How did the 90's bubble bust impact GA sales/values? 3 3

[Sqeggs]

7 minutes ago, Flex Mentallo said:

is it more thus than previously?

So much of my life is previously, and so little is thus. 

[Flex Mentallo]

5 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

So much of my life is previously, and so little is thus. 

 

Ah well, so mote it be.

[skypinkblu]

19 minutes ago, Flex Mentallo said:

What I'd like to ask you, Richard, is whether you see a widening rift in the back issue market, between the higher end and everything else, or would you speculate that a  rising tide will raise all ships? I promise not to take your view as fact - just interested to learn if you have a view?

There was a time when you could go on Ebay and most of what was offered in Golden Age was auctioned. You could bag last minute wins under the radar. Now all but 3% or 4% of what is on offer is BIN. Most of that seems to be optimistically priced. A lot of that stuff just lies there unsold. [The first golden age book I ever won in a Heritage auction was a Military Comics #14 in 9.4 that went well under guide. I flipped it a year or two later and just about recouped my outlay. The buyer immediately listed it on Ebay at several times the price. It has been there ever since - maybe 8 or 9 years.]

Meanwhile the high end market surges on to greater heights, seemingly unstoppable.  I assume that when compared to other areas of collecting, comics still have huge growth potential, and there are evidently many people out there willing and able to speculate. If a book sells high at auction, a new value is established, a sort of magic realism. This attracts further interest. On Ebay, conversely, sellers seem to assume that their low to midgrade books deserve to be priced in relation to high grade books, and hike their prices, even on books in rags. Even the dross seems largely overpriced. I suppose it was ever thus, but is it more thus than previously?

 

I find it seems to go up and down. I just sold some very low grade Wonder Woman books on eBay, 30-40 watchers on each book and the prices went higher than I expected. 

But, I auctioned them starting with 99 cents and no reserve and that always seems to do better. When I had them up at best offer, they just sat there.

Next week, these books could just sit even at an auction.

Just need 2 bidders. If one of them is watching tv and forgets to bid, you are in trouble;)

(someone I know just emailed me a few hours ago and told me he was watching tv and forgot to bid on one of the books, that it would have gone higher;) 

 

[Sqeggs]

3 minutes ago, skypinkblu said:

I find it seems to go up and down.  

When J.P. Morgan was asked to predict the future path of stock prices he would say,  “They will fluctuate.”

[MrBedrock]

4 hours ago, Flex Mentallo said:

What I'd like to ask you, Richard, is whether you see a widening rift in the back issue market, between the higher end and everything else, or would you speculate that a  rising tide will raise all ships? I promise not to take your view as fact - just interested to learn if you have a view?

There was a time when you could go on Ebay and most of what was offered in Golden Age was auctioned. You could bag last minute wins under the radar. Now all but 3% or 4% of what is on offer is BIN. Most of that seems to be optimistically priced. A lot of that stuff just lies there unsold. [The first golden age book I ever won in a Heritage auction was a Military Comics #14 in 9.4 that went well under guide. I flipped it a year or two later and just about recouped my outlay. The buyer immediately listed it on Ebay at several times the price. It has been there ever since - maybe 8 or 9 years.]

Meanwhile the high end market surges on to greater heights, seemingly unstoppable.  I assume that when compared to other areas of collecting, comics still have huge growth potential, and there are evidently many people out there willing and able to speculate. If a book sells high at auction, a new value is established, a sort of magic realism. This attracts further interest. On Ebay, conversely, sellers seem to assume that their low to midgrade books deserve to be priced in relation to high grade books, and hike their prices, even on books in rags. Even the dross seems largely overpriced. I suppose it was ever thus, but is it more thus than previously?

 

From my point of view sales are steady and good on all back issues in all grades ... especially when I have them priced at or below market. If I have them priced higher than market then sales are slower.

Crazy, huh?

[jhm]

Thanks a ton to everyone for the feedback so far. It's been both valuable and entertaining!

So far I'm not hearing anything that says it's a good time to pause on buying my favorite niche areas of GA. Hopefully that's not my addiction passion getting the best of me;)

Re. why I think there may be a bust...

Let's just call it pure opinion. I hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me the amount of flipping I'm seeing of books that are less than 3 months old is gaining traction and isn't likely to end well.

[skypinkblu]

4 hours ago, Sqeggs said:

When J.P. Morgan was asked to predict the future path of stock prices he would say,  “They will fluctuate.”

He was a smart man;)

[lou_fine]

6 hours ago, Flex Mentallo said:

What I'd like to ask you, Richard, is whether you see a widening rift in the back issue market, between the higher end and everything else, or would you speculate that a  rising tide will raise all ships? I promise not to take your view as fact - just interested to learn if you have a view?

There was a time when you could go on Ebay and most of what was offered in Golden Age was auctioned. You could bag last minute wins under the radar. Now all but 3% or 4% of what is on offer is BIN. Most of that seems to be optimistically priced. A lot of that stuff just lies there unsold. [The first golden age book I ever won in a Heritage auction was a Military Comics #14 in 9.4 that went well under guide. I flipped it a year or two later and just about recouped my outlay. The buyer immediately listed it on Ebay at several times the price. It has been there ever since - maybe 8 or 9 years.]

Meanwhile the high end market surges on to greater heights, seemingly unstoppable.  I assume that when compared to other areas of collecting, comics still have huge growth potential, and there are evidently many people out there willing and able to speculate. If a book sells high at auction, a new value is established, a sort of magic realism. This attracts further interest. On Ebay, conversely, sellers seem to assume that their low to midgrade books deserve to be priced in relation to high grade books, and hike their prices, even on books in rags. Even the dross seems largely overpriced. I suppose it was ever thus, but is it more thus than previously?

 

Flex;

I guess it really depends on what type of books you are looking at, as the scenario you are describing of a widening gap in the back issue market between the high grades and the lower grades were certainly true in years past, but not so much during the recent few years.  This same point was also brought up by Sean in his post on the CGC 8.5 Action 1 thread:

On 3/26/2018 at 9:09 AM, Crowzilla said:

Two million would be right at guide now, yes? Would be an interesting statement on the market (and Overstreet's historical widening of the spreads between grades) if we start seeing low grade copies bring multiples of guide, mid grade bring guide and a half, and high grade struggle to reach guide.

In fact, if you look at some of the auctions over the past few years, entry level copies of many of these GA keys and classic covers are going for absolute silly multiples to guide.  Just take a look at a book like 'Tec 31 which seems to have no problems fetching anywhere from $35K to $45K in even CGC 1.0 condition, the CGC 1.0 copy of Suspense Comics 3 which just went for over $20 in the recent CC auction, the raw copy of a Poor Action 13 that managed to fetch almost $15K on eBay a couple summers ago, etc.  For a non-key and non-classic cover book, take a look at the raw VG+ copy of Wonderworld Comics 11 that sold for almost $3K on ebay a couple summers ago again.   And yet what appears to be a very tightly graded CGC 8.0 copy (2nd highest graded behind only the Church copy) with a clipped coupon only managed to fetch $1,700 in the just completed CC auction.

On the higher end books from a pricing point of view, it would appear that one of the key factors to take into consideration is affordability.  As a result, since most collectors cannot afford to pay the big dollars for a high grade copy of a big book (if it even does come to market), they appear willing to compete and pay up for an entry level copy or other such lower grade just so they can have one in their collection. 

Of course, the scenario you are describing is indeed completely true for most SA books and BA books which are available in abundance. 

[batman_fan]

10 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

I always love reading these threads and seeing the differing viewpoints stated as fact, and which are each solely based on anecdotal evidence or biased opinion.

I can never remember a time when the golden age market as a whole has dropped in value. There have definitely been times when specific genres or titles have been stagnate or have dropped, but never a time when ALL golden age was stagnate, or ALL silver age was stagnate. Frankly there has never been a time when ALL new comics were unsellable. If that were the case then ALL comic stores would have gone out of business. Even during the mid to late 1990's there were new comics that were selling well. Some segment of back issue collecting has always increased in value but some amount which is higher than whatever segment has decreased in value. The back issue hobby has grown every year since I have been involved in it. The new issue market has grown and contracted a number of times over the last four decades (I started working in a comic store in 1978), most notably at the end of the "black and white glut" of the early 1980s and the end of the "speculator market" of the early 1990s. I don't think there is any solid evidence to make a correlation between new issue sales and back issue growth over the market as a whole.

My point is that this entire thread is conjecture. There have been no serious economic studies on the correlation of vintage comic sales and new issue comic sales. There have been no serious studies of the various trends in vintage comic pricing over time. I would love for someone to use some hard data to actual analyze these trends. But how many stores carry vintage? How many vintage dealers carry new comics? More importantly how many comic dealers are willing to share their actual sales data?

So speculate away. Have fun. But please don't take much said here seriously.

So you are saying studying the correlation between modern and other age comics would make an interesting PhD thesis   Would Bedrock Comics be willing to fund an aging student in this endeavor?

[tth2]

14 hours ago, mwotka said:

But it seems to me, that given the dollar amounts involved in GA (at least for key or very desirable issues), the pricing would more closely mirror the behavior of the overall economy and by extension financial markets and interest rates.  So when someone's stock portfolio crashes, like things did in 2000/01 and 2008/09, there should be a corresponding drop in GA prices (similar trends are observed in art sales, I believe).  

I would say it was actually almost the opposite.

As Lou said, GA (and SA) generally moved up in the mid 90s after the Modern Bubble collapsed.  I would then say that a lot of GA and SA stagnated or went down in the late 90s, and I've always attributed a lot of that to the Dotcom Bubble vacuuming up available dollars.  When the Dotcom Bubble burst, GA and SA started rocketing up throughout the 2000s. 

However, that may just be coincidental, rather than caused or influenced by the Dotcom Bubble bursting.  The bigger factors driving the rise of GA and SA prices were (i) first and foremost, the arrival and acceptance of CGC, (ii) the rise of eBay (which had already revolutionized back issue comic sales since the late 90s, but adding slabbing to eBay was like adding kerosene and (iii) the rise of online comic sites which morphed into online auctions (the Greg Manning auction in 2002 (can't remember the year anymore) was a seminal moment). 

Prices did drop somewhat during the Great Recession, but really not by all that much and certainly less than almost any other major investment asset that I can think of at the time, and some of the big drops only appeared to be drops because of forced sales by the likes of Gary Keller so soon after they had paid peak prices in 2005-06.

And since 2008, prices have just been going up at a 45 degree angle, with the last couple of years more like a 75 degree angle.  

[tth2]

5 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

From my point of view sales are steady and good on all back issues in all grades ... especially when I have them priced at or below market. If I have them priced higher than market then sales are slower.

Crazy, huh?

So stop pricing them higher than market. 

[tth2]

4 hours ago, jhm said:

So far I'm not hearing anything that says it's a good time to pause on buying my favorite niche areas of GA.

Don't worry, I just sent a PM to Delekkerste.  He'll come on now and tell you to stop buying comics because they're overpriced and going to crash soon.  He's been saying so since 2003, and darn it, it's bound to become true one of these days!

[adamstrange]

1 hour ago, tth2 said:

Don't worry, I just sent a PM to Delekkerste.  He'll come on now and tell you to stop buying comics because they're overpriced and going to crash soon.  He's been saying so since 2003, and darn it, it's bound to become true one of these days!

I was going to try my post again in ALL CAPS  but I like your idea better.

Edited March 28, 2018 by adamstrange

[lou_fine]

21 hours ago, lou_fine said:

If I remember correctly, the GA market was the hottest sector within the comic book market during that short period of time, as the MA market had already gone bust by then and the SA market had already peaked and was already into its cooling phase relative to the GA market by then . 

Ok, dug out my old copy of the '96 Overstreet guide to see what they had reported was happening in the 1995 comic book marketplace.  It's good to see that Bob was into writing actual market reports back in those days, as opposed to what he does nowadays which is just an introductory paragraph followed by a few pages of nauseating excerpts from some of his advisors (i.e. dealers).

Skip to the next post if you don't want to re-read what Bob had written in the first couple of paragraphs of his 1996 Annual Market report for 1995 sales:

"Fueled by large increases throughout the Golden Age, prices in the comic marketplace soared to new record highs.  Despite these new higher prices, demand for older comic books has continued to increase.  So much so that Overstreet responded in the Fall with a complete Golden Age price update, a 500-page book entitled The Overstreet Comic Book Price Update.  Once again the brisk price gains in the comic marketplace far outpaced the slower national rate of economic expansion."  (notice how he always says this year after year.  )

"GOLDEN AGE:  Still the hottest area in collecting.  Not only were the top companies' books, such as DC and Timely, selling for multiples of guide list, but the second tier of companies' books exploded with record sales reported throughout the year.  The most astonishing changes were occurring with certain Fox, Nedor, Gleason, and MLJ titles.  Prices paid for certain classic covers by Schomburg, Lou Fine, L.B. Cole, and others soared........"

Well, you get the drift anyways.  And for old slow conservative Bob who normally only gives small single digit increases to his Top 100 Golden Age List, it was definitely noteworthy that he had increased the prices by a whopping 32%   for that year.  Although the big books had year over year price increases of only around 20%, it was interesting to note that quite a few went up by more than 100%, with the big winner that year being Mystery Men #1.   This key Fox book had an astounding increase of 305%   as it went from $2,100 in the previous guide all the way up to $8,500 in just one year.  Unfortunately, this probably pretty much killed much of the overheated demand for many of the early Fox books going forward, as collectors like to chase after what are deemed as undervalued books, as opposed to what are deemed as reasonably priced books. 

 

Edited March 28, 2018 by lou_fine

[Flex Mentallo]

6 hours ago, MrBedrock said:

From my point of view sales are steady and good on all back issues in all grades ... especially when I have them priced at or below market. If I have them priced higher than market then sales are slower.

Crazy, huh?

More like an extreme case of sanity!

[jimjum12]

Since we are talking about the 90's, has anyone mentioned the year when OPG dramatically dropped all tiers below NM and made NM 9.2 ? As I recall, Fine plummeted from around half of NM to a third of NM ............ people were having nervous breakdowns, especially store owners who specialized in VG books. The entire SA market seemed to stall for several years. I had a friend who did real well scarfing up SA books at bargain prices then, because he still believed in them. GOD BLESS...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

[tth2]

6 hours ago, jimjum12 said:

all tiers below NM

[mwotka]

18 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

Couple things wrong with these statements.

First, I don't know any comic collectors who are using the stock market to finance their comic collecting.  I do know of people who, when the market starts to downturn, decide to sell their stocks and move some small portion of their cash into collectibles as a hedge investment.  So your initial premise does not work for me.

Second, in the early 1990s and the 2008/2009 time period, interest rates declined.  So, there is no reason to think that "borrowing costs" increases occurred in the relevant time periods which would have impacted the collectibles market.  For that matter, I can only think of one person I know who borrowed money to fund a comic purchase, and he borrowed from his family to fund that Action 1 acquisition.  So I don't agree with the second theme you assert above either.

I think you misunderstood my point.  Or perhaps I wasn't totally clear.  I didn't mean to imply that collections were/are financed off of stocks, just that when a buyer is looking at a big chunk of his nest egg (or whatever you want to call it) being down 25% or some big drop, he is probably less likely to spend his free cash on high ends things, like GA comics.  I could be totally wrong on that though, and I agree that other external factors could be at play besides the overall economy.  I do think collectibles can be a good hedge, and I think that is a good part of recent prices, as the markets seem topped out.  But not many investors are good at selling when things are starting to turn down.

I also didn't mean to imply that interest rates correlated to the market drop times I mentioned, obviously those things can move at different times.  But I think you are wrong that collectors don't finance.  Many buy on credit cards, and I'd be willing to bet some buyers and dealers have Lines of Credit that they tap, like when a big collection falls into their lap.  Makes sense that deals have to be more favorable to the buyer at higher interest rates.  One must also consider the alternate use of funds idea, whereby a buyer must feel confident that his investment in a high dollar comic must outperform an asset like a bond, which will pay him back more at higher interest rates.  And I'm fairly certain these factors have historically impacted all manner of collectibles.  

It is certainly true that studies haven't been done on the comic market.  But they have been done on art markets, and speculative bubbles and boom/bust cycles have certainly been observed.  It has also been observed that art markets are inefficient, which means that prices don't always reflect true values.  Seems the case with comics as well.  just because one book at one time in one particular grade sold for a certain price, it doesn't guarantee that all other prices should be based on that.  it could be as simple as having the right two bidders.  Once one has had his need satisfied for a certain book, then the next auction will find less buyers pushing the book higher (obviously some buyers like certain books and keep buying multiple copies; I can think of a few that have commented already).  I noticed this trend with some of the Billy Wright books that were bought fraudulently.  When they went back up a year or so later, they usually went for less.  

This is a very interesting discussion.  There is no certainty in any of this, especially as relates to comics, which don't seem to have been studied extensively.  

Edited March 28, 2018 by mwotka

[lou_fine]

35 minutes ago, tth2 said:

6 hours ago, jimjum12 said:

all tiers below NM

Is there any truth to the rumors that you will be coming out with a high-end royalty version of the price guide to perfectly complement Overstreet's much more pedestrian price guide?  

I believe that yours will start with a bottom grade of NM 9.4 and then have 8 different grade levels going right past a Gem Mint 10.0 and then topping out at a tth2 11.0.   

[batman_fan]

My experience is anything I am selling goes low and anything I am buying goes high