Modern variant values... finding the logic?

[exitmusicblue]

Salute to that...!

 

These threads are the real Infinity Gauntlet/Crusade the Not-So-Secret Wars

[Lethal_Collector]

 

True dat, you gotta have thick skin 'round deez parts!

 

 

Jerome

[ygogolak]

It doesn't matter anyway, it's just a number on a screen, that sort of proof isn't very meaningful either. The reason I even brought it up is because a public transaction implies a trusted third party. That's it, not to cause this sort of argument... just that people should be aware that these sort of things are often just word of mouth reports. Take that and consider it however you think it should be considered.

 

that's all U.S. currency has been since 1971.

 

 

[NP_Gresham]

If one can picture themselves selling those books for pennies on the dollar because of new interests, then it all makes sense. Most people don't buy fishing gear or golf clubs with the idea they will turn a profit when they acquire new interests.

But on the other hand, if one forsakes buying a house, building savings or filling the 401K with the notion that these books will be turned over at a later date to fund ones retirement or education or provide the down payment on ones new house, then that is downright delusional.

[shadroch]

As I sit on my patio, I am observing some clouds. If I stare at them long enough, I will be able to make out patterns. Some clouds will vaguely look like sheep. Some with look like people, some with look like islands.

As someone else looks at the same cloud from fifty miles away, he will make different observations of the same cloud. What I think looks like a sheep, he thinks it looks like a clock. We are both seeing patterns that don't really exist. It's human nature.

If you could calculate the total water content of that cloud, it wouldn't matter what shape you see or how far away someone else is.

 

And those are my thoughts on pooled values.

Actual water content of the cloud is my thought on pooled values.

 

Youngblood 1 has a bazillion copies out there. Does that make it a better book to own than Secret Defenders 1?

It might be a better book to own every copy of Youngblood 1 than owning every copy of Secret Defenders #1. We're talking about the pooled values.

 

A) is total supply

B) is normal value

 

More A doesn't always win because there's B.

 

Wouldn't the person owning every copy of Youngblood 1 be worse off because he spent more money and has more worthless stock?

[Mercury Man]

Modern Variant Comic Books are the rare Cabbage Patch Doll/Beanie Baby/Danbury Mint Collector Plates of comics. Manufactured Collectibles, worth a fraction of the price days/weeks/months/20 years later.

 

The test of time will level this thing off to more realistic levels.

 

Sell now, laugh to the bank., then go to church and thank your personal Jesus.

 

 

Thanks Yoda.

 

See you in 20 years.

 

-J.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mercury Man]

The Logic is, there is no logic. It may be a $9,000 four year old comic book to less than 1% of the comic collecting population but that is it. As long as the money exchanges, that is all that matters. Eventually they run out of dance partners, and someone is left holding the bag. Then the sell off, and drop off continues.

 

This comic has no broad appeal like a blue chip, high grade, older comic that offers some sort of historical (speaking comic book historical here) significance. It's just a Modern Age fad, rumored to have a low print run. Nothing more.

[Transplant]

I stopped reading when I realized there was lots of math and work involved. I was told there would be no math.

[bababooey]

I stopped reading when I realized there was lots of math and work involved. I was told there would be no math.

 

addition by subtraction

[r100comics]

One point of note... we don't even really have any hard evidence that the $9,000 sale happened (as far as I know). It was a private deal.

 

The documented data we have is around half that price, for whatever that is worth. Even then, most have a problem reconciling it.

 

It just is what it is, I argue you can't really justify it... for instance, considering this formula, lets say the last successful sale was $4,500... and then the very next one goes for $9,000. I mean, how does that make much sense? :shrug:

 

People have money, people see something they want, people buy it for the price it is available at. I just read in modern where someone attempted to buy a $5,000 modern variant using PayPal credit. Buyers like that are probably not the most financially sound.

 

Correction- it was a "private sale" until it was made public. But Private sales happen all the time, them not being on GPA doesn't mean they didn't happen. GPA doesn't report most comic book sales (and reports a lot of fake ones from ebay, which, yes they do the best they can to monitor). Most comic books sales are private anyway. Plenty happen here on these boards everyday. The last sale on GPA was $4000 for a 9.6 seven months ago. The last raw sale was $2500 last March. This was the first public sale of a 9.8 in four years. $9k might turn out to be a bargain if another 9.8 isn't offered for another four years.

 

-J.

 

Yeah, it doesn't mean it didn't happen. But it doesn't mean it did either. There's some disparity in the record of even recorded public sales, but in general, they're far more trustworthy than a person showing up on a forum and saying they sold X book for $Y. That's all.

 

He has no reason to lie. His book is sold and he's cashed out his PayPal funds. He has no reason to post his bank account information to "prove" anything to anybody. It is what it is. Essentially calling a boardie a liar is poor form, IMO. There are only 7 records of sales of the book in six years. It's like that because the book is rare and rarely offered for sale. Hence why a 9.8, first in 4 years, sold for $9k. But please , let's continue this latest cry-athon over what the ASM 667 sells for a little longer....

 

-J.

 

Sure he has a reason. If you read cmzare's posts he seems very willing to disclose details that support the price he paid or the price paid to him...he typed out the offers he received and posted them here.

The money doesn't need to be in his account, he can just take a pic of his transaction history with an amount paid to him of 9K and post an unedited pic - it'd take 10 seconds to put some post its on the screen covering up whatever personal details he doesn't want shared.

 

He can't because it didn't happen...but "you know" he withdrew the balance.

Just as the party who sold it to him told you the amount & outed him as the buyer.

Just like the 4K sale seven months ago that never received buyer feedback.

 

[valiantman]

As I sit on my patio, I am observing some clouds. If I stare at them long enough, I will be able to make out patterns. Some clouds will vaguely look like sheep. Some with look like people, some with look like islands.

As someone else looks at the same cloud from fifty miles away, he will make different observations of the same cloud. What I think looks like a sheep, he thinks it looks like a clock. We are both seeing patterns that don't really exist. It's human nature.

If you could calculate the total water content of that cloud, it wouldn't matter what shape you see or how far away someone else is.

 

And those are my thoughts on pooled values.

Actual water content of the cloud is my thought on pooled values.

 

Youngblood 1 has a bazillion copies out there. Does that make it a better book to own than Secret Defenders 1?

It might be a better book to own every copy of Youngblood 1 than owning every copy of Secret Defenders #1. We're talking about the pooled values.

 

A) is total supply

B) is normal value

 

More A doesn't always win because there's B.

 

Wouldn't the person owning every copy of Youngblood 1 be worse off because he spent more money and has more worthless stock?

If someone owned every copy of Youngblood 1 they wouldn't be worthless.

 

They could put just 29 copies into the market and make $100,000.

[jcjames]

I stopped reading when I realized there was lots of math and work involved. I was told there would be no math.

 

 

[FN-2199]

I read your post, then all of the comments, and then thought about this overnight. I understand your goal. You want to be able to quantify "How to price a variant" using the whole of market research. I think you are going in the right direction but aren't there yet.

 

I can't offer a suggestion to improve the formula because I am more of a grinder. I do research on a per-book basis, which seems to be what many people here do and that may be causing the disconnect. The detractors have to reconsider the paradigm of pricing a book based on the whole market rather than on a per-book basis. The case by case basis will always be more accurate but if you get the formula right you can get a pretty good understanding of cost to value with a quick formula.

 

For those confused, it seems that valiantman is trying to come up with the comic equivalent of the P/E ratio. While not an end-all, be-all for investing in stocks, the Price/Earnings ratio of a particular company's stock is a quick guide to value. If the value is there, invest the time to perform further research on the company.

 

Of course there are outliers which will inevitably skew the numbers but patterns should be able to be found. How many years did sports scouts push back against analytics? The analytics should supplement the research but can tell you where to look or what to consider.

 

Perhaps you need to add a variable to your formula based on the % of upward or downward trajectory in recent sales.

[ComicConnoisseur]

So the numbers don't appear to tell you anything significant when you combine them together for this issue. None of this is 'revealed' data, they're just data points available elsewhere. I don't see a connection between any of the items, other than your assumption the book isn't a key because of it's low CGC count. For this series, I'd actually argue that it would be considered a key, but that's just me.

I'm not sure why you want me to apply my "modern variant values logic" (topic title) to a book without variants.

 

I don't even understand how a variant in the group would have anything to do with anything.

 

 

I actually agree with Jaydogrules... and that is a rarity.

If you have a variant for a comic... and if that variant is the "preferred" version of that comic... the overall pooled value for that comic sees a shift toward the preferred variant.

 

How much shift is dependent upon both the quantity of the variant and the quantity of the regular.

 

Once you shift the overall dollars toward the variant, you can divide by quantity and get a dollar amount for one copy.

 

There is a way to make sense of ASM #667 Dell'Otto variants using the fact that it's just a regular issue of ASM, that the regular issues of #667 only sell for about $4, but the preferred variant only has 29 copies known.

I am getting from you that we should consider ASM #667 Dell'Otto variants like we would consider a CGC 9.9 grade for a comic?

[ComicConnoisseur]

If you look up the supposed print run (a sort of made up number already), then look up CGC values or eBay values for the 'regular' cover, what do you have here? You can get some perceived 'total market value' for the existing cover that you looked up the price for, but then what?

The print run is approximate, but there aren't 150,000 when Comichron says 15,000... and there aren't 15,000 when Comichron says 150,000. Using those numbers, we're not off by much.

 

As you mentioned, there are only 2 or 3 numbers needed...

 

A) The print run for all the versions of the book

B) The market price for a comparable book without any variants

 

A * B gives you a overall pool of dollars to work with.

 

We need another piece in the equation if there IS a variant... and if the market had any "standard" it might be something like 75% of A * B goes to the regular editions with 25% of A * B for the variants.

 

Let's pretend it's a 75/25 rule.

 

Take a $4 comic with 15,000 copies and no variants... A * B is $60,000

Take a similar comic (same title, next issue, for example) with 15,000 copies, but 500 are variants.

75% of the $60,000 for 14,500 regular editions would estimate the regular edition at $3.10 each.

25% of the $60,000 for the 500 variants would estimate the variant at $30 each.

But the total would still be about $60,000 because that's the standard for that title... even when there are no variants.

 

If the 75/25 rule worked all the time... the whole market could be predictable.

I doubt if that's the case... but there's nothing unusual about the scenario above.

 

Let's say there are 80,000 copies at $4 each, but no variants. That's $320,000.

Let's say the next issue has 80,000 copies, but 500 are variants.

 

75% of the $320,000 goes to the 79,500 regular editions... so they're about $3.02 each.

25% of the $320,000 goes to the 500 variants... so they're about $160 each.

 

All we've used is A, B, and a 75/25 rule.

 

If there are 80,000 copies and only 29 are the preferred variant...

 

75% of the $320,000 goes to the 79,971 regular (non-preferred) editions... so they're about $3 each.

25% of the $320,000 goes to the 29 preferred variants... so they're about $2,750 each.

 

Again, it's just A, B, and a 75/25 rule.

 

I'm not saying 75/25 is the rule... but you can get some consistent results using it... and not much else.

Variant modern comics remind me of Refractors in sportscards collecting in that

the refractor version of the card can be worth thousands in some instances,while the base card version is worth nothing.

Here is a good article on Refractors in the sportscard hobby. I see a good similarity to variants in comics.

Refractors

 

btw refractors have been around quite sometime now,so I could see this variant craze to last awhile as well.

[ComicConnoisseur]

Modern Variant Comic Books are the rare Cabbage Patch Doll/Beanie Baby/Danbury Mint Collector Plates of comics. Manufactured Collectibles, worth a fraction of the price days/weeks/months/20 years later.

 

The test of time will level this thing off to more realistic levels.

 

Sell now, laugh to the bank., then go to church and thank your personal Jesus.

 

 

My uncle and aunt made thousands off of Beanie Babies in the 1990s. Those Beanie Babies are worthless now, but during the 90s they were cash kings.

Sometimes it`s better to make money now with markets than hold or hope in twenty years what the market will be.

[Mercury Man]

Modern Variant Comic Books are the rare Cabbage Patch Doll/Beanie Baby/Danbury Mint Collector Plates of comics. Manufactured Collectibles, worth a fraction of the price days/weeks/months/20 years later.

 

The test of time will level this thing off to more realistic levels.

 

Sell now, laugh to the bank., then go to church and thank your personal Jesus.

 

 

My uncle and aunt made thousands off of Beanie Babies in the 1990s. Those Beanie Babies are worthless now, but during the 90s they were cash kings.

Sometimes it`s better to make money now with markets than hold or hope in twenty years what the market will be.

 

That is what my point was. If it is a Modern Collectible and is hot now, sell. You think that this comic will be in an auction house, sitting next to a blue chip key someday....dream on.

 

As for your earlier post, I don't know much about the collector mentality in sportscards when it comes to Refractors, but the Modern Variant chasing pool is a very shallow end of the pool. Not a whole lot of Modern comic collectors really care about variants. I am basing this on my own LCS owner sayinbg he is done worrying about getting in variants, because nobody is buying them, and he winds up selling them for less than cover after a year.

[Diaolos]

My favorite variants

 

 

[Lethal_Collector]

That is what my point was. If it is a Modern Collectible and is hot now, sell. You think that this comic will be in an auction house, sitting next to a blue chip key someday....dream on.

 

I need to get some lotto numbers from you.

 

 

Jerome

[Mercury Man]

That is what my point was. If it is a Modern Collectible and is hot now, sell. You think that this comic will be in an auction house, sitting next to a blue chip key someday....dream on.

 

I need to get some lotto numbers from you.

 

 

Jerome

 

 

That's fine. But it's the early 1990's all over again, the only difference is that the print runs are smaller. When the market corrects itself, the Modern stuff is the first to take the hit.