Combined investment will cause Golden Age (Collectors) to explode 3 3

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:52 PM, bluechip said:

On 9/2/2021 at 12:36 PM, batman_fan said:

Is it too early to talk about Obadiah Oldbuck and why it should be more valuable than Action 1?

That time is past.  Real people in the know know that Inspector Jabot came first.

Dr. Jukes had Superman in 1931.

[bluechip]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:54 AM, valiantman said:

Dr. Jukes had Superman in 1931.

Don't forget Nietszche

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:56 PM, bluechip said:

On 9/2/2021 at 1:54 PM, valiantman said:

Dr. Jukes had Superman in 1931.

Don't forget Nietszche

Nietzsche's guy wasn't faster than a speeding bullet and stronger than a locomotive.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/2/2021 at 7:56 PM, bluechip said:

Don't forget Nietszche

Or for that matter, the Zoroastrians 'we value those people who have struggled, or do struggle, or will struggle for the good.'

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/2/2021 at 8:05 PM, valiantman said:

Nietzsche's guy wasn't faster than a speeding bullet and stronger than a locomotive.

But he was magic.

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:53 PM, valiantman said:

On 9/2/2021 at 12:26 PM, waaaghboss said:

What makes this tricky to even talk about is you seem to keep changing your sales pitch.   

 

"It's an investment!"

"No, it's a layaway plan" 

"Wait, it's how you can own a piece of a first appearance"

"No it's an investment again!"

 

If you just pushed the financial investment angle and dropped the collectible pitch, I think you'd actually have a defensible argument.  Not a good investment imo, but a decent argument.  

Expand  

I'm not selling anything.

This is like teaching, where you have the say the same thing five different ways for each person in the classroom to figure out which one will stick in their own mind.

The only way to teach something five different ways is to know it five different ways.

Here's another way to teach it.  Colorful graphics!

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by valiantman

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 2:06 PM, Flex Mentallo said:

On 9/2/2021 at 2:05 PM, valiantman said:

Nietzsche's guy wasn't faster than a speeding bullet and stronger than a locomotive.

But he was magic.

Dr. Jukes's Superman was basically Captain America Super Soldier Serum, ten years earlier.  It was tested on the bad guy.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/2/2021 at 8:08 PM, valiantman said:

Dr. Jukes's Superman was basically Captain America Super Soldier Serum, ten years earlier.  It was tested on the bad guy.

Zoroaster invented guardian angels, which he called, poetically, fravashi (spirit of the road). It was tested on the good guys.

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 2:17 PM, Flex Mentallo said:

On 9/2/2021 at 2:08 PM, valiantman said:

Dr. Jukes's Superman was basically Captain America Super Soldier Serum, ten years earlier.  It was tested on the bad guy.

Zoroaster invented guardian angels, which he called, poetically, fravashi (spirit of the road). It was tested on the good guys.

That doesn't sound much like Superman or supersoldier serum.

[Flex Mentallo]

On 9/2/2021 at 8:18 PM, valiantman said:

That doesn't sound much like Superman or supersoldier serum.

What, the concept of goodness and the perfectibility of the human spirit? You,re absolutely right, but what do you suppose would Superman think?

[Kryptic1]

On 9/2/2021 at 2:40 PM, revat said:

This all sounds about right, thanks for sharing.  

You mitigate the risk to some extent by fractionalizing, but the fee you pay is essentially the control, and may be subject to the whims of people you think aren't acting totally rationally.  But like all investments (and life in general), there will be some luck involved.

 

HOWEVER, if I was doing some (I assume this is legal) finagling of the system, I would do this:

1.  Buy in normally for some large percentage of the comic (I'm not sure if there's limits on how much you can own).

2.  If a comic gets hot, vote (assuming I control enough votes) to sell the comic to myself (or someone close to me) at a below market price well before the comic reaches the peak.  I might even use equity gains to get loans if I can find the right lender and the interest works out.

2a.  As the illustrated story above shows, even if the comic is skyrocketing you can probably get some owners to just 'sell now', so you might only need to control 30% of shares to get a below market 'sell' done.

3.  Sell (you own all of it now) at the peak and keep that profit for myself.

4.  So essentially for a fraction you paid of the original price, I've 'reserved' this book if it goes nuclear.  But at minimum, I probably won't lose any money and its just a long term slow investment.

Of course, its no small feat to put down 30% of a $100K-$500K comic, but obviously there are plenty of savvy people who can do it.  I have no idea if there are enforceable safeguards to stop the above from happening (I guess the risk could be someone else who controls 30-40% doing it to you first), or maybe its encouraged because it'll get more people interested in investing.   

 

Note:  A lot of the criticism in this thread seems to be about "This is not how to collect or enjoy comic books" or some such thing.  And that's fine, but those sentiments have nothing to do with whether this is scam or good idea (which it might or might not be both).  Like fantasy football or gambling on football, you can enjoy watchin or playing football without thinking about those things at all, or you can enjoy those things even more than actually watching or playing the game, or you can enjoy them all in any combination that works for you.

Another Note:  This is a relatively new avenue of investing.  So if you there may be opportunities to LEGALLY exploit methods or create best practices that maximize haven't been thought of yet (or haven't been shared publicly yet).

 

You're limited to 10% of the total shares at IPO and for high demand items the limit is much lower.  Usually about 5% of the total shares change hands during the trading windows, so it would be difficult to accumulate enough shares to have control.  I never got over 6% of any individual comic and I would have been willing to buy a lot more of several of them.  Even if you got to 51% of an item, Rally still has to approve a sale so you couldn't force a sale to yourself for $1.

[revat]

On 9/2/2021 at 12:53 PM, Kryptic1 said:

You're limited to 10% of the total shares at IPO and for high demand items the limit is much lower.  Usually about 5% of the total shares change hands during the trading windows, so it would be difficult to accumulate enough shares to have control.  I never got over 6% of any individual comic and I would have been willing to buy a lot more of several of them.  Even if you got to 51% of an item, Rally still has to approve a sale so you couldn't force a sale to yourself for $1.

This is all very new, would you be in favor of raising ownership limits at IPO, is there a sweet spot that you think should be allowed? 

[Kryptic1]

On 9/2/2021 at 3:56 PM, revat said:

This is all very new, would you be in favor of raising ownership limits at IPO, is there a sweet spot that you think should be allowed? 

I'm fine with the limits as they are.  Letting a few people buy up large %s of an asset wouldn't fit with the spirit of what Rally is trying to do.

[waaaghboss]

On 9/2/2021 at 11:53 AM, valiantman said:

I'm not selling anything.

This is like teaching, where you have the say the same thing five different ways for each person in the classroom to figure out which one will stick in their own mind.

The only way to teach something five different ways is to know it five different ways.

You're selling the idea of fractional comic book investment.  Language can be tricky sometimes, so don't feel too bad about your continued misses

[Kryptic1]

On 9/2/2021 at 2:50 PM, valiantman said:

Kryptic1's comments stand as is.  He's accurately described how he made money on comic books he could not have afforded outright.

He didn't "do without".  He made money on comics he liked, but couldn't afford.  He didn't own them, so he didn't control the sale.

Profit on books he wanted, happy while he had them, profiting when he didn't.  Win-win.

I was mad about the first buyout, then after a while I realized that I can't expect the same group of people who made the irrational decision to sell me shares far under FMV to then make the rational decision to reject a buyout that's under FMV.  If they made good decisions, I never would have been able to buy so I wouldn't have made any money at all.  I'm just disappointed that the company that was founded on the idea of giving people the opportunity to buy into assets that are inaccessible due to rarity or price is now offering comics you could buy off eBay any day of the week.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Kryptic1

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 3:13 PM, Kryptic1 said:

On 9/2/2021 at 1:50 PM, valiantman said:

Kryptic1's comments stand as is.  He's accurately described how he made money on comic books he could not have afforded outright.

He didn't "do without".  He made money on comics he liked, but couldn't afford.  He didn't own them, so he didn't control the sale.

Profit on books he wanted, happy while he had them, profiting when he didn't.  Win-win.

I was mad about the first buyout, then after a while I realized that I can't expect the same group of people who made the irrational decision to sell me shares far under FMV to then make the rational decision to reject a buyout that's under FMV.  If they made good decisions, I never would have been able to buy so I wouldn't have made any money at all.  I'm just disappointed that the company that was founded on the idea of giving people the opportunity to buy into assets that are inaccessible due to rarity or price is now offering comics you could buy off eBay any day of the week.

Share prices are generally $50 or less on comics, so these are still items that can't be purchased any day of the week if the user only has (or wants to spend) $100.

Edited September 2, 2021 by valiantman

[valiantman]

On 9/2/2021 at 3:06 PM, waaaghboss said:

On 9/2/2021 at 1:53 PM, valiantman said:

I'm not selling anything.

This is like teaching, where you have the say the same thing five different ways for each person in the classroom to figure out which one will stick in their own mind.

The only way to teach something five different ways is to know it five different ways.

You're selling the idea of fractional comic book investment.  Language can be tricky sometimes, so don't feel too bad about your continued misses

That's why I made a picture.

The idea is the red line, which is completely worthless to those who have the means to play in the green line area.  The red line allows every other person on Earth (besides the green money people) the option to play with the big boys on the field, even if we're essentially sitting on the bench in the dugout.  It beats sitting in the stands with no skin in the game at all.

[MrBedrock]

 

On 9/2/2021 at 1:50 PM, valiantman said:

On 9/2/2021 at 1:37 PM, MrBedrock said:

On 9/2/2021 at 12:37 PM, Kryptic1 said:

Here's my experience with Rally.  I first learned about them through the thread in the General forum, and I really liked the idea of fractional investing, but I thought Rally's approach added too many expenses that would ultimately have to come out of investor returns.  I didn't plan to invest, but I watched as most of the comics were dropping in their secondary trading windows, and figured that the discount that I was getting to market value would offset those costs.  I deposited my money and started to buy up any comics that had fallen well under FMV.  I was watching the same comics climb higher and higher at auction, but on Rally they kept dropping.  In the Rally threads on Twitter, people were declaring "comics are dead!" because all they knew about the market was what they saw on Rally.  I kept buying, assuming that people would eventually catch on and bid the books back up to FMV.

Then the buyout offers started to come in.  When I joined Rally, I wasn't too concerned about the lack of control over the timing of the sale.  I assumed most shareholders would make rational decisions and since Rally makes the final decision on buyouts they could overrule the shareholders if necessary.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  The first offer was for Amazing Fantasy 15 in CGC 8.0 at $240k.  Days earlier, a copy in the same grade had sold on the Comiclink Exchange for $300k.  I reached out to Rally and asked why they would even consider such a low offer.  They responded that they would present all "qualified" offers to shareholders.  I also offered to buy up all shares from those who wanted to accept the offer so that anyone who wanted to stay in long-term could do so, but I got no response.  The offer was approved by over 80% of shareholders.  Rally had bought the book for $189k and it was worth $300k at the time of the sale.  That market had risen by 59%, but if you had invested at the IPO price, the combination of accepting a lowball offer and all of the expenses added by Rally had whittled your return down to 15% pretax.

So far, six of the nine books that I invested in have been bought out, all well below market prices.  Since I was buying during the trading windows below the IPO price my returns have been very good, but at the expense of the opportunity for future gains.  Most of the books worth investing in are gone, and they have been replaced by high population bronze age keys bought at the top of the market, like Giant Size X-Men #1 in CGC 9.8 for $64k or Amazing Spiderman 129 in CGC 9.8 for $40k.  The market value for the new books are down 30-40% from where Rally bought them, but Rally investors, convinced that "comics are hot!!!!" by all of the buyouts, are buying everything in sight.  I've been withdrawing my money since there isn't much left worth buying.

I don't regret using Rally, and I'm not concerned that it's all a scam.  My withdrawals have been processed quickly, and I just don't think they've put in all of this work over the last few years to run a smash & grab job on customer deposits.  Just understand if you buy in that your fellow shareholders and Rally know nothing about comics, and you are at their mercy when decisions are made.

Expand  

Thanks for your insight.

Now the fun begins. Let's sit back and enjoy the show as Valiantman picks and chooses the pieces of your post that best fit his argument.

Expand  

Kryptic1's comments stand as is.  He's accurately described how he made money on comic books he could not have afforded outright.

He didn't "do without".  He made money on comics he liked, but couldn't afford.  He didn't own them, so he didn't control the sale.

Profit on books he wanted, happy while he had them, profiting when he didn't.  Win-win.

 

Can you direct me to the part where he talks about the appeal of being able to add books to his collection that he couldn't otherwise afford?

[waaaghboss]

On 9/2/2021 at 1:34 PM, valiantman said:

That's why I made a picture.

The idea is the red line, which is completely worthless to those who have the means to play in the green line area.  The red line allows every other person on Earth (besides the green money people) the option to play with the big boys on the field, even if we're essentially sitting on the bench in the dugout.  It beats sitting in the stands with no skin in the game at all.

I like the FOMO you try to add in.  Those who don't fall for it sit on the sidelines and watch others make money.  This whole topic has the vibe of those guys trying to sell the latest greatest crypto coin 😄

I know you'll strongly disagree, but if this thing ever actually works, to me it seems to hinge on the greater fool theory, which is not a way I like to try and grow my money 

[batman_fan]

Is there a potentially secondary market where you sell shares in your share of a fractional ownership in a company that holds a collectible?  I mean there are people in third world countries that can’t participate in buying even one share at current prices but would love to add some of these items to their non-existent collections.