Comic Book Investing

[Sqeggs]

Whoa! I was merely taking a flyer on your employer. You sound like a government type, once again we all have to earn a living and that's no better or worse than any other means to an end. For the record, I wouldn't consider it cooking the books. I'd chalk it up as cherry picking selective data.

 

Oy! One more time and then I'm out of this. They don't cherry pick data or do any other improper manipulations.

 

Believe me, the CPI is scrutinized very closely. A lot of stuff depends on it. If anybody discovered anything in its calculation that indicated the BLS was cooking the books -- and it would be discovered -- it would be plastered all over the front page of the WSJ.

 

Ok, back to comics!

[HighStakesComics]

According to the staggering amounts of finds OVER HERE Comic books are not a good investment model

 

For the seller? No. For the buyer? Absolutely. We discussed the topic of mispriced finds on this thread a day or two ago. It just goes to show, if you aren't sure what something is worth, better to ask too much for it than too little. You can always drop your price, but once someone finds a deal its tough to jack it up.

 

The problem, of course, is that "garage sale finds" are no basis for making an investment strategy.

 

I can go to E*Trade, right now, and buy 10,000 shares of Walmart. Right now, this very instant.

 

I *cannot* go online and buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $100 each. I couldn't buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for almost ANY price, even if I had unlimited funds!

 

That's really the difference. The work involved is phenomenal, and can still result in *nothing.* The best find I ever made at a garage sale....ever...was in 1990, when I found a mid-grade copy of DD #158 for 50 cents. I was THRILLED.

 

That's the best sale I've ever found at a garage sale. 24 years ago.

 

And I look.

 

You wouldn't chalk that up as arbitrage, RMA? Closest thing within the boundaries on the law in the stock market would be covered calls on a long position, IMHO.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Hey anyone wanna talk about comics?

 

What the hell are those...?

 

:shrug:

[shadroch]

I always laugh when I hear people talking about how much work it is, to buy and sell comics.

When CC, CL, or MCS list their new auctions, it takes me about a half an hour to look through their listings and identify the books I'm interested in. I place bids on about 100 books and pray I don't win all of them. tough work, but someone has to do it.

When I sell, it takes perhaps an hour to pack them and label the boxes for the PO to pick up. Making up mysteryboxes does take a bit more time, but its fun.

[delekkerste]

The problem, of course, is that "garage sale finds" are no basis for making an investment strategy.

 

I can go to E*Trade, right now, and buy 10,000 shares of Walmart. Right now, this very instant.

 

I *cannot* go online and buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $100 each. I couldn't buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for almost ANY price, even if I had unlimited funds!

 

That's really the difference. The work involved is phenomenal, and can still result in *nothing.* The best find I ever made at a garage sale....ever...was in 1990, when I found a mid-grade copy of DD #158 for 50 cents. I was THRILLED.

 

That's the best sale I've ever found at a garage sale. 24 years ago.

 

And I look.

 

Not only that, but if we're talking about investing in comics, shouldn't we be talking about buying books at market prices and selling them at market prices? If you are able to buy books at a garage sale at pennies on the dollar, that's great for you, but it's not exactly a strategy that's consistently repeatable or scalable, especially for other people. You can tell someone to go out and put together a diversified portfolio of stocks and they can easily do it, but it's not like you can tell someone to go out and buy comics at pennies on the dollar at a garage sale and expect them to have a lot of success with that. :doh:

[october]

I love these investment threads because the same four or five predictable lemons always get trotted out. The 9.6 GL 76, the 9.6 AV 4, Hulk 181 9.8s, etc are held up as the poster children for all comics and their neverending downward value spiral. Yes, they were terrible buys at those price points. Yes, they have decreased in value. On the other hand they represent the top, infinitesimally small portion of purchases by buyers playing in the extreme deep-end. If we are going to include those, why don't we also look at how other blue chips have done in that deep end of the market?

 

Virtually any copies of Action 1, Detective 27, Superman 1, Batman 1 and others have done amazingly well in that same time period, and (depending on grade and level of resto) have seen 200-1000% value growth in the last decade. That doesn't fit the narrative of course. Neither does performance of low-mid-lower high grade silver and bronze keys. Those have seen tremendous growth, while their top census counterparts have languished.

 

I don't see comics as a great investment (which is why I have my money in more traditional vehicles), but letting a tiny fraction of the market color perception of it as a whole is as flawed as holding up WorldCom and Enron as reasons why all stocks are a terrible buy.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

That's not what I said at all, but it does highlight my point...everyone has their own agendas, which colors and shades their arguments, and often without the person speaking even being aware of it.

 

What I *DID* say is that the CPI does not take things into account, such as the actual value of real food, that skews the data, no matter how meticulously it is gathered, computed, tabulated, and formulated.

 

The example I gave above is milk. Cow's milk as it naturally exists is very nutritive, and provides beneficial bacteria that aids in human digestion. And that is the only milk there was 100 years ago. But milk today is extremely pasteurized and homogenized, which effectively strips it of much of its natural benefits, and makes it fairly worthless to consume (note the rise of "lactose intolerance.") This has enabled milk to "look, taste, and smell" the same, or nearly the same, so that it can be sold on a mass scale, thus lowering the price dramatically...but without the nutritive value natural milk has.

 

Actual milk, then, as it naturally exists is far more expensive than the cheap $1-$3/gallon homogenized and pasteurized product that is counted in the CPI. The actual value of nutritive milk is not counted in the CPI, which is about $12-$16/gallon.

 

This is just one example. And it is dependent on the personal decisions, opinions, and agendas of those who decide what is, and what is not, included in the CPI.

 

And if you start at a pre-determined point (ie, using pasteurized and homogenized milk prices to compute into the CPI), everything after that is going to be built on that faulty premise, regardless of how precise the methodology used AFTER that point.

 

This shouldn't really be that controversial. No one is saying the CPI is manipulated for political reasons (though, of course, there IS that, too. Civil servants....especially those of the career type...are also humans with their own ideas of how things should be. I don't trust anyone to "do the best they can", when their paychecks rely on them to produce certain results, to paraphrase Upton Sinclair. It is the "lifers", whose jobs are practically impossible to relieve them of, who should be watched the most.)

 

The problem begins long before the first computation is taken.

 

Indeed...everyone is entitled to his own opinion...but not his own facts.

 

No one doubts that over the very long run -- 100 years -- any calculation of purchasing power is very difficult; hence my reference to J.D. Rockefeller. It's hard to even conceive of what the purchasing power of his $900 million fortune was in constant dollars because the mix of products available to him was so different from that available in our own time.

 

Your story of milk falls into this category. For shorter periods, say, a decade or two, the BLS does about the best job that can be done correcting for changes in the quality of products. Most people are unaware they make these adjustments, but they spend a lot of time and energy on them. The adjustments are hardly definitive, though, and it's certainly possible to quibble on technical grounds with how they are made.

 

I'm not sure what you are saying in the first highlighted statement above other than that the CPI is manipulated for political reasons. That statement just isn't true.

 

The second statement isn't true either. The economists and statisticians make the calculations and report them. No one's paycheck depends in any way on what the results are.

 

Believe me, the details of how the CPI is computed are transparent and are scrutinized by people in academia and on Wall Street. Any untoward manipulation would be detected and would be a really big deal.

 

Still not the point.

 

No one is talking about obvious manipulation of how the CPI is computed. You are quite correct, the CPI is tied to many things, most substantially Social Security, and any obvious manipulation of it would be considerable news.

 

What I am saying is that the CPI is manipulated in ways that most people don't consider to be manipulation in the first place.

 

The most glaring way is with food. No one has a problem with including the price of "a loaf of bread" in the CPI tables. But what is the actual value of that loaf of bread? If it is chemically grown, chemically processed, and contains little to no nutritive value (and it doesn't), of what value is reporting the price of that loaf?

 

100 years ago, food was (for the most part), still completely natural. But especially since WWII, it has been chemically altered and processed to contain very little nutritive value...and yet, the CPI reflects THIS low-nutritive value food, rather than the cost of actual, nutritive, natural food.

 

And this isn't hippy-dippy vegan nonsense. When manufacturers take OUT nutrients, and then have to artificially PUT THEM BACK...mostly in a way that the human body was not designed to process (do you folks know what partially hydrogenated oils ARE?)...those foods may taste good, may smell good, may feel good...but they are, at best, like eating dirt, and at WORST, nothing but poison.

 

And that's not even getting started on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which have been in commercial food since 1994. The great rise in obesity, cancer, heart disease...all can be tied to the great Chemicalization of the food chain since WWII. But that's NOTHING compared to the genetic nightmares that await us even now. The health crisis of the late 20th century was chemical...the crisis of the 21st will be genetic.

 

That aside, the point is that the CPI HAS been manipulated...but in ways that "the public" thinks is perfectly acceptable...and thus, isn't news.

 

We can agree to disagree as to whether or not personal agendas, opinions, and ideologies affect, and to what degree, how people perform their jobs, among other things.

[RockMyAmadeus]

The problem, of course, is that "garage sale finds" are no basis for making an investment strategy.

 

I can go to E*Trade, right now, and buy 10,000 shares of Walmart. Right now, this very instant.

 

I *cannot* go online and buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $100 each. I couldn't buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for almost ANY price, even if I had unlimited funds!

 

That's really the difference. The work involved is phenomenal, and can still result in *nothing.* The best find I ever made at a garage sale....ever...was in 1990, when I found a mid-grade copy of DD #158 for 50 cents. I was THRILLED.

 

That's the best sale I've ever found at a garage sale. 24 years ago.

 

And I look.

 

Not only that, but if we're talking about investing in comics, shouldn't we be talking about buying books at market prices and selling them at market prices?

 

Yes, yes, 10,000 times YES!

[HighStakesComics]

The problem, of course, is that "garage sale finds" are no basis for making an investment strategy.

 

I can go to E*Trade, right now, and buy 10,000 shares of Walmart. Right now, this very instant.

 

I *cannot* go online and buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $100 each. I couldn't buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for almost ANY price, even if I had unlimited funds!

 

That's really the difference. The work involved is phenomenal, and can still result in *nothing.* The best find I ever made at a garage sale....ever...was in 1990, when I found a mid-grade copy of DD #158 for 50 cents. I was THRILLED.

 

That's the best sale I've ever found at a garage sale. 24 years ago.

 

And I look.

 

Not only that, but if we're talking about investing in comics, shouldn't we be talking about buying books at market prices and selling them at market prices? If you are able to buy books at a garage sale at pennies on the dollar, that's great for you, but it's not exactly a strategy that's consistently repeatable or scalable, especially for other people. You can tell someone to go out and put together a diversified portfolio of stocks and they can easily do it, but it's not like you can tell someone to go out and buy comics at pennies on the dollar at a garage sale and expect them to have a lot of success with that. :doh:

 

Some valid observations, but your conclusion is essentially telling someone to use every tool in the toolbox except the screwdriver. A conventional investment strategy will allocate a portion into investments that offer a risk free rate of return. The same should be done if you allocate a percentage of your time to buying and selling comics. The occasional find for pennies on the dollar does just that, but it no doubt requires a higher level of skill and probably results in a higher success rate if performed outside the comic hotbed of NYC.

[shadroch]

Wouldn't it simply be easier to admit you were wrong about gold then trying to claim that the CPI is worthless because a loaf of bread isn't really a loaf of bread.

[Petey's Wheatcake]

 

 

According to the staggering amounts of finds OVER HERE Comic books are not a good investment model

 

For the seller? No. For the buyer? Absolutely.

 

Exactly.I think I'm cheating in regards to the definition of the word "investing" many of you use. Maybe this is more a semantic argument than anything else.

 

I have extra money. I buy comics with this money. I sell these comics for more than I originally paid. These transactions occur sometimes a week, a month or five years after I purchase them. Depends on the comic.

 

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It's not complicated.

 

If someone were to ask me where I spent my extra money, I'd say that I invested it in comics. I certainly don't consider myself a dealer (especially not with the miniscule volume of transactions I've participated in lately). If anything, I'm currently a small scale collector that funds his purchases by buying and selling when possible. The only reason I originally felt the need to comment was because every time I've put a reasonable effort into expanding my comic book portfolio, I've succeeded. This includes driving across town to grab those 5 copies of Bone 1 for cover price that the sports card guy has for sale, patiently searching through dollar boxes for 30 and 35 cent price variants, or simply paying attention to the trends and buying Superman Adventures 5, DC Comics Presents 26, Marvel Tales 98, etc. when you can still get them cheaply.

 

Spending thousands of dollars on keys and waiting for years to see a return is another way to go. It's absolutely worked very well for some people, myself included at one time, but I won't deny that there is some risk involved and it's certainly not the best way to go for everyone. Maybe I'm only more willing to give it a try because it's also a hobby which I enjoy.

 

In fact, if you aren't extremely confident in your ability to succeed in comic book investment long term, I would agree with the others who advise against it. You probably are headed for a cliff.

 

I originally thought that anyone could do this, but maybe I'll have to consider the possibility that I can actually see the Matrix code and it's just a bunch of numbers to everyone else.

 

I don't know how to post the "It's called a joke." thingy, but that should probably go here. ;-)

[RockMyAmadeus]

I love these investment threads because the same four or five predictable lemons always get trotted out. The 9.6 GL 76, the 9.6 AV 4, Hulk 181 9.8s, etc are held up as the poster children for all comics and their neverending downward value spiral.

 

This isn't true, and hasn't been true, this entire thread. It has been carefully pointed out that these are EXTREME EXAMPLES.

 

It has also been pointed out that this is true of nearly ALL "investment quality" books over the last decade.

 

The point was "investment quality" books. A 6.5 Spidey #50 may have done very well (and it has), but is anyone going to point out that it is "investment quality"?

 

Would in 2003 have advised anyone else of investing in mid-grade keys? If not, why not? Could anyone have predicted the downfall of "investment quality" and the rise of the "mid-grade" 10 years ago?

 

How many copies of Action #1 are available for purchase on any given day? Batman #1? Detective #27?

 

If I can't buy an example, what good is the "200-1000% return"? What "narrative" do you suppose it doesn't fit? Is anyone who is opposed to investing in comics maybe trying to talk them down so they remain cheap? What is the motive of those who discourage investing in comics? That is the "narrative" you're looking for.

 

For myself, I've never owned a single comic book worth more than $3,000, ever. I can count the $1,000+ books I have owned, or own, on two hands.

 

So I'm not in that area of the playing field to begin with.

 

 

[the blob]

Nope. The higher ups don't determine the formulas; the formulas are worked out by the economists and statisticians the BLS employs.

-------------

 

And they make this incredibly huge determination that impacts virtually everyone with absolutely no political oversight or veto power? I doubt it. I didn't say Clinton personally made the change (indeed, the attached link indicates the changes were first considered during Bush I -- although I seriously doubt Robert Reich or whoever he had under him didn't have some say in it), but I've read in multiple places that some big change was made during his administration that changed how it was calculated, giving more weight to certain things in the "basket" and less to others, etc. This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum.

 

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article3135.html

[RockMyAmadeus]

Wouldn't it simply be easier to admit you were wrong about gold then trying to claim that the CPI is worthless because a loaf of bread isn't really a loaf of bread.

 

Wouldn't it simply be easier to admit you were wrong about gold than trying to claim that I'm misusing the CPI to hide my error...?

 

The CPI isn't worthless. <---key.

[Petey's Wheatcake]

The problem, of course, is that "garage sale finds" are no basis for making an investment strategy.

 

I can go to E*Trade, right now, and buy 10,000 shares of Walmart. Right now, this very instant.

 

I *cannot* go online and buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $100 each. I couldn't buy 10,000 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 for almost ANY price, even if I had unlimited funds!

 

That's really the difference. The work involved is phenomenal, and can still result in *nothing.* The best find I ever made at a garage sale....ever...was in 1990, when I found a mid-grade copy of DD #158 for 50 cents. I was THRILLED.

 

That's the best sale I've ever found at a garage sale. 24 years ago.

 

And I look.

 

Not only that, but if we're talking about investing in comics, shouldn't we be talking about buying books at market prices and selling them at market prices? If you are able to buy books at a garage sale at pennies on the dollar, that's great for you, but it's not exactly a strategy that's consistently repeatable or scalable, especially for other people. You can tell someone to go out and put together a diversified portfolio of stocks and they can easily do it, but it's not like you can tell someone to go out and buy comics at pennies on the dollar at a garage sale and expect them to have a lot of success with that. :doh:

 

Some valid observations, but your conclusion is essentially telling someone to use every tool in the toolbox except the screwdriver.

 

This.

[the blob]

Prudence would seem to dictate that comic "investing" ought to be with your fun money unless, of course, by "investing" you mean "inventory acquisition" because you are a dealer/junior dealer/p-t dealer, etc. and that is something else.

 

And also don't buy a 110 year old money pit of a house unless you are really handy.

 

 

[Aweandlorder]

First off, the countless of finds of valuable comic books going for pennies on the $100 suggests that there is a flaw in that investment model.. Maybe to the ordinary person comic books are harder to sell than you think, even though they are somewhat hot right now, people still don't have the knowledge or know how to sell them.. so in comparison to say, gold, that will not be a reasonable comparison. And to RMA's comparison, that is correct. Investing in stock involves making smart decisions which is the MAIN time consuming factor in the investment process. Whereas in comic books you need to factor in the buying process, the selling, the storage and the KNOW HOW to sell.. big difference. So you need to be smart, have luck, have ALOT of time on your hands (cough cough shadroch) and eventually you will make money off of it.. To me, that's not investing, that's called a job. Whether you do it prt time or full time reflects on your income FROM your investment.

Someone posted an article about Pogs and Beanie Babies as bad investment.. Guess what, you could still sell them on eBay and make money, but in comparison to comic books they're just not a good BUSINESS model, but at the end of the day they are collectibles

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

Not only that, but if we're talking about investing in comics, shouldn't we be talking about buying books at market prices and selling them at market prices? If you are able to buy books at a garage sale at pennies on the dollar, that's great for you, but it's not exactly a strategy that's consistently repeatable or scalable, especially for other people. You can tell someone to go out and put together a diversified portfolio of stocks and they can easily do it, but it's not like you can tell someone to go out and buy comics at pennies on the dollar at a garage sale and expect them to have a lot of success with that. :doh:

 

Some valid observations, but your conclusion is essentially telling someone to use every tool in the toolbox except the screwdriver.

 

This.

 

Building an investment strategy on the off-chance that you might happen upon some great books at a garage sale for pennies is foolhardy.

[october]

I love these investment threads because the same four or five predictable lemons always get trotted out. The 9.6 GL 76, the 9.6 AV 4, Hulk 181 9.8s, etc are held up as the poster children for all comics and their neverending downward value spiral.

 

This isn't true, and hasn't been true, this entire thread. It has been carefully pointed out that these are EXTREME EXAMPLES.

 

It has also been pointed out that this is true of nearly ALL "investment quality" books over the last decade.

 

The point was "investment quality" books. A 6.5 Spidey #50 may have done very well (and it has), but is anyone going to point out that it is "investment quality"?

 

Would in 2003 have advised anyone else of investing in mid-grade keys? If not, why not? Could anyone have predicted the downfall of "investment quality" and the rise of the "mid-grade" 10 years ago?

 

How many copies of Action #1 are available for purchase on any given day? Batman #1? Detective #27?

 

If I can't buy an example, what good is the "200-1000% return"? What "narrative" do you suppose it doesn't fit? Is anyone who is opposed to investing in comics maybe trying to talk them down so they remain cheap? What is the motive of those who discourage investing in comics? That is the "narrative" you're looking for.

 

For myself, I've never owned a single comic book worth more than $3,000, ever. I can count the $1,000+ books I have owned, or own, on two hands.

 

So I'm not in that area of the playing field to begin with.

 

 

I can't (don't want to) respond to all of this, but copies of blue chip golden age keys can be found in pretty much every large CLink, Heritage and Comic Connect auction. I just clicked on the next Heritage auction and guess what the first book to pop up was? Action 1. Not that hard to find one of the top 10 GA keys. At most it would take a month or two of casually looking through the top auctions to locate one.

 

As for the narrative, I don't know. I just know that the same guys make the same arguments whenever a thread like this crops up. I don't understand the need to dump on comics as a place to park some wealth literally every time to the discussion is brought up, but it seems to exist.

 

The "investment grade" label has always smacked of snake oil to me, so I never paid much attention. It's a meaningless term that's used in a sales pitch and has no hard and fast definition. In any case, most people would treat anything north of $500 as an investment, be it a mid-grade book or a high grade book.

[shadroch]

First off, the countless of finds of valuable comic books going for pennies on the $100 suggests that there is a flaw in that investment model.. Maybe to the ordinary person comic books are harder to sell than you think, even though they are somewhat hot right now, people still don't have the knowledge or know how to sell them.. so in comparison to say, gold, that will not be a reasonable comparison. And to RMA's comparison, that is correct. Investing in stock involves making smart decisions which is the MAIN time consuming factor in the investment process. Whereas in comic books you need to factor in the buying process, the selling, the storage and the KNOW HOW to sell.. big difference. So you need to be smart, have luck, have ALOT of time on your hands (cough cough shadroch) and eventually you will make money off of it.. To me, that's not investing, that's called a job. Whether you do it prt time or full time reflects on your income FROM your investment.

Someone posted an article about Pogs and Beanie Babies as bad investment.. Guess what, you could still sell them on eBay and make money, but in comparison to comic books they're just not a good BUSINESS model, but at the end of the day they are collectibles

 

I guess we live in different worlds. I've spent more time in this thread than I do most months buying or selling books. If you can't spare an hour a month to scan a few auctions and five minutes twice or thrice a day to check out the selling forums here, you need to learn to manage your time better.

As far as selling goes, I could take the time to scan the books and post them here, deal with the endless lowball PMs and get 97% of the sale price or ship them to an auction house and get 90% of the sale price while reaching a far larger market. I prefer the auction route.