Are prices still climbing or have they eased up a bit??? 43 43

[Microchip]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:16 AM, ChasingKingKirby said:

Just finished mine.  AF15 thru ASM300.

 

Have you got a journal on here going, showing the books??

[Microchip]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:53 AM, NP_Gresham said:

Love to see how many loons would come out of the woodwork to bid up that 8.0 Hulk 181 in the 9.9 label if that SCS damaged book ever hit the market

Any estimates on where it would go, definitely north of $250K.

[BlowUpTheMoon]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:58 AM, BlowUpTheMoon said:

Sellers in the recent ComicLink auction took a bloodbath. 

I've been seeing tons of stuff like this:

[mjoeyoung]

The ComicLink 9.6 AS#58 is the lowest sale since 2019.  I worked out the averages for a few years for this grade:

2021 $686

2020 $465

2019 $583

2018 $502

2017 $578

2016 $548

2015 $406

That was a really good deal !!! 

[Stefan_W]

On 9/23/2022 at 11:58 AM, BlowUpTheMoon said:

Sellers in the recent ComicLink auction took a bloodbath. 

I have a pile of books in the current auction along with Oct and Nov, and yeah "bloodbath" is the perfect way to describe the ones that ended so far. I sent them all in hoping to roll smaller books into a grail but if they all end at a full third below value I will end up with a lesser book than I had hoped. 

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

In years past I got some great deals on comic books in ComicLink auctions, some at 50% off of previous sales and auctions. Having said that, it must stink to be on the other side of such a result.
 

[ChasingKingKirby]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:25 PM, universal soldier said:

Glad I got my #1 from you when I did! 

Mines not as good as the one I sold you.  Took me years to replace it.

 

[ChasingKingKirby]

On 9/26/2022 at 11:36 PM, mjoeyoung said:

The ComicLink 9.6 AS#58 is the lowest sale since 2019.  I worked out the averages for a few years for this grade:

2021 $686

2020 $465

2019 $583

2018 $502

2017 $578

2016 $548

2015 $406

That was a really good deal !!! 

Wow!  I literally just bought a copy a couple Clinks ago…. Id have been much better off with this one.

[ChasingKingKirby]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:55 PM, Microchip said:

Have you got a journal on here going, showing the books??

I don’t.   I posted pics of a lot of them in the “Show your ASMs” threads.  Thats prolly a good idea to do one though.  

[MGsimba77]

At this point it's overwhelmingly clear the catalyst for the hyper rise of 2020 21 was crypto. Just check any bitcoin performance chart and the relationship with collectibles is almost identical. The crypto suspicions were accurate!

[mjoeyoung]

On 9/26/2022 at 4:57 PM, Microchip said:

They both do look very similar, I'm sure there's more books that would show the same trend.  This is the last 10 year tale for hobby for appreciating books? 

I missed this on my first read through, the answer is YES.  Any book that has enough sales looks something like this.  Silver Age Plus looks like this.  Golden Age books that have enough sales also look similar.  Here is the chart for Crime SuspenStories #22 3.0:

The entire market went for the same ride, which is why I don't think GA's seeming immunity will last.

[mjoeyoung]

On 9/27/2022 at 1:22 PM, MGsimba77 said:

At this point it's overwhelmingly clear the catalyst for the hyper rise of 2020 21 was crypto. Just check any bitcoin performance chart and the relationship with collectibles is almost identical. The crypto suspicions were accurate!

There was just so much money available from so many places.  Crypto was up, stocks were up, you didn't have to pay rent, you didn't have to pay student loans, you were paid for not going to work.  A daughter of one of my friends worked at Tuesday Morning over summer break from college during the pandemic.  When the local store went out of business (or the entire company, can't remember) she was paid by the Federal government for the rest of the summer.  She went back to college with thousands of dollars (I believe the number was close to something over $10k) after barely working her summer job.  If the government is going to give you free money, you would be a fool not to take it.  Eventually the party has to end.

[MGsimba77]

On 9/27/2022 at 7:26 PM, mjoeyoung said:

There was just so much money available from so many places.  Crypto was up, stocks were up, you didn't have to pay rent, you didn't have to pay student loans, you were paid for not going to work.  A daughter of one of my friends worked at Tuesday Morning over summer break from college during the pandemic.  When the local store went out of business (or the entire company, can't remember) she was paid by the Federal government for the rest of the summer.  She went back to college with thousands of dollars (I believe the number was close to something over $10k) after barely working her summer job.  If the government is going to give you free money, you would be a fool not to take it.  Eventually the party has to end.

Yes the stimulus could explain away some of it. I'm getting at the sustained hyper increases in the upper five and six figure books through all or most of 2021. That's not attributable to a few thousand stimulus dollars in the hands of non needy people. That began to cool off substantially ~ early 2022 following a similar trend in crypto. 

Btw not everyone receiving funds from uncle Sam were college kids in part time jobs. Some were like my next door neighbor in hotel industry who couldn't work for over a year with three young kids to feed and wife barely having work. But that's another debate for another forum 🙂

Edited September 28, 2022 by MGsimba77

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:52 PM, MGsimba77 said:

Yes the stimulus could explain away some of it. I'm getting at the sustained hyper increases in the upper five and six figure books through all or most of 2021. That's not attributable to a few thousand stimulus dollars in the hands of non needy people. That began to cool off substantially ~ early 2022 following a similar trend in crypto. 

Btw not everyone receiving funds from uncle Sam were college kids in part time jobs. Some were like my next door neighbor in hotel industry who couldn't work for over a year with three young kids to feed and wife barely having work. But that's another subject for another forum 🙂

I agree that some of these macro observations, while they have value, can also grossly oversimplify.

Let me toss out another oversimplification that at least has one more degree of nuance.  From the start of the pandemic there was a lot of talk about a "K-shaped recovery" -- the idea being that for people in certain jobs (generally white-collar jobs that allow telecommuting, as opposed to jobs in the service industry that don't for obvious reasons), economic fortunes actually improved while things got much worse for so many others.  On the extreme end of the lucky ones, of course, were the extremely wealthy who generally saw their wealth (and their separation from regular folks) grow to previously unseen levels.

Mapping this to the collectibles market, it seems to me that no amount of broad economic downturn is ever going to really eliminate the lucky few who have the ability to go hard for the most expensive items available.  So even if there is a broad and deep correction in the overall market, I expect the bluest of the blue chips to be fairly resistant to it.

[Microchip]

On 9/28/2022 at 11:05 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

On the extreme end of the lucky ones, of course, were the extremely wealthy who generally saw their wealth (and their separation from regular folks) grow to previously unseen levels.

A guy here got busted, holding down 6 testing roles, 2 for major telco's here in Australia.   In the current environment he could have been earning $180-230k for each of them.   WFH, in the IT profession was too much temptation for some.   

But the skinny on it was, wages went up for that industry, and they got to hang out with their action figure collection at the same time.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Microchip

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2022 at 7:34 AM, thunsicker said:

On 9/24/2022 at 12:48 PM, mjoeyoung said:

Thanks for the info.  GA has seemed impervious so far.

Agree to disagree.  I’ve had an All Winners 14 that I’ve dropped from last price to around 15% off the last price over the last half year with no takers.

Unfortunately, in a market that's falling or showing signs that it's about to fall, these non-key mid-run issues are usually a leading indicator as they are the first to drop as there's now less big reason to buy them from a demand point of view.  

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2022 at 10:27 AM, DC# said:

Right now I am just pulling (manually) GPA data when each of these auctions come up - I don't have a historical database.    In theory, I could add a year (or two) going back but would be stuck picking the high or low from that year.   I just don't have the time to compute the average of that year as GPA summary only shows high/low.

My instinct is that most books have a curve that generally looks like this (this happens to be Amazing Spider-Man #14 6.0).  

 

 

Greatly appreciate you taking the time to put this sample listing result for us for ASM 14 as I think it's probably a pretty good reflection of how the comic book marketplace tends to perform over the long term.  

In other words, extended long periods (i.e. decade long or more) of plateau or slow growth in valuations a la Overstreet's 3% or 4% per year which is then punctuated by a shorter, but rather explosive period of pricing gains before it settles back down in a rinse and repeat cycle.  Definitely still remember the 80's when the SA Marvel books went into a slumber for almost the entire decade and even dropped back down a bit before being shaken awake by the approaching SA earthquake at the end of the 80's.  Clearly remember this as I had stupidly turned down a HG set of ASM 2-10 for a mere $1K or slightly less than top of guide just about a year before the SA rocketship took off.  Still my biggest non-buying regret from a pure comic book POV since I missed out on all of those key Spidey villians' first appearances.    

Decided to make my move into GA instead at that point in time which remained relatively flat during the new book (i.e. Image & Valiant prior to Deathmate) and SA explosion which took place in the early 90's before the GA books did an explosive catch-up for a couple of years there in the mid-90's.  The GA books then went into their usual slumber before having that initial short term spike of irrational exuberance when CGC first came onto the scene and most of those inital buyers ended up losing money on their purchases as the GA market settled back down for the next decade or so.  Pretty much of a bull market for the GA books starting around 2016, but this unusually long time period of pricing growth seems to be showing signs of getting a bit long in the tooth with the big valuation increases becoming more and more narrow and starting to appear to limit themselves more to the hard to find, high grade, and/or classic cover books as time goes on.    

Edited September 28, 2022 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

On 9/27/2022 at 4:15 PM, mjoeyoung said:

I missed this on my first read through, the answer is YES.  Any book that has enough sales looks something like this.  Silver Age Plus looks like this.  Golden Age books that have enough sales also look similar.  Here is the chart for Crime SuspenStories #22 3.0:

Yep, I would tend to agree with you that the chart for most GA books would most probably look about the same, with just the timing of the increases and peaks at slightly different time periods.  

I remember the current GA bull market started off back in 2016 with the pre-Robin 'Tec's taking the initial jump, followed close behind by the early Actions with the Superman covers.  It was sort of like the starting gun firing off for the GA market, although the Actions seems to have already cooled back down and even the pre-Robin 'Tec's are starting to slow except for the perennial 'Tec 31 with the classic Bats cover which still seems to be going great guns for now at least.  

Your chart for CSS 22 would confirm my thinking that the EC books were a couple of years behind before the GA heat cycled around to their part of the market.  I still remember Matt Baker being super hot a couple of years ago, with the resulting heat moving onto the L.B. Cole and PCH books after that.  Starting to feel a bit like 1996 in terms of the GA market right now with what seems to be an approaching pause as the heat is starting to narrow a bit and focusing more on HTF and classic cover books where the real strength in the GA marketplace has been for awhile now.  

Edited September 28, 2022 by lou_fine

[lou_fine]

On 9/26/2022 at 11:49 AM, WolverineX said:

Jerome Powell is destroying speculators like he is going to destroy the housing market.  

 

I guess this kind of shows that it's a lot easier to be a Fed Chairman when you are simply simply lowering interest rates and putting a ton of money out there, but the job becomes a whole lot tougher when you have to cut back and raise interest rates in order to fight a case of raging inflation.  

[lou_fine]

On 9/27/2022 at 5:14 AM, Stefan_W said:

On 9/23/2022 at 8:58 AM, BlowUpTheMoon said:

Sellers in the recent ComicLink auction took a bloodbath. 

I have a pile of books in the current auction along with Oct and Nov, and yeah "bloodbath" is the perfect way to describe the ones that ended so far.

Definitely not the case for the consignors who had some of those HTF GA Centaurs in both the just completed CL Featured and CC Event Auctions as those books all sold for record high prices.  

Edited September 28, 2022 by lou_fine