Crash conspiracy missing the scarcity factor

[lighthouse]

I probably should have made this post in a new thread, since it is sure to be lost in a crash conspiracy thread... Oh well...

 

And 27 minutes and 16 new replies proves I was right...

[Fan4Fan]

Exactly my point. I picked 2 similar issues, not worth much on their own accord, but being older X-men books, would have demand.

 

But your example is totally unrealistic, since that kind of Census gap would mean that X-Men 93 is already a key issue, and probably selling for multiples of what #92 does.

 

Or in real-world terms, Hulk 181 vs. 184.

 

Funny you should pick 184... I've been looking for a copy of that. I have no interest in 181, tho'.

 

Thanks,

Fan4Fan

[WernerVonDoom]

Hoarding of comics was far less common just a few years later. The "smart" money believed that the books from mid-1970s would "never be worth anything". And those perceptions held true for a very long time. As recently as 1997, if you asked most dealers they would tell you that Bronze Age material (with a few notable exceptions) was worthless. So those same dealers didn't care for it the way they did their Silver (or even their 80s Teen Titans, X-Men and Daredevils). The Silver Age books deserved a Mylar. The 80s stuff deserved a bag and board. The Bronze Age didn't even deserve a bag. When the bag and board phenomenon first took off, collectors were quick to bag their Golden Age and Silver Age. They may have even bagged some of the newest books they bought. But the Bronze? Nope, that stuff's never gonna be worth anything...

 

This is soooo true. Around 95/96, a comic store around here put out stacks of 9.4/9.6 issues of these books for $5 a piece: Marvel Premeire #1, New Gods #1, Warlock #1, and Forever People #1. They were not in mylars, just bagged and stacked on the counter for people to paw through.

[Zonker]

I'm in the process of changing my mind-- since crash threads have turned out to be inevitable, I've decided to aspire to be a true connoisseur of the genre-- and this is one of the best yet!

 

Why?

 

Because of the helpful clarity around the demand side vs. the supply side.

 

When we talk about scarcity of supply, we're talking about fairly concrete stuff. Data-mining the CGC census. Projections on how those numbers will change over time. Historical analogies to graded coins and cards. Print runs. Survivability estimates. Sure, many of these require conjecture, but it is conjecture that at least has some basis in hard data as the starting point for extrapolation.

 

Contrast that with discussions of demand. What drives demand? Opinions. Fashion. Fads. Trends. Competing distractions for collectors' attention. This is more psychology than anything (though I'll grant that one area affecting demand is demographics, and demographics is subject to good hard quantification.)

 

So when we look at demand, we're confronted with this type of puzzler: Are vintage comics likely to have more or less residual, long-term, generation-over-generation demand than, say, primo tulip bulbs in 17th century Amsterdam? And since it's really hard to get to facts around such a question, the debate will surely continue to rage...

[NoImSpartacus]

That's what happens when you put your money in assets with totally ephemeral values while requiring very real dollars to service your liabilities.

 

Gene

 

 

Excellent thought Gene.

[Illiterati-migration]

(Was "Re: high grade is not fun anymore" Didn't want to keep hijacking that thread.)

 

I think what we're missing is the scarcity factor. Value is derived from scarcity (or perceived scarcity). In sports cards, you have inserts, or chase cards. I was into football cards, and a common Michael Vick rookie card isn't worth much, if there's no sense of scarcity to it. Maybe $10. But a Michael Vick SP Authentic rookie, serial numbered to only 250, sells for $1000. And within the 250 cards, if you can find one with a unique patch, that makes it even more scarce, and worth 40% more. And we're talking about a 3 year old card. So this would be comparable to a modern comic.

 

There will always be a greater value associated with high grade comics, because of their scarcity. I think CGC has allowed us to quantify that scarcity, which was anyone's guess in the past. Of course, it's not 100% accurate, because every book hasn't been submitted. But in previous crashes, we weren't dealing with comics that had a population of <10 in the world. Valiant was considered "scarce" because it had a low print run of 10,000. Not 10.

 

Scott Travers said in a recent article that when PCGS started, common MS65 Morgan dollars were trading for thousands, and that they can be picked up for less than $100 today. I think that was a case of a misperception of scarcity. So our question should be, will that happen to CGC? In 5 years, how many more early silver 9.4's will there be? What kind of increase will we see with modern high grade comics? If the 5 Hulk 181's in 9.8 increase to 10 total, will it's value be cut in half? I think if it remains around 5-8, there will always be 8 people in the world willing to spend thousands for it. I just can't see the market agreeing that it's only worth $700. And in an auction, it only takes 2 buyers to get the price going.

 

I'm not a CGC fan, but I just thought this idea should be factored into the conversation.

 

Ask Ian about the values of SCARCE books.

[Zonker]

Bump.

 

Cause some are still overlooking the demand side on that other thread.