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Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit???
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Started by InfantTerrible,

7,173 posts in this topic

GermanFan

GermanFan

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--- Comic Collecting, like any other asset, will recover its losses.---

How?

Look at demographics, look at the economy, look at the debt, look at the world situation (its a powder keg).

I dont see it. After the crazyness, the hangover will be bad and very long.

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Gregd

Gregd

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On 9/11/2022 at 6:32 AM, GermanFan said:

--- Comic Collecting, like any other asset, will recover its losses.---

How?

Look at demographics, look at the economy, look at the debt, look at the world situation (its a powder keg).

I dont see it. After the crazyness, the hangover will be bad and very long.

Like I said, fear has set in.

The world always has times of being a powder keg. There is always a cyclical financial crisis. The national debt has been an issue for decades. The aging population here will mean we bring in younger immigrants from other countries to balance that (we have used immigration to fulfill population issues in the past). 

Young investors- avoid the noise. Keep investing in solid assets. Over the long haul you will be rewarded. Yes it’s tough when these things go down and no, we don’t know the floor. But I guarantee the S and P makes a new high in the next few years. 

As far as comics- some of the giant outliers may take years to recover (like the X-men 1 8.5) or not at all. But the majority of comics will go through another bull market at some point once this bear market ends.

Edited by Gregd
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MetalPSI

MetalPSI

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On 9/11/2022 at 6:41 AM, Gregd said:

Like I said, fear has set in.

The world always has times of being a powder keg. There is always a cyclical financial crisis. The national debt has been an issue for decades. The aging population here will mean we bring in younger immigrants from other countries to balance that (we have used immigration to fulfill population issues in the past). 

Young investors- avoid the noise. Keep investing in solid assets. Over the long haul you will be rewarded. Yes it’s tough when these things go down and no, we don’t know the floor. But I guarantee the S and P makes a new high in the next few years. 

As far as comics- some of the giant outliers may take years to recover (like the X-men 1 8.5) or not at all. But the majority of comics will go through another bull market at some point once this bear market ends.

Sound and grounded advice

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drbanner

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On 9/9/2022 at 10:22 AM, valiantman said:

Good question - since the price changes listed above specifically focus on the books with high total market value, I've checked the CGC Census for only those books to get a comparison in the census growth:

1930s +2.5%
1940s +3.7%
1950s +5.7%
1960s +10.6%
1970s +13.6%
1980s +19.5%
1990s +22.9%
2000s +7.4%
2010s +27.3%

Thanks for the info, a 20% jump in the census in one year for the 80s/90s books after 20 years of grading is impressive. Will be interesting to see what happens to the census this year with prices on those books down pretty dramatically.

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MetalPSI

MetalPSI

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On 9/11/2022 at 1:15 PM, drbanner said:

Thanks for the info, a 20% jump in the census in one year for the 80s/90s books after 20 years of grading is impressive. Will be interesting to see what happens to the census this year with prices on those books down pretty dramatically.

I can't wait, I've got a long way to go on my Gen13 collection 

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Northwest

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On 9/10/2022 at 11:00 PM, drdonaldblake1 said:

Heritage September auction CGC X-Men 1 8.5 went for $78k.

Just around one year ago there was a heritage auction sale around $170k

Temporal discounting: collectors anticipating X-men would enter the MCU  shifted to more near term opportunities. X-men will have their day in the Sun. 

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lou_fine

lou_fine

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On 9/11/2022 at 5:01 AM, WolverineX said:
On 9/10/2022 at 11:00 PM, drdonaldblake1 said:

Heritage September auction CGC X-Men 1 8.5 went for $78k.

Just around one year ago there was a heritage auction sale around $170k

Dang really?  Is this the same across the board

Actually, kind of expected and no real surprise when you see multiple HG copies of this book and other BA/CA keys showing up in every single auction during the past couple of years.  hm

Especially when this supply of HG copies will only increase going forward as CCS/CGC digs their way out from their backlogged inventory.  :tonofbricks:

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FFB

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On 9/9/2022 at 12:50 PM, Gregd said:

I agree about a lot of this… but timing is always tricky. Why I say it’s probably good to be tip toeing into picking up books that have fallen. Just like the market, economic outlook can swing in a day and trying to time when to jump in is a fools game:

 

4A39D458-B914-4F7D-8E9A-4A8AD8678BA3.thumb.jpeg.3388937a0fae07c7fa53aee550c5fb63.jpeg

Just like stock picking- pick good books (higher grade) with sound fundamentals (notable issues with smaller census numbers)  with a reasonable historical price point 🤷🏻
Not all picks will perform well so be diversified. I invest in golden age, silver age, bronze, a little modern and magazines. 

I do acknowledge that there are some similarities between stocks and comics, in the sense that if you miss a huge day up because a movie is announced, you might miss the entire run-up on price.  But in general, stocks and comics do not move in the same way or for the same reason. 

Publicly traded stocks have at least 4 significant events every year in the form of quarterly earnings reports.  Earnings might be higher or lower than expected for a quarter, but the company tends to give analysts enough information about what's going on to model projected earnings into the future.  Comics don't have quarterly earnings reports, or earnings for that matter.  Many comics have no drivers of demand at all, except that someone wants to buy it because they like it.  Or no one wants to buy it, and it's essentially worthless regardless of what the price guide says.  

Also, if you own a profitable company that pays a dividend, then even if a broad market downturn happens and the share price drops, you still will generally still get the dividend.  Comics don't pay dividends.

Also, whereas a comic book might see one or two, or even a dozen or two, spikes in sales all of a sudden, once more than a few dozen copies of a book come onto the market, it tends to soften the price.  Not always, but generally.  Stocks take a much larger amount of selling in order to depress the price, and unless that selling is sustained over a period of time, the price will rebound because the stock price is generally representative of actual earnings or anticipated growth in some key metric (like market share) that is expected to someday turn into earnings.  Comics don't generate earnings aside from the sale of the asset itself.  

Stocks, unlike comics, can sell in the volumes of millions of shares without affecting the price because there is so much more money and so many more participants in that market. 

Furthermore, the popularity of a comic book that spikes nowadays tends to be around some future event being announced and the resultant FOMO, and once that event happens, it's old news, FOMO goes away, and the price tends to plummet.  There are some exceptions, like Action 1 or Tec 27, but the great majority of the books on the market follows that trend.  

Bottom line is that I do not think that the stock market is a helpful analogue to the comic book market because they have little in common.  

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Nick Furious

Nick Furious

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On 9/11/2022 at 3:35 AM, GermanFan said:

I dont see collecting US Comics going global, other than being a niche market. UK of course and some other european countries. Thats a small fraction of the home market in the US and Canada.

I actually think that going global is one of the real possibilities for new comic books.  I don't think it will change values of old books so much as create a bigger market for new books.  The new X-men team of GSX1 was specifically designed to appeal to a global market.  Of course that was in the days before the internet and social media, so I don't think it was all them successful in that regard.  But we are seeing more of an attempt to take a mostly New York based industry and make it more desirable around the world.  I think it will be more successful this time around.  As for older comic books, I'm under the impression that the majority of new collectors (true collectors, not investors) either never get very interested in old stuff or do so very slowly and gradually.  

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Gregd

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On 9/11/2022 at 8:45 PM, FFB said:

I do acknowledge that there are some similarities between stocks and comics, in the sense that if you miss a huge day up because a movie is announced, you might miss the entire run-up on price.  But in general, stocks and comics do not move in the same way or for the same reason. 

Publicly traded stocks have at least 4 significant events every year in the form of quarterly earnings reports.  Earnings might be higher or lower than expected for a quarter, but the company tends to give analysts enough information about what's going on to model projected earnings into the future.  Comics don't have quarterly earnings reports, or earnings for that matter.  Many comics have no drivers of demand at all, except that someone wants to buy it because they like it.  Or no one wants to buy it, and it's essentially worthless regardless of what the price guide says.  

Also, if you own a profitable company that pays a dividend, then even if a broad market downturn happens and the share price drops, you still will generally still get the dividend.  Comics don't pay dividends.

Also, whereas a comic book might see one or two, or even a dozen or two, spikes in sales all of a sudden, once more than a few dozen copies of a book come onto the market, it tends to soften the price.  Not always, but generally.  Stocks take a much larger amount of selling in order to depress the price, and unless that selling is sustained over a period of time, the price will rebound because the stock price is generally representative of actual earnings or anticipated growth in some key metric (like market share) that is expected to someday turn into earnings.  Comics don't generate earnings aside from the sale of the asset itself.  

Stocks, unlike comics, can sell in the volumes of millions of shares without affecting the price because there is so much more money and so many more participants in that market. 

Furthermore, the popularity of a comic book that spikes nowadays tends to be around some future event being announced and the resultant FOMO, and once that event happens, it's old news, FOMO goes away, and the price tends to plummet.  There are some exceptions, like Action 1 or Tec 27, but the great majority of the books on the market follows that trend.  

Bottom line is that I do not think that the stock market is a helpful analogue to the comic book market because they have little in common.  

My initial discussion about stocks was to counter the pretty frequent doom and gloom projections about the economy, the dismal future of the world, etc. that live on these boards. I don’t think it’s super healthy- and it actually can sway folks to make terrible decisions about their finances in ways that can have significant impact to them in the future. To younger investors who read these, I offer the counter that I have seen many crises- dot com busts, 9/11, the financial meltdown and real estate implosion, Covid…. Every time it was the end of the stock market and the economy as we know it. Except it wasn’t- and if you were swayed to pull your money out of the market for a safe haven you would have robbed yourself of some great returns. 

My other point is if you invested in comics regularly through the years, you would have come up well ahead of the game especially if you stayed diversified in different eras and genres. 
There are lots of correlations that make sense regarding investing in any asset class: Don’t let fear or greed drive your decisions, do your research, quality wins out, steadily building a portfolio over time helps you buy at low and high points, and accept some things you buy may not always work out….
 

 I am not saying comics are stocks- but just like art, gold, real estate, they can be a very nice part of a broader portfolio. 

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THE_BEYONDER

THE_BEYONDER

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On 9/11/2022 at 8:45 PM, FFB said:

I do acknowledge that there are some similarities between stocks and comics, in the sense that if you miss a huge day up because a movie is announced, you might miss the entire run-up on price.  But in general, stocks and comics do not move in the same way or for the same reason. 

Publicly traded stocks have at least 4 significant events every year in the form of quarterly earnings reports.  Earnings might be higher or lower than expected for a quarter, but the company tends to give analysts enough information about what's going on to model projected earnings into the future.  Comics don't have quarterly earnings reports, or earnings for that matter.  Many comics have no drivers of demand at all, except that someone wants to buy it because they like it.  Or no one wants to buy it, and it's essentially worthless regardless of what the price guide says.  

Also, if you own a profitable company that pays a dividend, then even if a broad market downturn happens and the share price drops, you still will generally still get the dividend.  Comics don't pay dividends.

Also, whereas a comic book might see one or two, or even a dozen or two, spikes in sales all of a sudden, once more than a few dozen copies of a book come onto the market, it tends to soften the price.  Not always, but generally.  Stocks take a much larger amount of selling in order to depress the price, and unless that selling is sustained over a period of time, the price will rebound because the stock price is generally representative of actual earnings or anticipated growth in some key metric (like market share) that is expected to someday turn into earnings.  Comics don't generate earnings aside from the sale of the asset itself.  

Stocks, unlike comics, can sell in the volumes of millions of shares without affecting the price because there is so much more money and so many more participants in that market. 

Furthermore, the popularity of a comic book that spikes nowadays tends to be around some future event being announced and the resultant FOMO, and once that event happens, it's old news, FOMO goes away, and the price tends to plummet.  There are some exceptions, like Action 1 or Tec 27, but the great majority of the books on the market follows that trend.  

Bottom line is that I do not think that the stock market is a helpful analogue to the comic book market because they have little in common.  

BA38E806-9251-46FF-AA38-A22B7A3A5A10.jpeg.f07b3c7c852f9ee43678fb8834b28a14.jpeg

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