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

[Robot Man]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:27 AM, 1Cool said:

Glad to hear. I was just going off the dozen or so pictures I saw of the event that were posted here or there.  I was a little pissed that the crowds in CA looked eerily similar to the crowds we see here in the mid-west with almost everyone being overweight and middle aged.  California people should look better - step it up West Siders!

I am old and retired. I might have lots of white hair but am far from overweight or disabled. I will run right over most of you young wippersnappers for an interesting box of GA…

[1Cool]

On 2/23/2023 at 2:06 PM, Robot Man said:

I am old and retired. I might have lots of white hair but am far from overweight or disabled. I will run right over most of you young wippersnappers for an interesting box of GA…

I'm 6'4 and 250 lbs so for the safety of your hips please don't try to run me over.  I tire easily so running around me would be a good strategy.

[1Cool]

Side note - I really, really hate those huge backpacks people seemed to have made a staple at any Con.  Most of us are not small and when you factor a 3 foot wide backpack on everyone's shoulder it just gets obnoxious.  I remember a few people with them a decade ago and now it seems like these roadblocks are everywhere.  Ban the backpacks!

Edited February 23, 2023 by 1Cool

[Ryan.]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:27 AM, 1Cool said:

everyone being overweight and middle aged. 

WTTB!!!

[universal soldier]

On 2/23/2023 at 2:15 PM, 1Cool said:

 I tire easily so running around me would be a good strategy.

 That just reminded me of this clip.

 

[Gaard]

On 2/22/2023 at 2:11 PM, KCOComics said:

 Over the years my grandmother threw them all out. 

Every time I read/hear something like this, I'm reminded how lucky my childhood friend was. He was the most die-hard baseball card collector I've ever known. He was also the son of the neighborhood garbageman. He used to help out his old man with his routes in the morning. (this was back in the '70s). I can't tell you how many times he would tell me about the boxes of cards he would find in the trash. Today, he has one of those huge safes - that reaches almost to the ceiling - to house his 'good' cards, many of which he found in the trash.

Shoot, my old man owned a stupid auto body shop. Why couldn't he have been a garbageman? I would've preferred to hunt comics in the trash than bondo a dang quarter panel.

[Robot Man]

On 2/23/2023 at 11:21 AM, 1Cool said:

Side note - I really, really hate those huge backpacks people seemed to have made a staple at any Con.  Most of us are not small and when you factor a 3 foot wide backpack on everyone's shoulder it just gets obnoxious.  I remember a few people with them a decade ago and now it seems like these roadblocks are everywhere.  Ban the backpacks!

This is what I usually bring when shopping at cons. It safely holds two neat stacks of books without moving around inside.

It belonged to my grandfather. He carried it to work every day from the ‘40’s-‘60’s. I have gotton some snicker’s and snide comments from some.

But if it could only talk of what was inside.  And many have asked to see inside and inquired “got any thing in there to sell?”…

[the blob]

On 2/23/2023 at 2:21 PM, 1Cool said:

Side note - I really, really hate those huge backpacks people seemed to have made a staple at any Con.  Most of us are not small and when you factor a 3 foot wide backpack on everyone's shoulder it just gets obnoxious.  I remember a few people with them a decade ago and now it seems like these roadblocks are everywhere.  Ban the backpacks!

Don't you want people buying a bunch of stuff?

 

[COI]

"Demography is destiny". This is likely the peak, not just because of the MCU or the saturation of superheroes in the culture generally, but because of demographics. At this moment we have 4 generations of collectors overlapping: boomers, gen x, millennials and zoomers. The boomers are the largest and wealthiest generation,  both inside and outside the context of the comic book market. They're the ones who got in on the ground floor and have most of the best books/collections, with much of that material acquired for pennies on the dollar many years ago. 

On the other end, the zoomers are the smallest generation. Again, both inside and outside the context of the hobby, they're a fraction of the size and they're going to have a fraction of the wealth. Aside from a lucky few who may inherit a boomer or gen x'er collection at some point, the ones who want to collect are going to have to do so from scratch, buying in at high tide. 

The Gen x'ers and millennials are are a large group and they may (emphasis on may) be able to absorb all of the incredible books that are going to be hitting the market in the next 10-15 years as the boomers exit, but there's close to zero chance that the zoomers will constitute a replacement generation for the boomers. It isn't happening.

You can count heads all you want at the next con or the next 20 cons and you can keep telling yourselves that certain books (GA and pre-'64 SA!!) will always be safe, but it's just a question of 'when' not 'if' this will no longer be true. It's not because comics aren't great, or culturally significant; the numbers just don't work. Collecting appears to be as much an innate temperament as it is "just a hobby", so sure, there will be youngsters who have that temperament, and their nostalgia for whatever they're consuming on Disney + might drive them to want to collect the source material. As a generation, however, they just won't have the numbers or the resources to replace the three generations that came before them. And they certainly won't have the same sensibilities, so you can't assume they'll care for war propaganda, or robots carrying women off into the sunset, or "good girl art", or gratuitous pre-code violence, or whatever else you think is safe, even if those books only have ____ number on the census. 

This is why I think we're in peak times. I'm not suggesting all prices across the board will never hit 2021 levels again, but this window of stacking generations is closing. No one knows what's going to happen, but you can't deny the confluence of extraordinary circumstances in the last few years. Hard to see how this perfect storm ever gets replicated again, or how circumstances can change in the future to facilitate substantial and consistent growth for the market in the coming decades.

[WolverineX]

On 2/23/2023 at 7:40 PM, COI said:

"Demography is destiny". This is likely the peak, not just because of the MCU or the saturation of superheroes in the culture generally, but because of demographics. At this moment we have 4 generations of collectors overlapping: boomers, gen x, millennials and zoomers. The boomers are the largest and wealthiest generation,  both inside and outside the context of the comic book market. They're the ones who got in on the ground floor and have most of the best books/collections, with much of that material acquired for pennies on the dollar many years ago. 

On the other end, the zoomers are the smallest generation. Again, both inside and outside the context of the hobby, they're a fraction of the size and they're going to have a fraction of the wealth. Aside from a lucky few who may inherit a boomer or gen x'er collection at some point, the ones who want to collect are going to have to do so from scratch, buying in at high tide. 

The Gen x'ers and millennials are are a large group and they may (emphasis on may) be able to absorb all of the incredible books that are going to be hitting the market in the next 10-15 years as the boomers exit, but there's close to zero chance that the zoomers will constitute a replacement generation for the boomers. It isn't happening.

You can count heads all you want at the next con or the next 20 cons and you can keep telling yourselves that certain books (GA and pre-'64 SA!!) will always be safe, but it's just a question of 'when' not 'if' this will no longer be true. It's not because comics aren't great, or culturally significant; the numbers just don't work. Collecting appears to be as much an innate temperament as it is "just a hobby", so sure, there will be youngsters who have that temperament, and their nostalgia for whatever they're consuming on Disney + might drive them to want to collect the source material. As a generation, however, they just won't have the numbers or the resources to replace the three generations that came before them. And they certainly won't have the same sensibilities, so you can't assume they'll care for war propaganda, or robots carrying women off into the sunset, or "good girl art", or gratuitous pre-code violence, or whatever else you think is safe, even if those books only have ____ number on the census. 

This is why I think we're in peak times. I'm not suggesting all prices across the board will never hit 2021 levels again, but this window of stacking generations is closing. No one knows what's going to happen, but you can't deny the confluence of extraordinary circumstances in the last few years. Hard to see how this perfect storm ever gets replicated again, or how circumstances can change in the future to facilitate substantial and consistent growth for the market in the coming decades.

I  will eagerly await this magical time when I can buy Startling Comics 49 for 10 bucks...

[the blob]

On 2/23/2023 at 7:40 PM, COI said:

"Demography is destiny". This is likely the peak, not just because of the MCU or the saturation of superheroes in the culture generally, but because of demographics. At this moment we have 4 generations of collectors overlapping: boomers, gen x, millennials and zoomers. The boomers are the largest and wealthiest generation,  both inside and outside the context of the comic book market. They're the ones who got in on the ground floor and have most of the best books/collections, with much of that material acquired for pennies on the dollar many years ago. 

On the other end, the zoomers are the smallest generation. Again, both inside and outside the context of the hobby, they're a fraction of the size and they're going to have a fraction of the wealth. Aside from a lucky few who may inherit a boomer or gen x'er collection at some point, the ones who want to collect are going to have to do so from scratch, buying in at high tide. 

The Gen x'ers and millennials are are a large group and they may (emphasis on may) be able to absorb all of the incredible books that are going to be hitting the market in the next 10-15 years as the boomers exit, but there's close to zero chance that the zoomers will constitute a replacement generation for the boomers. It isn't happening.

You can count heads all you want at the next con or the next 20 cons and you can keep telling yourselves that certain books (GA and pre-'64 SA!!) will always be safe, but it's just a question of 'when' not 'if' this will no longer be true. It's not because comics aren't great, or culturally significant; the numbers just don't work. Collecting appears to be as much an innate temperament as it is "just a hobby", so sure, there will be youngsters who have that temperament, and their nostalgia for whatever they're consuming on Disney + might drive them to want to collect the source material. As a generation, however, they just won't have the numbers or the resources to replace the three generations that came before them. And they certainly won't have the same sensibilities, so you can't assume they'll care for war propaganda, or robots carrying women off into the sunset, or "good girl art", or gratuitous pre-code violence, or whatever else you think is safe, even if those books only have ____ number on the census. 

This is why I think we're in peak times. I'm not suggesting all prices across the board will never hit 2021 levels again, but this window of stacking generations is closing. No one knows what's going to happen, but you can't deny the confluence of extraordinary circumstances in the last few years. Hard to see how this perfect storm ever gets replicated again, or how circumstances can change in the future to facilitate substantial and consistent growth for the market in the coming decades.

Why on earth do you think boomers are still sitting on their collections? Maybe late boomers. Where do you think all that cheap SA in the 70s - 80s (and 90s) was coming from? Boomers selling off their collections. Who do you think my local comic shop was getting keys from in the 90s? The Boomers who needed to pay for kids college, buy drugs, got laid off, whatever. No doubt there are ome affluent ones who did not need to sell, but the notion that there are all these Boomers with closets full of FF 1- 100 and ASM 1 - 100 who have been waiting SINCE THE 60s and 70s to time this market and unload them now, when the average age of a baby boomer is 67, is silly. These folks had lot of opportunities to sell. Now my generation, that's another issue, all those guys 50-55 who bought the Boomers' books cheap in 1980-95....  ... My older brother sold most of his SA collection (mostly bought in the 70s)  in the mid 80s to buy weed....

 

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by the blob

[the blob]

On 2/23/2023 at 7:40 PM, COI said:

"Demography is destiny". This is likely the peak, not just because of the MCU or the saturation of superheroes in the culture generally, but because of demographics. At this moment we have 4 generations of collectors overlapping: boomers, gen x, millennials and zoomers. The boomers are the largest and wealthiest generation,  both inside and outside the context of the comic book market. They're the ones who got in on the ground floor and have most of the best books/collections, with much of that material acquired for pennies on the dollar many years ago. 

On the other end, the zoomers are the smallest generation. Again, both inside and outside the context of the hobby, they're a fraction of the size and they're going to have a fraction of the wealth. Aside from a lucky few who may inherit a boomer or gen x'er collection at some point, the ones who want to collect are going to have to do so from scratch, buying in at high tide. 

The Gen x'ers and millennials are are a large group and they may (emphasis on may) be able to absorb all of the incredible books that are going to be hitting the market in the next 10-15 years as the boomers exit, but there's close to zero chance that the zoomers will constitute a replacement generation for the boomers. It isn't happening.

You can count heads all you want at the next con or the next 20 cons and you can keep telling yourselves that certain books (GA and pre-'64 SA!!) will always be safe, but it's just a question of 'when' not 'if' this will no longer be true. It's not because comics aren't great, or culturally significant; the numbers just don't work. Collecting appears to be as much an innate temperament as it is "just a hobby", so sure, there will be youngsters who have that temperament, and their nostalgia for whatever they're consuming on Disney + might drive them to want to collect the source material. As a generation, however, they just won't have the numbers or the resources to replace the three generations that came before them. And they certainly won't have the same sensibilities, so you can't assume they'll care for war propaganda, or robots carrying women off into the sunset, or "good girl art", or gratuitous pre-code violence, or whatever else you think is safe, even if those books only have ____ number on the census. 

This is why I think we're in peak times. I'm not suggesting all prices across the board will never hit 2021 levels again, but this window of stacking generations is closing. No one knows what's going to happen, but you can't deny the confluence of extraordinary circumstances in the last few years. Hard to see how this perfect storm ever gets replicated again, or how circumstances can change in the future to facilitate substantial and consistent growth for the market in the coming decades.

I read this post in 2004 or whenever I joined these boards...

 

[COI]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:06 PM, the blob said:

Why on earth do you think boomers are still sitting on their collections? Maybe late boomers. Where do you think all that cheap SA in the 70s - 80s (and 90s) was coming from? Boomers selling off their collections. Who do you think my local comic shop was getting keys from in the 90s? The Boomers who needed to pay for kids college, buy drugs, got laid off, whatever. No doubt there are ome affluent ones who did not need to sell, but the notion that there are all these Boomers with closets full of FF 1- 100 and ASM 1 - 100 who have been waiting SINCE THE 60s and 70s to time this market and unload them now, when the average age of a baby boomer is 67, is silly. These folks had lot of opportunities to sell. Now my generation, that's another issue, all those guys 50-55 who bought the Boomers' books cheap in 1980-95....  ... My older brother sold most of his SA collection (mostly bought in the 70s)  in the mid 80s to buy weed....

 

 

I didn't say that. I said the boomers constitute the largest generation of collectors, and the ones who are still around have been at it for a long time. Of course lots of them bought and sold and bought again since the '60s and '70s but if you bought in the '90s or early 2000s, you bought for pennies on the dollar relative to today on a lot of the most popular books. 

[COI]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:08 PM, the blob said:

I read this post in 2004 or whenever I joined these boards...

 

This doesn't refute anything I said about the changing demographics. Actually, it doesn't say anything at all.

[EastEnd1]

On 2/23/2023 at 7:40 PM, COI said:

"Demography is destiny". This is likely the peak, not just because of the MCU or the saturation of superheroes in the culture generally, but because of demographics. At this moment we have 4 generations of collectors overlapping: boomers, gen x, millennials and zoomers. The boomers are the largest and wealthiest generation,  both inside and outside the context of the comic book market. They're the ones who got in on the ground floor and have most of the best books/collections, with much of that material acquired for pennies on the dollar many years ago. 

On the other end, the zoomers are the smallest generation. Again, both inside and outside the context of the hobby, they're a fraction of the size and they're going to have a fraction of the wealth. Aside from a lucky few who may inherit a boomer or gen x'er collection at some point, the ones who want to collect are going to have to do so from scratch, buying in at high tide. 

The Gen x'ers and millennials are are a large group and they may (emphasis on may) be able to absorb all of the incredible books that are going to be hitting the market in the next 10-15 years as the boomers exit, but there's close to zero chance that the zoomers will constitute a replacement generation for the boomers. It isn't happening.

You can count heads all you want at the next con or the next 20 cons and you can keep telling yourselves that certain books (GA and pre-'64 SA!!) will always be safe, but it's just a question of 'when' not 'if' this will no longer be true. It's not because comics aren't great, or culturally significant; the numbers just don't work. Collecting appears to be as much an innate temperament as it is "just a hobby", so sure, there will be youngsters who have that temperament, and their nostalgia for whatever they're consuming on Disney + might drive them to want to collect the source material. As a generation, however, they just won't have the numbers or the resources to replace the three generations that came before them. And they certainly won't have the same sensibilities, so you can't assume they'll care for war propaganda, or robots carrying women off into the sunset, or "good girl art", or gratuitous pre-code violence, or whatever else you think is safe, even if those books only have ____ number on the census. 

This is why I think we're in peak times. I'm not suggesting all prices across the board will never hit 2021 levels again, but this window of stacking generations is closing. No one knows what's going to happen, but you can't deny the confluence of extraordinary circumstances in the last few years. Hard to see how this perfect storm ever gets replicated again, or how circumstances can change in the future to facilitate substantial and consistent growth for the market in the coming decades.

The same demographics hold for any collectible, or stock investments, or real estate, etc... sounds like the end times are coming! 

[october]

On 2/23/2023 at 8:27 PM, COI said:

This doesn't refute anything I said about the changing demographics. Actually, it doesn't say anything at all.

I think reminding everyone that the exact same demographic cliff arguments have been present on the boards since it's inception is worth pointing out, as well as the fact that they have yet to be correct. I remember reading them when I first joined and, had I listened then, I would have missed out on twenty years of a great hobby, not to mention the greatest bull run in comic prices of all time. I chose to ignore the doomsayers then for the same reason I ignore them now...no one, no one, has a crystal ball. Will those concerns eventually prove right? Maybe? Probably? Frankly, who cares? The only truly universal quality advice in collectibles is the golden rule: buy what you love at a price you can afford. Then you don't have to worry about the rest. 

[Westy Steve]

I collected coins and currency when the demographics were 10 times worse and prices kept going up as the retirees kept buying. How many here are retired and buying?  Will you all please just stop so I can get my books cheaper?  No?

 

And now the echo boomers are just reaching the age where they can seriously bid against me. great.

Edited February 24, 2023 by Westy Steve

[the blob]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:27 PM, COI said:

This doesn't refute anything I said about the changing demographics. Actually, it doesn't say anything at all.

Yeah, folks then were saying it was gonna happen in the next 2-5 years back then. My response was the same then,. As I said, I am more concerned about my generation. The age on this board is heavily in the 47-55 range. GenX. In 7-15 years we are going to want to retire. Right now our kids are going to college (possibly a bigger concern). We fueled the comic craze in the early 90s. I dunno who fueled the hike in prices from 2017-2021, maybe us. maybe older millenials, I dunno.

[KCOComics]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:27 PM, COI said:

This doesn't refute anything I said about the changing demographics. Actually, it doesn't say anything at all.

It speaks to the fact that almost since collecting comics has became a hobby, people have been saying similar things.  Demographics will change, people will dump massive collections and prices will crash. 

And I believed this. When I was a kid... 15 or 16, the first time I heard this debate at a convention, I was giddy. Plotting my time to pick up an ASM1 for a sack full of recyclable cans.  

Then when the movies started coming out and you saw books like TOS39 reach unbelievable heights, I laughed at people. Said it was ridiculous to spend thousands on a book that was worth hundreds just months earlier. 

Around 2010 I stopped waiting for the inevitable crash.  I've adopted the attitude that I can't control what happens next and I should take advantage of opportunities when they come. Because every time I've passed on an opportunity I've lived to regret it.  

 

 

 

[COI]

On 2/23/2023 at 10:33 PM, october said:

I think reminding everyone that the exact same demographic cliff arguments have been present on the boards since it's inception is worth pointing out, as well as the fact that they have yet to be correct. I remember reading them when I first joined and, had I listened then, I would have missed out on twenty years of a great hobby, not to mention the greatest bull run in comic prices of all time. I chose to ignore the doomsayers then for the same reason I ignore them now...no one, no one, has a crystal ball. Will those concerns eventually prove right? Maybe? Probably? Frankly, who cares? The only truly universal quality advice in collectibles is the golden rule: buy what you love at a price you can afford. Then you don't have to worry about the rest. 

The demographic shifts I'm talking about have yet to be proven correct, because they haven't happened yet. I'm talking about the zoomers not being able to replace the boomers, which is a long term problem, because there are two generations separating the two. 20 years ago, the zoomers were in diapers or weren't born yet, and the boomers weren't close to retirement. The fact that I'm making a point about demographics doesn't mean it's the same point that was being made 20 years ago. It doesn't mean I'm right either, but simply pointing to the past and saying essentially that because something hasn't happened in the last 20 years it won't in the next 20, isn't a particularly compelling argument either. I laid out a case as to why I think we might be in peak times; I may be totally wrong, but I don't think a hand wave and pointing to a bunch of outdated arguments from 20 years ago - as if they're the exact same arguments I'm making here - addresses those points. It might be easy to vaguely point to the future and claim an eventual collapse, but hindsight and rear-view extrapolation is also easy.

 I also understand that it's easier to be cynical about the future because on a long enough timescale everything collapses eventually. And you were right to not put too much weight in what people were saying 20 years ago because no one has a crystal ball; but we do have data on demographics, and this shift is coming. To someone else's point, it's going to affect a lot more than just comics and demographers have been on this stuff for decades. The timing and the "how" in terms of its impact on this market no one knows, but I think it's interesting to discuss. 

As to the point in bold, I agree completely and wouldn't suggest otherwise. It's what I do myself.