Which market will crash first? housing market or the comic market?

[FlyingDonut]

IThe CGC forum has run out of topics and starts talking about golf.

 

Uh-oh.

[delekkerste]

There are always clues to a comic crash coming.

 

Would that be anything like dealers tripping over themselves to get in on the goldmine of selling pressed books and every thread on the CGC Forum turning into a protest against pressing?

 

Let's face it - everybody "knew" that the Nasdaq was a huge bubble and yet almost nobody got out despite all the clues. It's not enough to recognize the clues; you also have to have the right mindset to be able to act on them. In theory, you're right - people should be able to see the signs and get out before a crash comes. But, then again, theoretically, it should be easy for people to lose weight - just exercise more and eat less. Easier said than done.

[MK Ultra]

Down here in S. Florida it's nuts. Median home price in Palm Beach County is now $400K. Home sales are slowing here too, because there are no homes for sale! A friend is trying to buy a place, and is having all sorts of trouble with the banks approving his appraisals. I think that's the begining of the crash. Banks are hiring more appraisers for in house, and auditing more appraisals done by third parties. That will make the continued flipping more difficult and if interest rates start to rise....

[comicworm]

Again guys, I must point out-CGC comics have been going strong for almost 6 years. There isn't a so called "bubble" in the history of the US that lasted that long. The Nasdaq internet bubble only latsed two and half years, and the real estate bubble is only on its second year. Like it or not, CGC or some variation there of, is the way collectible vintage comics will be sold for years to come.

 

Now, modern graded comics? Thats another story entirely. It always makes me laugh when other collectors show me a 9.8 graded issue that was published within the last two years......

 

Subscription services for CGC 9.8 modern comics and pretty funny too...You ought to take that money and buy multiple issues of that same comic and keep them bagged and boarded for years to come....

[krazykat-migration]

Again guys, I must point out-CGC comics have been going strong for almost 6 years. There isn't a so called "bubble" in the history of the US that lasted that long. The Nasdaq internet bubble only latsed two and half years, and the real estate bubble is only on its second year. Like it or not, CGC or some variation there of, is the way collectible vintage comics will be sold for years to come.

 

Now, modern graded comics? Thats another story entirely. It always makes me laugh when other collectors show me a 9.8 graded issue that was published within the last two years......

 

Subscription services for CGC 9.8 modern comics and pretty funny too...You ought to take that money and buy multiple issues of that same comic and keep them bagged and boarded for years to come....

 

REAL ESTATE YOU CAN AT LEAST RESIDE IN.

 

WHAT THE HELL AM I GONNA DO WITH MY TRANSFORMERS # 1 IF WE HAVE A CRASH ?

[drbanner]

The books that have risen the farthest the fastest are more likely to fall the furthest, which has already happened to modern (post-1980) books. To illustrate, at Heroes Con last weekend I saw a dealer with boxes and boxes of Modern slabbed 9.8's for $9.95...

 

Vintage hi-grade Bronze and Silver (pre-1975 Bronze Age keys, pre-1965 including non-keys) have also seen huge increases, but the escalation has definitely slowed down on these over the last year or so. Seems this category of books have stabilized a bit. Slabbed silver/bronze books below VF never really experienced the huge price spikes high grade books did, and they appear to be selling at basically the same prices they were 5 years ago (well below guide), slabbed or not.

 

I'm not sure that slabbed GA (in any grade) saw anywhere near the same level of price escalation that silver to modern books did, so that market is probably the most stable of all. I do know that CGC brought a lot of great GA books out of collections, which was very nice for me personally as I was able to pick up some great slabbed GA books at reasonable prices over the last few years!

 

I don't collect OA, but it seems a lot of collectors "graduated" from books to OA over the last few years due to the run up in book prices due to CGC, and from what I've read OA prices have also appreciated greatly since 2000. Is OA overpriced? Not if it sells!

[krazykat-migration]

The books that have risen the farthest the fastest are more likely to fall the furthest, which has already happened to modern (post-1980) books. To illustrate, at Heroes Con last weekend I saw a dealer with boxes and boxes of Modern slabbed 9.8's for $9.95...

 

Vintage hi-grade Bronze and Silver (pre-1975 Bronze Age keys, pre-1965 including non-keys) have also seen huge increases, but the escalation has definitely slowed down on these over the last year or so. Seems this category of books have stabilized a bit. Slabbed silver/bronze books below VF never really experienced the huge price spikes high grade books did, and they appear to be selling at basically the same prices they were 5 years ago (well below guide), slabbed or not.

 

I'm not sure that slabbed GA (in any grade) saw anywhere near the same level of price escalation that silver to modern books did, so that market is probably the most stable of all. I do know that CGC brought a lot of great GA books out of collections, which was very nice for me personally as I was able to pick up some great slabbed GA books at reasonable prices over the last few years!

 

 

Yes, OA prices have gone up quite a bit. I remember in 1988 I tried to sell the OA to a prime silver age Daredevil cover by Gene Colan and the comic book store said it was worth $2000. There was no market to evaluate the price. In 1999 the same piece was put on Ebay and it garnered enough bids to reach $8000. This year the piece sold for $25,000. Yes, prices have gone up.

I don't collect OA, but it seems a lot of collectors "graduated" from books to OA over the last few years due to the run up in book prices due to CGC, and from what I've read OA prices have also appreciated greatly since 2000. Is OA overpriced? Not if it sells!

[krazykat-migration]

Yes, OA prices have gone up quite a bit. I remember in 1988 I tried to sell the OA to a prime silver age Daredevil cover by Gene Colan and the comic book store said it was worth $2000. There was no market to evaluate the price. In 1999 the same piece was put on Ebay and it garnered enough bids to reach $8000. This year the piece sold for $25,000. Yes, prices have gone up.

[drbanner]

Yes, OA prices have gone up quite a bit. I remember in 1988 I tried to sell the OA to a prime silver age Daredevil cover by Gene Colan and the comic book store said it was worth $2000. There was no market to evaluate the price. In 1999 the same piece was put on Ebay and it garnered enough bids to reach $8000. This year the piece sold for $25,000.

 

Yikes, it would be great to be the collector that bought the book in 1988, but I sure hope the collector that paid $25k plans to hang that gem on his wall for many moons to come...

[krazykat-migration]

Actually. It was the Cover to a DareDevil Book Issue #23. I think its only going to go up and the 25K price will look cheap in the future. ORIGINAL MARVEL BULL-PEN !

[DarrenSmith]

I love these crash threads.

 

I bought a condo in Phoenix for 600k and sold it for 3 million. I bought a hulk 181 for 120 bucks in 1990 and sold if for a new car. Both markets are so hot that if you blink you are too late. Instead of wasting your time on this forum you should be buying comics and real estate in Lvegas or Phoenix.

 

There are always clues to a comic crash coming. Several clues to watch for would be:

 

In comics if Chuck sells his business and buys a chain of tire stores with Steve B then you need to worry.

 

Pedigreecomics and Comiclink agree to a merger of equals.

 

Highgradecomics starts selling ungraded NM comics.

 

The CGC forum has run out of topics and starts talking about golf.

 

To many to mention but I am sure some of you have other signs you can share with us.

 

Don't forget this clue:

 

Major Dealers mailing out printed catalogs to try to move their inventories (Metro, Harley)

[goldust40]

Metro's listing may have been the first since '97, but Harley regularly does catalogues.

[shrunkenhead]

I think there's little question that the housing market is headed for serious trouble in the current hot areas (Southern California, and in Florida the palm beaches and the nice parts of Miami). Eventually the middle class folks who are buying these rapidly rising properties are not going to be able to pay the escalating taxes and interest rates; there are going to be a lot of forced foreclosures. No question--it will get ugly. So yeah, I actually see the "hot" housing market in more trouble than the "hot" comic market...just give it about three to five years.

 

But Banner makes an excellent point about GA comics and their relative stability

throughout the CGC boom....the same is true of the vast majority of the housing market. There's been no mad rush on houses in Northern Illinois, for example, and thus there will be no crash. It's just the hot properties that are going to take the fall.

[VintageComics]

What do you mean when you say crash? Again guys, there are a lot of CGC graded comics that do not sell for a premium over guide values. Tomb of Dracula #1 is a great example! So when you say crash, are you referring to slabbed comics dipping below guide values? That will never happen. Again, we are not in a "bubble" like the housing market. People were flipping comic books long before CGC came along......

There are plenty of graded comics, even in hi grades that do not fetch guide....lots of books went down in price in the vf range in the guide and i remember not being able to fetch guide for key SA ASM's in this grade earlier this year...

[shrunkenhead]

Plenty of highgrade silver and gold sells for less than guide in highgrade, simply because it's so expensive and sellers often don't want to advertise a book for a year or more in the hopes of attracting the right buyer. To view the guide as "rock bottom" price on all books, especially for 60-yr old books that trade for many thousands of dollars in 8.0 and 9.0, is absurd.

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

I think there's little question that the housing market is headed for serious trouble in the current hot areas (Southern California, and in Florida the palm beaches and the nice parts of Miami). Eventually the middle class folks who are buying these rapidly rising properties are not going to be able to pay the escalating taxes and interest rates; there are going to be a lot of forced foreclosures. No question--it will get ugly. So yeah, I actually see the "hot" housing market in more trouble than the "hot" comic market...just give it about three to five years.

 

But Banner makes an excellent point about GA comics and their relative stability

throughout the CGC boom....the same is true of the vast majority of the housing market. There's been no mad rush on houses in Northern Illinois, for example, and thus there will be no crash. It's just the hot properties that are going to take the fall.

 

Yeah, in my neck of the woods (Hernando County), we've had a huge run-up in prices over the last year. Lots of brand new homes bought and/or built by out of state investors looking to rent out, appreciate, & flip. The problem is, we don't have the economic base to support more then a handful of $900-$1300/month rentals. There are literally dozens of brand new, never-lived in homes just sitting in Spring Hill with a rental sign out front.

 

Many younger families can't afford the median priced home in our area either (now nearing $200,000...up from $140,000 just a year ago)...its all retirees and folks from up north cashing out of overheated markets. If you can only afford to spend $100,000...its either an older mobile home or a 30 year old 800 sq ft block home for you.

 

With rising property taxes, plentiful inventory, a thin pool of rental prospects, and drastically increasing homeowners insurance rates, many speculators in my area are going to be left standing when the music stops.

 

It's like Valiants in '93 all over again!

[delekkerste]

the same is true of the vast majority of the housing market. There's been no mad rush on houses in Northern Illinois, for example, and thus there will be no crash. It's just the hot properties that are going to take the fall.

 

Is that like how only the bubbly Nasdaq crashed between March 2000 and October 2002, while the Dow and S&P went on to make new high after new high? I guess that drop in the S&P from 1552.87 to 768.63 was all just a dream!

 

It's a fallacy that real estate is purely a "local" market, because interest rates are not determined locally. You don't see 6% 30-year fixed mortgages in Florida and 2% ones in Oregon and 15% in Arkansas. The sad fact of the matter is that Americans from coast to coast are overconsuming and living beyond their means. Prices may not have risen as much outside of the coasts, but are the homeowners/consumers in the heartland really in such great financial shape that they will be able to withstand a significant downturn in the coastal markets/economies?

 

The answer, my friends, is clearly no. Just as how the 9/11 attacks affected Americans' collective psyche and spending habits across the country and not just in NY, D.C. and Pennsylvania, so too will a real estate correction on the coasts affect the rest of the country. The same principle applies to the comic market. Just because GA hasn't had the speculative frenzy that SA and BA have had does not mean it will be immune if/when we get a significant downturn in those segments of the market. GA prices won't seem like such a relative bargain if SA prices were to fall hard across the Board, while also prompting people to question if GA will indeed be able to hold up under such conditions. It's easy to say now, with the market looking healthy, that buyers will step up, etc., but you might be amazed at how quickly psychology can turn on a dime.

 

And, let's not kid ourselves - a downturn in the housing market will hammer the price of just about all assets, including comics. Even the BSDs will feel the pain if their $8 million home falls to $5 million. Those still flush with cash will not want to engage in overly conspicuous consumption when times are tough (I'm just thinking about post-9/11 where a lot of buyers pulled in their horns, and their pocketbooks weren't even hit that badly then compared to what a housing decline would entail), and the smart ones will hold out for better prices in a buyer's market. That's just human nature. It's amazing to hear how many people here claim they would love to see a crash, so they can get great bargains. Well, let's see how many people actually step up to the plate when they're being bombarded by depressing economic news on a daily basis and everyone around them is fretting about their job security or avoiding foreclosure on their homes. Under those kinds of conditions, your willingness to buy (psychology) dominates even your ability to buy.

 

Not saying that this is going to happen overnight...after all, it's not enough for real estate prices to peak, but they have to come down significantly afterwards, and that invariably takes time (e.g., the last downturn in real estate here in NYC lasted 8 years from peak to trough). Just some food for thought. Have a nice day, everyone.

[tth2]

speaking of real estate and Palm Beach, where the devil has sfilosa been?

[JiveTurkeyMoFo]

It's a fallacy that real estate is purely a "local" market, because interest rates are not determined locally. You don't see 6% 30-year fixed mortgages in Florida and 2% ones in Oregon and 15% in Arkansas. The sad fact of the matter is that Americans from coast to coast are overconsuming and living beyond their means. Prices may not have risen as much outside of the coasts, but are the homeowners/consumers in the heartland really in such great financial shape that they will be able to withstand a significant downturn in the coastal markets/economies?

 

A lot of the buyers in my market are from up north....I'm not looking very favorably at the news that home sales in areas in the northeast are beginning to slow, and inventories are beginning to rise...because that will ultimately affect us in Florida.

 

We in the sunshine state worry about a "perfect storm" forming in the next few months....rising insurance rates, rising interest rates, rising fuel costs, overheated local markets/property values, a general slowdown in real estate markets nationwide, and the possibility of another major hurricane or two gives some Floridians reason to pause.

[the blob]

mm, comics really took off big time the last time the housing market was down the toilet ('89-'93)

 

the valiant/modern crash had some impact on the overall market, but mainly a group of investors/speculators was purged out of the market and collectors started to focus more on vintage books that had more of a solid foundation. yes, it was more complicated than that becasue for 2-4 years lots of shops unloaded their inventory of everything and the early 90s have continued to depress new comics to this day (of course, the whole 80's comic market had things out of whack in terms of price vs. quantity. GI Joe #1 was a $20 book with a billion or so copies out there. You could buy lots of nice high grade SA books for $20, heck, maybe even a Hulk 181 and mutiple high grade ASM 129s for $20! the whole speculation thing just hit its apex in the early 90s.)

 

as for the housing bubble, RE is not "purely" local, but local issues have a big impact. manhattan, for example, is an island with very little land to build on and lots of people who want to live there. another terror attack will have a much worse impact than interest rates going up to 8%. and what if interest rates don't go up a lot and, instead, hang around in the 6-7% range they've been in for several years now? (there was plenty of price appreciation going on when rates were at 7 - 7.5%) places where homes are still affordable vs. local incomes have much less to fall. but some places are so completely out of whack with the ability of people to pay that the only way people are buying is with these nutso interest only mortgages which really are a catastophe waiting to happen.