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

[VintageComics]

On 8/9/2023 at 11:05 AM, Robot Man said:

Covid was a real shocker to us and wasn’t natural. 

I knew you'd eventually come around. 

[VintageComics]

On 8/9/2023 at 11:50 AM, dikran said:

On 8/9/2023 at 11:05 AM, Robot Man said:

Seems like most collectors and dealers are hanging on to their books right now. Waiting this out. Less availability translates to higher buying prices on the copies available. Things will stabilize and we will see stuff slowly increase again. Covid was a real shocker to us and wasn’t natural. 

But these horrendous auction results keep putting downward pressure on prices and that puts BIN prices on eBay & marketplaces further and further from ''reality'' so the impatient take the auction route and the cycle continues...

People had the same fears when auction houses STARTED auctioning comics.

Most people here seem to forget that before 2010 auction houses were NOT the go to place to buy comics. It was eBay, conventions and fixed price listings on websites. 

Auctions are relatively recent (prominent) development in the hobby and have only been prominent for about 13 years and the market has been rising steadily regardless of how many books come to market. I don't think we're at a tipping point yet. 

EDITED TO SAY: Yes, I know Sothebys and other auction houses auctioned collectibles, but those were the exception unlike now being the rule. 

On 8/10/2023 at 3:12 PM, DC# said:

Comiclink continues to confound (even putting aside recent tech issues)...here are two copies of Star Wars #1 9.8 WP.    One closed on 7/27 for $3,168 (which was before the tech issues and is about $500 lower than 90 day noting there are two August sales of $3300 and $2994) while the other closed on 8/9 for $4,025 (which is the highest sale since early May).  

I will let you pick which one is which....... 

There was also a $3850 sale a month ago.

Meanwhile, GPA averages are $3600 / 12 sales over 90 days. 

I'm not sure why people are surprised. You get low prices and high prices and if you auction enough stuff, it all averages out.

If auction houses ONLY sold people's stuff at at a loss they'd have gone out of business a long time ago. 

Some people want to win every time. That's impossible, but you CAN win MOST of the time and that's all it takes to move onward and upward.

Edited August 12, 2023 by VintageComics

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

To repeat, I, like many, have always looked for good deals/prices on the comic books, raw and CGC graded, I want. For the last few years, since around 2018, I have primarily purchased CGC graded run fillers since I had purchased all the CGC graded major and minor keys that I wanted relatively long ago. During 2021-2022 I mostly, if not solely, I'll have to check my records, purchased CGC graded books via auctions, always underbidding and winning a few run fillers and some minor keys. In 2023 I have purchased (won) perhaps two CGC graded run fillers at prices I like.

If I decide to sell, it will not be for several years and should make a profit on all, perhaps including run fillers. If no profit is to be had, that is fine since like most board members the goal is to look for and find, hopefully purchase, and enjoy the comic book.

[Robot Man]

On 8/11/2023 at 8:09 PM, VintageComics said:

I knew you'd eventually come around. 

I was commenting on how prices during Covid were unnatural. Not that Covid wasn’t a real and very deadly disease. Many who believed otherwise are sadly no longer with us. Pulling what you want out of my statement to make your point is very misleading. 

[Bumble Kitty]

On 8/12/2023 at 7:44 AM, Robot Man said:

I was commenting on how prices during Covid were unnatural. Not that Covid wasn’t a real and very deadly disease. Many who believed otherwise are sadly no longer with us. Pulling what you want out of my statement to make your point is very misleading. 

 No offense here, but I kind of interpreted your statement the same way Roy did.  Since you clarified your statement, I get it.  

[lou_fine]

On 8/9/2023 at 8:05 AM, Robot Man said:

Seems like most collectors and dealers are hanging on to their books right now. Waiting this out. Less availability translates to higher buying prices on the copies available. Things will stabilize and we will see stuff slowly increase again. Covid was a real shocker to us and wasn’t natural. 

 

On 8/9/2023 at 8:50 AM, dikran said:

But these horrendous auction results keep putting downward pressure on prices and that puts BIN prices on eBay & marketplaces further and further from ''reality'' so the impatient take the auction route and the cycle continues...

Looks like you joined the boards here in 2008.  

Being a longer term collector then, I highly doubt that you would be buying during the crazy Covid and gov't money giveaway time period and more likely selling during this pandemic driven crypto-like time periods for collectibles.  

Then again, with CCS/CGC then being absolutely buried with what might otherwise be worthless books in submissions, your books might have dropped in value by the time your got them back from CGC.  

[Microchip]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:44 AM, Robot Man said:

I was commenting on how prices during Covid were unnatural. Not that Covid wasn’t a real and very deadly disease. Many who believed otherwise are sadly no longer with us. Pulling what you want out of my statement to make your point is very misleading. 

The Amish, they're still doing fine, aren't they?

Covid prices are now the top mark for book prices.   When the next price rise will arrive is very hard to say.   But the genie is out of the bottle now in terms of what is possible.  

[Microchip]

On 8/13/2023 at 9:02 AM, lou_fine said:

Then again, with CCS/CGC then being absolutely buried with what might otherwise be worthless books in submissions, your books might have dropped in value by the time your got them back from CGC.  

I was loading my Wolverine Limited Series onto the registry.

There is over 49,000 of those 4 books subbed to date!!   It's just a crazy number, absolutely bonkers. 

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

Some folks still "believe" that the moon landings were faked.

Comic book prices have always fluctuated. Yes, even prior to graded comic books as many board members know. When there is a steady or rare steep increase in prices that is what it is. When there is steady or rare steep decrease in prices that is what it is. Price outliers can always be found for either instance, but that merely is the exception that proves the rule for the prevailing trend.

Of course, this is applicable to things that are important.

 

[Nick Furious]

I think there is still some downside to go.  People resist selling at a loss but over time the "sunk cost" idea becomes easier to accept.  When the cost is far enough behind you, cash flow can take precedence over profit.  Sometimes people just get sick of looking at a poorly timed purchase and decide to accept what the market is willing to pay.  The last sellers to accept this tend to get the worst price and mark the bottom of the market.  The other option is to just hold on for the long haul and hope demand returns to the book. 

[dikran]

On 8/12/2023 at 7:02 PM, lou_fine said:

 

Looks like you joined the boards here in 2008.  

Being a longer term collector then, I highly doubt that you would be buying during the crazy Covid and gov't money giveaway time period and more likely selling during this pandemic driven crypto-like time periods for collectibles.  

Then again, with CCS/CGC then being absolutely buried with what might otherwise be worthless books in submissions, your books might have dropped in value by the time your got them back from CGC.  

I get the COVID thing. What I don’t get is why a lot of prices are over correcting so far in the opposite direction to below pre pandemic prices in some cases… This just seems  “different” than the previous dips and crashes to me. Like fundamentally different  Bragging about getting books below GPA lows, why would the next guy want to pay more?… Anyway hope I’m wrong, my collector self is happy filling gaps but my investor self is getting cold sweats seeing money flush down the toilet. 

[WNY]

My own personal view, but I think an ongoing price correction is good for the hobby long term. Will allow for more participants, and that’s a good thing. I personally was getting turned off by the crazy high prices and started to feel like the cost of the hobby was no longer worth it, even if the books I owned were theoretically worth more.

I guess part of it is that I do think most people should be viewing comics as a hobby rather than an investment. While collectibles is surely an emerging asset class, it definitely falls in the category or alternatives, which means higher-risk and higher-reward. You just naturally see that in asset classes like these that are less liquid and more opaque (as much as grading has helped improve the opacity of the market).
 

Outside of dealers and those who participate in the hobby as a business, I guess it feels like you should buy books at a price point that you would be happy to actually own it for. 
 

Getting off my soap box now…  

[comicartfan]

I am really flummoxed as to how people are so bewildered by the current state of the market. Inflation,interest rates, the war in Ukraine, political discord, record credit card debit for the US (1 trillion for the first time) and an uncertian job market. Collectibles are down all over the place. I was talking to a dealer/collector about buying some of my statues since I am moved into a smaller place. He was saying how slow the market is, but also acknowledged that collectibles are slow all over. A collector I know was saying that on the site ComicArtFans that he noticed a sizeable increase in people listing art for sale. True, July and August are infamously a bad time to sell, this really rings true this year. It's hard to gauge where the bottom is, just like we didn't know where the ceiling was when books exploded. 

I have been on these boards since 2003 and literally once a week there was a new thread about how the newly formed CGC collecting boom was going to crash. The hobby was getting this huge surge in prices due to the 3rd party grading, the eBay effect and new collectors coming in/back. 

Then we had a correction....then another boom in 2008-2009. Another drop, then another boom with Marvel Studios...It's all cyclical. We can analyze it to death, as we do....or we can just enjoy the hobby and decide individually when to cash out. Movies and TV shows haven't been moving the needle when it comes to books like they once did. There could be a multitude of reasons. Lack of quality, abundance of material we're now exposed to as well as all the reasons I listed above. 

I think the next 6 months or so will be interesting to see how it plays out. 

Something I have been wondering about is how are dealers riding this wave ?  Has anyone noticed dealers adjusting prices on current inventory to account for falling prices ? Does a book that was priced at X dealer's site for $1500 last year now say $1000 ? - Just for example. 

Edited August 13, 2023 by comicartfan

[Nick Furious]

On 8/13/2023 at 9:45 AM, dikran said:

I get the COVID thing. What I don’t get is why a lot of prices are over correcting so far in the opposite direction to below pre pandemic prices in some cases

I'm not sure which books you referring to but I'm guessing it would be books that were not slabbed in huge quantities before the bubble drove submissions.  For those books in particular, the quantity of high-grade slabbed copies is probably exponentially larger than it was before 2020.  

[Stefan_W]

On 8/11/2023 at 11:07 PM, wiparker824 said:

I too am confounded by CL. I had a low bid on ASM 300 tonight in a 9.2 with white pages for $424. It wound up winning which would put it as the GPA low of the 92 sales of 9.2 for this book on GPA for 2023, previous 2023 low of $478. Meanwhile other books I was bidding on in the SA I thought I put on high enough bids to win and was blown out of the water.  Though this might indicate something more about the CA vs SA current market standing rather than CL’s instability.

The copper age going to take a beating even for the bigger keys like ASM 300 IMO. Just too much supply to fuel demand in times like these.

 

 

I think ASM 300 is one of the books with a lot of room to drop. Prior to the pandemic I used to regularly buy 9.4 CGC graded copies for less than the hammer price on your 9.2. 

I see ASM 300 as a special case that does not necessarily represent other books from that era. When it came out everyone knew it was going to be an important book and people loaded up on copies. I remember my local comic book shop had order sheets out where people could request whatever number of copies they wanted. People were buying up 5, 10, 20, or whatever copies, and then they read one and put the rest away. There are gads of very high grade copies of this book as a result. 

[dikran]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:04 PM, Stefan_W said:

I think ASM 300 is one of the books with a lot of room to drop. Prior to the pandemic I used to regularly buy 9.4 CGC graded copies for less than the hammer price on your 9.2. 

I see ASM 300 as a special case that does not necessarily represent other books from that era. When it came out everyone knew it was going to be an important book and people loaded up on copies. I remember my local comic book shop had order sheets out where people could request whatever number of copies they wanted. People were buying up 5, 10, 20, or whatever copies, and then they read one and put the rest away. There are gads of very high grade copies of this book as a result. 

Not every comic book buyer of today was alive or collecting in 1988… it’s a book with very high demand and is very liquid regardless of how many are out there. It’s one of the books newcomers target when entering and tend to buy multiples of.
But of course we need newcomers…

[Stefan_W]

On 8/13/2023 at 12:36 PM, dikran said:

Not every comic book buyer of today was alive or collecting in 1988… it’s a book with very high demand and is very liquid regardless of how many are out there. It’s one of the books newcomers target when entering and tend to buy multiples of.
But of course we need newcomers…

True, but my point is there is no shortage of very high grade copies. The demand is there, but the supply is also through the roof which should lead to fairly stable prices unless there is an exceptional circumstance (the pandemic, or a new movie coming out).

[Pantodude]

Sometimes you need to just stop and take a good look around, smell the roses.  Collectors are lucky to have a source of fun that is not a consumable, but rather a true asset (alternative or not!) that persists for unlimited enjoyment.  And to this day, at least over longer terms, true vintage comics remain a good investment vehicle to boot.  Even attributing a modest valuation to that enjoyment (presumably across many books and for however many years), I expect many books would have paid for themselves (or at least made having them well worth the venture in light of even current valuations).  I hope it's not about a particular book in a vacuum.  I hope most are experiencing the breadth and depth of the experience that is this hobby, and that has real value.  Although difficult to quantify, enjoyment of the hobby should put market volatility in its proper place.  Hopefully.  

Edited August 13, 2023 by Pantodude

[Nick Furious]

On 8/13/2023 at 1:14 PM, Stefan_W said:

True, but my point is there is no shortage of very high grade copies. The demand is there, but the supply is also through the roof which should lead to fairly stable prices unless there is an exceptional circumstance (the pandemic, or a new movie coming out).

You are correct for everything from 9.0-9.6.   The supply of ASM 300 in 9.8 is significantly lower than any of the other books that are most commonly graded.  It's about 30% of ASM 361 or Secret Wars 8.  

Edited August 13, 2023 by Nick Furious

[dikran]

On 8/13/2023 at 5:27 PM, Nick Furious said:

You are correct for everything from 9.0-9.6.   The supply of ASM 300 in 9.8 is significantly lower than any of the other books that are most commonly graded.  It's about 30% of ASM 361 or Secret Wars 8.  

Newsstand or CPV is the way to go for those books.