May I ask a question?

[MrBedrock]

SA is only valuable for non-key isuues in high grade. The rest is compost. GA, for the most part, has at least some value in all grades.

Despite the huge supply of lower grade silver there is a price point at which all of it will sell. And for titles like FF, Spidey and X-Men that price point is fairly significant. So to call it compost isn't really accurate. Is it possible that the trends identified by comparing the top grade books could lead us to the conclusion that maybe lower grade GA is overvalued in relation to all books?

 

It is compost. When a $15 book in low grade sells for five figures in ultra high grade, the $15 book is compost.

 

There are many examples of this in SA, damn few in GA. That's the point I'm trying to make. A decent lower grade mid run GA book still runs you $100 - $500. This is not true of 90% of the SA

I hear you, but from a resale standpoint I'd much rather have a stack of those $15 low grade Marvel comics than a vast majority of the $100 to $500 low grade golden age (A handful of DC's and Timelys and a few scattered specific books being the exception). That wasn't true four or five years ago.

[Ted Knight]

Westerns, late Lev Gleasons, many reprint books from the 40s and 50s, chunks of Dells. Finding a price point at which these are viable sellers can be very difficult.

 

This is a very good point. Content of these books has little to no appeal to the vast majority of the market. It seems that many genres for entertainment that were valid from 1933 to 1960 are less valid today. By comparison, a greater percentage of the genres of the 60s are still of interest and certainly mainstream Marvels and DC are more popular than ever.

 

But the SA has it's dogs as well. Low to mid-grade Gold Keys are a tough sell.

[MrBedrock]

As opposed to most silver age where there are so many copies available that the demand is only felt in the uppermost grade ranges.

I think the view of the expense of GA is due to the fact that it is conventional wisdom that GA is more expensive (which was true for a long time) and because a grade by grade comparison at the high end will usually, even now, show the GA issue being more expensive. Essentially, the evidence that people are looking at confirms conventional wisdom because they compare top copies.

 

I agree that people think golden age is expensive. I hope prices are not being driven simply because people think golden age should be expensive, but I do think that is the case in some respects. But closer inspection reveals that the conventional wisdom doesn't hold true most of the time. There aren't many comics in the way of silver age that are unsellable, even in low grade. There are large swaths of golden age that are. Westerns, late Lev Gleasons, many reprint books from the 40s and 50s, chunks of Dells. Finding a price point at which these are viable sellers can be very difficult.

 

Compare them to the equal counterparts of the SA and you will find similar results.

No you won't. Find a price point and silver age Marvel Westerns sell. Marvel and DC reprint books sell. Thunder Agents sell. Most anything from the 60s has some demand. About the only 60s books I have a hard time selling are Mad Magazines and some of the Dell non-TV show stuff. But I couldn't tell you the last time I sold a Star Spangled comics without drastically cutting the price. And I have some mid-number Lev Gleason Daredevils that lasted through $1 box sales!

[ciorac]

SA is only valuable for non-key isuues in high grade. The rest is compost. GA, for the most part, has at least some value in all grades.

Despite the huge supply of lower grade silver there is a price point at which all of it will sell. And for titles like FF, Spidey and X-Men that price point is fairly significant. So to call it compost isn't really accurate. Is it possible that the trends identified by comparing the top grade books could lead us to the conclusion that maybe lower grade GA is overvalued in relation to all books?

 

It is compost. When a $15 book in low grade sells for five figures in ultra high grade, the $15 book is compost.

 

There are many examples of this in SA, damn few in GA. That's the point I'm trying to make. A decent lower grade mid run GA book still runs you $100 - $500. This is not true of 90% of the SA

I hear you, but from a resale standpoint I'd much rather have a stack of those $15 low grade Marvel comics than a vast majority of the $100 to $500 low grade golden age (A handful of DC's and Timelys and a few scattered specific books being the exception). That wasn't true four or five years ago.

 

Makes me glad I'm not a dealer anymore.

[ciorac]

As opposed to most silver age where there are so many copies available that the demand is only felt in the uppermost grade ranges.

I think the view of the expense of GA is due to the fact that it is conventional wisdom that GA is more expensive (which was true for a long time) and because a grade by grade comparison at the high end will usually, even now, show the GA issue being more expensive. Essentially, the evidence that people are looking at confirms conventional wisdom because they compare top copies.

 

I agree that people think golden age is expensive. I hope prices are not being driven simply because people think golden age should be expensive, but I do think that is the case in some respects. But closer inspection reveals that the conventional wisdom doesn't hold true most of the time. There aren't many comics in the way of silver age that are unsellable, even in low grade. There are large swaths of golden age that are. Westerns, late Lev Gleasons, many reprint books from the 40s and 50s, chunks of Dells. Finding a price point at which these are viable sellers can be very difficult.

 

Compare them to the equal counterparts of the SA and you will find similar results.

No you won't. Find a price point and silver age Marvel Westerns sell. Marvel and DC reprint books sell. Thunder Agents sell. Most anything from the 60s has some demand. About the only 60s books I have a hard time selling are Mad Magazines and some of the Dell non-TV show stuff. But I couldn't tell you the last time I sold a Star Spangled comics without drastically cutting the price. And I have some mid-number Lev Gleason Daredevils that lasted through $1 box sales!

 

The market must have radically changed since I was a retailer then. I had to discount low grade non-key Marvel and DC comics drastically to get them to move. If you can sell those non-superhero titles in low grade for anywhere near guide you are truly a marvel of retailing acumen.

 

I know where a cache of 30,000 of them are if you are inclined to pay half guide or better for them. Superhero titles included.

[Hamlet]

I don't think he was saying that they would sell at near guide. Just that they would sell at some non-trivial price.

 

A VG copy of FF 67 won't sell at guide. But put it out for $5, and it will sell (probably to me, and then I would have three of them

 

By the way, does anyone want to buy a VG copy of FF 67 for $6?

 

 

The market must have radically changed since I was a retailer then. I had to discount low grade non-key Marvel and DC comics drastically to get them to move. If you can sell those non-superhero titles in low grade for anywhere near guide you are truly a marvel of retailing acumen.

 

I know where a cache of 30,000 of them are if you are inclined to pay half guide or better for them. Superhero titles included.

[ciorac]

I don't think he was saying that they would sell at near guide. Just that they would sell at some non-trivial price.

 

A VG copy of FF 67 won't sell at guide. But put it out for $5, and it will sell (probably to me, and then I would have three of them

 

By the way, does anyone want to buy a VG copy of FF 67 for $6?

 

 

The market must have radically changed since I was a retailer then. I had to discount low grade non-key Marvel and DC comics drastically to get them to move. If you can sell those non-superhero titles in low grade for anywhere near guide you are truly a marvel of retailing acumen.

 

I know where a cache of 30,000 of them are if you are inclined to pay half guide or better for them. Superhero titles included.

 

Isn't five bucks trivial? What would its 9.6 counterpart sell for? My point is the outrageous disparity

[Hamlet]

The 9.6 sells for a ton of money because there aren't many of them out there, and there are some "crazy" people willing to spend "crazy" money to have the absolute best copy available.

 

There are many thousands of copies of the VG books out there. There is plenty of supply, and reasonable demand, just not at high prices. There is no reason that this book should command a lot of money in low grade.

 

Frankly, the VG price has always made more sense to me than the 9.6 price.

 

Isn't five bucks trivial? What would its 9.6 counterpart sell for? My point is the outrageous disparity

[COI]

Great thread, guys. You're all making me want to look at Timelys when I start collecting again.

[Forbush-Man]

SA is only valuable for non-key isuues in high grade. The rest is compost. GA, for the most part, has at least some value in all grades.

Despite the huge supply of lower grade silver there is a price point at which all of it will sell. And for titles like FF, Spidey and X-Men that price point is fairly significant. So to call it compost isn't really accurate. Is it possible that the trends identified by comparing the top grade books could lead us to the conclusion that maybe lower grade GA is overvalued in relation to all books?

 

It is compost. When a $15 book in low grade sells for five figures in ultra high grade, the $15 book is compost.

 

There are many examples of this in SA, damn few in GA. That's the point I'm trying to make. A decent lower grade mid run GA book still runs you $100 - $500. This is not true of 90% of the SA

I hear you, but from a resale standpoint I'd much rather have a stack of those $15 low grade Marvel comics than a vast majority of the $100 to $500 low grade golden age (A handful of DC's and Timelys and a few scattered specific books being the exception). That wasn't true four or five years ago.

 

I once asked Jamie Newbold what he would like to have come into his shop, and his answer was low grade silver age Marvels and dollar books (books he pays .10 each for and sells for $1 each.) That was a surprise to me then, but I now understand he has no problem selling low grade silver age Marvels, and he has a regular supply of customer combing through the $1 books, where his margins are higher.

[Ted Knight]

I don't think he was saying that they would sell at near guide. Just that they would sell at some non-trivial price.

 

A VG copy of FF 67 won't sell at guide. But put it out for $5, and it will sell (probably to me, and then I would have three of them

 

By the way, does anyone want to buy a VG copy of FF 67 for $6?

 

 

The market must have radically changed since I was a retailer then. I had to discount low grade non-key Marvel and DC comics drastically to get them to move. If you can sell those non-superhero titles in low grade for anywhere near guide you are truly a marvel of retailing acumen.

 

I know where a cache of 30,000 of them are if you are inclined to pay half guide or better for them. Superhero titles included.

 

Isn't five bucks trivial? What would its 9.6 counterpart sell for? My point is the outrageous disparity

 

Yes, it is. Hamlet is pointing out that there is a price that the books will sell. But I think you're correct that when the price is so low, the impact on the greater market is negligible and that, relatively, their value is insignificant. (thumbs u

[Ted Knight]

A VG copy of FF 67 won't sell at guide. But put it out for $5, and it will sell (probably to me, and then I would have three of them

 

Still waiting for the law of diminishing marginal utility to kick in.

[Hamlet]

The price point for much of that stuff could be the dollar box

 

I don't think that there is neccessarily anything wrong with that. Who decided that every single thing that was ever printed in comic form needs to have collectible value in excess of a buck or two?

 

Even those things will sell on E-bay. I sold some trashed Westerns (including a 1.0 Jimmey Wakely #2) for a few bucks on Ebay a couple years ago. I'm sure that I pulled most of them out of quarter boxes in the 80s, so I probably broke even after inflation.

 

When I was collecting during the late 80s, I would generally buy any non-destroyed 10 cent or 12 cent comic out of a quarter box. There was a fair amount of stuff that I got this way over the years. I could probably still put together most of a longbox of this stuff. Much of it would still just be dollar box material. Some of it would be worth a little more. A few of the higher grade items might be worth a lot more.

 

If dealers have too much of this stuff on their hands, throw it into the dollar box and free up some capital to buy books that are in higher demand.

 

I agree that people think golden age is expensive. I hope prices are not being driven simply because people think golden age should be expensive, but I do think that is the case in some respects. But closer inspection reveals that the conventional wisdom doesn't hold true most of the time. There aren't many comics in the way of silver age that are unsellable, even in low grade. There are large swaths of golden age that are. Westerns, late Lev Gleasons, many reprint books from the 40s and 50s, chunks of Dells. Finding a price point at which these are viable sellers can be very difficult.

[Hamlet]

It depends on how you measure things. The value of the 100s (1000s ?) of VG FF's that change hands is probably not insignificant in total.

 

GPA only has two listed 9.6 sales for FF 67 from 2010 and 2011, and only 4 sales for that book in 9.4. They aren't tracking the whole market, of course, but I suspect that the total value of lower grade books that are changing hands could actually be larger than the ultra high end books.

 

Yes, it is. Hamlet is pointing out that there is a price that the books will sell. But I think you're correct that when the price is so low, the impact on the greater market is negligible and that, relatively, their value is insignificant. (thumbs u

[Hamlet]

I'm still carrying around those Wolverine 50s and Marvel Comics Presents 90s that we bought way back when.

 

Having an extra copy of FF 67 is way more useful to me than those.

 

Still waiting for the law of diminishing marginal utility to kick in.

[yoink-migration]

Then I digged into the population of early Spidey and I was amazed to see that early Spidey (AS not AF) commanded almost the same high price than early Superman. The only big difference was the population of Spidey vs Superman.

 

I was not quite understanding why Spidey would command such prices when in fact the population was bigger (double or more) Superman's one.

 

One reason is that Spider-Man isn't as ghey as Superman.

[tb]

Great discussion.

 

A few weeks ago, I was looking into the CGC census population of high grade comics from the 1930s for a different reason. Some of the posts in this thread made me curious how those numbers would compare to the early 1960s.

 

The chart below shows the number of comics graded unrestored 9.0 or higher for each year from 1935 to 1965. For example. the top blue column on the right shows that there are 3,707 books graded CGC 9.0 from 1965. The purple column below that shows 3,304 9.2 copies from that year. The sum of all the columns is the total number of copies graded 9.0+ for each year.

[adamstrange]

Excellent graph!

 

The number of 9.6s in 1965 are either greater than or similar in number to the total number of 9.0+ copies of any prior year.

[comicdonna]

Wow, this is a really cool chart. Thanks for sharing.

[Moondog]

As opposed to most silver age where there are so many copies available that the demand is only felt in the uppermost grade ranges.

I think the view of the expense of GA is due to the fact that it is conventional wisdom that GA is more expensive (which was true for a long time) and because a grade by grade comparison at the high end will usually, even now, show the GA issue being more expensive. Essentially, the evidence that people are looking at confirms conventional wisdom because they compare top copies.

 

I agree that people think golden age is expensive. I hope prices are not being driven simply because people think golden age should be expensive, but I do think that is the case in some respects. But closer inspection reveals that the conventional wisdom doesn't hold true most of the time. There aren't many comics in the way of silver age that are unsellable, even in low grade. There are large swaths of golden age that are. Westerns, late Lev Gleasons, many reprint books from the 40s and 50s, chunks of Dells. Finding a price point at which these are viable sellers can be very difficult.

 

Compare them to the equal counterparts of the SA and you will find similar results.

No you won't. Find a price point and silver age Marvel Westerns sell. Marvel and DC reprint books sell. Thunder Agents sell. Most anything from the 60s has some demand. About the only 60s books I have a hard time selling are Mad Magazines and some of the Dell non-TV show stuff. But I couldn't tell you the last time I sold a Star Spangled comics without drastically cutting the price. And I have some mid-number Lev Gleason Daredevils that lasted through $1 box sales!

 

The market must have radically changed since I was a retailer then. I had to discount low grade non-key Marvel and DC comics drastically to get them to move. If you can sell those non-superhero titles in low grade for anywhere near guide you are truly a marvel of retailing acumen.

 

I know where a cache of 30,000 of them are if you are inclined to pay half guide or better for them. Superhero titles included.

 

 

I have to discount every low to mid-grade comic I sell except Timely's, GGA, PCH, and obvious keys.