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The January 2023 HA auction starting to load up
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411 posts in this topic

On 1/9/2023 at 3:17 PM, Bronty said:

The market is definitely pretty resilient so far.    A lot of us old men are pretty much lifers.     It might be different when we are gone though. 

Yup. Reminds me of the motorcycle cruiser market (I ride), who buys all those $$$ bikes once the lifers age out/can't ride anymore? Those expensive toys are a tough spend for a younger crowd with less money and changing tastes... much like what OA might be facing over the next decade as the core collectors move into their 60s.

Edited by KirbyCollector
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On 1/9/2023 at 1:30 PM, tth2 said:

Looking forward to The Great Crash of 2023, which history annals will mark as having started with this auction! :popcorn:

Seriously though, there have been some major price drops for certain silver keys in various grades over the last six months or AF15 in CGC 6.5 and X-Men 1 in CGC 8.5 come to mind.....see the thread re the " $six figure club"

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On 1/10/2023 at 9:09 AM, rsonenthal said:

Really, how about frozen concentrated orange juice futures?  

Sorry, I didn't want to be snarky (so sorry if I offended anyone).  I don't think the price of comics or most any other commodity have more than a passing correlation to the OA market.

Ron

lol 

Yeah, there is a correlation, but its pretty tepid.    And common sense in that we just saw it play out...    Collectibles that shot way up during covid mostly came way down.     Art didn't shoot up a fraction of what some other collectibles did, so there's little need or scope for things to have to correct.

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On 1/10/2023 at 9:52 AM, Bronty said:

lol 

Yeah, there is a correlation, but its pretty tepid.    And common sense in that we just saw it play out...    Collectibles that shot way up during covid mostly came way down.     Art didn't shoot up a fraction of what some other collectibles did, so there's little need or scope for things to have to correct.

Any idea if it correlates to the fine art market? 
 

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On 1/10/2023 at 9:52 AM, Bronty said:

lol 

Yeah, there is a correlation, but its pretty tepid.    And common sense in that we just saw it play out...    Collectibles that shot way up during covid mostly came way down.     Art didn't shoot up a fraction of what some other collectibles did, so there's little need or scope for things to have to correct.

Aside from OA, I suspect a decent % of us also collect cards (sports & non-sports) and comics.

Cards spiked early during the onset of covid to historical highs and were amongst the first to drop from their lofty record high prices.

Comics were next and followed a similar pattern.

OA was/is late to the game wrt price increases.  My personal opinion is that we are still in the midst of a price hike, although the rise in prices will be less volatile.  Additionally, I think that OA prices won't crash and burn as badly as the aforementioned 'related' collectibles because OA is one of a kind whereas the others are mass produced.

Your mileage may vary.

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On 1/10/2023 at 9:09 AM, rsonenthal said:

Really, how about frozen concentrated orange juice futures?  

Sorry, I didn't want to be snarky (so sorry if I offended anyone).  I don't think the price of comics or most any other commodity have more than a passing correlation to the OA market.

There are not many asset prices remaining that are not off of their highs to varying degrees, as more and more assets have gotten caught in the undertow of changing macro and social/behavioral conditions. And, when 98% of asset prices are off their highs, I don't think we're talking so much about correlation anymore as causation. And, as such, I find it difficult to believe that somehow original comic book art is the one asset class in the world that is and will remain immune to all external/macro factors and somehow has an infinite Sharpe ratio with all upside and not even the remotest possibility of ANY downside/pullback whatsoever. And if that sounds ridiculous or like a mischaracterization, just look/ask around and tell me this isn't EXACTLY what the consensus in this hobby now believes.

Not saying a crash is coming by any means, but, I do not believe that we will not see ANY negative effect on the OA market in 2023, as some/many here expect, from deteriorating macro conditions. The fact that we haven't seen it yet doesn't mean a lot to me - the dominoes have been slowly toppling for the past 2 1/2 years* and some of the few remaining holdouts have only recently begun rolling over.
 

 

* Bonds topped in early 2020. Speculative growth stocks and SPACs topped in early 2021. Most sports cards topped in early 2021. The majority of stocks topped in mid-2021. Comics started topping in late summer 2021 in a rolling process where some didn't top until a year or more later. Crypto topped in late 2021. The major stock indexes topped in early 2022. Apple peaked in March 2022. The secondary collectible watch market peaked in March 2022. Tesla peaked in April 2022 is down more than 75% since then. Meme stocks like GameStop and AMC peaked in April 2022. The highest profile NFT projects peaked in April 2022. High-end sports cards mostly topped in 1H22. The previously white-hot L.A. real estate market has been down every month since peaking in May 2022 as measured by the Case-Shiller index (similar stories for much of the U.S. real estate market). Commodities topped in July 2022. Private market company valuations have crumbled in 2H2022. There have been fewer and fewer holdouts with each passing month. 

Edited by delekkerste
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On 1/10/2023 at 11:10 AM, jjonahjameson11 said:

Aside from OA, I suspect a decent % of us also collect cards (sports & non-sports) and comics.

Cards spiked early during the onset of covid to historical highs and were amongst the first to drop from their lofty record high prices.

Comics were next and followed a similar pattern.

OA was/is late to the game wrt price increases.  My personal opinion is that we are still in the midst of a price hike, although the rise in prices will be less volatile.  Additionally, I think that OA prices won't crash and burn as badly as the aforementioned 'related' collectibles because OA is one of a kind whereas the others are mass produced.

Your mileage may vary.

I agree with much of this. My only caveat is that I think the magnitude of price increases in OA is being downplayed somewhat by some. True, prices didn't go truly parabolic for comics and OA until after the Jan. 2021 Goldin auction (IMO the most significant collectibles auction of all-time - $720K each for two 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA 10s that had been $25-35K a year earlier suddenly made every other collectible on the planet seem dirt cheap; my friend immediately went out and bought an AF #15 CGC 9.4 in the aftermath of this sale for exactly this reason). 

But, parabolic is exactly where prices went (and prices were still galloping ahead at a gaudy clip even before then, just nowhere near the multiple triple digits that the card market saw in 2020), to the point where we are now talking about prices that are probably triple on average of pre-pandemic levels and a lot more than that for many items. You could easily lop 10-30% off of most current OA prices and most people would barely notice because the prices would still look :screwy: compared to the price levels most of us were used to not long ago. So, if the argument is that there's no fat to trim in OA prices because they didn't go up that much compared to some other things...that's a banana in the tailpipe that I'm not falling for. 

Again, the word crash is not in my present vocabulary as relates to OA. I just don't think the market will keep going from strength to strength to strength if the macro environment continues to deteriorate and would not be surprised to see at least a flattening out with some pockets of weakness at a minimum later this year.

Edited by delekkerste
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On 1/10/2023 at 9:09 AM, rsonenthal said:

Really, how about frozen concentrated orange juice futures?  

Sorry, I didn't want to be snarky (so sorry if I offended anyone).  I don't think the price of comics or most any other commodity have more than a passing correlation to the OA market.

Ron

Hi, Ron:

If you only collect OA, then perhaps your statement is a strong one.

However, I collect both comics and OA and my income is somewhat limited.  As comics back issue prices increased drastically (Silver/Bronze/Copper keys), I shifted my collecting focus to OA and nearly stopped collecting comics altogether.  

Since comics prices have/continue to drop, and OA prices are rising, I am buying more comics, and less OA.  

Given the above, I'd say there's more than just a passing correlation between the two :gossip:

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On 1/10/2023 at 2:38 PM, Bronty said:

I feel like you and I are thinking along pretty similar lines and taking different stances somehow lol 

Eh, sounds to me like we're on the same page, or at least close to it. No question that OA didn't go up 20x in a year like the '86 Jordan PSA 10s and isn't going to crash 80% in 18 months like that card has. But, a 200% average gain in 3 years for OA (on top of a many years-long unbroken string of advances before then*) is still very gaudy, and it would not be surprising to see a bit of a softening at a minimum amidst the current headwind-filled macro environment at some point this year. Which is all I will commit to at this point, and it seems like from the above that you're on board with at least that much as well.  

 

* While certainly not the only reason, OA didn't go up as much as some collectibles verticals in 2020 and early 2021 because it had already hugely outperformed other categories for years up to that point. 

Edited by delekkerste
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On 1/10/2023 at 6:38 PM, batman_fan said:

The only way I can see a significant collapse is if sellers have to sell.  If prices are dropping and you don't have to sell, wouldn’t you wait for things to recover unless you think they will never recover.

True, but, I would add that you can still have value impairment in the absence of transaction volume. Sep 2008-March 2009 is a perfect example of that - the market froze up for the most part during that time, and so many are still laboring under the delusion that somehow original art was immune to the downturn or, even more absurdly, that it was somehow counter-cyclical (narrator: it wasn't, and dissecting the actual data shows that 100% of the alleged "counter-cyclical" gains occurred during the violent reflationary period after March 2009). 

While some individual pieces may have held their value (because of their unique nature and the willingness of some buyers to have still bought), if you put a diverse collection on the auction block in March 2009 vs. June/July 2008 (at the height of the hard asset bubble with art, collectibles, commodities and the last few, unscathed real estate markets all hitting all-time highs at that time), thus capturing the performance of a broader swath of the market and not just the top pieces, can anybody seriously argue that valuations and liquidity wouldn't have been impaired/diminished during this time period? 

If demand softens and sellers don't sell, the value impairment may not be readily visible, but, if the buyers are no longer where they were, valuations have still declined even if sellers are willing to stick it out. 

That said, I reiterate: I am not in any way expecting a "significant collapse". 

Edited by delekkerste
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On 1/11/2023 at 9:04 AM, delekkerste said:

True, but, I would add that you can still have value impairment in the absence of transaction volume. Sep 2008-March 2009 is a perfect example of that - the market froze up for the most part during that time, and so many are still laboring under the delusion that somehow original art was immune to the downturn or, even more absurdly, that it was somehow counter-cyclical (narrator: it wasn't, and dissecting the actual data shows that 100% of the alleged "counter-cyclical" gains occurred during the violent reflationary period after March 2009). 

While some individual pieces may have held their value (because of their unique nature and the willingness of some buyers to have still bought), if you put a diverse collection on the auction block in March 2009 vs. June/July 2008 (at the height of the hard asset bubble with art, collectibles, commodities and the last few, unscathed real estate markets all hitting all-time highs at that time), thus capturing the performance of a broader swath of the market and not just the top pieces, can anybody seriously argue that valuations and liquidity wouldn't have been impaired/diminished during this time period? 

If demand softens and sellers don't sell, the value impairment may not be readily visible, but, if the buyers are no longer where they were, valuations have still declined even if sellers are willing to stick it out. 

That said, I reiterate: I am not in any way expecting a "significant collapse". 

In summary, OA is immune to crashes.

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