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

[1Cool]

On 8/31/2023 at 11:04 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Anyone who's saying the market is down, or that ComicLink results are poor, is living in a completely different world than the one I inhabit.  Every single book I bid on this week (except for ASM #7, which went for a solid but not unreasonable price relative to recent auctions) went for extremely high prices.  I can't tell which were more painful, the ones I won or the ones where I came in second.

I live in a completely different world then you since I don't even look at the high end books since they don't exist in my budget.  Glad the ultra rare ubber graded books are still doing well!

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:42 AM, COI said:

I'll say the same thing I've said every two dozen pages or so in this thread:

1) the comic market is so vast and varied that you can find data points to support any hypothesis you want about the status of the market or where it is headed. 

2) Everyone here is hyper focused on the top 5-10% of books (slabs, high grade) and ignoring the rest, so not only are these just anecdotes, they're anecdotes selected from a very small pool of sales.

3) There is no data for most sales. 

4) In general, collectors tend to fixate either on the books they lose at auction, or the books they take a bath on as sellers/consignors, and those limited market interactions create biases. 

These conversations are interesting enough, but we're all mostly in the dark about most things that don't fall into our individual areas of focus. We can play point-counterpoint all day and we can make an infinite number of plausible arguments based on hand-selected data, but ultimately most of us are just guessing. 

Everything you're saying here makes sense -- I wouldn't disagree with any of it.

But speaking just for myself, your point #2 is the point -- I'm generally buying at the top 1-5% of the census for the books I'm chasing.  Which is why my "hypothesis" has always been that we're in a stratified market, and why I've never thought that observations about ASM #194 in 9.8 or Hulk #181 in 7.0 have much correlation with books that are far more scarce in grade.

[Happy Noodle Boy]

All of these auctions just reinforce my hypothesis that the 9.8 collecting mentality is very, very silly. Yes, yes, everyone is free to buy whatever they want, different strokes for different folks, etc.--but it's still all very silly.

I'll take my 9.4's and 9.6's --and even 8.5's!--at a fraction of the price, thank you very much.

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 8/31/2023 at 11:54 PM, lou_fine said:

Any bets that it was just two crzed bidders out there trying to beat the out of each other's wallet as it shot up by more than $40K in 20 bids within the final 2 minutes of the auction close:      

https://www.comiclink.com/auctions/history.asp?item=1707644&back=%2Fauctions%2Fitem.asp%3Fback%3D%2FAUCTIONS%2FSEARCH%2EASP%3FFocusedOnly%3D1%26where%3Dauctions%26title%3Dmarvel%2Bsuper%252Dheroes%2B18%26ItemType%3DCB%23Item%5F1707644%26id%3D1707644%26itemType%3D0

ComicLink's bid history is tricky to analyze because it's not really counting the number of bids the way you'd typically think.  You need to look closely at the time stamps -- you will often see pairs with identical time stamps, which tells you that someone bid enough to beat what appeared to be the high bid, but that bid was immediately trumped by the fact that it didn't match the true (hidden) max of the high bid.  So in this case:

8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $76,000
8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $74,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $71,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $69,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $66,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $64,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $60,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $58,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $56,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $54,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $52,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $50,000
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $46,500
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $44,500
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $42,000
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $40,000
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $38,001
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $37,001
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $36,000
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $35,000
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $32,111
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $31,111
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,250
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,000
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,250
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,000
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,250
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,000
8/30/2023 8:56:03 PM ET     $25,250

This tells me that as of 8:56:03, the book was sitting at $25,250 but the true max bid was actually higher than the ultimate $76,000 winning result.  I say this because once you scan up from that bottom row, all of the bids are in pairs, the first being the new bid and the second being the auto-bid generated by the system.  It's possible that multiple under-bidders were putting in bids -- the ones at $31,111 and $37,001 seem like they might come from people with different bidding styles than all the round numbers -- but toward the end it's likely that just one person was bidding it up higher and higher.

So I think there may have been one bidder who was "crazed" or "on tilt" bidding like crazy in the final two minutes, but the other person had chosen madness at least 40 minutes earlier.  

Disclaimer:  No judgments, just forensics!!!

Edited September 1, 2023 by Sweet Lou 14

[WolverineX]

On 9/1/2023 at 9:17 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

ComicLink's bid history is tricky to analyze because it's not really counting the number of bids the way you'd typically think.  You need to look closely at the time stamps -- you will often see pairs with identical time stamps, which tells you that someone bid enough to beat what appeared to be the high bid, but that bid was immediately trumped by the fact that it didn't match the true (hidden) max of the high bid.  So in this case:

8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $76,000
8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $74,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $71,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $69,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $66,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $64,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $60,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $58,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $56,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $54,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $52,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $50,000
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $46,500
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $44,500
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $42,000
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $40,000
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $38,001
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $37,001
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $36,000
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $35,000
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $32,111
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $31,111
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,250
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,000
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,250
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,000
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,250
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,000
8/30/2023 8:56:03 PM ET     $25,250

This tells me that as of 8:56:03, the book was sitting at $25,250 but the true max bid was actually higher than the ultimate $76,000 winning result.  I say this because once you scan up from that bottom row, all of the bids are in pairs, the first being the new bid and the second being the auto-bid generated by the system.  It's possible that multiple under-bidders were putting in bids -- the ones at $31,111 and $37,001 seem like they might come from people with different bidding styles than all the round numbers -- but toward the end it's likely that just one person was bidding it up higher and higher.

So I think there may have been one bidder who was "crazed" or "on tilt" bidding like crazy in the final two minutes, but the other person had chosen madness at least 40 minutes earlier.  

Disclaimer:  No judgments, just forensics!!!

Honestly, having these two crazy bidders are they really the market?  Often these are just outliers.  

[lou_fine]

On 9/1/2023 at 6:17 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

So I think there may have been one bidder who was "crazed" or "on tilt" bidding like crazy in the final two minutes, but the other person had chosen madness at least 40 minutes earlier.  

 

On 9/1/2023 at 6:39 AM, WolverineX said:

Honestly, having these two crazy bidders are they really the market?  Often these are just outliers.  

Isn't this how you get what are headline grabbing 6-figure sales of CGC highest graded BA books of what are otherwise relatively common books except for thier assigned subjective CGC grade?  

To each their own, but my preference would be to spend my money where the overwhelming value is derived from the underlying book itself, as opposed to being derived almost entirely from that subjectively assigned number on the top left hand corner of the slab holder.  

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 9/1/2023 at 7:52 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Everything you're saying here makes sense -- I wouldn't disagree with any of it.

But speaking just for myself, your point #2 is the point -- I'm generally buying at the top 1-5% of the census for the books I'm chasing.  Which is why my "hypothesis" has always been that we're in a stratified market, and why I've never thought that observations about ASM #194 in 9.8 or Hulk #181 in 7.0 have much correlation with books that are far more scarce in grade.

hypothesis my eye- it's a FACT. CGC stratified the market, Covid spending was the tide that raises all boats, but now that tide is gone, and the stratification is even more stark now. Now all the money wasted slabbing non-high census SA an BA keys and non-keys looks like money just as well tossed in a fire if you are the fool holding that 9.2 Ms. Marvel #1, Eternals #1, She-Hulk #1, etc , etc, or anything below a 9.0.  I would laugh, LAUGH if suddenly CGC were victims of their own greed and submissions tanked. What's the point? Might as well send it to MCS and be done with it. 

[dikran]

If by stratified you guys mean the vintage 9.Xs selling for bajillions and everything else being dollar bin trash then yes, the market is stratified...

[dikran]

Also where are all these plentiful common raw 9.8 candidate SA BA books you guys keep harping about? Certainly not in any comic shops in Montreal Quebec Canada

[Axelrod]

On 9/1/2023 at 9:17 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

ComicLink's bid history is tricky to analyze because it's not really counting the number of bids the way you'd typically think.  You need to look closely at the time stamps -- you will often see pairs with identical time stamps, which tells you that someone bid enough to beat what appeared to be the high bid, but that bid was immediately trumped by the fact that it didn't match the true (hidden) max of the high bid.  So in this case:

8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $76,000
8/30/2023 9:41:51 PM ET     $74,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $71,000
8/30/2023 9:41:42 PM ET     $69,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $66,000
8/30/2023 9:41:33 PM ET     $64,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $60,000
8/30/2023 9:40:48 PM ET     $58,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $56,000
8/30/2023 9:40:40 PM ET     $54,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $52,000
8/30/2023 9:40:16 PM ET     $50,000
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $46,500
8/30/2023 9:40:08 PM ET     $44,500
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $42,000
8/30/2023 9:40:00 PM ET     $40,000
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $38,001
8/30/2023 9:39:52 PM ET     $37,001
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $36,000
8/30/2023 9:39:39 PM ET     $35,000
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $32,111
8/30/2023 9:36:05 PM ET     $31,111
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,250
8/30/2023 9:02:17 PM ET     $28,000
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,250
8/30/2023 9:02:08 PM ET     $27,000
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,250
8/30/2023 9:01:59 PM ET     $26,000
8/30/2023 8:56:03 PM ET     $25,250

This tells me that as of 8:56:03, the book was sitting at $25,250 but the true max bid was actually higher than the ultimate $76,000 winning result.  I say this because once you scan up from that bottom row, all of the bids are in pairs, the first being the new bid and the second being the auto-bid generated by the system.  It's possible that multiple under-bidders were putting in bids -- the ones at $31,111 and $37,001 seem like they might come from people with different bidding styles than all the round numbers -- but toward the end it's likely that just one person was bidding it up higher and higher.

So I think there may have been one bidder who was "crazed" or "on tilt" bidding like crazy in the final two minutes, but the other person had chosen madness at least 40 minutes earlier.  

Disclaimer:  No judgments, just forensics!!!

This is why I'll never put in a "secret" max bid on an item (at least, not a max that is way out there in terms of price).  For fear that someone (the company perhaps) knows what it is and will just shill me up to my max every time. 

Not saying that's what happened, but I am just very paranoid about the possibility of things like that.   

[bc]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:47 PM, Axelrod said:

This is why I'll never put in a "secret" max bid on an item (at least, not a max that is way out there in terms of price).  For fear that someone (the company perhaps) knows what it is and will just shill me up to my max every time. 

Not saying that's what happened, but I am just very paranoid about the possibility of things like that.   

I've never had an issue with perceived shilling on Clink. There has been several times where I put in a max bid that was outrageously over FMV because I couldn't watch it in real time and really wanted the book.

Every one went for around FMV at the time, none of them came anywhere near my crazy bid.

-bc

[buttock]

On 9/1/2023 at 10:55 AM, bc said:

I've never had an issue with perceived shilling on Clink. There has been several times where I put in a max bid that was outrageously over FMV because I couldn't watch it in real time and really wanted the book.

Every one went for around FMV at the time, none of them came anywhere near my crazy bid.

-bc

Clink's method of bidding dissuades shilling to a degree.  Without being able to see some real-time behavior at the end of the auction, you have to just throw out something and hope that it sticks.  That's riskier than going up incrementally.

[Ryan.]

On 9/1/2023 at 12:42 AM, COI said:

we're all mostly in the dark about most things that don't fall into our individual areas of focus. We can play point-counterpoint all day and we can make an infinite number of plausible arguments based on hand-selected data, but ultimately most of us are just guessing.

This could be expanded to cover basically all aspects of modern discourse throughout society.

[COI]

On 9/1/2023 at 8:52 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Everything you're saying here makes sense -- I wouldn't disagree with any of it.

But speaking just for myself, your point #2 is the point -- I'm generally buying at the top 1-5% of the census for the books I'm chasing.  Which is why my "hypothesis" has always been that we're in a stratified market, and why I've never thought that observations about ASM #194 in 9.8 or Hulk #181 in 7.0 have much correlation with books that are far more scarce in grade.

We're in agreement. What I said would be more directed to instances where people extrapolate from the top 5% to paint a picture of the market in its totality, which you clearly aren't doing.

[COI]

On 9/1/2023 at 2:34 PM, Ryan. said:

This could be expanded to cover basically all aspects of modern discourse throughout society.

Can't say I disagree with that. We want certainty and we want to be right, but as individuals we just can't know enough to justify that certainty. So we tend make sweeping generalizations and we oversimplify based on what little we do understand. 

[wiparker824]

On 9/1/2023 at 5:56 AM, Mark Warren said:

All of these auctions just reinforce my hypothesis that the 9.8 collecting mentality is very, very silly. Yes, yes, everyone is free to buy whatever they want, different strokes for different folks, etc.--but it's still all very silly.

I'll take my 9.4's and 9.6's --and even 8.5's!--at a fraction of the price, thank you very much.

I love the 9.8 collecting mentality. Every 9.8 I get I just sell and buy a 9.2-9.6. Use the profits to buy more books. 

[VintageComics]

On 9/1/2023 at 8:56 AM, Mark Warren said:

All of these auctions just reinforce my hypothesis that the 9.8 collecting mentality is very, very silly. Yes, yes, everyone is free to buy whatever they want, different strokes for different folks, etc.--but it's still all very silly.

I'll take my 9.4's and 9.6's --and even 8.5's!--at a fraction of the price, thank you very much.

Some people like the most beautiful thing they can attain, some just want the thing no matter the shape, and some want a piece of a thing. 

Picassos and Ferraris are silly too, I guess. Or not. Guess it all depends on your perspective. 

 

[VintageComics]

On 9/1/2023 at 1:56 PM, buttock said:

Clink's method of bidding dissuades shilling to a degree.  Without being able to see some real-time behavior at the end of the auction, you have to just throw out something and hope that it sticks.  That's riskier than going up incrementally.

You smart. Me dumb. 

[VintageComics]

On 9/1/2023 at 10:45 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

I would laugh, LAUGH if suddenly CGC were victims of their own greed and submissions tanked. What's the point? Might as well send it to MCS and be done with it. 

It's already happening. 

Large submitters have changed their submission strategies because CGC is inconsistent, slow, lots of QC problems, etc. 

I've changed how I submit and refuse to submit the MAJORITY of books I used to submit. Can't be bothered. 

The grades are all over the place. 

It takes more than 3 days sometimes just to open a package on a Walkthrough invoice. They used to be IN AND OUT in 24-48 hours. 

QC?

Don't get me started. I've had books go back 3 times for the same things sometimes. I'm sure many others are doing the same. 

[squidmo2000]