What decades of comic books has CGC been grading?

[lou_fine]

 

 

 

 

The Blue color shades are too similar for me to tell the difference between the decades for your 1990's, 1970's, and 1930's books.

 

Either that or I just can't see your Blues for the 1930's decade. Is it that tiny little sliver just on the left hand side of your second chart?

 

Come to think of it, I guess there just can't be that many books from the 1930's that gets graded to actually even register on your graphs. Especially when the old-time collectors who would be the most likely ones to have these books are not part of the CGC generation of collectors who are much more slab-centric.

[lou_fine]

Nice thread.... for some reason I thought that silver age was their bread and butter at one point. Now I see that has never been the case.

 

No, it's always been about books from the past decade or so at any point in time, because these books are just so readily available for grading and subsequent speculative hype.

 

If CGC had to depend on the truly vintage collectible books for their grading revenue, they would have had to close their doors many years ago. Especially as time goes on, there are less and less of the older raw books left to grade.

[valiantman]

 

 

 

 

The Blue color shades are too similar for me to tell the difference between the decades for your 1990's, 1970's, and 1930's books.

 

Either that or I just can't see your Blues for the 1930's decade. Is it that tiny little sliver just on the left hand side of your second chart?

 

Come to think of it, I guess there just can't be that many books from the 1930's that gets graded to actually even register on your graphs. Especially when the old-time collectors who would be the most likely ones to have these books are not part of the CGC generation of collectors who are much more slab-centric.

Yes, that tiny sliver on the bottom left is the 1930s, but the 1930s are basically always too small to see. The stack is oldest (bottom) to newest (top), if that helps separate the decades. The 1940s are at the bottom, and 2000s/2010s are at the top. The 1980s green separates the two blues you want; the 1970s under the green and the 1990s above the green.

[Sqeggs]

The explosion in grading new (2010) books seems to be exploding and driving the huge increase in the number of books getting graded last year. I wonder how many of those new books were variants?

I did that analysis as a chart a few months ago with "percentage of submissions" using the comic date.

 

 

Fascinating stuff. Thanks very much for posting it.

 

Looks like if you combine this figure with the ones in your first post, we can draw the conclusion that slabbing recent variants is a pretty large chunk of CGC's business.

[Topnotchman]

Nice thread.... for some reason I thought that silver age was their bread and butter at one point. Now I see that has never been the case.

 

I feel like there are a lot of walk through and express from Silver Age which could be driving the bottom line with dollars instead of units.

[joeypost]

Nice thread.... for some reason I thought that silver age was their bread and butter at one point. Now I see that has never been the case.

 

No, it's always been about books from the past decade or so at any point in time, because these books are just so readily available for grading and subsequent speculative hype.

 

If CGC had to depend on the truly vintage collectible books for their grading revenue, they would have had to close their doors many years ago. Especially as time goes on, there are less and less of the older raw books left to grade.

 

Most of these books are being submitted as SS books. If you hang around the CGC booth for any period of time, you can see exactly how many SS books are getting done at a given show, even the smaller ones. If the guest/artist list is good so will the number of SS submissions.

[Topnotchman]

Are you able to break out signature series?

[valiantman]

Are you able to break out signature series?

 

This is for all decades of comics.

 

Specific to comics from 2010 to current, it was about 36% of submissions each of the last four years.

[grebal]

 

 

 

 

From time to time you go hardcore into some data pool with your passion for numbers, and then share the results, with some inferences or conclusions, here on the board. Friggin awesome, thanks. !

[1Cool]

Are you able to break out signature series?

 

This is for all decades of comics.

 

Specific to comics from 2010 to current, it was about 36% of submissions each of the last four years.

 

That's incredible and slightly scary from a non SS fan perspective. Almost 1/4 books over the last 4 years has a scribble on the cover and over 1/3 when considering only new books. Somebody somewhere must be making fat cash selling SS books to pull in that kind of numbers.

[valiantman]

Are you able to break out signature series?

 

This is for all decades of comics.

 

Specific to comics from 2010 to current, it was about 36% of submissions each of the last four years.

 

That's incredible and slightly scary from a non SS fan perspective. Almost 1/4 books over the last 4 years has a scribble on the cover and over 1/3 when considering only new books. Somebody somewhere must be making fat cash selling SS books to pull in that kind of numbers.

Over 1/3 of the new books submitted to CGC, but that was 50,000 books in 2016 out of over half-a-billion books printed since 2010. So 99.99% of new comics printed aren't being signed and submitted.

[1Cool]

Are you able to break out signature series?

 

This is for all decades of comics.

 

Specific to comics from 2010 to current, it was about 36% of submissions each of the last four years.

 

That's incredible and slightly scary from a non SS fan perspective. Almost 1/4 books over the last 4 years has a scribble on the cover and over 1/3 when considering only new books. Somebody somewhere must be making fat cash selling SS books to pull in that kind of numbers.

Over 1/3 of the new books submitted to CGC, but that was 50,000 books in 2016 out of over half-a-billion books printed since 2010. So 99.99% of new comics printed aren't being signed and submitted.

 

Yea - it's a drop in the bucket overall. But if you take a random 8 books in to be slabbed then 2 will be SS. Those SS guys are really cranking out the product!

[GM8]

Does GPS have data on the SS premium that books get? It wouldn't be precise as any number of contributors or quasi-related people can sign a book but still interesting nonetheless.

[aerischan]

Does GPS have data on the SS premium that books get? It wouldn't be precise as any number of contributors or quasi-related people can sign a book but still interesting nonetheless.

Wonder how many of those are Stan Lee.

[lou_fine]

The explosion in grading new (2010) books seems to be exploding and driving the huge increase in the number of books getting graded last year. I wonder how many of those new books were variants?

I did that analysis as a chart a few months ago with "percentage of submissions" using the comic date.

 

 

Are you able to break out signature series?

 

This is for all decades of comics.

 

Specific to comics from 2010 to current, it was about 36% of submissions each of the last four years.

 

Well, from these 2 graphs, it clearly looks like if it wasn't for the creation of signed and manufactured collectibles of what would otherwise be worthless books, CGC would be right out of business.

 

Definitely glad that I don't own any of these manufactured collectibles as my thinking is that 99.999% of them will see only deteriorating value as time goes on as speculators move onto the next hot flavor of the month.

 

But to each their own and whatever turns your wheel.

[GM8]

Wonder how many of those are Stan Lee.

 

He's the biggest one of course. I know he gets paid like $50 for each signature, wonder if he actually refuses to do one based on the book. Like if I put a Wonder Woman random book in front of him would he just sign it for the cash? Or would he say, "comeon, you can't even put a Marvel in front of me?"

[GM8]

Well, from these 2 graphs, it clearly looks like if it wasn't for the creation of signed and manufactured collectibles of what would otherwise be worthless books, CGC would be right out of business.

 

Definitely glad that I don't own any of these manufactured collectibles as my thinking is that 99.999% of them will see only deteriorating value as time goes on as speculators move onto the next hot flavor of the month.

 

But to each their own and whatever turns your wheel.

 

Ok, so take it a step further for and giggles. When the market for SS's & variants cools and reverses...will the money going into them be rerouted to traditional key issues? Or has that money already gone into them, thus driving up their value and looking for quicker profits in the variants? I believe its the latter as I think about it.

[90sChild]

I think the interesting correlation here is that there is

price resistance to what people are willing to pay to have books graded.

 

Everyone would love to have quality silver age and bronze age

to to submit but when that genre doesn't even bring Overstreet guide

prices for books that are graded 9.2 or better.

 

Then what's the point of paying extra for grading?

 

The cheaper alternative is sending in this modern drek that

is bringing far larger profit margins from a volume submission stand point.

 

CGC should lower pricing on the value, economy and standard tiers.

 

As a volume submitter I have tons of material that would fit these eras

but they bring just as much selling them raw and

there is far lower risk submitting moderns in volume.

 

I think the second graphic hides the overall counts, but the first graphic indicates that there are still strong numbers being submitted for the older decades, they're just a smaller percentage of what is sitting at CGC at any given time.

 

Yes, there are smaller numbers or percentages of the other eras.

That is why I used the theory of pricing resistance.

 

There are other factors but from a business standpoint.

ie. finding quality books in the gold, silver and bronze aren't as frequent.

Demographic of buyers these days seem to pay far more for modern

"flavor of the month" drek.

 

It's not worth submitting the other material because it doesn't

bring guide prices for 9.2 or better.

A good example is X-Men in the #110 to 142 range.

Those books often bring lower then guide price in 9.2 or 9.4.

 

So it only makes sense that there are more moderns submitted

from a dealer standpoint.

 

As a buyer, I've noticed this trend myself and I capitalize on it all the time by buying slabbed 9.2 or 9.4 bronze age books for the same price some people are asking for raw copies. There could be multiple things going on here though; more sellers are using graded sales prices to reflect the asking prices of their raw books. I think the other thing going on is that the market is not ready to consider 9.2/9.4 from the bronze age an investment grade book yet. Ie. if you have an X-men #129 in 9.2 ($120), the demand is going to be significantly lower than for 9.6 copies ($200+).

 

I've seen it recommended all over the place that you want a 9.6 minimum, preferably a 9.8 if you want an investment grade copy (from this era of books). Since finding 9.6/9.8 raw books is becoming harder and harder (my opinion?) this is probably resulting in less new bronze age books being graded. Moderns on the other hand that are readily available, a $4 book in 9.8 trends around $40-50 on average. Based on the charts though, we are still seeing an increase in bronze books being graded, so who really knows. I just know as a buyer, it makes it way easier for me to buy that slabbed copy for the same price as the raw one.

 

[musicmeta]

All these graphs charts are simply AWESOME! Valiantman is the stats man!

[valiantman]

All these graphs charts are simply AWESOME! Valiantman is the stats man!

Thanks... that's a perfect way for me to show off my new toy... www.slabdata.com

 

Enjoy!