10 years since the "crash"... so what caused it?

[Cyclops]

[fastballspecial]

My reasons as I went thru it were much easier cuz I was just a kid in college at the time.

 

Ebay, Email, and Sports Card Dealers.

 

The first two have been discussed in length the last one I dont think has. No offense to anyone here, but do any of you remember all the sports card dealers that flocked to comics in the 90s because they destroyed their hobby? I remember shows in the 90s where these guys started showing up and knew nothing about comics, but tried to sell them like cards. I still wont buy from a dealer if I see baseball cards set up along with their comics and its been 20 years.

 

[500Club]

No offense to anyone here, but do any of you remember all the sports card dealers that flocked to comics in the 90s because they destroyed their hobby? I remember shows in the 90s where these guys started showing up and knew nothing about comics, but tried to sell them like cards.

Yup. I remember.

 

Valiant was the prime currency of these guys, and they ordered them like they ordered Pro Set 1990 Football.

[AKA Rick]

I think like any other collectible hobby, once you get non-collectors entering the market to essentially take advantage of buyers, as future sellers and they horde material based on speculation, it's the beginning of the downfall.

 

I'm sure there were and are many of these buyers who didn't even read the comic books or have any ideas to the characters.

 

You had and still have investors who lack the passion or education as well as patience to contribute to the hobby, trying to corner the market and take advantage of true fans by holding 'em hostage and marking them up. That's legal and even moral, since if you assume the risk, you assume both the reward (The Walking Dead) or penalty (name almost any other Image comic release) of profits or losses.

 

Same as when the 90's stock market was riddled with amateur investors buying stocks of companies they didn't even know what they did or conducted research on the P/E ratios.

 

And you had grown men buying Beanie Babies not for the cuteness, but just for the potential pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, by hording them, elbowing little kids at stores, so they can make 'em up and resell them. Same thing happened with the action figure market too.

 

Same as in the late 80's with baseball cards, around 1987 through the early 90's, where although it's not the publisher or manufacture's fault, they are essentially the drug dealers who push out the product to a sometimes ignorant public.

 

However, there is something called accountability. If you stop supporting the pushers, they will be forced to change their ways. If you continuing supporting the pushers, they will continue to exploit.

 

The trading card market is still doing it with their manufactured scarcity marketing of the 1/1 cards and crash numbered collectibles that the ink is barely dry by the time the put 'em to market, and they trump themselves with an every more rare release (or so says their marketing machine).

 

Even in the original art market, you see tiny sketch cards and comic book sketch covers with sometimes mediocre renderings outselling in price, the cost of a full 11" x 17" commission by that same artist or published artwork. For some odd reason, some collectors are enamored by the cards and covers, thinking they have something more special, when in fact, yes, they do have a one of a kind item, regardless if it's seeded 1 in 200 packs or if it's a CGC graded comic book. With original art, every piece is as scarce as the other, they're all original and one of a kind. So, the medium it's drawn on should in theory be the background and the artwork itself regardless of medium should be the foreground.

 

The comic book market is doing their damage right now with their variants. At first it was for special celebration books. Then it was for retailers. So, now you have 1:4; 1:10; 1:50; 1:200, limited to 100, 250, 500 type variations coming from the major publishers like Marvel and DC as well as more indie press like Zenescope who actually prints their own money by making these 100 limited edition print runs and selling the comics for $50-100 at conventions right out of the gate. Manufacturing scarcity. If a tree falls in the woods and nobody's there to hear it, does it fall? If a company prints 1, 10, 100, or 1,000 copies but there's not enough interested buyers, is it truly scarce?

 

I think the only way to stop the insanity and go back to the basics is to stop supporting the pushers and the dealers. If you starve them, then the pushers (hording resellers) will be forced to lower their prices to turn their bad investments into cash, and the dealers (publishers) will stop producing the junk (variants) and putting 'em on the street.

 

[dgarthwaite-migration]

Greed & lies caused the crash. It manifested in different ways. The lies revolved around telling people everything was the next hot collectible when they knew supply outweighed true demand.

 

DG

[RockMyAmadeus]

Okay, I've done a little re-reading of the various industry pubs from a 1993 pre-crash perspective,

 

 

Sorry, these little kids just falling off the turnip trucks with their old OSs bought on EBay, and telling longtime collectors and dealers "the way things *really* were" makes me angry and totally amused (at their hubris and stupidity) at the same time.

 

It would be like me trying to tell some longterm 70-year old GA collector what the market was *really* like in 1965, just from reading some old books.

 

hm

[RockMyAmadeus]

Okay, I've done a little re-reading of the various industry pubs from a 1993 pre-crash perspective, and there are the usual suspects being trotted out by seemingly-prophetic "the apocalypse is coming" dealers and market reporters.

 

One of the biggies that seems to have slipped under the radar bears examination, especially since it was one of the main causes of both the speculative bubble and the horrendous dealer over-orders:

 

Retailer Premiums

 

You remember, those "you order 25/50/100 of this issue and we'll toss in one of our gold-foil enhanced, limited edition, signed by the creators, guaranteed to shoot up in value overnight comics - Now how many thousand copies shall I put you down for?".

 

[HarrisonJohn]

I stoped collecting in what turned out to be the exact time of the crash simply because nothing was readable.

[dupont2005]

I stoped collecting in what turned out to be the exact time of the crash simply because nothing was readable.

Same. And I think THAT is what caused the crash. The crash was really only for modern speculating, right? Action #1 was still worth a chink of change. Year old Image, Valiant, Marvel, and DC took the hit. When the publishers realized people were buying these comic by the crate, no matter what was inside, they quit putting out good content. The polybags would never be opened anyways. Just make sure a new character is introduced every five issues of X-Men and the money will keep rolling in. Eventually the people who actually read the comics caught on and quit buying them, then the speculators had nobody to sell to but each other.

[Mr.Diggler]

One more comic crash please.

[scarlet_speedster]

everybody wants to talk about how bad the crash was in the 90's was but nobody wants to talk about alot of good things that happened. personally for me if it wasn't for stuff like overstreet monthly. and and a little comic book kit wal-mart sold i might not ever got into comics experience stuff like x-men, spawn, daredevil, green lantern and the list goes on. im not saying that there wasn't a huge load of that came out then, but because i seen the new stuff it made me want to go back and look at stuff that came before it in the gold and silver era. and im sure many of you were the same way.

[Underground44]

Has anyone read any 90's garbage recently?

I flicked though a couple of issues of Bloodstrike and there was like 20 pages to it, hardly any dialogue and 50% of the books were full of ads about the next big #1 issue that was coming out.

There was absolutely no substance to these books (why the hell I ever bought it is beyond me). At least most of the modern Image books that I've seen have decent writing and the ideas are fresh and interesting - and the print runs aren't 500,000 per book.

[Muaythai607]

remember the wizard expected prices in the future.. 99. % of those were wrong.. i wonder what they were bases those expected prices frommm

[Magneto]

One more comic crash please.

 

As long as it makes it a little more affordable for me to buy my silver age keys and X-Men books!

[Mike's Rack]

Okay, here's the deal with the mid-90's crash, and it was the same in the mid-80's and the same today:

 

1) Newbies entering the "speculator/investment" comic arena, the vast majority of which had not bought comics for over a decade, and were attracted by the $$$, as usual.

 

2) Mass media exposure of "comic investments" (magazines, newspapers, TV, etc.) fueled the newbie explosion, bringing big bucks into the hobby and driving prices skyward.

 

3) At a certain point, the "hot potatoes" that speculators were buying and selling hit a ceiling, and with no more profits to reap, this started the mass exodus of speculators/investors.

 

4) Once the speculators left, the "heat" also left the comic hobby, leading to less exposure by mass media, less active speculation on new and back issue comics, and a serious deflating in real-world (not Overstreet) comic book values.

 

5) Rinse and repeat 4) and 5) a few times.

 

All Boom/Bust occurences come down to two main factors: Newbie money rushing in due to mass speculator profits and media exposure, which is then slammed by a "glass ceiling" that specs are willing to pay for the "hot potatoes", fueling a mass exodus of the money-grubbers.

 

It happened in the 80's, it happened in the 90's and it'll happen this decade as well.

 

Newbie money + parabolic price spikes + "hot potato" speculator flipping = Long-term Pain.

My theory is similar to this with one addition. Because speculators were buying multiple copies to flip, companies started to believe that they could churn out any sort of and still sell half a million copies. Fans fled from the books because they were turned off by the speculators and the lower quality stories and art. The market became predominately speculators When the speculators realized that they were only selling to each other, the bubble popped. By now, there were few fans left, so the big publishers didn't have anyone to buy their tripe. The industry survived on the back of a handful smaller publishers that produced quality comics and alternative imprints like Vertigo. These quality books brought back new readers and built a new fan base. These fans turned into collectors and people saw them making money on these lower print books. Selling comics is both fun and potentially profitable so more people started flipping books. More money entered the modern segment of the hobby and things continued. If the cycle continues as history has shown, we are on the verge or in the midst of another bubble. Bubbles are not necessarily bad, but collectors, speculators and the publishers need to learn from past mistakes. Speculators are starting to jack up the print runs by preordering bunches. Remember Walking Dead #1 had a microscopic print run (around 7K) and a popular TV show. If a new book say Saga (with a print run in the mid 30K) is to rise to the same value of the Walking Dead #1, economic principles dictate it would have to be 5 times as popular (35K / 7K). It's possible this could happen, however it is unlikely. It is more likely that Saga will have a certain level of hardcore fans smaller than the number of Walking Dead fans and once the speculators unleash their long boxes on the market, the value won't be anywhere close to Walking Dead #1. I would be impressed (it may restore my faith in the ability of mankind to recognize quality work) if there were close to 35K people who consider themselves Saga fans. However, that is not to say that it won’t appreciate and generate a nice return. But the most important thing is that it is a cool book with a great story and the world is a better place with the creative work of Saga in it. The trick is to keep the quality. If comics are good, I don’t care about speculation. When they start to suck and people buy them anyway, then it’s time to run for the hills.

[Mayor006]

No offense to anyone here, but do any of you remember all the sports card dealers that flocked to comics in the 90s because they destroyed their hobby? I remember shows in the 90s where these guys started showing up and knew nothing about comics, but tried to sell them like cards.

Yup. I remember.

 

Valiant was the prime currency of these guys, and they ordered them like they ordered Pro Set 1990 Football.

 

Pro Set 1990 football - Emmitt Smith RC! what, $2 maybe?

[ThoseBackPages]

No offense to anyone here, but do any of you remember all the sports card dealers that flocked to comics in the 90s because they destroyed their hobby? I remember shows in the 90s where these guys started showing up and knew nothing about comics, but tried to sell them like cards.

Yup. I remember.

 

Valiant was the prime currency of these guys, and they ordered them like they ordered Pro Set 1990 Football.

 

Pro Set 1990 football - Emmitt Smith RC! what, $2 maybe?

 

Yep, on a good day!

 

wax is $7 per box

[Mayor006]

Man I remember buying a TON of Pro-Line when it came out in 1991. They started the autograph craze if you ask me. There was one in just about every third box. I must have bought 2 cases of that when I was a kid!

[ThoseBackPages]

Man I remember buying a TON of Pro-Line when it came out in 1991. They started the autograph craze if you ask me. There was one in just about every third box. I must have bought 2 cases of that when I was a kid!

 

you and i both!

 

 

[the blob]

Has anyone read any 90's garbage recently?

I flicked though a couple of issues of Bloodstrike and there was like 20 pages to it, hardly any dialogue and 50% of the books were full of ads about the next big #1 issue that was coming out.

There was absolutely no substance to these books (why the hell I ever bought it is beyond me). At least most of the modern Image books that I've seen have decent writing and the ideas are fresh and interesting - and the print runs aren't 500,000 per book.

 

I actually don't buy "poor product" as a real driving force because a lot of the books being put out by Marvel and DC weren't so bad. Batman was prtty good during this period, I enjoyed the X-Men then, Spiderman had some good stuff going on, Dardevil too, Dale Keown's/Peter David's Hulk was good, Valiant was pretty good and so on. True, Spawn was one of the only image books to feature actual plots (I liked Maxx too)...although I sort of rememer reading Supreme too and kind of not disliking it.

 

The crash happened because everyone and his brother, including a ton of folks who moved over from cards to comics right around then, ordered wayyyyyyyyy too much product under the delusion that there would be a back issue market for this stuff, failing to pay attention to the law of supply and demand. This incredible glut of product then pulled down stuff from the 80's that wasn't as massively overprinted because there was a perception problem. That perception problem carries over to all 90's books, when, in fact, some of the stuff from late '97 - '99 was produced in relatively tight print runs.

 

Much like if walking dead becomes a 200,000 copy a month book (and maybe even 150,000), you can pretty much forget about anything from 100 on up having a back issue market.

 

Now it is true, and was true then, that some massively speculated books of earlier eras survived as sellable and collectible back issues (Pete Parker 1, Star Wars 1, Avengers Annual 10, X-Men 137, Daredevil 181 to name a few), but these "dealers" were acting like 90% of what was churned out had that sort of potential.

 

What Marvel, DC, Image (and Valiant too, but I don't think they had the money once things went bad) should have done was some sort of "glut buster" program...allowing dealers to send covers of excess inventory back (or the top half of the front cover) with a promise to recycle the coverless copies in exhange for limited variant editions of various books.