Investing potential in low grade comics?

[the blob]

Did you watch the "Levine" video? It really has me thinking of local fans with huge collections and what is going to happen when they sell off.

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

 

Haven't people been unloading their collections since ebay arrived, and they unloaded before then? That's how comic stores get inventory, convention dealers get inventory, ebay sellers get inventory, etc. It all gets circulated round and round. People unload collections, new people become avid collectors after having a casual interest, etc. The people who unloaded 10-15 years ago have sellers regret and get back in. We've had 2 recessions in the last 20 years and one has to assume that there was plenty of unloading going on during both.

 

If I remember correctly, October has basically put together a pretty large and nice collection over the last 5 or so years. One guy on one of the other chat boards has put together a 30,000+ collection in the last 5 or so years, etc. I'm sure there are a bunch of people here who became avid buyers/collectors since the advent of ebay. Jscomics is constantly listing collections. The stuff gets absorbed. Obviously there's a limit, I just don't know what it would take to reach it.

[Rob]

To add, a comic like Fantastic Four #72 in high grade is saleable on Ebay if you are not a dealer and that is your only outlet. One in low grade, say a 2.0 may be worth only $5 and isn't saleable because of the cost of postage and the cost of the ebay ad. Should I ever decide to liquidate my collection, I will be selling comics like that in runs.

 

I wouldn't sell books like FF #72 in 2.0. Maybe FF 1-20. Or Golden Age. Gotta be worth your while.

[Mac Man]

See, now that makes me sad, because all I've been buying lately (minus the short detours to the 3/$1 box) are the Silver and Bronze Age comics one or two at a time as I'm able. I totally understand the seller's side, however, in wanting to sell in small runs for profit reasons. It's just easier for me to buy in small pieces.

[the blob]

I list $5 SA books in my store. It was more of a no brainer when listing were 2 cents, less so now, but the beat up SA FF, if priced right, will sell. But it could take a year, in which case you've spent 60 cents on listing fees and another 60-90 cents for FVF and paypal. To many, it's not worth the bother, but I tend to look at how much I've made vs. my fees in total, rather than book-by-book. Every now and then I de-list stuff that has been gathering dust too long, of course.

[That Ron Dude]

I can read the future no better than anyone else, but hey, by the time my predictions are proved wrong or right, no one will remember this posting anyhow.

 

Mr. Levine is getting up there in years as are many of the dealers and collectors who got into this on the ground floor. They are all going to reach their retirement years at about the same time and try to sell off huge quantities of real spoonola that hasn't moved in all the time they have been trading and selling. Unfortunately, the youth of tomorrow isn't going to give a rat's spoon about TV guides, Lucy Ricardo busts and a box full of the same gold key first issue.

 

Comics aren't dead but they have transformed. If comics were pulps, we would be looking at Amazing and Fantastic in the late '60's selling at very low levels with nothing much else on the stands. I could go on but I don't think I have to.

 

I think the next generation will have Spiderman, Superman, Batman, Ninja Turtles and a few others but most of the stuff that I love, which is collectable today will be forgotten. I just can't see that many kids running after the Ant-Man in Tales to Astonish.

 

Last night I bought an Incredible Hulk #6 for $119.95. The seller said it was a VG or a VG+ but it was really only a G. I bid with two and a half minutes to go. I was the only bidder. A quarter million people (it seems) go to the San Diego Con and I was the only bidder on a comic that started out much lower than the Overstreet Guide price. Even on a read hot comic like Amazing Spider-Man #1 you usually get about 25 bids which might represent 10 bidders or so.

 

When I was a cute little kid I would go to the conventions and there would be ugly old men selling pulps. They were all over the SF and comic conventions. You just don't see these guys anymore. I know collectors who want The Shadow and Astounding in nice condition but I know of no one who wants much else. By the way, there is a pulp convention at the SF library downtown tomorrow, admission $2. I would love to know who goes to it.

 

As I said, anyone can make a prediction and that is mine. All the old coots, of which I am now one, will sell off their basements full of junk all at the same time and the market won't be able to absorb it.

 

Stay alert, be calm, watch for the signs.

 

One other comment that is not a prediction-- Businessmen are inclined to tell you that everything is wonderful until they pull up stakes and flee their creditors. Mr. Levine, no doubt, already had a hundred plausible reasons why minimun wasn't reached on his enormous collection. So... when you watch for those signs watch real closely.

[Shadow]

Good points. The Baby Boomer Generation will start selling off, if it hasn't already. But, due to the age span of said generation, I think the market may be able to absorb some of this. I don't forsee this as a 1 - 4 year sell-off, but a continual process. The question is "Are there a good number of viable consumers to purchase that inventory?" I don't know.

[That Ron Dude]

Quickly, I think it will be a thirty year process, starting from the time of the retirement of the first baby boomers to the death of the final ones. A lot of the comics will be sold by the widows and children.

[Rob]

Quickly, I think it will be a thirty year process, starting from the time of the retirement of the first baby boomers to the death of the final ones. A lot of the comics will be sold by the widows and children.

 

Man, when's this gonna start? When will those pesky baby boomers start dying?

[That Ron Dude]

Well, I have it on good auttttttttttttttttlsaaaaaaaaaaaaajmm x:L

'k;

[the blob]

Ron, I don't really understand what you're getting at. Slightly nicer and better priced Hulk 6s have recently gotten many bidders. That one happened to be a P.O.S. and didn't. I don't keep a guide in front of me, but $119 sounds like plenty for that particular copy. A Hulk 6 seems to be listed every few days on ebay. People don't have to go nuts on bidding. Early Marvel keys in any condition aren't really hurting right now.

 

As for old timers with basements full of stuff, my point is that many of them have sold off their stuff already. I have my doubts that the people who started collecting in the 60's have all kept their original collections intact. I know too many people who were actually in the business 35-40 years ago who have virtually nothing left.

 

As for comparisons to the pulp market, sure, I guess that's a comparison to be made except of course, maybe it was comics that killed pulp collecting? Only time will tell. I guess one thing that didn't help was that pulps were fading in an era that wasn't terribly interested in nostalgia, the 60s and 70s, whereas we're very nostaligc nowadays...I guess trends could change, of course. But all these mcMansions they've built over the last few years sure are great for housing massive collections!

[That Ron Dude]

Good points about why there doesn't seem to be an awful lot of bidding on some very collectable books.

 

More good points on nostalgia. I remember people saying that Doug Kenney invented nostalgia. Certainly, he wasn't the only one, but it probably is a recent phenomenon. Could it be that comic collecting replaced pulp collecting? Well I never thought of that either, but comic fandom was once a subset of SF fandom where the pulps were traded. We have, as a group, split off and are much larger now, if you can measure size of the groups by their conventions.

 

I continue to wonder though, if comic collecting will extend into the next generation, and to what degree. It could be that my own children aren't involved in it at all, or that the rug was pulled out from under stamp speculation and a similar bump will one day occur for comics, or that comics are no longer a mass media, or that the market is manipulated to create instant collectables. Still, I am aware that prices, for the most part continue to rise.

 

We'll see what the future holds!

[eddly]

I just have to bump this thread!

 

Recently I've been hunting down low to midgrade collections as well. Sure it takes a lot of time, but it is fun slowly burning away my original costs of the purchase and still have most of the books from the collection!

[bhhooks22]

I' m gonna bump it also!....I read it when it 1st came out ,and it was so interesting....I just went through it again this Sat morn.........Question though??...since these things tend to go in cycles,it's interesting to speculate on what the bell curve will look like in a few years!....

As a real estate investor...,I haven't been buying ,for the 1st time in approx. 12 years.......b/c too many people were doing the same thing, just as they did in the tech stock crash of 2000. ....The old saying is that when your neighbor,barber,waiter, etc is giving you hot stock tips or remodeling houses to flip,........Well it's time to get out!!! .........

Of course comic collecting is a niche market and a hobby first and foremost, yet since slabbing and E-bay etc. have come along , it has taken on many characteristics of a traded commodity.......

So do you use the "Contrarian" investing/speculation model that states basically" you do the opposite of what the herds are doing....??....

Well then you would buy the fair/good comics ,I suppose!.........But the masses cannot afford to buy all the best copies of keys or expensive books.......so I don't think you can make the same analogy!......yet there are some similarities.......ANYONE care to add anything.............I'm tired of reading about pressing!......

[CAP Freak]

I collect low-mid grade comics

[eddly]

The old saying is that when your neighbor,barber,waiter, etc is giving you hot stock tips or remodeling houses to flip,........Well it's time to get out!!!

 

 

 

I agree, but thankfully I don't think we've seen this with comics yet. There are new people getting in to comics for sure, but I haven't seen many people locally atleast trying to get into comics only for investment purposes yet. To me it seems like the people getting into comics, are actually getting BACK into comics. They collected when they were younger and now they have a higher disposable income.

 

 

[Mac Man]

Eddly, I'm a good example of many to be found in that population of a collector coming back after a long hiatus.

 

I'm a big fan of collecting low-grade Silver Age ASM. I typically don't buy at guide value trying to get somewhere between 25%-50% of OSPG (and I've even snagged a couple lower than that!). Do I think I'd get all of my money back if I sold them all tomorrow? Maybe not on every issue, maybe get ahead on a few others. Do I think they'll be worth something down the road? Definitely. Spidey's the cashcow for Marvel, so I don't think we'll see a dip in his popularity.

 

But that's just me. And if they don't increase in value? Who cares? They're still great to collect either way!

[bhhooks22]

Yeah,...I got back in to possibly sell it all over the last few months,.......but it's too much work!.....All I ever do is end up buying more!..........BH....

[eddly]

I'm kinda strange when it comes to comics, I don't actually enjoy reading them that much. When I originally collected as a kid, I got a thrill out of just chasing down certain issues, completing runs and even speculating on new titles (punisher... excalibur... etc from the copper age).

 

I love to look at the cover art and the story that it tells and even the history associated with it when you consider older golden and silver age comics. I am fascinated by the covers of these older issues. Some of them would never be ok in our society today (think war and pre-code horror). So instead of pulling out issues to read, I just like flipping through the books to simply look at the covers (especially old detective comics and batman books)

 

While I have no interest in collecting original art of as of yet, I am reallying getting the bug for chasing old low-grade and mid-grade comics. I recently got an opportunity to buy two collections (first one I ended up missing out on), but I was able to purchase the second which included a large amount of old detective, batman, daredevil, sub-mariner, and captain america books in it... along with 100s of copper books of course. While I'm not seeing dollar signs when I look at these books, I feel I can make a decent profit on them as I sell them piece by piece and I am having a lot of fun seeing covers I have never seen before. All in all, I don't think any of the books are in high grade enough to be worth grading professionally, but I'm happy with them all the same.

 

I do try to read comics from time to time though, but I end up being unsatisfied with them as they take only a few minutes to read, and they have either poorly thought out stories, or they're not even complete. I won't even mention the ads in them...

 

 

[rza808]

I have seen more and more younger people (30ish) asking "do you think this is gonna go up in value in 20 years?) who are not in the hobby. lots of the 90's collectors out there didnt really understand the hobby watch the movies coming out and start collecting again. These new hobbyist are now older with a better understanding but relatively new to the hobby. They look for keys or comics they remembered. Covers drawn by McFarlane and Jim Lee strike instant interest. They have no knowledge of Silver or Golden age stuff. The older generation I have seen are selling their books already. Quite a few have brought in some to the shop I work in looking to make some higher end sales. I think there will be a drop off somewhere in the future for Golden and Silver age comics. I am realtively young and have appreciation for these older books but I dont believe that this is common. I hope I am wrong but today's market of new comics alienates young collectors and therefore the hobby cannot grow or sustain itself at current levels. Kids look at anime and video games the way we looked a comics. Thats why I try to get kids to read comics. I even give those nasty 90's garbage away to the few kids who visit the shop. I dunno maybe I am an insufficiently_thoughtful_person but heed my words the end of days are coming but I hope not

[Mac Man]

Regarding the more relatively unknown titles, I'd probably say you're on to something. Looking at the titles that are still well-known, I'd disagree. Titles like Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, X-Men, Captain America, etc, are still in the mainstream, and I don't see these comics dropping off the radar. Just too much exposure-- even if it is due in part to movies.