years.

 

Some big winners in the 1990s boom have been left behind this time around. Mergers-and-acquisitions activity is still relatively weak. The regulatory settlement to resolve conflicts of interest between research departments and investment-banking operations has dented research budgets across Wall Street.

 

Today, traders who bet on the market with their own firm's capital are cashing in. So, too, are hedge-fund executives and bond traders. The average bonus for bond specialists rose 30% last year, compared with a 5% raise for investment bankers and equities pros, says compensation consultant Johnson Associates Inc.

 

A beneficiary is the high-end real-estate market in New York, says Dolly Lenz, a real-estate agent at Douglas Elliman. "People are getting bonuses again," says Ms. Lenz, who says she closed on about $100 million in contracts in last month -- her best month ever and about triple her January 2003 tally.

 

One apartment drawing interest is the Fifth Avenue co-op of L. Dennis Kozlowski, former chairman and chief executive of conglomerate Tyco International Ltd. His $15,000 poodle-shaped antique umbrella stand, $6,000 shower curtain and $38,000 backgammon table became symbols of 1990s excess. Now several Wall Street professionals are showing interest in buying Mr. Kozlowski's apartment, according to Sharon Baum, a real-estate broker at Corcoran Group involved in showing the place. With 11 rooms, including a master bedroom with Central Park views and staff quarters, the apartment is listed at around $28 million.

 

Dining at New York's Le Cirque restaurant late last month, three Wall Street executives approached real-estate mogul Donald Trump, interrupting his dinner, to ask about prices of apartments in his deluxe Manhattan buildings. "I've never been inundated like that," Mr. Trump says.

 

Grant Morgan, who runs a brokerage firm in New York called First Republic Group, says he likely will add 30 new brokers to his 100-broker staff this year. After several years of putting off a remodeling job at his Greenwich, Conn., home, the bachelor now is spending $600,000 to gut and rebuild.

 

"We're comfortable the market won't take a new downturn," says Mr. Morgan, 36, who was comfortable enough to spend a week at The Breakers in Palm Beach last month and six months ago bought a $150,000 Ferrari 360. "Things are thawing."

 

 

[whetteon]

The real question is that now the stock market is going up, will that mean fewer people will buy comics or does it matter? I have yet to find any correlation between the two although I suspect there is.

[garthgantu]

I don't claim to know the answer to that one either, Whet... I was merely speculating that with the billions in bonuses being paid out to Wall Street types this quarter, some of that bonus money might be finding its way into the back issue market...

[drbanner]

I was merely speculating that with the billions in bonuses being paid out to Wall Street types this quarter, some of that bonus money might be finding its way into the back issue market...

 

Well, that goes against the reality that the comic book market went throught it's greatest period of growth during 2000-2003, just when the stock market tanked...who knows!?!?

[burntboy]

Got the low price index updated. Now both indexes are fresh:

 

TCS Indexes

 

 

So what pushed up the mid-price index lately? Is ASM #129 moving up strongly vs previous data points in your graph?

 

I haven't really noticed ASM #129 in the grade I'm following in the index (9.2) moving up very much over the last six months. It took about a 20 percent jump around June/July of last year to the $600 level and has bounced around that level ever since. The move up in the index over the last year was more a case of a very gradual upturn in the majority of the books in the index (punctuated by a steep dive and steep recovery late in 2003).

 

There were two key events that I believe affected the mid price index most over the last six months:

 

November to Christmas 2003 was Very weak. Most of the books in the index took a sudden 10 percent or more dive. And then just as quickly they recovered in the first month of this year. This was across the board, not just in a few of the issues.

 

Then there was a single auction that had an unfortunate affect on the index back in November. An Iron Man #1 in 9.4 received a high bid significantly lower than it had been receiving (about $400 lower). That one auction lowered the index by 400 points for about 4 weeks until another issue in that grade showed up. If you look at the auction (2200915328) you see the book has a big fat grease pen number on the front cover. CGC apparently doesn't take off much for that (though they did make a notation on the label), but I know I and many other collectors would not be interested in that book. I think I may delete that book from the index and repost the index. (I'm debating that. I don't want to get into the habit of picking and choosing 'exceptions' based on subjective choices. I just don't have time and I want the index to remain an objective index.)

 

I chose the particular issues I did a year and a half ago when I had data on about 35,000 auctions. I tried to pick a cross section of books that appeared to trade often enough to make them good candidates for an index. Now with 150,000+ auction records I would make some different choices. But I have not revised the indexes because to do so I would necessarily induce some personal bias into the selections. I would consciously or unconsciously bias my selections based on 20/20 hindsite to make an index appear to go up, go down, or stay the same - whatever I wanted.

 

(There are some interesting studies on biased selections in the stock market indexes. Standard and Poors in their S&P500 index makes a regular practice of dropping failing companies from their indexes and adding new stronger companies. This has a pronounced upward bias on their indexes that has nothing to do with the market and everything to do with just picking the winners and dropping the losers after the fact. To a lesser extent Dow Jones does the same thing with the Industrial average. One interesting tidbit - on average stocks that are dropped from the averages actually do VERY well in the short term after being dropped, but over the long haul they tend to do poorly compared to the companies that replace them.)

 

I am working on a new 'high priced' index and I am trying very hard to concentrate on making my selections based only on auction volume, cross-section of the market, and price as it stands now without actually looking at what the price was 2 years ago. That way I hope to be as 'surprised' as anyone when I see how it looks with all the data points filled in.

 

i'm just SO happy for all these deserving folks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[thecomicsheet]

Here's an article from yesterday's Wall St. Journal, that may explain some of the recent high-dollar sales of funnybooks...

 

With the Market Up,

Wall Street High Life

Bounces Back, Too

 

Chartered Jets, a Wedding

At Versailles and Fast Cars

To Help Forget Bad Times

By GREGORY ZUCKERMAN and CASSELL BRYAN-LOW

Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

...

 

I am DEFINITELY in the WRONG business.

[Warlord]

 

My more refined stats for January 2004 after deleting keyword spams, multiple item auctions, etc, in round numbers:

 

12,800 CGC auctions for a single CGC'd comic

 

Of course, I have a feeling there are still a large number of auctions included in that where the title may have simply included "CGC" without a blatant non-CGC qualifier, but those will take even more time to weed out.

 

Other updated numbers some other time, maybe tomorrow.

 

 

[Warlord]

The Crash Watch continues!

 

Stats for Feb 2004, in round numbers:

11,3000 CGC auctions

3,500 auctions received 0 bids

900 auctions were Reserve Not Met

900 auctions ended with BIN

950 auctions ended with Reserve Met

$1,640K total value of comics sold

 

Stats for Mar 2004, in round numbers:

12,3000 CGC auctions

4,300 auctions received 0 bids

750 auctions were Reserve Not Met

850 auctions ended with BIN

850 auctions ended with Reserve Met

$1,080K total value of comics sold

[joe_collector]

I don't think the stark drop-off is due to a crash, but to insufficiently_thoughtful_person sellers listing their books at nose-bleed prices.

 

It doesn't look like anyone selling has any faith in the market right now.

[BachelorOfComix]

[Warlord]

I don't think the stark drop-off is due to a crash, but to insufficiently_thoughtful_person sellers listing their books at nose-bleed prices.

 

It doesn't look like anyone selling has any faith in the market right now.

 

The Heritage auctions are going to cause big swings and their numbers are included in my totals if they did them via eBay. What were the dates of the auctions in the 1st Qtr? Wasn't one in Feb, and none in March?

[sfilosa]

Yes.

 

Heritage had an auction in early February and now one in early April. They will have another one in June.

 

On that note, I'm not sure I can afford another Heritage Auction so soon.