Yep, we are in the 1990's collectibles pre-crash 2 2

[aardvark88]

17 hours ago, revat said:

but consider the REASONS things are bought and sold in terms of comics and collectibles.  what would cause ALL of them to crash? Wouldn't the money just move to something else?  Wouldn't there be cushions of ebay buyers letting you down gently instead of a massive crash?  Except for the dumbest of speculators who would have failed anyways? And how many people buy 10's or hundreds of a given comic that if the market for that comic crashed they'd be broke?  It just doesn't happen anymore.  So yes, the occasional dummy might get crushed from time to time, but what would cause a major chunk of dealers/sellers/flippers to get crushed at the same time?  I just don't think its possible any more with the internet.  Which is not to say any individual can't make a string of bad decisions and lose money, just that I don't think it can easily be system wide. 

I think the new issue market is at a much more precarious point right now. Just ask around to see which LCS has stopped ordering new issues or about to shutter their shops due to having no physical space to store their overstock from chasing the weekly variants (1:50, 1:100, 1:300, etc) for their subscribers. Projected print run on ASM #800 is over 470,000 plus variants. The only saving grace for LCS closing down is instead of having a 10c on the dollar liquidation, they can try to sell slower on eBay or Amazon, or at local cons.

[revat]

29 minutes ago, aardvark88 said:

I think the new issue market is at a much more precarious point right now. Just ask around to see which LCS has stopped ordering new issues or about to shutter their shops due to having no physical space to store their overstock from chasing the weekly variants (1:50, 1:100, 1:300, etc) for their subscribers. Projected print run on ASM #800 is over 470,000 plus variants. The only saving grace for LCS closing down is instead of having a 10c on the dollar liquidation, they can try to sell slower on eBay or Amazon, or at local cons.

Yes if stores are dumb enough to over order blindly without guaranteed sale on incentive variants, yes they're in trouble.  But nowadays with the internet and easy info/communication with customers its easy to line up buyers ahead of time to cover most of your costs for ordering all the regular copies buy pre-ordering the variants.  So yes they have a bunch of overstock later, but they're probably not losing on the deal, just getting jammed up space wise. And even if they were dumb enough to over order on the variants, they could immediately sell them online for 'less loss' if no one in the store buys them. 

Not that stores can't be dumb or lose, just not in such an immediate widespread way that would crash the whole market in my opinion.  And the market can always be propped up with the next movie or announcement of a movie or tv show.  Or graphic novels.  Etc.  I think store owners are smarter these days. 

But yes I would say the variant market is going in a bad direction in general, I just don't think there's any significant danger, and won't be for a while.  And the people who buy the very expensive super rare variants, they're probably rich, they'll be alright and still buy what they like.  Or their dealers who didn't buy that high anyways and aren't sitting on 2000 copies of ASM 667 like people did with Xforce 1 or Death of Superman.  The crash happened because EVERY DEALER invested in the same 10 comics that had MILLIONS of copies.  Now LCS's PRE-SELL very expensive variants, but like 2-5 per store max. 

[Hamlet]

19 hours ago, revat said:

but consider the REASONS things are bought and sold in terms of comics and collectibles.  People buy them for OTHER reasons than financial, and any given market is more opaque to your average consumer.  The stock market is full of MILLIONS of people who do nothing but trade and research stocks all day.  How many comic investors have such perfect knowledge?  And yes any 1 or 5 comics can crash at the same time, but what would cause ALL of them to crash? Wouldn't the money just move to something else?  Wouldn't there be cushions of ebay buyers letting you down gently instead of a massive crash?  Except for the dumbest of speculators who would have failed anyways? And how many people buy 10's or hundreds of a given comic that if the market for that comic crashed they'd be broke?  It just doesn't happen anymore.  So yes, the occasional dummy might get crushed from time to time, but what would cause a major chunk of dealers/sellers/flippers to get crushed at the same time?  I just don't think its possible any more with the internet.  Which is not to say any individual can't make a string of bad decisions and lose money, just that I don't think it can easily be system wide.  I think that scenario only occurs in the event of a CGC scandal.

Have you not gone through a bubble before?

As prices rise, it pulls in people who are mostly just interested in buying stuff while it is going up.  All it takes for those people to start selling is to have the market correct a little.

In the normal give and take of a healthy market, those people coming into and leaving the market are no big deal.  However, in bubble markets, those people have driven prices so high that when they lose interest, the market price drops dramatically.

People have seen pretty much all comic keys go up consistently and dramatically for a long time.  A large percentage of the market now believes that they can essentially buy comic keys without much risk of long-term loss.  That has driven them to buy many more key books at a much higher cost than they would in a normal market. 

When people re-learn that comic keys can go down as a group as well as go up as a group, the people who bought books primarily as speculation will start selling instead of buying.  That is likely to cause a fairly dramatic change in values of most key comics.  Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it is fast.  Sometimes the market recovers, and sometimes it doesn't. 

The end of a new bubble is always just a little bit different than past bubbles, but when people are buying something while the price is increasing dramatically and assuming that it won't ever stop increasing, it almost always ends very badly eventually.

[revat]

1 minute ago, Hamlet said:

Have you not gone through a bubble before?

As prices rise, it pulls in people who are mostly just interested in buying stuff while it is going up.  All it takes for those people to start selling is to have the market correct a little.

In the normal give and take of a healthy market, those people coming into and leaving the market are no big deal.  However, in bubble markets, those people have driven prices so high that when they lose interest, the market price drops dramatically.

People have seen pretty much all comic keys go up consistently and dramatically for a long time.  A large percentage of the market now believes that they can essentially buy comic keys without much risk of long-term loss.  That has driven them to buy many more key books at a much higher cost than they would in a normal market. 

When people re-learn that comic keys can go down as a group as well as go up as a group, the people who bought books primarily as speculation will start selling instead of buying.  That is likely to cause a fairly dramatic change in values of most key comics.  Sometimes it is slow and sometimes it is fast.  Sometimes the market recovers, and sometimes it doesn't. 

The end of a new bubble is always just a little bit different than past bubbles, but when people are buying something while the price is increasing dramatically and assuming that it won't ever stop increasing, it almost always ends very badly eventually.

I'm not saying the market can't go down, I just believe that the factors in the comic market won't lead to any type of significant crash.  Which isn't to say the market won't level off or drop, even significantly.  There's just to many people willing to buy at 90 cents on the dollar for keys, and 25cents on the dollar for drek, and those people can be found IMMEDIATELY on the internet.  That's the other thing, right now we're talking about many separate segments of the market which operate almost independently, whereas they weren't so diversified before.

in the old days, you went your LCS for nearly everything - new issues, back issue fillers, KEYS, older comics.  So if your LCS failed because they bought too much image and Jim Lee Xmen, all of those other things got sold off cheap too, destroying the whole market.  Now there's specialized dealers who specialize, and specialized buyers, but also dealers can make decisions on the fly too to prevent crashes, by tracking the data (their own and on larger scales), and buyers and sellers have immediate access to the whole world.  Its just too big of a market that really, and it really isn't affected by external forces like politics, natural disasters, or tax rules.  And very few things would cause a whole class of buyers to fire sale IMO.

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 4/28/2018 at 4:04 AM, chrisco37 said:

At the end of the linked article, it says the card was originally from an uncut sheet.  But that was before Mastro ever bought it.  He subsequently trimmed it even further.

 

That raises a really interesting question. Since the company that manufactured these in 1909 did NOT "finish production" on the uncut sheet (can you imagine?), then the card was trimmed in the first place OUTSIDE of manufacture. If Mastro trimmed it again...what's the difference...? Setting aside the "he did this to make the card appear nicer" argument, which is a given...but if the card was trimmed post-production to remove it from its sheet...what's the technical difference of what Mastro did?

And why wasn't the card regarded as "trimmed" from the first procedure?

[Hamlet]

1 minute ago, revat said:

I'm not saying the market can't go down, I just believe that the factors in the comic market won't lead to any type of significant crash.  Which isn't to say the market won't level off or drop, even significantly.  There's just to many people willing to buy at 90 cents on the dollar for keys, and 25cents on the dollar for drek, and those people can be found IMMEDIATELY on the internet.  That's the other thing, right now we're talking about many separate segments of the market which operate almost independently, whereas they weren't so diversified before.

in the old days, you went your LCS for nearly everything - new issues, back issue fillers, KEYS, older comics.  So if your LCS failed because they bought too much image and Jim Lee Xmen, all of those other things got sold off cheap too, destroying the whole market.  Now there's specialized dealers who specialize, and specialized buyers, but also dealers can make decisions on the fly too to prevent crashes, by tracking the data (their own and on larger scales), and buyers and sellers have immediate access to the whole world.  Its just too big of a market that really, and it really isn't affected by external forces like politics, natural disasters, or tax rules.  And very few things would cause a whole class of buyers to fire sale IMO.

What is causing almost all key books to rise in unison?

People are always excited to buy stuff at 90 cents on the dollar when it is going up.  Typically, those people disappear when something is going down in value.

[RockMyAmadeus]

On 4/29/2018 at 3:00 PM, ComicConnoisseur said:

They now upped the $60k offer to $75k.

https://www.blowoutcards.com/blog/blowoutcards-com-offers-60000-for-bgs-9-5-shohei-ohtani-superfractor-autograph-from-new-2018-bowman-boxes/

 

That's because people were talking about it on the CGC board. Now look what you've done.

[revat]

2 minutes ago, Hamlet said:

What is causing almost all key books to rise in unison?

People are always excited to buy stuff at 90 cents on the dollar when it is going up.  Typically, those people disappear when something is going down in value.

I agree, but what would cause EVERYTHING to go down dramatically in value at the same time?  I'm just having a tough time seeing the trigger.  I can see a given hot comic leveling off or decreasing, but what would cause a precipitous drop in a whole market, or even a segment of the market?  Again, not saying we can go up forever or that we're not due for some correction on some books or segments, just that I don't see any reason to get any major bubble bursts.  I don't think very many people are getting ridiculously overextended into speculation.  The really expensive variants now have fairly low print runs, and the much older keys are also pretty limited in terms of print run, and have collectors at every grade.  So people who have been waiting to buy those at lower prices will snap those up when prices decrease at 5 to 10% or more.  And yes they could level down even lower, but that would take a lot of time and I think a lot of those comics enter collections and stop moving.  Its not like stocks, which are purely financial instruments.  A lot of the comics go into collections and don't come out, especially for comics that people pay a lot for.

[1Cool]

9 minutes ago, revat said:

I agree, but what would cause EVERYTHING to go down dramatically in value at the same time?  I'm just having a tough time seeing the trigger.  I can see a given hot comic leveling off or decreasing, but what would cause a precipitous drop in a whole market, or even a segment of the market?  Again, not saying we can go up forever or that we're not due for some correction on some books or segments, just that I don't see any reason to get any major bubble bursts.  I don't think very many people are getting ridiculously overextended into speculation.  The really expensive variants now have fairly low print runs, and the much older keys are also pretty limited in terms of print run, and have collectors at every grade.  So people who have been waiting to buy those at lower prices will snap those up when prices decrease at 5 to 10% or more.  And yes they could level down even lower, but that would take a lot of time and I think a lot of those comics enter collections and stop moving.  Its not like stocks, which are purely financial instruments.  A lot of the comics go into collections and don't come out, especially for comics that people pay a lot for.

I see a couple sections of the industry that is ripe for a huge downturn.  The biggest being the SS section of the hobby.  People have invested crazy amounts of money into signed books with the hope that they can squeeze every drop out of a book by getting Stan or Todd or whoever to sign a copy.  What happens when Stan eventually passes and the million people with his SS go to cash in and the market implodes with the supply.  Prices crash and then people start trying to sell off all those ultra rare 6 signed slabs that they paid $1,000 for.  I hope things keep going on the upward trend but with all the money being spent on SS books at each Con I worry about the ripple effects of a SS slab crash.

[RockMyAmadeus]

22 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I see a couple sections of the industry that is ripe for a huge downturn.  The biggest being the SS section of the hobby.  People have invested crazy amounts of money into signed books with the hope that they can squeeze every drop out of a book by getting Stan or Todd or whoever to sign a copy.  What happens when Stan eventually passes and the million people with his SS go to cash in and the market implodes with the supply.  Prices crash and then people start trying to sell off all those ultra rare 6 signed slabs that they paid $1,000 for.  I hope things keep going on the upward trend but with all the money being spent on SS books at each Con I worry about the ripple effects of a SS slab crash.

There are collectors at the ends of these chains. These books aren't just being done by flippers constantly flipping to each other.

My SS collection is the crown jewel of it all (in my collection.)

I don't think you're going to see a "OMG, Stan's dead!" rush to market.

There was no such rush with Bernie, nor with Len, nor with Herb, nor with most of the other guys who have left us. YES, they're not Stan, but Stan IS Stan, and a lot of people do Stan to COLLECT Stan. 

An ambitious SS guy could do Stan's entire catalog of Marvel, from FF #1 to whenever he stopped actively creating comics. An even MORE ambitious fan could do everything...that's something in the neighborhood of 2,000-3,000 different books...that Stan wrote. That would be a sight to see.

And if that happened, it wouldn't even scratch the surface of what actually exists.

Frankly, I'm immensely disappointed that I never did a lot of the guys I could have done before they left us, AND...I'm sad that there weren't more done. People blitch about SS and creators "having" to sign hundreds of books, but the reality is, there's only a finite amount of time and resources, and once they're gone...that's it. There will be no more Joe Kubert signed books, ever. The set of Frank Frazetta SS books is complete (at about 125, by the way.)

So, I say, get them done, and get them done now. There may not be an opportunity in the future.

Edited May 15, 2018 by RockMyAmadeus

[Hamlet]

4 minutes ago, revat said:

I agree, but what would cause EVERYTHING to go down dramatically in value at the same time?  I'm just having a tough time seeing the trigger.  I can see a given hot comic leveling off or decreasing, but what would cause a precipitous drop in a whole market, or even a segment of the market?  Again, not saying we can go up forever or that we're not due for some correction on some books or segments, just that I don't see any reason to get any major bubble bursts.  I don't think very many people are getting ridiculously overextended into speculation.  The really expensive variants now have fairly low print runs, and the much older keys are also pretty limited in terms of print run, and have collectors at every grade.  So people who have been waiting to buy those at lower prices will snap those up when prices decrease at 5 to 10% or more.  And yes they could level down even lower, but that would take a lot of time and I think a lot of those comics enter collections and stop moving.  Its not like stocks, which are purely financial instruments.  A lot of the comics go into collections and don't come out, especially for comics that people pay a lot for.

I think you are underestimating the effects of fear and greed on people's buying decisions.

People are excited to buy things at a small discount right now, because they are pretty certain that things will continue to go up.  When prices start falling, people get scared and pull back.  They don't provide that floor in prices that seemed rock solid.

What will trigger it?  Who knows?  What triggered the stock market crash of 1929 or 2000?  What triggered the drop in gold prices in the 1980s or over the last 6 years?  Or the drop in comic book prices in the 90s?  Its hard to pinpoint, and its never just one thing, just as bubbles aren't caused by just one thing in the first place.

Note that it might not be a fast decline.  Bubbles can take years to deflate.  And, on occasion, the higher prices are sustained and it turns out not to have been a bubble.

However, I wouldn't count on all of those buyers coming in and supporting prices if we have a sustained decline.  They will probably have moved on to the next hot thing that currently going up at that time.

[RockMyAmadeus]

If I had grown up with Stan Lee's 1960s Marvel universe, and had the means to do so, I would absolutely have gone after a complete Stan SS set. Absolutely.

I've gone after a complete Totleben/Bissette Swamp Thing run, MM run, Sam Kieth's work, Jim Lee's work, Liefeld's work (yeah, I know), Sergio's Groo...all the books that were important to me when I was at my formative period as a collector.

So, yeah, if I was 20 years older, I would totally have gone after a complete Stan Lee SS Marvel run. Can you imagine?

[RockMyAmadeus]

3 minutes ago, Hamlet said:

I think you are underestimating the effects of fear and greed on people's buying decisions.

People are excited to buy things at a small discount right now, because they are pretty certain that things will continue to go up.  When prices start falling, people get scared and pull back.  They don't provide that floor in prices that seemed rock solid.

What will trigger it?  Who knows?  What triggered the stock market crash of 1929 or 2000?  What triggered the drop in gold prices in the 1980s or over the last 6 years?  Or the drop in comic book prices in the 90s?  Its hard to pinpoint, and its never just one thing, just as bubbles aren't caused by just one thing in the first place.

Note that it might not be a fast decline.  Bubbles can take years to deflate.  And, on occasion, the higher prices are sustained and it turns out not to have been a bubble.

However, I wouldn't count on all of those buyers coming in and supporting prices if we have a sustained decline.  They will probably have moved on to the next hot thing that currently going up at that time.

What is greed...?

No, it's not what the idjit OIiver Stone put in the mouth of Gordon Gecko.

Greed isn't the desire for more and more...that's gluttony. Greed is simple: it's an extension, and expression, of jealousy. The idea that someone else has or gets something that YOU think THEY don't deserve (and which, of course, you DO.)

THAT is greed.

"What? Cindy got a new bike, and I only got a box of Legos?? That's not fair!" 

That's greed. 

[Hamlet]

1 minute ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

What is greed...?

No, it's not what the idjit OIiver Stone put in the mouth of Gordon Gecko.

Greed isn't the desire for more and more...that's gluttony. Greed is simple: it's an extension, and expression, of jealousy. The idea that someone else has or gets something that YOU think THEY don't deserve (and which, of course, you DO.)

THAT is greed.

"What? Cindy got a new bike, and I only got a box of Legos?? That's not fair!" 

That's greed. 

And how is that expressed in markets when things are going up? 

"I'd better buy it quick before it goes up more and I'm left behind".

When a market is going down, it tends to turn to fear-

"I'd better wait to buy it until it is done going down".

If a person can override those impulses and do the opposite, they can avoid a lot of market pain.

[1Cool]

52 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

There are collectors at the ends of these chains. These books aren't just being done by flippers constantly flipping to each other.

My SS collection is the crown jewel of it all (in my collection.)

I don't think you're going to see a "OMG, Stan's dead!" rush to market.

There was no such rush with Bernie, nor with Len, nor with Herb, nor with most of the other guys who have left us. YES, they're not Stan, but Stan IS Stan, and a lot of people do Stan to COLLECT Stan. 

An ambitious SS guy could do Stan's entire catalog of Marvel, from FF #1 to whenever he stopped actively creating comics. An even MORE ambitious fan could do everything...that's something in the neighborhood of 2,000-3,000 different books...that Stan wrote. That would be a sight to see.

And if that happened, it wouldn't even scratch the surface of what actually exists.

Frankly, I'm immensely disappointed that I never did a lot of the guys I could have done before they left us, AND...I'm sad that there weren't more done. People blitch about SS and creators "having" to sign hundreds of books, but the reality is, there's only a finite amount of time and resources, and once they're gone...that's it. There will be no more Joe Kubert signed books, ever. The set of Frank Frazetta SS books is complete (at about 125, by the way.)

So, I say, get them done, and get them done now. There may not be an opportunity in the future.

If you say so.  I just see so many guys on Facebook talking about getting a book signed since its worth $300 signed and $150 unsigned so why not spend the extra $40 for signing cost and SS upcharge.  Maybe there is a huge horde of SS collectors squirreling away all the SS books but there is so many copies floating around it just seems destined to collapse in my mind.   Guess we will see.

[revat]

1 hour ago, 1Cool said:

If you say so.  I just see so many guys on Facebook talking about getting a book signed since its worth $300 signed and $150 unsigned so why not spend the extra $40 for signing cost and SS upcharge.  Maybe there is a huge horde of SS collectors squirreling away all the SS books but there is so many copies floating around it just seems destined to collapse in my mind.   Guess we will see.

I agree, sort of.  But what would a collapse look like?  The vast majority of CGC SS ALREADY don't sell for profit, and the actual market is still quite niche, with people just buying a few of whatever they like. I don't think that there's tons of dealers sitting on tons of overpriced CGC SS that are just waiting to cash in someday.  A lot of people TRY doing CGC SS for profit and get jammed up with some  slabs, but they don't invest with their savings or to the point of ridiculousness (like in the 90s).   I guess the Stan market could collapse, but that would be well after his death I assume, but then people would still be ..."But there won't be anymore, I don't want to let go that cheaply".  I'm just not sure what would cause the market to say "Stan Lee CGC SS on Silver Surfer 4 AND Greg Capullo CGC SS on New 52 Batman AND Berni Wrightson on CGC SS on Swamp Thing ALL WILL DROP PRECIPITOUSLY IN THE SAME TWO WEEKS".   People will always like signed stuff, and yes, things go up and down with the fame and popularity of artists and creators, but its always about riding the wave til you catch the next one or until you collected something you really want to keep.  That's the key with the age of today, comics stop (or slow down) trading very often with people who want to keep them, and because of the internet they usually find their way to a keeper, even if its not at a super high price, its not pennies on the dollar.  And then supply becomes lower again (yes I get that demand becomes lower too).

*Also it shouldn't be ignored that a lot of buyers, sellers, flippers, part-time dealers have other jobs that actually pay the bills, which means they're rarely overextended to the point where they HAVE to liquidate for pennies on the dollar, or that they would have to stop buying/collecting entirely if they had some losses.  They do it for fun and profit, and make up a pretty significant amount of the comic world now I think, especially here on the boards.  That also makes it harder and less likely to have to NEED to flood the market for any given issue or type of issues. 

[VintageComics]

Someone just asked this question on social media:

Why isn't the first appearance of Red Goblin skyrocketing like Weapon H or Gwenom?

I can only shake my head and wonder why.

You know something's up when noobs are expecting a meteoric rise in value. Wow.

[Callaway29]

I made an eBay offer this week and stated “90day gpa” in the message. The guy wrote back saying 90day gpa means nothing, enthusiastically, and then referenced his FF1 he bought 3 months ago. This book was not in the same league as FF1, nor particularly hot...he stuck to his 75% over GPA asking price. 

Some people legitimately think this is how the market works...for all books...all the time. 

Edited May 15, 2018 by Callaway29

[revat]

42 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Someone just asked this question on social media:

Why isn't the first appearance of Red Goblin skyrocketing like Weapon H or Gwenom?

I can only shake my head and wonder why.

You know something's up when noobs are expecting a meteoric rise in value. Wow.

at some point, someone was gonna take (legally, nothing nefarious) their lunch money.  Might as well be me, now.

[RockMyAmadeus]

4 hours ago, revat said:

5 hours ago, 1Cool said:

If you say so.  I just see so many guys on Facebook talking about getting a book signed since its worth $300 signed and $150 unsigned so why not spend the extra $40 for signing cost and SS upcharge.  Maybe there is a huge horde of SS collectors squirreling away all the SS books but there is so many copies floating around it just seems destined to collapse in my mind.   Guess we will see.

I agree, sort of.  But what would a collapse look like?  The vast majority of CGC SS ALREADY don't sell for profit, and the actual market is still quite niche, with people just buying a few of whatever they like. I don't think that there's tons of dealers sitting on tons of overpriced CGC SS that are just waiting to cash in someday.  A lot of people TRY doing CGC SS for profit and get jammed up with some  slabs, but they don't invest with their savings or to the point of ridiculousness (like in the 90s).   I guess the Stan market could collapse, but that would be well after his death I assume, but then people would still be ..."But there won't be anymore, I don't want to let go that cheaply".  I'm just not sure what would cause the market to say "Stan Lee CGC SS on Silver Surfer 4 AND Greg Capullo CGC SS on New 52 Batman AND Berni Wrightson on CGC SS on Swamp Thing ALL WILL DROP PRECIPITOUSLY IN THE SAME TWO WEEKS".   People will always like signed stuff, and yes, things go up and down with the fame and popularity of artists and creators, but its always about riding the wave til you catch the next one or until you collected something you really want to keep.  That's the key with the age of today, comics stop (or slow down) trading very often with people who want to keep them, and because of the internet they usually find their way to a keeper, even if its not at a super high price, its not pennies on the dollar.  And then supply becomes lower again (yes I get that demand becomes lower too).

*Also it shouldn't be ignored that a lot of buyers, sellers, flippers, part-time dealers have other jobs that actually pay the bills, which means they're rarely overextended to the point where they HAVE to liquidate for pennies on the dollar, or that they would have to stop buying/collecting entirely if they had some losses.  They do it for fun and profit, and make up a pretty significant amount of the comic world now I think, especially here on the boards.  That also makes it harder and less likely to have to NEED to flood the market for any given issue or type of issues. 

All true.

AND...

The vast, vast, vast...like 75% or more...majority of those doing SS are doing it AT COST. That is, they are either schlepping the books to cons with their own witnesses, or grabbing CGC witnesses, and doing it themselves, or they're paying someone a nominal cost to do it for them. They're not paying "market prices" for them, for the most part.

Consider: as of this week, there are 587,494 SS books in existence. That number isn't exact, but it's well, well within the margin of error.

Right now, on eBay, there are 10.587 listings under the search term "CGC SS" and 2,229 under the search term "CGC signature."

That's HALF a percent (.5%) to a little less than 2% of all the CGC signature series books that exist.

Heritage has 16...yes, just 16...available for sale, and as far as I can see, the other similar sites are the same. 

Those are phenomenal numbers.

That means 98% OR BETTER of the signature series books are in the hands of people who aren't selling them at this time. How many of those are in dealer inventory, just waiting to be sold? I dunno...maybe another 2-3%? I set up at the Oceanside comic show in 2016, and had an entire wall, and plenty of boxes, made almost solely of CGC SS books. I was the only "dealer" in the room who had more than 10 SS slabs.

No, SS is a very collector-centric niche, Facebook "dealers" aside.