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

[bc]

On 12/9/2023 at 4:31 PM, VintageComics said:

(and frankly, I was the forerunner of an influencer on here 15 years ago before there were influencers)

-bc

[DC#]

On 12/9/2023 at 9:38 AM, VintageComics said:

Everyone keeps trying to find logic (why people buy things) in an illogical endeavor (collecting).

Why?

Collecting is about as illogical as consumerism gets. 

The only people who will be logical about it are the people who don't like or collect comics. 

This may be the most accurate thing I have ever read on these boards..   

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/9/2023 at 4:13 PM, bc said:

-bc

 

[VintageComics]

On 12/9/2023 at 5:39 PM, DC# said:

On 12/9/2023 at 12:38 PM, VintageComics said:

Everyone keeps trying to find logic (why people buy things) in an illogical endeavor (collecting).

Why?

Collecting is about as illogical as consumerism gets. 

The only people who will be logical about it are the people who don't like or collect comics. 

This may be the most accurate thing I have ever read on these boards..   

The problem is, we collectors are all in the same asylum and vouching for each other that we're all sane.

"but they measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise"  

[thehumantorch]

On 12/9/2023 at 12:19 PM, Pantodude said:

[edit] Did you see the whole video?  [had to watch it again in case I missed something]  It's actually the complete opposite.  He's going all-in on his comic book business and selling his PC (turns out not all, just most) to fund the business during these leaner times.  

Sorry, couldn't get past 20 minutes of him showing all the books he was selling.

[GermanFan]

On 12/9/2023 at 3:41 PM, VintageComics said:

Aren't these guys kids of Mark Wilson?

Their dad was a monster comic dealer for decades and their uncle was well known too.

These guys aren't amateurs. This is all just great fodder for video content. 

Here's the same guy interviewing his dad, who he introduces as one of the greatest comic book dealers of the 80's and 90's.

 

That was interesting. How he points out that the money squeezing trickery with comics didnt end with the appearance of grading companies but rather changed (the pressing and resubmit  game).

Edited December 10, 2023 by GermanFan

[VintageComics]

On 12/10/2023 at 7:13 AM, GermanFan said:

That was interesting. How he points out that the money squeezing trickery with comics didnt end with the appearance of grading companies but rather changed (the pressing and resubmit  game).

I haven't watched the video, but the press and resubmit game is not money squeezing trickery, because it's been open knowledge for almost 20 years and reasonably common knowledge for longer. 

The money squeezing trickery for fraud artists went from trying to mess with the comics to messing with the slabs. 

With each countermeasure taken, much of the fraud is eliminated but the persistent ones try to find NEW ways to deceive the public.  

A good parallel is protecting your money. Locking your money in a bank protects your money from MOST common thieves, but then the uncommon thieves start robbing banks rather than robbing your home. 

[buttock]

On 12/9/2023 at 9:10 AM, october said:

An N of 290 is more than sufficient for drawing conclusions about the whole data set. We don't need any more sales to reasonably think the majority of Promise books would be in the red if resold right now.

That's true assuming a random selection, but this wasn't a random selection.  

[Stefan_W]

On 12/11/2023 at 3:10 PM, VintageComics said:

I haven't watched the video, but the press and resubmit game is not money squeezing trickery, because it's been open knowledge for almost 20 years and reasonably common knowledge for longer. 

 

This is exactly right. 

I remember being in the local comic shop in the 1980s and hearing guys talking about trimming openly, and one guy in a suit offering to trim up books for people for a small fee. My friends and I came upon the strategy of stacking heavy books on a comic for a week or two in order to flatten it out more. There was zero profit motive on our end since there was no profit to be had - we just wanted our books to look nicer. Some innovators who were older and more dedicated to figuring out other processes like using presses and steam.

I dont think it is a stretch to say pressing comics already existed but came to the forefront when CGC started up and slabs became a thing. The corollary to that is CGC ruled early on that pressing was not a restoration in comics (unlike paper money). With pressing and slabbing being a legit thing it follows that people like me will look at some books that are already slabbed and say "I think I can get that out and maybe get a grade bump."

[F For Fake]

Am I the only one who recognizes Ben Garant? Had no idea Travis Junior was a comic nerd! (Also a hugely successful screenwriter, and comedy star going back to The State.)

[MyNameIsLegion]

On 12/12/2023 at 8:35 AM, Stefan_W said:

This is exactly right. 

I remember being in the local comic shop in the 1980s and hearing guys talking about trimming openly, and one guy in a suit offering to trim up books for people for a small fee. My friends and I came upon the strategy of stacking heavy books on a comic for a week or two in order to flatten it out more. There was zero profit motive on our end since there was no profit to be had - we just wanted our books to look nicer. Some innovators who were older and more dedicated to figuring out other processes like using presses and steam.

I dont think it is a stretch to say pressing comics already existed but came to the forefront when CGC started up and slabs became a thing. The corollary to that is CGC ruled early on that pressing was not a restoration in comics (unlike paper money). With pressing and slabbing being a legit thing it follows that people like me will look at some books that are already slabbed and say "I think I can get that out and maybe get a grade bump."

you said it wasn't money squeezing trickery and then proceeded to describe exactly that. Matt Nelson himself, the head of CGC, what did he do before that? Provided a service to pre-screen and press books. He charged a fee (part of the money squeezing) pressed the books (the trickery) at a time that there was much handwringing on these boards about disclosing pressing at all, network of disclosure or whatever it was called, and soon a clandestine practice was all the rage and it was a race to find books with money to be squeezed out of them quite literally with a t-shirt press. What did CGC do? They thought and thought, and studied, hemmed and hawed because they couldn't definitively determine if a book was pressed or not, so they gave up and leaned into it. If you can't beat'em join'em or in this case, hire'em to do it better for CGC and make it part of their service. Now CGC is reaping the benefits of the squeezing. no conflict of interests there eh? Sure, the verdict is still out what the long term impact of pressing will be. That Action #1 may be a brittle cracker in 20 year, but pray to god no one ever feels compelled to crack that slab ever again because there's only diminishing returns from here on out if you do and everyone knows it. I daresay no-one is ever going to crack those Promise Books unless they actually have a negative association as a whole for being over graded and a generic 9.6 might just be better if you are willing to gamble it's not a 9.2.

[october]

On 12/11/2023 at 5:20 PM, buttock said:

That's true assuming a random selection, but this wasn't a random selection.  

What's not random about it? The list I saw was a good cross section of publishers/grades/prices/genres. There might sample bias, but without information on who resold, how many people resold and the circumstances that led to resale it's all speculation. Comics are an opaque market and we can pick apart any given dataset, but the list I saw was enough for me to conclude that most Promise books haven't/wouldn't perform well on resale if sold right now.

Maybe you know more about the consignor(s) than I do. 

Edited December 12, 2023 by october

[buttock]

On 12/12/2023 at 9:16 AM, october said:

What's not random about it? The list I saw was a good cross section of publishers/grades/prices/genres. There might sample bias, but without information on who resold, how many people resold and the circumstances that led to resale it's all speculation. Comics are an opaque market and we can pick apart any given dataset, but the list I saw was enough for me to conclude that most Promise books haven't/wouldn't perform well on resale if sold right now.

Maybe you know more about the consignor(s) than I do. 

Big swaths of Bat books & other similar items that were bought by one buyer who didn't seem to care about prices.  If you took the Timely books and resold them they would probably fetch as much or more than the first round.  But that wouldn't make me think that all of the Promise books would turn a profit.  The bottom line is that a lot of the books sold for silly prices, some would sell for less, some would sell for more, but what has come back around isn't a representative cross section.  And a lot of them weren't bought for the quick flip. 

This is the same conversation people had about the Mile High books in 1977.  Chuck wanted 4X guide and the collecting community thought he was out of his mind.  Time has proven him right against the opinion of the masses.   

[buttock]

On 12/12/2023 at 9:16 AM, october said:

What's not random about it? The list I saw was a good cross section of publishers/grades/prices/genres. There might sample bias, but without information on who resold, how many people resold and the circumstances that led to resale it's all speculation. Comics are an opaque market and we can pick apart any given dataset, but the list I saw was enough for me to conclude that most Promise books haven't/wouldn't perform well on resale if sold right now.

Maybe you know more about the consignor(s) than I do. 

Not to mention, simply the fact that any book comes back to market defines it as different than one that comes to market.  The weirdness of statistics, but the 290 books that did get resold were resold for a reason, whereas the ones that haven't been resold were held for a reason.  Therefore different animals, at least statistically.  Maybe the seller(s) of these books chose to sell them because they felt they overpaid.  I'm not saying that's the case, but all of that factors into the definition of randomness.   

Edited December 12, 2023 by buttock

[october]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:59 AM, buttock said:

Not to mention, simply the fact that any book comes back to market defines it as different than one that comes to market.  The weirdness of statistics, but the 290 books that did get resold were resold for a reason, whereas the ones that haven't been resold were held for a reason.  Therefore different animals, at least statistically.  Maybe the seller(s) of these books chose to sell them because they felt they overpaid.  I'm not saying that's the case, but all of that factors into the definition of randomness.   

Just because someone holds a book doesn't mean they didn't overpay. If anything, it's probably the opposite. I tend to pay much more aggressively for keepers. 

This collection was a perfect storm. The height of the asset bubble, comic mania, free money, etc. They sold in the biggest venue, hyped to the moon. It's shocking to me that ANY, literally ANY, Promise books have resold at a premium over this short timeframe. People did well buying Chuck's "overpriced" Church copies, but holding them for years/decades was likely the key...as it is here. 

[buttock]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:25 AM, october said:

Just because someone holds a book doesn't mean they didn't overpay. If anything, it's probably the opposite. I tend to pay much more aggressively for keepers. 

This collection was a perfect storm. The height of the asset bubble, comic mania, free money, etc. They sold in the biggest venue, hyped to the moon. It's shocking to me that ANY, literally ANY, Promise books have resold at a premium over this short timeframe. People did well buying Chuck's "overpriced" Church copies, but holding them for years/decades was likely the key...as it is here. 

That's why I said, "I'm not saying that's the case".  I only said that to highlight that this isn't a random selection, which was to answer your question.  

I ended up with 3 promise books.  I'm pretty certain that I could make a profit on 2, the other I just kept bidding until I won it and I would probably lose money, but might be able to profit.  If I sold all 3 I wouldn't say that there's a 66% likelihood that other Promise books will turn a profit.  Whether or not any individual Promise book would sell for more or less at this time is a function of the individual book.  The generalizations just don't work that way.  

[buttock]

On 12/12/2023 at 10:25 AM, october said:

This collection was a perfect storm. The height of the asset bubble, comic mania, free money, etc. They sold in the biggest venue, hyped to the moon. It's shocking to me that ANY, literally ANY, Promise books have resold at a premium over this short timeframe. People did well buying Chuck's "overpriced" Church copies, but holding them for years/decades was likely the key...as it is here. 

Snyder and others were buying primo Church books and turning a profit quickly early on.  Again, the individual book matters.  

[VintageComics]

On 12/12/2023 at 11:13 AM, MyNameIsLegion said:

you said it wasn't money squeezing trickery and then proceeded to describe exactly that. Matt Nelson himself, the head of CGC, what did he do before that? Provided a service to pre-screen and press books. He charged a fee (part of the money squeezing) pressed the books (the trickery) at a time that there was much handwringing on these boards about disclosing pressing at all, network of disclosure or whatever it was called, and soon a clandestine practice was all the rage and it was a race to find books with money to be squeezed out of them quite literally with a t-shirt press. What did CGC do? They thought and thought, and studied, hemmed and hawed because they couldn't definitively determine if a book was pressed or not, so they gave up and leaned into it. If you can't beat'em join'em or in this case, hire'em to do it better for CGC and make it part of their service. Now CGC is reaping the benefits of the squeezing. no conflict of interests there eh? Sure, the verdict is still out what the long term impact of pressing will be. That Action #1 may be a brittle cracker in 20 year, but pray to god no one ever feels compelled to crack that slab ever again because there's only diminishing returns from here on out if you do and everyone knows it. I daresay no-one is ever going to crack those Promise Books unless they actually have a negative association as a whole for being over graded and a generic 9.6 might just be better if you are willing to gamble it's not a 9.2.

You sound like all the bitter people in 2006 who made a lot of mistakes about understanding the process, only because they were so emotional and unreasonable about the topic.

Pressing a book isn't trickery.

It's a benign, almost natural process in much the same way that if you lay on a bed for long enough, you'll actually get taller.

I've told this story many times, but I uncovered an incredible, high grade, original owner collection in a tropical climate and the books were stacked for many years raw. This pressure from stacking along with the natural humidity caused them to naturally press and preserve their condition. Should I disclose that they were stored in a humid environment, stacked for years? 

People who talk about "the long term impact of pressing" know nothing of what a book goes through before they're printed. They go through much worse conditions during the printing process BEFORE the books hit the stands, than a properly pressed book. The heat, the pressure, the violent forces - have you EVER looked into the process or seen it on video? Those books aren't treated with care. 

At least a presser is treating it like a collectible. 

How about when your books are sitting in the delivery truck out in the desert, and it's 120 degrees outside, and nearly 200 degrees in the truck where your plastic starts to melt? Do you think the truck driver cares about your precious collectible?

The fact is that people have been scraping boogers off of books, pressing them and trying to make their nice books look better for as long as there have been comics and some are just better at it than others and it's been an ever evolving process since Pop Hollinger, arguably the 1st vintage comic book dealer was taping books together to preserve them back in the 1940s.

What people take exception about is the money they leave on the table. Well, tough bananas. I've left 6 figure life changing money on the table. We've all done it. As adults, you take your lumps in life, learn your lessons and move on.

Or just stay bitter forever. The choice is yours. 

[VintageComics]

On 12/12/2023 at 12:25 PM, october said:

This collection was a perfect storm. The height of the asset bubble, comic mania, free money, etc. They sold in the biggest venue, hyped to the moon. It's shocking to me that ANY, literally ANY, Promise books have resold at a premium over this short timeframe. People did well buying Chuck's "overpriced" Church copies, but holding them for years/decades was likely the key...as it is here. 

I think you've just explained why this isn't a truly random economic selection of data. We've never seen an entire economy do what it did in 2021 compared to what it's doing now. Not even the world economic pump of 2005-6 and the drump of 2007-08 was this extreme. 

If the collection came to market at any other time, like when other major collections came to market and was resold at any other time, I'd argue you'd see a far smaller swing in prices.

What happened in 2021 was as much about the world economy as it was the collection and so it's just really hard to unpack and pinpoint how much of the buying was directly related to the hobby and how much was directly related to the economy. 

It would be really interesting to note how other hobbies fared compared to comics in a macro study - ie how many baseball cards, or cars, or watches or whatever are coming back to market and reselling.

[MAR1979]

On 12/12/2023 at 1:21 PM, VintageComics said:

I think you've just explained why this isn't a truly random economic selection of data. We've never seen an entire economy do what it did in 2021 compared to what it's doing now. Not even the world economic pump of 2005-6 and the drump of 2007-08 was this extreme. 

If the collection came to market at any other time, like when other major collections came to market and was resold at any other time, I'd argue you'd see a far smaller swing in prices.

What happened in 2021 was as much about the world economy as it was the collection and so it's just really hard to unpack and pinpoint how much of the buying was directly related to the hobby and how much was directly related to the economy. 

It would be really interesting to note how other hobbies fared compared to comics in a macro study - ie how many baseball cards, or cars, or watches or whatever are coming back to market and reselling.

Same incessant whining about prices in the Card forums, by the same dimwits or is it liars? (IE Kenny Goldin + PWCC + 4SC) who said in 2021 it was not a bubble and prices would continue to skyrocket due to "new money" in the hobby and similar nonsense.

The only answers are; 1) adapt or 2) be young enough to wait it out until next bubble in 20-30 years.

Tiny/Small seller's perhaps sell books at whatever you can right now and grab 10k (max limit per calendar year) before end of year, then 10K in Jan of Series I Bonds while they are at 5.27% (until April). Of course many other ways to earn 5% or more right now without Seller fees!

Edited December 12, 2023 by MAR1979