The Crash of 1993

[seank]

Interesting article about the great comic book crash of 1993.

 

The article analogizes to the housing crash and also contains this interesting quote:

 

"As a financial concern, comic book publishers are no longer in the publishing business: They’re curators of, and incubators for, extremely valuable intellectual property. To comic-book collectors, that’s very good news."

 

 

[Snake Eyes]

Great article (thumbs u

 

Thanks for finding it

[PurpleZeke]

That was a decent read!

[dem1138]

I'm not so sure about his line - I definitely never recall this or seeing any evidence to support it, "Even the value of blue chips, like Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27, plunged."

[TheWatcher]

I'm not so sure about his line - I definitely never recall this or seeing any evidence to support it, "Even the value of blue chips, like Action Comics #1 and Detective Comics #27, plunged."

 

An Action 1 sold in 1995 for a record 137.5K . Didn't seem to affect prices for this book one bit. I believe that copy turned out to be the 8.0 that sold for 1M, if memory serves

[Brian48]

The same thing happened to the sports card collecting hobby at around the same time. Good thing I stopped collecting sports card in '91 as it was just about to tank.

[Hamlet]

Did anyone ever actually pay $25 for the 1984 New Teen Titans #1?

 

I remember being late to the game on that one too, but I only paid $4.50 (which was itself a foolish purchase).

 

 

[dem1138]

The same thing happened to the sports card collecting hobby at around the same time. Good thing I stopped collecting sports card in '91 as it was just about to tank.

 

But even in that hobby during that time you could never get a '52 Mantle cheap nor have the prices ever tanked.

 

 

[Duffman_Comics]

An accurate, well written analysis. Thanks seank (thumbs u

[seank]

The same thing happened to the sports card collecting hobby at around the same time. Good thing I stopped collecting sports card in '91 as it was just about to tank.

 

But even in that hobby during that time you could never get a '52 Mantle cheap nor have the prices ever tanked.

 

 

But as the article says, premium items or real estate locations won't suffer too much in a crash.

[Comicopolis]

Definitely an interesting read. (thumbs u

[arexcrooke]

The same thing happened to the sports card collecting hobby at around the same time. Good thing I stopped collecting sports card in '91 as it was just about to tank.

 

But even in that hobby during that time you could never get a '52 Mantle cheap nor have the prices ever tanked.

 

 

But as the article says, premium items or real estate locations won't suffer too much in a crash.

Yep, it isnt the Tec 27s, the Action 1s, the Goudey Ruths, or Topps Mantles (any of them, not just the Cadillac of baseball cards)

Its the ordinary run of the mill cards and comics etc that take it in the bum

[rabidwolf]

The thing I remember from the mid 90s is that the value of mid and low grade back issues tanked while high grades started going for multiples. The actual crash did not relly otherwise affect silver and gold comics. Many of the moderns (incluidng marvel, DC, Image and oh yeah valiant) became inflatd in price and soon after ate it big time from what I remember.

[MCJ]

There's a second part:

 

Crash of '93 continued

 

Superman didn't stay dead for long, did he?

[Owls Head]

Did anyone ever actually pay $25 for the 1984 New Teen Titans #1?

 

I remember being late to the game on that one too, but I only paid $4.50 (which was itself a foolish purchase).

 

 

 

Most be a different one? I was thinking of this one:

The New Teen Titans # 1--Marv Wolfman/George Perez-1980 -- not 1984.

 

[spidrvacc]

What a Great read. I saw first hand the Sports card crash and the comic crash. My brother has boxes and boxes of sports cards somewhere. he lost thousands I think. And he had a ton of Valiant and Image junk he wound up throwing out. I had one copy of all the image and valiant stuff and sold most of it at a profit . I had seen the sports card market crash and learned something.

[silverseeker]

That was an interesting read...thanks for sharing!

 

I remember buying multiple copies of the first few issues of the second Wolfman-Perez New Teen Titans series in 1984 when it came out, but don't remember the first issue ever hitting $25...

[Rommin]

Thanks for the link!

 

I hated hated hated hated being a comic book reader/collector around that time, 91-93 .. so much so that I got out of the hobby altogether. Everything was drawn as a third hand derivative of McFarlane, stories droned on and on, and the gadget/gizmo/ multi-cover multi-copy stuff was just way too much.

 

I wish I would have spent money on Silver/Bronze books back then instead

[the blob]

The groundwork for the crash was laid in 1993 (massive overordering of "hot" books), but I don't think it really hit until 1994.

 

I guess vintage stuff did get his a bit as HAD to happen when you had that many shops closing, all within a few years. A lot of inventory was hitting the market at shows and what not.

 

But yeah, I don't remember anything about Action 1 or even the Marvel SA keys taking a tumble at that time. Afterall, the economy in general was starting to pick up around then.

[jdjunker]

That is an interesting read, but i'm not sure I'd take it as a 100% accurate portrayal of the comics market crash. The author is a bit loose with some of the details.

 

It is in fact the crash of 93, comic sales peaked in Aug 93 and then began a rapid and steady decline.

 

However, the author seems to place far too much blame for the initial collapse on the distributors. Not to mention, Capital and Diamond were not the only distributors in 93, there were probably half a dozen smaller distributors still around. The distribution method did in fact allow for the collapse to take place, and the distributors created a lot of problems for themselves by extending credit to accounts they shouldn't have and/or in amounts they shouldn't have, but by and large the collapse was caused by the blatant greed of the speculators and shameless exploitation of the market by the publishers.

 

The problem of the initial collapse was worsened when Marvel decided to take steps to set up their own distribution and purchased Heroes World to do so. That single move eliminated any chance any of the smaller distributors had of rebounding and in fact forced a battle between Diamond and Capital for who could sign DC to an exclusive, as that is the only chance either of them had to survive.

 

Odds are good that if Marvel would not have tried their own distribution the market would have settled in significantly below the levels of the early 90s bubble, but also somewhere above the rock bottom it eventually hit.