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

[gadzukes]

I sold about 20 comics in the recent CL auction. 

1 of them flopped tremendously, selling at about 40% of what I thought it would go for. I think I simply valued it too high (no recent comps)

9 of them performed at about 70-75% of GPA . 

6 of them performed at about 80-85% of GPA 

3 performed at about 90% of GPA.

And 1 GA book did much better than I thought it would do.  Woohoo!

Overall... pretty depressing.

If I could just sit on my slabs for a year, I would, but..... I need the money..... so I just sent CL another 15 slabs.  Hopefully better results on these next ones, but I'm not holding my breath.

[mjoeyoung]

On 9/24/2022 at 1:44 PM, gadzukes said:

And 1 GA book did much better than I thought it would do.  Woohoo!

 

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

[universal soldier]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:56 PM, DC# said:

I will likely be posting the CL session 1 recap tomorrow - didn’t even bother trying to recap the hundreds of other listings in later sessions.    No conclusions yet but did notice some lower prices on early ASM
   

I have been watching a couple and saw the same thing. I'm hoping for a continued drop but thinking it's getting near the time to pull the trigger on finishing off my run.

[blazingbob]

On 9/24/2022 at 10:04 AM, alexgross.com said:

i'm not sure what your grounds for complaint are- since we seem to be in agreement that many key book auction results are "gamed," who benefits more than dealers? every time a new high is recorded on gpa from halperage or metropolis (i mean CC) you can then list and possibly sell your copy for an even higher price. 

the only ones getting hosed here are the customers imho. sorry you have to deal with us trying to haggle.

I guess my "Grounds for complaint" are if Dealer pricing is too high and Auctions are gamed what should the basis for pricing be?  

Customers getting hosed?  I don't see sellers of books to me going way off GPA when they sell me something or asking for trade value.

 

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2022 at 12:31 PM, mjoeyoung said:

The recently closed Comic Connect auction.

An ASM#1 2.5 for $4025 and a JIM#83 1.5 for $1782

These are probably just mistakes, I don't think the price advanced on the day of the auction.  They really should put that they are reprints in the TITLE to avoid any mistakes.

Any bet that the 2 high bidders in these 2 auctions here didn't bother to look that closely at the CGC label or to the capitalized bold print right at the front of the auction listing description.    

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:31 PM, mjoeyoung said:

The recently closed Comic Connect auction.

An ASM#1 2.5 for $4025 and a JIM#83 1.5 for $1782

These are probably just mistakes, I don't think the price advanced on the day of the auction.  They really should put that they are reprints in the TITLE to avoid any mistakes.

The fact anyone would sell a 2.5 reprint boggles my mind. But my favorite part is the seller demanding a 15% commission on top of the hammer price

[alexgross.com]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:23 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

The fact anyone would sell a 2.5 reprint boggles my mind. But my favorite part is the seller demanding a 15% commission on top of the hammer price

when there is a 15% buyers commission on CC, it does not mean that it goes directly to the buyer, does it? i know that's been CC's reply as to why in the last year or two more than half their books suddenly have a BP on them, but it's not believable. that's money out of the auction house's pocket if the BP is going directly to the seller. nearly impossible to believe that they are okay with letting most sellers do that, especially on garbage books like a low grade reprint book. 

the 20 per cent BP on heritage does not go to the seller, it goes to the house, obviously. 

[THE_BEYONDER]

On 9/24/2022 at 2:56 PM, DC# said:

I will likely be posting the CL session 1 recap tomorrow - didn’t even bother trying to recap the hundreds of other listings in later sessions.    No conclusions yet but did notice some lower prices on early ASM

My nominally informed opinion of the market.   
- I do think things are going to get worse.   Macro economics will dictate and the headwinds don’t look favorable for the next year at a minimum. (Look up recent comments by Larry summers).    And my sentiment is about comic market overall - there will always be exceptions and outliers 

- for sellers, I believe the phrase is called “chasing the market down”     A seller thinks a book is worth $1500 and doesn’t accept an offer for $1350.   By time seller agrees to reprice to $1400 the market has already set a new price at $1200. And on and on.   You hear real estate agents talk about it.   I always assumed dealers were less susceptible (less emotional about the inventory) to this phenomenon but maybe dealers around here could opine. 

- for buyers, it was probably easy to get comfortable with “overpaying” in a rising market as the “will be worth more in the future” was likely just weeks away.    Takes a strong constitution (or balance sheet) to drop 4 or 5 or 6 figures on a comic book and not worry about whether you have timed the bottom.  

As for me - I have been a net buyer for the past 4-5 years but will confess to slowing down especially on bigger ticket items.  Found myself buying a lot of raw bronze and copper of no particular note or quality just to feed the addiction.   Or 9.8 slabs of books that I was just pissed my personal childhood copy only got a 9.6 - Buying out of spite!    

It’s not easy to release a book on the way down.  It’s not unlike a visit to the casino.  You’re having a good night and up $1000.  Rather than take that free 1k and stop, you decide to “play a few more rounds”.  Next thing you know you’re only up $500, and inevitably chase your profits down to zero(or worse) trying to get that $1000 back.

[alexgross.com]

On 9/22/2022 at 7:11 AM, lou_fine said:

And for all you worry warts on the boards here who's crying over the crashing price of their AF 15's, let's hope you've got a copy of Spidey 1 because at least now we know where all of the money is going to:      

https://www.comicconnect.com/item/948566

I guess that QES sticker and short little video by Vinnie must have made all the difference in the world as it sold for almost $200K in Tuesday's evening's CC Event Auction for a mere GC 9.0 graded copy.  

Don't you absolutely hate it when some fool out there outbids you by a mere $5 for your grail of a book since I thought for sure that my last second bid of $170,550 would have won, but I guess that fool must have had a prior bid in there of $170,555 which came out to $196,138.25 with the 15% BP juice in there.  

by the way, for those wondering if this was a real sale, i know the buyer. that's not to say it was not shilled, it probably was to a point. but it was bought by a real person who does not work for CC or Metropolish. 

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2022 at 5:07 PM, alexgross.com said:

by the way, for those wondering if this was a real sale, i know the buyer. that's not to say it was not shilled, it probably was to a point. but it was bought by a real person who does not work for CC or Metropolish. 

Was this winning bidder aware that there was a book with a prior Spidey first appearance called Amazing Fantasy 15?  

[Microchip]

On 9/25/2022 at 10:19 AM, lou_fine said:

On 9/25/2022 at 10:07 AM, alexgross.com said:

by the way, for those wondering if this was a real sale, i know the buyer. that's not to say it was not shilled, it probably was to a point. but it was bought by a real person who does not work for CC or Metropolish. 

Was this winning bidder aware that there was a book with a prior Spidey first appearance called Amazing Fantasy 15?  

A 9.0 AF15 is over a $1million, with 8.5's hitting nearly $875,000.  

Spidey 1 looks like great buying at this point.

[DC#]

On 9/24/2022 at 12:44 PM, gadzukes said:

I sold about 20 comics in the recent CL auction. 

1 of them flopped tremendously, selling at about 40% of what I thought it would go for. I think I simply valued it too high (no recent comps)

9 of them performed at about 70-75% of GPA . 

6 of them performed at about 80-85% of GPA 

3 performed at about 90% of GPA.

And 1 GA book did much better than I thought it would do.  Woohoo!

Overall... pretty depressing.

If I could just sit on my slabs for a year, I would, but..... I need the money..... so I just sent CL another 15 slabs.  Hopefully better results on these next ones, but I'm not holding my breath.

I do feel that the supply side of the equation is starting to change.  Over the past few years, The weekly Heritage auctions would have ample higher grade ASM books for sale each week (think 6.5 to 8.5 of issues 1-20).   It feels (I purposely am using feels because I have not crunched the data) that when those show up now there are more lower grade titles (2.0 to 5.0). 
 

same on clink - my waitlist has been showing fewer and fewer auction listings for tracked titles while the exchange inventory is swelling.   Very often at prices that felt more aligned to the market of late 2021.   Often listings are more than double clinks own auction results 
 

[Northwest]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:23 PM, GreatCaesarsGhost said:

The fact anyone would sell a 2.5 reprint boggles my mind. 

It seems likely the buyer thought it was a first print at those prices.

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 9/24/2022 at 8:21 PM, Northwest said:

It seems likely the buyer thought it was a first print at those prices.

You should look at the eBay listings as well. A few mislabeled star wars 35 cents cgc have sold for hundreds causing reprints to be mislabeled to sell. Kind of day I'm having discovering the rampant sadness.

[lou_fine]

On 9/24/2022 at 4:33 PM, alexgross.com said:

when there is a 15% buyers commission on CC, it does not mean that it goes directly to the buyer, does it? i know that's been CC's reply as to why in the last year or two more than half their books suddenly have a BP on them, but it's not believable. that's money out of the auction house's pocket if the BP is going directly to the seller. nearly impossible to believe that they are okay with letting most sellers do that, especially on garbage books like a low grade reprint book. 

I am quite sure that the 15% BP option was given to the consignor not just for the GRR reprint books only, but most probably given as part of a larger consignment whereby the consignor wanted to take the 15% BP option for their entire consignment.    

As for the 15% BP option, I am sure that it's just CC's way of trying to entice more potential sellers to consign their books with them by squeezing a few more dollars into the pockets of the consignors by a percentage point of so by the time it's all said and done.  Don't you just love the rather twisted convoluted mathematical gymnastics that is done in order to provide the consignors with this extra money if they do decide to choose this option here for their consignment?  

 

On 9/24/2022 at 4:33 PM, alexgross.com said:

the 20 per cent BP on heritage does not go to the seller, it goes to the house, obviously. 

It actually might not be this straightforward as I heard from many that it's really dependent upon how good you are at negotiating, and of course this is also highly dependent on the quality and potential value of your consignment.  

Like a used car salesperson, the key here would be your actual take home percentage as it's really a combination of both your BP and SP commission fees as these are both apparently negotiable.  Likewise in a new or used car purchase negotiation, it's really the bottom line as they can give you more trade-in value for your old car, but then give you less of a discount on your new car.    

Edited September 25, 2022 by lou_fine

[MAR1979]

On 9/23/2022 at 1:32 PM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Thanks, this helps.

WWBN #32 seems like a book that was waaaay overhyped and massively due for a correction.  (Full disclosure, I would eventually like to upgrade my 9.4 to 9.6 so I'm certainly hoping that's the case.)

ASM #300 is in such ridiculously high supply, it's not the kind of book I would ever put up for auction because you're taking a big risk there.  Regardless of its status as the "grail" of the Copper Age, it's exactly the kind of book that you'd expect to be hurt by any sort of broad market correction.

Regardless of Modern/Copper/Bronze High Supply books will be affected first and foremost -  glut era will by far be hit hardest.   Of course there will be outliers folks there always are, however they are not an indication of true market health.

If you sell comics, I don't, specifically high population stuff you may look back 3-12 months from now and think selling in Sept 2022 as prices were in early stages of free-fall may not have been a bad idea. 

I again postulate that a whole bunch high pop stuff may very well fall below pre-pandemic levels.   I think that type of correction+ is already underway with books like ASM361, MCP72, X-Men 1,4. McFarlane being super hot right now has postponed what will be one of the largest % falls from grace; Spawn 1. No book on the planet has more 9.8 copies and every census update seems to go up by a hundred or so...

"The Wind's Of Thor Are Blowing Cold"  - Jones/Page/Plant

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by MAR1979

[mjoeyoung]

On 9/24/2022 at 9:22 PM, MAR1979 said:

I again postulate that a whole bunch high pop stuff may very well fall below pre-pandemic levels.   I think that type of correction+ is already underway with books like ASM361, MCP72, X-Men 1,4. McFarlane being super hot right now has postponed what will be one of the largest % falls from grace; Spawn 1. No book on the planet has more 9.8 copies and every census update seems to go up by a hundred or so...

I agree with you, I think we are going to see corrections that put most of the market at 2018 or earlier levels.  I believe that most of this uptick in the market has been driven by pure speculation.  There is no organic reason for the prices to have jumped so much, especially after there had ALREADY been nice price increases from all the movies. In this Forbes article a guy from HA admits that he doesn't know why the market was so hot.  There are still enough "hopeful" speculators that see these falling prices as buying opportunities and they are keeping the market from freefall.  We may be entering "dead cat bounce" territory.

As for Spawn, there were what, 1.7+ million copies sold?  I can remember tons of these in $5 or less boxes.  At the time, some of the later issues were worth more because everyone bought #1 and subsequent issues had much lower sales.  10K 9.8s? The 9.6s should be worth more because they are rarer.

[GermanFan]

The niche market of Europe/UK dries up as Euro and Pound Sterling tank against the USD.

[Tec-Tac-Toe]

On 9/24/2022 at 12:32 PM, ThothAmon said:

If you buy books monthly for let’s say 45 years or so you overpaid for many but underpaid for many more. Dollar cost averaging has worked with the added benefit of owing less taxes on your “lemons”. 

I, of course, was speaking to the current prices some dealers are asking for many CGC graded and raw comic books and, consequently, based on many of them selling, that I am "wishful thinking" in regards to purchasing them since they are priced far above what I am willing to pay but others are not.

To your point, perhaps like you, I have been regularly purchasing comic books off the newsstand and, later, newsstand and LCS since 1969. I was fortunate that, as I call it, the "almost corner grocery store" in Union City, NJ the older gentleman who owned it sold new issues and also had strewn about tons of Golden and Silver Ages comic books and magazines. He offered a discount on the new issues and sold the Golden and Silver Age from ten cents to 50 cents, priced a such I have no idea why and never inquired as he was quite surly. I love the fact that I recall this like it was yesterday.

(Edit) There were a Few a few stops, about two years total, (edit) during which I stopped purchasing new issues during the 1990s but, of course, purchased most of them as back issues later on.

As you point out, some are worth more than I paid for them, some less. Overall, like all or almost all that post here, I am far above what I paid. Granted, when and, I should have written, if I decide to sell at some point, likely will, I hope that there are folks willing to purchase them and for, hopefully, more than I paid.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Tec-Tac-Toe
Grammar.

[Sweet Lou 14]

I honestly didn't realize Spawn #1 ever had a period of "grace" to fall from.