Are TPB good investments or purely for entertainment value?

[gcstomp]

TPBs are for reading only-no collectible value whatsoever.

 

That is such a false statement. Anyone who uttered this is so out of touch with the market, that anything that follows is just an exercise in argument for the sake of chit chat.

 

 

[kav]

How about "99.999% of TPBs are for reading only'?

[gcstomp]

I am ok saying most trades are for reading and hold little collectible value. Not as high a loss percent as floppy comics though. After all no way are you going to find long boxes of trades and hard covers for sale at $20 a pop, but that is pretty easy to do with buying comics.

 

My background is I have dealt primarily in buying and selling trades + hc's at shows for 10 years now, the "other" stuff in my space is a couple boxes of better material for the wall, with a table of $1 books to pay for the space. I am just a solo operation, but I cant imagine there are many one man bands that have moved more trades than me over the years.

 

To me, trades are the most reliable money stream imaginable, but you have to know what you are doing. I know guys who shop shows with very small bank rolls of a couple of hundred bucks but consistently find in the $5 boxes books they can grade and flip for $100+. You can look at the long boxes of comics being blown out at $15 or $20 at the end of a show and wrongly conclude that comics are worthless. Or, same as trades, know you have to have some experience and know how to consistently make money dealing in trades, or comics, or whatever.

[F For Fake]

How about "99.999% of TPBs are for reading only'?

 

Sure, but I'd say the same for comics too.

[comix4fun]

How about "99.999% of TPBs are for reading only'?

 

Sure, but I'd say the same for comics too.

 

 

And you'd want one more 9 added after the decimal point too.

[Aweandlorder]

First of all, I do not refer to TPBs just as books in softcover format.. I refer to them in both Trade Paperback AND Hardcover format. Much like Diamond and most retailers do.

Im sure most people including the OP here do to.

That may be a reason for some here (cough cough Kav) to find most of the discussion here as irrelevant.

And its true, Hardcover books are commanding MUCH higher prices both in primary and secondary markets.

 

I bring it back to you... Kav?

[kav]

I have to agree that TPBs are as much of a collectible as regular comics. There won't be any Action #1s or anything but otherwise yep.

[Aweandlorder]

I am ok saying most trades are for reading and hold little collectible value. Not as high a loss percent as floppy comics though. After all no way are you going to find long boxes of trades and hard covers for sale at $20 a pop, but that is pretty easy to do with buying comics.

 

My background is I have dealt primarily in buying and selling trades + hc's at shows for 10 years now, the "other" stuff in my space is a couple boxes of better material for the wall, with a table of $1 books to pay for the space. I am just a solo operation, but I cant imagine there are many one man bands that have moved more trades than me over the years.

 

To me, trades are the most reliable money stream imaginable, but you have to know what you are doing. I know guys who shop shows with very small bank rolls of a couple of hundred bucks but consistently find in the $5 boxes books they can grade and flip for $100+. You can look at the long boxes of comics being blown out at $15 or $20 at the end of a show and wrongly conclude that comics are worthless. Or, same as trades, know you have to have some experience and know how to consistently make money dealing in trades, or comics, or whatever.

 

Every word here is solid. To me at least

Very well said sir!

[Aweandlorder]

I was thinking more in terms of, the very best TPB potential investment vs the very best comic investment, apples the apples, same time period.

 

Again respectfully disagree. Comics have a greater value on the secondary market no question about it. Theyve been marketed to us for decades longer than TPBs. So naturally they are and probably will always be the most valuable ones to own.

But is buying an ASM 129 at an inflated price yields back more of a premium than say the TMNT TPB example showed earlier?

Couple that with the fact that there is no great awareness of this newer format (30+ years compared to 75+ years for comics), testimonies by some praising TPBs as a preferred format, and the staggering appreciation in price with some, makes me believe that there is a bright future for this format.

 

 

It's entirely possible for them to have a bright future.

 

However, you may be overlooking the greatest difference between comics, and how they achieved their status, and TPBs: original material.

 

TPBs are reprinted material, from the comics. The first appearances of these characters, the things that drive the values to such extremes are in the comics themselves and not the later printings and later collections.

 

TPBs are, by definition, not original material but later collections of something already published. As bright as the future may be that simple fact is the concrete ceiling short of the clear blue sky.

 

But there are many who prefer to collect TPBs over comics. Again, that market hasnt stabilized yet. I understand that. But at the same time, it is not as recognized among most comic book collectors yet.

Just wait till the Flippers hear about it

[comix4fun]

And its true, Hardcover books are commanding MUCH higher prices both in primary and secondary markets.

 

 

 

Except for Dark Tower.....cases of Dark Tower hardcovers are being used in place of sandbags in flood zones.

[comix4fun]

I was thinking more in terms of, the very best TPB potential investment vs the very best comic investment, apples the apples, same time period.

 

Again respectfully disagree. Comics have a greater value on the secondary market no question about it. Theyve been marketed to us for decades longer than TPBs. So naturally they are and probably will always be the most valuable ones to own.

But is buying an ASM 129 at an inflated price yields back more of a premium than say the TMNT TPB example showed earlier?

Couple that with the fact that there is no great awareness of this newer format (30+ years compared to 75+ years for comics), testimonies by some praising TPBs as a preferred format, and the staggering appreciation in price with some, makes me believe that there is a bright future for this format.

 

 

It's entirely possible for them to have a bright future.

 

However, you may be overlooking the greatest difference between comics, and how they achieved their status, and TPBs: original material.

 

TPBs are reprinted material, from the comics. The first appearances of these characters, the things that drive the values to such extremes are in the comics themselves and not the later printings and later collections.

 

TPBs are, by definition, not original material but later collections of something already published. As bright as the future may be that simple fact is the concrete ceiling short of the clear blue sky.

 

But there are many who prefer to collect TPBs over comics. Again, that market hasnt stabilized yet. I understand that. But at the same time, it is not as recognized among most comic book collectors yet.

Just wait till the Flippers hear about it

 

Sure a lot of people prefer TPBs over comics, takes up less space, more convenient to pick up entire storylines and (most importantly) cheaper than the originals.

 

[Aweandlorder]

And its true, Hardcover books are commanding MUCH higher prices both in primary and secondary markets.

 

 

 

Except for Dark Tower.....cases of Dark Tower hardcovers are being used in place of sandbags in flood zones.

 

Someones gonna build a wall soon. And Stephen King will pay for it!

[Bird]

I listed 3 trades on ebay and one sold within an one or two, so that helped. I got one dollar less after fees and such than I was asking at my garage sale this week, so that worked fine.

[rjrjr]

Terrible investment.

 

Purchased February 1 for $201 including shipping. Sold last week for $1399.

 

By my admittedly bad math, that's roughly a 1000% annualized return. Terrible investment. No one should ever invest in trade paperbacks. You shouldn't look for this in a used bookstore, since there's no market for it. I'd avoid this one like the plague. And don't get me started on this worthless piece of garbage.

 

Unless you know what you are doing and can exploit inefficiencies in the marketplace. But since all the posters in the thread have said there's no market for trades, you should just stay out. I'll do it for you and let you know.

 

 

 

 

Outliers

 

 

TPB's are like lottery tickets. You can't win if you don't play but playing is no guarantee of winning.

 

I haven't read the entire thread, has anyone posted the Miller DKR limited TPB from '86 as an example yet?

 

They're not outliers. There's a small but very defined market place for trades, and there are several trades that always command a significant premium. If you know what you're doing, you can exploit significant inefficiencies in the marketplace by buying on the very cheap and selling them on eBay and Amazon.

 

You have to know what you're doing, but there's a very nice niche marketplace to exploit in trades as the overwhelming majority of sellers are like Kav and believe trades are worthless. Perhaps 80% are. But that 20% is in very high demand.

 

 

There are thousands of different TPB's put into print every year. Being able to rattle off 10 or even 100 TPBs that do very well, when OOP usually, is the very definition of an outlier, or better yet an extremely select example that is not indicative of the overall market for TPBs.

 

Basically every other TPB is lucky to sell at 50% off MSRP in the secondary market.

 

In some cases the scarcity is perceived (Marvel Omni's that go in and out of print every other week it seems) that drives prices, but they aren't long term increases in almost every case.

 

Exploiting the ability to buy low and sell high in the short terms doesn't equate, for the vast majority of TPB's, that anyone is making an appreciable ROI on TPB's as a whole by buying and holding.

 

I took the question as more, which TPB's will be a good investment, long term, and not "what can I find at a book store for $20 and sell for $50, today?" Your model is great to churn harder to find TPBs, but it's not really an "investment" model. The money is great and I don't doubt that, but it doesn't feel like a long term buy and hold investment model at all.

 

 

I agree. if you make a list of the 'valuable ones' and check your list once in a while at yard sales or used bookstores, you might occasionally pickup some good value here and there. But if you're planning to make this one of your actual 'investment' streams on any kind of large scale...there's probably smarter ways to invest your money, not to mention that TPB's are heavier and take more space.

 

you could see someone saying, I love comics, I've got $2K-5K sitting around to search for collections this year, that I can hopefully flip into $8K-$10K over a year in my free time. And with some work, you could reasonably expect to be able to find a reasonable collection or collections to buy and flip.

 

But it seems like it'd be pretty hard to find $2K of tpb's to flip into even $4K in one year. Plus they're heavier, take up more space, and are harder to protect from damage, both during storage AND during shipping.

 

Respectfully disagree about everything said above.

Knowing how to buy, how to list, where to look, is all you really need.

I can share so much info here that will teach any one of you how to comfortably do your research right and sell fast.

I wont for two reasons:

1. I have in the past in other threads and it was nothing but witty remarks about things that the commentators had absolutely no knowledge about

2. It will most likely hurt my revenue stream

So

If you'd like, just take my word for it:

I am now profiting AS MUCH from TPBs as I am from comic books

 

 

You can profit as much from comics as TPBs and everything above can STILL be true. In every hobby there will be certain items harder to find or more in demand than others. That doesn't seem to be in question. Whether or not you can "invest" in TPBs and have them appreciate like similarly desirable comics is another question entirely.

 

I believe the divide between people discussing the topic are between ones taking the question as "can you make a living buying and flipping a select number of TPB's?" and "are TPB's something that will be increasingly valuable over time?"

 

The short term flip and the long term, hold and wait to appreciate, results would be dramatically different. I think you can agree on that front when it comes to TPB's. And I am talking TPB's not limited edition HC's, signed and ltd editions, etc.

 

 

 

 

Initially I am inclined to agree with that, but really, what is the hit ratio on "regular" comics these days? How many new titles are released every week? At least a couple of hundred, across all of the companies, right? And of those, how many show any gain in value whatsoever? I'd imagine the total would be similar to the number of trades that show similar appreciation. I think the truth across the board is that the vast majority of comics that are printed in any format will never be worth more than the paper they're printed on. Anything that manages to heat up, at all, at any point, is in an of itself an "outlier".

 

 

I was thinking more in terms of, the very best TPB potential investment vs the very best comic investment, apples the apples, same time period.

 

Take the Marvel Fireside books vs any of the Marvel #1's collected therein.

 

Or more recently, take the really great TPB's like Miller's DKR (just the TPB 1st print) vs. the big key books from '85-'95. All of the TPBs have hit a ceiling where they stop or drastically slow whereas comics of the same quality don't seem to have the same ceiling if any ceiling.

 

 

TPB prices are impacted by subsequent printings of the material more than the comics are. For example, the Star Wars: Empire's End TPB use to be a very valuable TPB. Then Empire's End was collected along with Dark Empire II. The prices for that first TPB plummeted. Whereas a comics value doesn't seem to be impacted by a new TPB reprinting the material. At least, that has been my observation.

[rjrjr]

Terrible investment.

 

Purchased February 1 for $201 including shipping. Sold last week for $1399.

 

By my admittedly bad math, that's roughly a 1000% annualized return. Terrible investment. No one should ever invest in trade paperbacks. You shouldn't look for this in a used bookstore, since there's no market for it. I'd avoid this one like the plague. And don't get me started on this worthless piece of garbage.

 

Unless you know what you are doing and can exploit inefficiencies in the marketplace. But since all the posters in the thread have said there's no market for trades, you should just stay out. I'll do it for you and let you know.

 

As soon as those Darth maul comics are collected again by Marvel, that TPB price will plummet. I've watched that happen to the Star Wars TPBs over and over again for the past 10+ years.