Historical Price Data - Revised to include 'Fine' data on pg 4 (not good)

[bb8]

Uh...a 'fine' in 1980 is most likely a VG at best in today's market. Maybe even lower. Grading standards will definitely skew these numbers.

[Aman619]

but - -- compiling Overstreet pricing data from year to year is not in any way a comparison to the Stock market. Sure its fun and all, but Overstreet prices have RARELY matched real sales data - - always lagging far behind, or even going above nowadays. It just represents a carefully tended garden of pricing that always went up in a managed manner.

 

Whereas Wall St data is REAL data representing actual sales prices in numbers FAR beyond the totals sales of comic books. Theor sampling is so much greater and adds credence to the prices.

 

I suppose you could compare Overstreet to the Dow, though, since they are both contrived sets of data: The Dow is a controlled/managed list that has continually shed its losers and replaced them with newer winning stocks, thereby skewing its numbers upward.

 

what Im saying is that Action 1 to name the most obvious candidate has always sold for far more than Guide, so of what value is charting the Guide price year by year except as a point of entry to Bob's methodology of price guide management?

[jimjum12]

but - -- compiling Overstreet pricing data from year to year is not in any way a comparison to the Stock market. Sure its fun and all, but Overstreet prices have RARELY matched real sales data - - always lagging far behind, or even going above nowadays. It just represents a carefully tended garden of pricing that always went up in a managed manner.

 

Whereas Wall St data is REAL data representing actual sales prices in numbers FAR beyond the totals sales of comic books. Theor sampling is so much greater and adds credence to the prices.

 

I suppose you could compare Overstreet to the Dow, though, since they are both contrived sets of data: The Dow is a controlled/managed list that has continually shed its losers and replaced them with newer winning stocks, thereby skewing its numbers upward.

 

what Im saying is that Action 1 to name the most obvious candidate has always sold for far more than Guide, so of what value is charting the Guide price year by year except as a point of entry to Bob's methodology of price guide management?

 

..... yeah, if you were to ADD up ALL the NM guide values for Action 1 in OSPG since 1970, you'd probably be closer to what a NM Action 1 might actually sell for. GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[rjrjr]

I had a crack at this a few years ago as well. See this post and forward.

 

Haven't updated it for a while though.

Thanks for sharing, I think my next step in the process may be to look at 'Fine" values instead of top values. See how those numbers shake out. I had thought about doing that when I started this journey but for simplicity reasons just looked at top value (as they are listed in a chart at the start of each OSPG, so I didn't have to look up each book individually). If I look at 'Fine' values which may represent a more fair assessment(?) then it will take quite a bit more time as I will have to look up each book for each year.

 

Decided to look at 'Fine' pricing and the results are less than stellar. As where investing in the DJIA (and reinvesting dividends) netted $419,600 at the end of 2012 had you invested $10,000 at the beginning of 1980. For 'Fine' guide prices, $10,000 in the GA portfolio would have netted $338,700 and only $164,800 for the SA portfolio. Those numbers are still both better than DJIA investing if you had not reinvested dividends, as that would have only netted $156,236.

 

None of the SA books beat the market with fine pricing during this time. And there were only 5 out of 14 GA books that did. As where with top grade books (NM-) all 12 of the SA books outperformed the market and 10 out of the 14 GA books outperformed the market.

 

So my conclusions have been revised a bit, investing in highest grade holy grail (mainly) superhero books gives you the best shot at beating the stock market over time. But who has that kind of money just laying around that can be risked on comic book investing? Not me

 

 

 

Just a couple of more thoughts on this subject. A NM comic in 1980 is not what a NM comic is today. I'm still not convinced you could have picked NM copies of most of the comics on your list from dealers. You would have had to have a discerning eye and went against what was acceptable as NM in 1980. Availability of NM copies of many of these books is not readily available whereas stocks are always available, since millions and billions of shares are traded daily.

 

So, even if you had the money in 1980 to invest in these comics, availability would have been a factor as well as what was considered NM at the time.

 

[rjrjr]

Uh...a 'fine' in 1980 is most likely a VG at best in today's market. Maybe even lower. Grading standards will definitely skew these numbers.

 

You beat me to this thought.

 

[RedGiant]

One thing I also find interesting is how well these books (both in NM- AND Fine) have performed over the past few years. People keep bringing up grades aren't the same today as they were in 1980 (I agree). However, I don't think anyone would argue that grades now are really any different than they were at the beginning of 2010. Additionally, it would be tough to argue the stock market hasn't done well since the beginning of 2010, as it has. So taking those factors into consideration, I find the 2010-2012 column interesting. During this time, here is the breakdown:

 

DJIA (reinvesting dividends) - up 36%

NM- GA books - up 47%

NM- SA books - up 55%

FN GA books - up 38%

FN SA books - up 27%

 

Three of the four outperformed the Dow during a strong time for stocks and the fourth was close performance wise.

[Aman619]

again, keep in mind you are comparing Bob Overstreets pricing data to real world Stock results. apples and oranges.

 

If someone were to have bought the basket of comics in the NM GA books portfolio, or any of the others, their results would be very different than Guide changes, chances are they paid way over guide, and today see little or no profit on most of the books. the NM Books that are being compared to the Dow are not for sale at Overstreet prices!

 

The Guide REALLY is just a GUIDE. always has been.

 

Comics just do not have a reliable pricing resource. All of choices out there need many years of experience to read between the lines. The Guide is Bob's dream visions of values. GPA doesn't get reports from major sources of sales data. Auctions prices are skewed by many factors:, pg quality, upgradability, death matches between bidders to name a few. ALL affect the prices that are posted on GPA and in the Guide (once a year!)

 

So to publish an authoritative "researched" piece like this on Seeking Alpha ? well, hope the potential comics investors do their own homework. (of course this piece isn't very different from all the other investment advice available).

 

btw - - Ive just finished going thru the latest Guide, title by title. And the % of books that had their prices go up this year was far less than ever. In fact, Bobs new tack this year was to lower the G prices, increasing the spreads between G and NM-. Going BACKWARDS on prices is a very new phenomenon for Overstreet. It says he realizes that he has finally caught the market on many sectors of comics and has to pull back.

[Hamlet]

Most of the golden age books are nearly non-existent in 9.2 grades, which is why the Church books immediately sold for multiples of guide when they became available.

 

From a practical standpoint, almost no one had the opportunity to purchase NM copies of these books in 1980 (or now, for that matter).

 

Most people who would have been "investing" in comics in 1980 would have been paying NM prices for what today would be called F-VF books at best. It's also very likely that a decent portion of the books they ended up buying would have non-disclosed restoration.

 

Just a couple of more thoughts on this subject. A NM comic in 1980 is not what a NM comic is today. I'm still not convinced you could have picked NM copies of most of the comics on your list from dealers. You would have had to have a discerning eye and went against what was acceptable as NM in 1980. Availability of NM copies of many of these books is not readily available whereas stocks are always available, since millions and billions of shares are traded daily.

 

So, even if you had the money in 1980 to invest in these comics, availability would have been a factor as well as what was considered NM at the time.

[RedGiant]

For those wondering "actual" pricing (GPA) vs "guide" (OSPG) - I did run some numbers on Fine SA books for 2010 through 2012. There wasn't enough NM- data to look at and not much Fine data on GA books from actual sales, so really I just wanted to get a general idea of premium paid and what kind of actual returns the books had vs. guide. What I found for Fine SA books, one would typically pay a premium of about 20-25% over Fine guide prices for CGC slabbed books. While the SA portfolio increased 27% between 2010 through 2012 - while one would have to pay a premium over guide for these books, the real return was very similar percentage wise. For example, let's look at Brave and the Bold 28. While the premium paid at the start of 2010 or end of 2012 was about 14% - both the guide values AND the actual sales as recorded by GPA were almost identical percentage wise - about a 40% increase during this time.

[Aman619]

ahem. GPA doesn't reflect many private sales nor any Comiclink sales. Many many record prices, and some lower prices happen off GPAs radar (thru no fault of their own.)

 

Short of being a dealer with his nose on the ground as much as humanly possible 24/7 and extremely well connected to "everyone", we just do not have a precise method of charting comics prices and values!!

 

I wish there was!

[rjrjr]

One thing I also find interesting is how well these books (both in NM- AND Fine) have performed over the past few years. People keep bringing up grades aren't the same today as they were in 1980 (I agree). However, I don't think anyone would argue that grades now are really any different than they were at the beginning of 2010. Additionally, it would be tough to argue the stock market hasn't done well since the beginning of 2010, as it has. So taking those factors into consideration, I find the 2010-2012 column interesting. During this time, here is the breakdown:

 

DJIA (reinvesting dividends) - up 36%

NM- GA books - up 47%

NM- SA books - up 55%

FN GA books - up 38%

FN SA books - up 27%

 

Three of the four outperformed the Dow during a strong time for stocks and the fourth was close performance wise.

 

 

[AlexanderM]

One thing I also find interesting is how well these books (both in NM- AND Fine) have performed over the past few years. People keep bringing up grades aren't the same today as they were in 1980 (I agree). However, I don't think anyone would argue that grades now are really any different than they were at the beginning of 2010. Additionally, it would be tough to argue the stock market hasn't done well since the beginning of 2010, as it has. So taking those factors into consideration, I find the 2010-2012 column interesting. During this time, here is the breakdown:

 

DJIA (reinvesting dividends) - up 36%

NM- GA books - up 47%

NM- SA books - up 55%

FN GA books - up 38%

FN SA books - up 27%

 

Three of the four outperformed the Dow during a strong time for stocks and the fourth was close performance wise.

 

That emoticon should only be used in the sense "booh.. I hate what you are saying but I have no good counter argument".

 

I think anyone above 6 years old with a sensible argument should share that instead of merely using such an emoticon.

 

 

[ComicConnoisseur]

again, keep in mind you are comparing Bob Overstreets pricing data to real world Stock results. apples and oranges.

 

If someone were to have bought the basket of comics in the NM GA books portfolio, or any of the others, their results would be very different than Guide changes, chances are they paid way over guide, and today see little or no profit on most of the books. the NM Books that are being compared to the Dow are not for sale at Overstreet prices!

 

The Guide REALLY is just a GUIDE. always has been.

 

Comics just do not have a reliable pricing resource. All of choices out there need many years of experience to read between the lines. The Guide is Bob's dream visions of values. GPA doesn't get reports from major sources of sales data. Auctions prices are skewed by many factors:, pg quality, upgradability, death matches between bidders to name a few. ALL affect the prices that are posted on GPA and in the Guide (once a year!)

 

So to publish an authoritative "researched" piece like this on Seeking Alpha ? well, hope the potential comics investors do their own homework. (of course this piece isn't very different from all the other investment advice available).

 

btw - - Ive just finished going thru the latest Guide, title by title. And the % of books that had their prices go up this year was far less than ever. In fact, Bobs new tack this year was to lower the G prices, increasing the spreads between G and NM-. Going BACKWARDS on prices is a very new phenomenon for Overstreet. It says he realizes that he has finally caught the market on many sectors of comics and has to pull back.

Interesting. A trend continues towards the rarest/best condition items being ultra valuable and common-uncommon or lesser condition items being valueless.

[ComicConnoisseur]

@diestler.

I thought you would find this old article interesting.

Some Wall Street broker in the early 1990s did a similar track with baseball cards against the stock market.

Tracking blue chip baseball cards against stocks.

[RedGiant]

@diestler.

I thought you would find this old article interesting.

Some Wall Street broker in the early 1990s did a similar track with baseball cards against the stock market.

Tracking blue chip baseball cards against stocks.

Fun read, thanks for sharing.

[Sqeggs]

Going BACKWARDS on prices is a very new phenomenon for Overstreet. It says he realizes that he has finally caught the market on many sectors of comics and has to pull back.

 

Not really. I'm too lazy to document it by hauling out my old guides, but he whacked the prices on mid-grade Marvel SAs back in the early to mid 2000s, if irrc.

[Sqeggs]

One thing I also find interesting is how well these books (both in NM- AND Fine) have performed over the past few years. People keep bringing up grades aren't the same today as they were in 1980 (I agree). However, I don't think anyone would argue that grades now are really any different than they were at the beginning of 2010. Additionally, it would be tough to argue the stock market hasn't done well since the beginning of 2010, as it has. So taking those factors into consideration, I find the 2010-2012 column interesting. During this time, here is the breakdown:

 

DJIA (reinvesting dividends) - up 36%

NM- GA books - up 47%

NM- SA books - up 55%

FN GA books - up 38%

FN SA books - up 27%

 

Three of the four outperformed the Dow during a strong time for stocks and the fourth was close performance wise.

 

The results are interesting, but while it was a strong period for the Dow, it was also a strong period for comic prices.

 

The question is whether going forward, comic prices are likely to sustain their growth rates. I would argue that it is more likely that the typical high-grade GA/SA/BR key is worth less 10 years from now than that it is worth more. I've made this argument in other threads so I won't rehash it again, other than to say we have been going through a period where the stars have been aligned for comic collecting. The future is likely to be much less favorable.

 

In any event, in judging expected returns, you need to take into account risk. Investing in collectibles is much, much riskier than investing in blue chip stocks.