Warehouse find yields 1 million comics

[drbanner]

This was back in the '80s, and most of those books probably fetch even less now.

 

That's what I've been saying for awhile on here; the Byrne X-men run is great to own and read, but it's been a HORRIBLE investment since the 1980's. Almost as bad as Miller DD's.

 

Not if they graded out as 9.4/9.6/9.8's!!

[DiceX]

I'll take "The Late Bronze Crash of 2005" for $100, Alex.

 

One word comes to mind... WOOT!!!

 

May all your bananas dance atop a pile of cheap funny books!

[DiceX]

This was back in the '80s, and most of those books probably fetch even less now.

 

That's what I've been saying for awhile on here; the Byrne X-men run is great to own and read, but it's been a HORRIBLE investment since the 1980's. Almost as bad as Miller DD's.

 

Not if they graded out as 9.4/9.6/9.8's!!

 

I agree. I made quite a bit of cash on Byrne X-Books last year.

[heinlein99]

When you add up all the $5, $10 and $15 comics, it's an astronomical value.

 

When you dump them all into the market at once, it becomes a microscopic value.

 

I gasped when I saw the title of this thread - until I read what era the books were from. It's a great era for reading material, but not for investment. Anybody watching for a run-up in later Charltons can pretty much kiss that idea goodbye.

 

personally, i think we should just bomb iraq with long boxes of that stuff.

 

Haven't those poor people suffered enough?

[Weird]

It was when I read the words:

 

Neat Stuff Collectibles

 

and

 

The comics, graded at Very Fine to Near Mint

 

together, that I said

[DiceX]

It was when I read the words:

 

Neat Stuff Collectibles

 

and

 

The comics, graded at Very Fine to Near Mint

 

together, that I said

 

Perhaps Chuck helped them with the grading.

 

And I'm wondering, if they find a single buyer for these, how long it will take to receive them.

I mean...If it takes 2, 3 months to get a single book...how long will it take to get your "million" books?

[ninanina]

It was when I read the words:

 

Neat Stuff Collectibles

 

and

 

The comics, graded at Very Fine to Near Mint

 

together, that I said

 

Perhaps Chuck helped them with the grading.

 

And I'm wondering, if they find a single buyer for these, how long it will take to receive them.

I mean...If it takes 2, 3 months to get a single book...how long will it take to get your "million" books?

 

[joe_collector]

Perhaps Chuck helped them with the grading.

 

Chuck is (barely) living proof that all you need is luck to have a hoard of high-grade comics fall on your lap, and he did it twice.

[awe4one]

Anybody watching for a run-up in later Charltons can pretty much kiss that idea goodbye.

 

Where do you see Charlton mentioned? And the majority of Charltons titles continue until the 1984/1985 timeframe before being canceled...from the article it looks as if the latest comic is 1981...

 

Jim

[HouseofComics.Com]

i guess i understand hoping to sell it as a lot, but couldn't he have just contact the 100 or biggest dealers? who among us it going to buy 1 million copies of 25 cent to $3 books?

 

it's silly because he could have just put those x-men 104s (and similar books) out in stacks on tables at shows for $10 a pop (like he'd do with stuff 10 years ago --- he'd have like a stack of 50-100 copies each of the Miller Wolverine mini for $4 each or something like that) and blown them out in a year without demoralizing and destroying the market for them. 1500 copies of a comic that 95% of the collectors out there wouldn't mind another copy of is not a big deal, it's just that when you announce to the world that you plan to unload 1500 at once, it diminishes perceived value.

 

1. What matters isn't that NeatStuff is selling them all at once to a buyer. This doesn't effect the market at all. After all, this same sale just happened when the original owner sold them to NeatStuff. What matters is what the next buyer does with them. NeatStuff definitely knows what it's doing here.

 

I think it's just speculation to assume that the next buyer (if they sell) will dump them on the market. I'm sure it will be someone who will at least do it slowly. Bakertowne tried to mix it up but considering the warehouse was almost all Archie and Classics, it got old fast. How many people now have 3, 5, 10 copies of Unusual Tales 21? Or Katy Keene Pinup Parade #9? It was the same issues every time. But if you have copies of every major comic in depth from a four-year period that's a lot easier to mix up.

 

2. Probably just as important to NeatStuff as the profit from this one deal is the publicity. They want to be known as the people you go to when you want to sell your million book bronze warehouse. Or your Action Comics 1-10 set. Again, they really know what they are doing.

 

3. To me all this really does is remind the marketplace that books from that period in HG are even less rare than you might think. Not that I don't need them...

 

Marc

[JuliusSeizure]

BUT, if you had only bough minty copies, not such a terrible investment

 

Actually it was, since in the mid to late-80's, those Byrne X-Men books were $15-$30+ NM raw. I can buy them on EBay now for less.

 

The only way to make money on them, was to buy stacks off the shelf for 30 to 40-cents a shot.

Yep, good thing I love 'em.

[the blob]

I was thinking along the lines of the end of the Byrne run, 137 - 142 or so, that were cheap then (at shows at least, not in stores) due to vast quantity, but have magical ficticious values now. that stuff was pretty much $5 and under at shows in NY back then because all the dealers had bought like 5-10,000 (or some ridiculous number, I've heard a lot thrown around by people who were dealers in the early 80's) of each of these issues.

 

granted, you could have bought much better stuff for $5 a book back then

[the blob]

maybe it's a p.r. ploy by neatstuff, but the announcement has devalued the merchandise for whoever buys it in bulk from them, that's all I'm saying. telling the world that 1500 VF and better X-Men 104s are about to hit an already saturated market (even if they are ultimately sold off slowly) is pretty much telling everyone not to pay more than a couple of bucks each for them. mind you, i don't think 1500 of any one byrne x-men issue is so much, but from the perspective of 9.8 chasers, it's not unreasonable to think that 10 or more of those will come back 9.8s, a bunch 9.6ses, even more 9.4s, etc. even if it's only 10% of them that make 9.4 or better, that could be a lot of books out there for that niche market.

[HouseofComics.Com]

maybe it's a p.r. ploy by neatstuff, but the announcement has devalued the merchandise for whoever buys it in bulk from them, that's all I'm saying. telling the world that 1500 VF and better X-Men 104s are about to hit an already saturated market (even if they are ultimately sold off slowly) is pretty much telling everyone not to pay more than a couple of bucks each for them. mind you, i don't think 1500 of any one byrne x-men issue is so much, but from the perspective of 9.8 chasers, it's not unreasonable to think that 10 or more of those will come back 9.8s, a bunch 9.6ses, even more 9.4s, etc. even if it's only 10% of them that make 9.4 or better, that could be a lot of books out there for that niche market.

 

That's a good point and I was only commenting about the raw market anyway.

 

I think it quickly becomes apparent what is happening when big new supply hits the market. Maybe the announcement causes it to happen in advance but if the next buyer keeps running twenty auctions of X-Men 104 a week and sends all the best ones to be graded, there's no stopping it.

 

IMHO.

 

Marc

 

P.S.-- I do think that it's ridiculous that X-Men 143 is $35 in guide! The same price as others that are harder to get and even more than 136 and 138 which are now $28 in Overstreet--what is up with that? In my experience 143 is tons more common than 136.

[bigfiver69]

Hey guys,

 

I'm loving this thread.... it reveals a lot (to me anyway) about dealers and collectors. And maybe even speculators.

 

My hope? That whoever buys these is foolish enough to flood the market. Noah-esque flooding. If there are high grade sets from the late 70s/early 80s of titles like Weird War, Sgt, Rock, House of Mystery, Unexpected, Time Warp, GI Combat, Mystery in Space, Jonah Hex, Conan, etc, (ie, titles that don't have an 'X' in them) I'll break my leg climbing onto that bandwagon. There may be a crapload of high grade mainstream titles available, but if you're looking for long runs of genre titles in true High Grade, it's hard times out there.

 

What could possibly be wrong with nice comics from an interesting era on the cheap? Nothing, if you're a collector.

 

Damn, I'm still waiting for the early bronze flood everyone was predicting. I have had three different very reputable, trustworthy dealers tell me that there are warehouse-type collections of 1970-75 books out there, and the owners are waiting for a peak to drop them into the market.

 

 

Battening down the hatches,

Shep

[Norrin_Radd]

My hope? That whoever buys these is foolish enough to flood the market. Noah-esque flooding.

 

 

[joe_collector]

I have had three different very reputable, trustworthy dealers tell me that there are warehouse-type collections of 1970-75 books out there, and the owners are waiting for a peak to drop them into the market.

 

That's a fact Jack, and as sportscards and coins have proven, there are far more copies of any 1960's and up pop collectible out there than you can even imagine.

 

All it takes is time and patience.

[DiceX]

I have had three different very reputable, trustworthy dealers tell me that there are warehouse-type collections of 1970-75 books out there, and the owners are waiting for a peak to drop them into the market.

 

That's a fact Jack, and as sportscards and coins have proven, there are far more copies of any 1960's and up pop collectible out there than you can even imagine.

 

All it takes is time and patience.

 

Please give details on a warehouse find of '60s-'70s sportscard. I'd love to read about that.

No doubt there are metric tons of '80s+ sportscards, but I've never heard tales such as this one.

[OldGuy]

Good, those books are over rated anyway. I nice price adjustment is in order.

 

Well, speaking of raw copies anyway, they went down sharply in guide this year. Pretty much whacked across the board.

 

If they are over-rated I'm not quite sure why. Aren't they the best superhero comics of the period, flat-out? And aren't they essentially the only comics from that period even worth anything? I'm speaking broadly, of course.

 

Cheers,

Marc

 

I was kiding about the "over rated" part. I love those stories. I've found the Masterworks from Marvel a great wat to read these.

[joe_collector]

Please give details on a warehouse find of '60s-'70s sportscard. I'd love to read about that.

 

Most of the good ones were uncovered in the 1980's, and some unopened material dates back to the 30's and 40's. Stuff from the 60's and 70's was found by the pallet-full, so really the only ones of note anymore (due to rarity) end in the 1950's.

 

And remember, with sports cards, it's not always a "warehouse/storage find" but old stores too, as cards were sold virtually everywhere back then. And once vending cases got rolling in the early to mid-70's, that was pretty well it for even perceived scarcity.

 

And this isn't even covering the POINT of my post, that the AVAILABLE SUPPLY (including collections, store stock, speculative hoards, finds, etc.) for 1960's-and-up pop collectibles is far more than you could ever imagine.