Comic Book Investing

[the blob]

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.

 

Can we stop treating comics like they're inherently different as an "investment" than any other collectible such as antiques or art or rare coins or whatever other than it is a bit more of a niche? Those markets certainly have their ups and downs, hot items, cold items, etc. Particularly contemporary artists, but certainly antiques too. Finding a "steal" is certainly part of the investment technique in those areas.

[Petey's Wheatcake]

 

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

 

This is only incorporated into my strategy insomuch as I do not believe in turning away free money.

[Aweandlorder]

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.

 

how much money were talking on a monthly basis vs time. Totals please, after expenses. Avergae

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

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.

 

I can buy 10,000 shares of Walmart in the next five minutes.

 

Doing a quick perusal, it looks like there have been 13 sales of Action #1 through Heritage since 2002, with one pending. At Heritage, at least, that's a little more than one a year. I'll assume that CLink and Comic Connect have pretty much the same average.

 

How does one invest in something that comes up so infrequently, and worse, then have to vigorously compete with others to even be able to obtain it, possibly pushing that asset out of the range of "good investment"...?

 

The only competition for Walmart shares is the price. I suppose the same could be said for Action #1 or any of the others, but buying 10,000 shares isn't going to make much of a blip on the 3.23 billion Walmart shares outstanding.

[october]

 

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.

 

I can buy 10,000 shares of Walmart in the next five minutes.

 

Doing a quick perusal, it looks like there have been 13 sales of Action #1 through Heritage since 2002, with one pending. At Heritage, at least, that's a little more than one a year. I'll assume that CLink and Comic Connect have pretty much the same average.

 

How does one invest in something that comes up so infrequently, and worse, then have to vigorously compete with others to even be able to obtain it, possibly pushing that asset out of the range of "good investment"...?

 

The only competition for Walmart shares is the price. I suppose the same could be said for Action #1 or any of the others, but buying 10,000 shares isn't going to make much of a blip on the 3.23 billion Walmart shares outstanding.

 

If you add in Detective 27, Superman 1 and Batman 1, that averages to at least one per month. Yes, there will be competing buyers, but weren't we talking about buying at market value?

 

No. It's not as easy as buying Wal-Mart shares....but so what? Having to wait and watch for a month or three isn't some giant barrier to entry.

[shadroch]

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.

 

how much money were talking on a monthly basis vs time. Totals please, after expenses. Avergae

 

I'll be happy to answer your question if you ask it better. I'm not sure exactly what you are asking here. Its hard to average expenses as some books I sell I have had for twenty years or more and paid less than cover price for, and others I've had a year or two.

A lot of my books pre-2000, I don't have records of what I paid for them. I can usually remember if they were con buys from a dealer, bought from a fan or flea market finds, but what I paid is nebulous. Post 2003, I pretty much have exact records what I paid and when. Not 100%, but at least 90%.

[HighStakesComics]

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 respect your opinion, but I couldn't disagree more. There are 3 reasons the sale of comics, if done outside of a corporation are investments:

1.) Because they are taxed as such. If you sell your comics and report the income, you will be taxed at 28%, essentially the effective short term cap gains rate. The government DOES NOT TAX THE SALE AS ORDINARY INCOME. If you are in the first few brackets and sell your books, you will pay 2-3X the tax rate. It blows my mind that the same guy that's said earlier today that the government would never be wrong about the CPI, just several days ago said there was no way comics were in any way shape or form investments, because that is exactly how they are being taxed!!

2.) The sale of comics does not include the manufacturing of any good or the providing of any service. It is simply the transfer of property via electronic medium. Sounds pretty similar to most investments to me!!

3.) Considering that most of the books used in the aforementioned examples were originally sold for $.10-$.15 you had better hope there are others out there that view these books as investments because if that were to vanish overnight we would be up the creek without a paddle. It is the perceived value (appreciation) of these books that has made them trade at current prices. This is especially true if you are talking slabbed books because its not like they are being bought and sold for their readibility/entertainment value. If that were the case the reprints would trade at parity to the originals.

[Aweandlorder]

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.

 

how much money were talking on a monthly basis vs time. Totals please, after expenses. Avergae

 

I'll be happy to answer your question if you ask it better. I'm not sure exactly what you are asking here. Its hard to average expenses as some books I sell I have had for twenty years or more and paid less than cover price for, and others I've had a year or two.

A lot of my books pre-2000, I don't have records of what I paid for them. I can usually remember if they were con buys from a dealer, bought from a fan or flea market finds, but what I paid is nebulous. Post 2003, I pretty much have exact records what I paid and when. Not 100%, but at least 90%.

 

This answer is more complicated than the whole thread itself

I think the right answer would be.. none of youre goda*n business...

Are you sure you're a NYer?

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

If you add in Detective 27, Superman 1 and Batman 1, that averages to at least one per month. Yes, there will be competing buyers, but weren't we talking about buying at market value?

 

Yes, but it also means you may not be able to obtain one unless you markedly "overpay", which is the antithesis of investing.

 

No. It's not as easy as buying Wal-Mart shares....but so what? Having to wait and watch for a month or three isn't some giant barrier to entry.

 

True, but...how many comic book "investors" have $XXX,000 to invest? Can I buy 1/10th of an Action Comics #1? (This has been tried before, to varying levels of success. Usually, Radioactive Man #1 levels of success.)

 

The market has either got good investments, entry into which is too rare and too expensive, or poor investments that just happen to be common.

 

 

[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

 

I respect your opinion, but I couldn't disagree more. There are 3 reasons the sale of comics, if done outside of a corporation are investments:

1.) Because they are taxed as such. If you sell your comics and report the income, you will be taxed at 28%, essentially the effective short term cap gains rate. The government DOES NOT TAX THE SALE AS ORDINARY INCOME. I'd you are in the first few brackets and sell your books, you will pay 2-3X the tax rate. It blows my mind that the same guy that's said earlier today that the government would never be wrong about the CPI, just several days ago said there was no way comics were in any way shape or form investments, because that is exactly how they are being taxed!!

2.) The sale of comics does not include the manufacturing of any good or the providing of any service. It is simply the transfer of property via electronic medium. Sounds pretty similar to most investments to me!!

3.) Considering that most of the books used in the aforementioned examples were originally sold for $.10-$.15 you had better hope there are others out there that view these books as investments because if that were to vanish overnight we would be up the creek without a paddle. It is the perceived value (appreciation) of these books that has made them trade at current prices. This is especially true if you are talking slabbed books because its not like they are being bought and sold for their readibility/entertainment value. If that were the case the reprints would trade at parity to the originals.

 

So if we learned anything from this thread is that no one has real commitments or a job to report to on a Monday afternoon

[Cat-Man_America]

 

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.

 

I can buy 10,000 shares of Walmart in the next five minutes.

 

 

 

.......................An intervention may be needed!

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

So if we learned anything from this thread is that no one has real commitments or a job to report to on a Monday afternoon

 

Speak for yourself. My customers DEMAND results.

 

And I'm giving them to them as we speak!

[Petey's Wheatcake]

 

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.

 

I can buy 10,000 shares of Walmart in the next five minutes.

.

 

If you believe that those shares are a solid investment, then that's the way you should go. There are also comics you can buy which will grow in value. They are not mutually exclusive. Do both, pick one, whatever you prefer to do.

 

If you are arguing that comics are not THE BEST investment opportunity available, then I agree with you.

 

I'd be interested to hear what you think has the best chance of being worth more next year than it is today. There is no way you accumulate the books you have without knowing what you are doing(I mean, unless you inherited them).

[HighStakesComics]

 

So if we learned anything from this thread is that no one has real commitments or a job to report to on a Monday afternoon

 

Speak for yourself. My customers DEMAND results.

 

And I'm giving them to them as we speak!

 

Hilarious. On vacation here but glued to the message boards I recently discovered. I should probably get back to the wife and kid before they turn on me as well.

[Aweandlorder]

 

So if we learned anything from this thread is that no one has real commitments or a job to report to on a Monday afternoon

 

Speak for yourself. My customers DEMAND results.

 

And I'm giving them to them as we speak!

 

Hilarious. On vacation here but glued to the message boards I recently discovered. I should probably get back to the wife and kid before they turn on me as well.

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7821110#Post7821538

 

[shadroch]

Working as hard as I ever do right now.

[ComicConnoisseur]

 

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.

Agreed with the crisis of the 21st will be genetic, as it`s now being reported that 1 in 50 children are born autistic.

Those genetic odds are mind-boggling, but true.

1 in-50-American-Children-Diagnosed with autism.

 

[Aweandlorder]

Can we stop treating comics like they're inherently different as an "investment" than any other collectible such as antiques or art or rare coins or whatever other than it is a bit more of a niche? Those markets certainly have their ups and downs, hot items, cold items, etc. Particularly contemporary artists, but certainly antiques too. Finding a "steal" is certainly part of the investment technique in those areas.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

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.

 

I can buy 10,000 shares of Walmart in the next five minutes.

.

 

If you believe that those shares are a solid investment, then that's the way you should go. There are also comics you can buy which will grow in value. They are not mutually exclusive. Do both, pick one, whatever you prefer to do.

 

If you are arguing that comics are not THE BEST investment opportunity available, then I agree with you.

 

I'd be interested to hear what you think has the best chance of being worth more next year than it is today. There is no way you accumulate the books you have without knowing what you are doing(I mean, unless you inherited them).

 

You've changed the parameters of that particular discussion. I, too, believe that Detective Comics #27 is one of the best investments in comics there is.

 

I cannot go to eBay and buy one right now. I can't go anywhere and buy one right now.

 

I could *probably* buy one within a week, and I know who the people are to call to make that happen....but I would almost certainly be paying a price that would turn that "good investment" into a poor one.

 

Comics are not only NOT "the BEST" investment, they are a poor, poor one.

 

But, by all means...everyone should do what makes them happy in the investment arena.

 

PS. I inherited no comics. The last time anyone in my family bought a comic that I know of was in the 40's, and those were thrown away long before I appeared on the scene.

 

What I think will be worth more next year than it is today? Star Wars #1-107.

[Aweandlorder]

What I think will be worth more next year than it is today? Star Wars #1-107.

 

OK now we're talking (pulls up sleeves)

 

Rat Queens #1

 

Lets go! lets go! lets go!