Would you hit the price reset button? 1 1

[lm1589]

I wonder how many collectors are overall happy about the Marvel explosion.

Yes many of your books have gone up in price - but if you're not selling and need to spend 4x the price for the books you need - would you press the 'reset the market 10 years button' if you could? 

 

[MattTheDuck]

I guess it depends on what other variables you're throwing in there.  Ten years ago, I didn't have the resources available I have now, so if I had my current understanding of what to buy in terms of quality, I could have only picked up a fraction of what I can now, even with lower prices. I'd love to have the chance, though.

[KCOComics]

Personally, I wish things were less expensive. 

When I first started collecting, I can remember going to shows and the conversation from the old guard was "I refuse to buy a CAP1 or Sup1 or Bat1 because they use to be affordable and today's prices are just crazy". And that was back when you could still get those books in descent shape for under 5 figures. 

And I remember thinking they lacked perspective... Fast-forward and I'm watching midgrade copies of Avengers 1 and DD1 go for 5 figures and all I can think is, I refuse to pay those prices when not long ago those books could be had for under $1k. 

So I guess it's great that some of my collection has gone up in value. But what good is that if your not selling?  When every key is a major financial commitment, it gets discouraging. Or at least, you have to be more selective. 

I've changed my focus to some less expensive genres. I really enjoy it and it will probably never "pay off" like marvel superheroes, but I've never been a comic investor anyway. I'll still go after big keys if the right opportunity is there, but the days of seeing an X1 on the wall of local comic shop and spontaneously buying it, are probably gone. 

 

[namisgr]

Collectors on a budget can always decide to lower their acceptable range of grades and choose to go after runs or cool reader issues rather than the keys whose prices have skyrocketed.  But yes, the day of affordability of most Silver and Bronze age Marvels has come and gone.  The 1990s were a great time to collect that material.

[marvelmaniac]

You would have to go back much further than 10 years for me, I stopped buying 12 years ago because the prices of the books I was looking for (Early Kid Colt, Rawhide Kid and Early, Pre-Hero JIM and Strange Tales) was getting out of hand, you would probably have to go back to pre-eBay days for me.

[bpc3qh]

Sure, unless it meant I only had the funds available to me at the time prices were that low. At the end of the day I can now afford anything (except, like, AC 1 and Tec 27), but that wouldn't have been true in the past, even with lower prices. So it's tough.

[LowGradeBronze]

Today's prices certainly make you look at ''yesterday's opportunities" in a very different way. I used to hunt down local newspaper ads that just said old comics for sale and you never knew what you'd find when you got there. Or cutting someone's grass for £1 and then they say, would you like these comics instead? Today's value of that small pile of comics is now well over £500. Crazy. I'm just glad I still have some of them. But yes, I would press the reset button as I want the comics, not the money or some theoretical wealth I'll never realise. It's pricing too many collectors out of the market and leading to the dreadful whining griping we see on these boards about whether some microscopic mark will degrade someone's comic from 9.8 down to 9.6. That's not comic collecting, sorry!