Right Now is MY Golden Age

[PUNYHUMAN]

Well I don't know if it's my Golden age,but I know i enjoy collecting Golden Age ,books that is when I can afford them & that's never enough!!!

[joe_collector]

I'm not saying you shouldn't collect VG to VF, obviously you should collect what you want, but IN EVERY COLLECTIBLE FIELD, high-grade, cream of the crop quality is what ALWAYS RULES.

 

Hey, no one is telling you to collect VG to VF, only that you shouldn't expect to making longterm money buying CGC comics at market prices.

 

High-grade, cream of the crop may "rule", but it's also the area of most speculation and where you can lose your shirt if you don't sell at the right time.

[joe_collector]

[it kind of depends on how much you like high grade books because you just like 'em, and how much you like 'em because they're worth a lot.

 

That's exactly it, and I personally like comics for what they are, and am not insane enough to ever equate CGC comics with investment.

 

But as we've seen before, values plummet and the blush fades from the rose, and the majority of supposed collectors run for the hills. Or to put it a different way, where were all you high-grade freaks in 1995-98, when prices were rock bottom?

[delekkerste]

But as we've seen before, values plummet and the blush fades from the rose, and the majority of supposed collectors run for the hills. Or to put it a different way, where were all you high-grade freaks in 1995-98, when prices were rock bottom?

 

That's exactly it - everybody thinks they're an expert these days (which, by definition, can't be true) and nobody wants to admit to themselves that they weren't smart enough to buy back when prices really were attractive or that the party could end sometime soon without them getting their "fair share". These people are like my mom, who works in biotech and in the late 1990s put a lot of money into overvalued drug stocks because she heard one of her colleagues had bought some big pharma stock many years before and made like 20,000% on it (needless to say, that investment didn't work out too well).

 

It should be obvious that the time to buy is before something goes up thousands of percent, but today's high-grade slab collector/investor/speculator, emboldened by a large influx of money entering the market and propelling prices to new highs the past few years, seems to have forgotten that the road to lasting, long-term wealth is to buy low and sell high, not to buy at high prices and hold on even as prices reach nosebleed levels. Those people inevitably hang on too long and experience colossal, unbearable pain during the bust phase. Just ask BassGMan and his tech stock experience. Or my mom for that matter, who lost all of her late 1990s paper profits and more when the bubble burst, at one point even refusing to open her brokerage statements. Today's comic investor will experience similar pain - a few years from now, today's eBay comic junkies won't be able to even look at eBay or ComicLink without getting depressed. In this environment, we'll see who's truly as emotionally and financially detached from their collections as they claim and who will really be scooping up "bargains" that they claim they can't wait for today, when comic prices (along with their investment portfolios and housing prices) get whittled away, bit by bit, as the weeks and months pass.

 

Nobody can predict the future with 100% accuracy except liars, charlatans and lunatics. However, anyone who thinks the future is totally random and unpredictable is simply wrong. Actions today have consequences tomorrow. The future, like a blackjack game, is a series of dependent outcomes. The hand you're dealt tomorrow depends greatly on what cards were played today. People should approach the future face front and with eyes wide open, not with their heads turned looking at the beautiful gains in the rearview mirror.

[shadroch]

Gene,

If comic prices are crashing at the same time Wall St is crashing and my real estate values are also in decline,I most likely wouldn't be spending much on comics.If we have a major depression,recession,revolution-I'll be out of the market.

However,if we have an across the board 50% drop in comic prices during an economic boom,I'll be buying with a vengence,picking up all the books I've always wanted and don't have yet.

I think this is pretty much the gist of your point,yes?

[delekkerste]

Gene,

If comic prices are crashing at the same time Wall St is crashing and my real estate values are also in decline,I most likely wouldn't be spending much on comics.If we have a major depression,recession,revolution-I'll be out of the market.

However,if we have an across the board 50% drop in comic prices during an economic boom,I'll be buying with a vengence,picking up all the books I've always wanted and don't have yet.

I think this is pretty much the gist of your point,yes?

 

Yes. I firmly believe that a "perfect storm" is brewing and that we will see a once-in-a-lifetime liquidity crisis/economic bust which will pummel the price of virtually all assets, especially those that produce no income and have very little intrinsic value (like collectibles). Even if I didn't see that coming, I think normal market dynamics and demographic/cultural trends would eventually cause a big correction from today's values, but I don't think many asset prices will escape the throttling that I see coming. I think the wheels are already in motion now, though the realization that a top is in place and that prices aren't coming back probably won't occur for some time after a peak is achieved (which might not occur until real estate starts to roll over in earnest sometime in 2005/06, though I wouldn't be surprised if it happened before then given the level of froth and greed in the marketplace at the present time).

[PovertyRow]

I'll tell you, every day I wake up, look at my slowly re-re-regrowing collection, think about the online possibilities, these forums, etc. I do agree. These be fine times.

[fantastic_four]

Thanks to ebay and CGC (and this board), I'm more immersed in this hobby than at any other point in my life, and I'm loving it! I've learned more about comics and comic collecting in the past 3 years than I learned in the thirty years before that, combined. And thanks to ebay I now have an outlet to buy and sell comics without dealing with dealers, I can explore new collecting areas that were otherwise inaccessible before the internet, and I can make the hobby pay for itself with smart purchases.

 

AGREE entirely!!!

[squidmo2000]

I agree that this is the greatest time to collect.When I was younger,I was able to build an ASM set from 120-250 just from the shops & newstands,but forget about getting 1-100 with just 2 shops in my area and 1 or 2 conventions a year.The shops I went to had ratty early Spidey's for 10X guide and only a handful of those.The Internet,E-bay,and most importantly CGC allowed me to put together the set I've always wanted...........I'm now 5 issues away from having a complete ASM #1-40 run,and I would not have been able to do that even 10 years ago.I'm even starting runs now that I never would have before,like VF Tales to Astonish runs & early FF's.It's basically like having a comic shop in my house now,and without E-bay and CGC,I can honestly say I would never have returned to the hobby..........

[FlyingDonut]

Nobody can predict the future with 100% accuracy except liars, charlatans and lunatics. However, anyone who thinks the future is totally random and unpredictable is simply wrong. Actions today have consequences tomorrow. The future, like a blackjack game, is a series of dependent outcomes. The hand you're dealt tomorrow depends greatly on what cards were played today. People should approach the future face front and with eyes wide open, not with their heads turned looking at the beautiful gains in the rearview mirror.

 

Gene - I love you man, but you just set a record for number of cliches in a rant.