What would happen if a large quantity of a key issue were found? 2 2

[shadroch]

There are 155 9.8s. I find it hard to believe there aren't 200 more people worldwide who want and can afford one.

[LadyDeath]

Secret Wars 8 always baffled me. Almost 30k graded copies, it's not rare whatsoever but always plastered on social media.

[Gambold Vintage]

Ok, so sketch out a plan for this attic-find fantasy that will never happen:

--You find one 9.8 copy of IH181. Whee! You sell it at auction for 70K and spend a happy summer in the Caribbean. 

--You find two 9.8 copies. Even better! You sell one and keep the other one quietly in your collection, to spring upon the world later. 

--You find three 9.8 copies. Sell one, keep two - double your investment, double your future fun!

--You find four or more 9.8 copies - Sell one, keep two, and quietly burn the rest in the dead of night, fully aware of the secret and awful act and the karma you will pay later. 

[stormflora]

On 11/23/2023 at 12:20 PM, Gambold Vintage said:

Ok, so sketch out a plan for this attic-find fantasy that will never happen:

--You find one 9.8 copy of IH181. Whee! You sell it at auction for 70K and spend a happy summer in the Caribbean. 

--You find two 9.8 copies. Even better! You sell one and keep the other one quietly in your collection, to spring upon the world later. 

--You find three 9.8 copies. Sell one, keep two - double your investment, double your future fun!

--You find four or more 9.8 copies - Sell one, keep two, and quietly burn the rest in the dead of night, fully aware of the secret and awful act and the karma you will pay later. 

Or just keep selling one every 2-3 months to eliminate suspicions of oversupply and end up with a $280-420K yearly income. Retire happy

[Gambold Vintage]

Nah, you wouldn't be able to do that for long before people started asking - who is selling a new 9.8 IH181 every few months, with a brand new CGC ID number? My guess is after the third one the Internet would take an interest, your background and contacts would be scoured, and you would become a popular topic of conversation and investigation. 

You could create a new seller profile each time but CGC is gonna know who you are, because you are paying to get them graded. Unslabbed 9.8s of the same, super high profile key rolling into their office every 2-3 months, from the same billing address? The first thing they will consider is that you are making them somehow. So they'll get to work on verifying these aren't counterfeits, and after that, they will start asking questions. You can stonewall of course, but then another three months goes by and you send another one in...

Edited November 23, 2023 by Gambold Vintage

[namisgr]

On 11/23/2023 at 11:02 AM, Gambold Vintage said:

What is a harder to determine is what if 100 copies were found, ranging from 9.0 to 9.6? That's only an additional 3% to the current 3000 that exist in those conditions, so it's probable there would little to no effect on pricing. If anything, prices might creep up a bit because of the flurry of bids to get one of those new-found copies. 

If the prices on a particular issue like Hulk #181 weren't sensitive to current supply, then auction houses would not have the policy that they do, to limit the number of copies of Hulk #181 in 9.6 condition sold in each auction to one.  I learned about this policy when using an auction house to sell my collection of high grade picture frame Marvels, and finding that if they already had a copy from another consigner in the same grade as mine, then my copy would get bumped to the following auction.  They have this policy to protect sellers, who stand to benefit from the highest realized price possible so long as their copy is the one and only being sold in that auction and at that grade at a time.

I think the number of copies available on the open market across all of the most commonly used venues influences the prices that are realized on them.  It's a lot harder to sell a high grade copy of a particular issue above recent GPA average when there are four of them currently for sale than it is to sell the one and only copy in that grade that's been available over the past 12 months.  So I do think that a find of a large stash of a particular sought after issue in a warehouse or unopened distributor box or a longbox would be likely to depress the market price considerably if the copies flooded the market rather than trickled out slowly over time.

The flip side of this relationship between supply and demand is that if a particular book or run of books in an uncommon high grade hasn't been available from any of the commonly used venues for a relatively long period of time, bringing them to a market starving for them can get surprisingly high and sometimes record prices.

These have been my experiences, anyways.

Edited November 24, 2023 by namisgr

[stormflora]

On 11/23/2023 at 6:14 PM, Gambold Vintage said:

Nah, you wouldn't be able to do that for long before people started asking - who is selling a new 9.8 IH181 every few months, with a brand new CGC ID number? My guess is after the third one the Internet would take an interest, your background and contacts would be scoured, and you would become a popular topic of conversation and investigation. 

You could create a new seller profile each time but CGC is gonna know who you are, because you are paying to get them graded. Unslabbed 9.8s of the same, super high profile key rolling into their office every 2-3 months, from the same billing address? The first thing they will consider is that you are making them somehow. So they'll get to work on verifying these aren't counterfeits, and after that, they will start asking questions. You can stonewall of course, but then another three months goes by and you send another one in...

Technically and likely legally, as long as the issues are legitimate and not counterfeit, the person wouldn't even need to worry. Because CGC would need to grade it 9.8 anyway. They have no reason to bar someone from an issue getting graded. "We don't like how you're saturating the market so go away." doesn't quite make sense. CGC only makes money from the actual grading service, not from trying to keep prices artificially inflated.

The issue is that with a constant stream hitting the market, it'll depreciate the value of it over time as people start realizing that there's a lot of supply.

Edited November 24, 2023 by stormflora

[stormflora]

On 11/23/2023 at 7:43 PM, namisgr said:

If the prices on a particular issue like Hulk #181 weren't sensitive to current supply, then auction houses would not have the policy that they do, to limit the number of copies of Hulk #181 in 9.6 condition sold in each auction to one.  I learned about this policy when using an auction house to sell my collection of high grade picture frame Marvels, and finding that if they already had a copy from another consigner in the same grade as mine, then my copy would get bumped to the following auction.  They have this policy to protect sellers, who stand to benefit from the highest realized price possible so long as their copy is the one and only being sold in that auction and at that grade at a time.

I think the number of copies available on the open market across all of the most commonly used venues influences the prices that are realized on them.  It's a lot harder to sell a high grade copy of a particular issue above recent GPA average when there are four of them currently for sale than it is to sell the one and only copy in that grade that's been available over the past 12 months.  So I do think that a find of a large stash of a particular sought after issue in a warehouse or unopened distributor box or a longbox would be likely to depress the market price considerably if the copies flooded the market rather than trickled out slowly over time.

The flip side of this relationship between supply and demand is that if a particular book or run of books in an uncommon high grade hasn't been available from any of the commonly used venues for a relatively long period of time, bringing them to a market starving for them can get surprisingly high and sometimes record prices.

These have been my experiences, anyways.

However, this is a clear example of artificial price fixing, and it's just done under the table so that the law doesn't penalize them for doing so. Said auction house in question could make up some BS reason on the surface to delay a second issue from being sold in the same auction, and nobody could complain about price fixing. The actual sellers of the issues also stand to benefit, and the buyers are not going to file a lawsuit on potential price fixing when they don't know that a second, or third, or fourth auction would have what they want. And even then, the auction house could lie and say that it's coincidental new stock.

[namisgr]

It's two auctions.  The final hammer prices are anything but fixed.

[Gambold Vintage]

>Technically and likely legally, as long as the issues are legitimate and not counterfeit, the person wouldn't even need to worry.<. The person wouldn't need to worry, but it would be difficult to "eliminate suspicions of oversupply" when they are submitting one every 2-3 months. Collectors will want to know where they were from, is there a larger collection behind them, can they be pedigreed - etc.

You can't lay low and slab/sell one every season without bringing a major amount of attention to yourself. Attention that will eventually reveal your sources and your issue count and yes...tank the value of further sales. 

[Namtak]

On 11/23/2023 at 8:25 PM, namisgr said:

It's two auctions.  The final hammer prices are anything but fixed.

The comics probably will sell more than the hammer will

[Buzzetta]

Wasn't there a warehouse find of FF 48?   My former LCS owner (since retired) used to tell of a number of Silver Age Warehouse finds and I also remember him claiming that there was a large stash of ASM 33 out there. 

[namisgr]

On 11/24/2023 at 2:18 AM, Buzzetta said:

Wasn't there a warehouse find of FF 48?   My former LCS owner (since retired) used to tell of a number of Silver Age Warehouse finds and I also remember him claiming that there was a large stash of ASM 33 out there. 

 

[D2]

On 11/23/2023 at 11:20 AM, shadroch said:

There are 155 9.8s. I find it hard to believe there aren't 200 more people worldwide who want and can afford one.

66k competes with a lot of other luxuries out there. 

Obviously we are talking subjectively. And maybe you’re right, you know? Maybe there are 200 people that would drop it. 

It is possible. Only time will tell. 

I just wish we had a comparison.

Top/Most Popular 1st Appearance Golden Age I’d think is either Supes or Batman

Silver Age is obviously Spider-Man

Bronze/Copper age? Who is the most popular 1st appearance? Wolverine I would think. Who is the 2nd? Ninja Turtles? But their CGC counts are low.
 

There are 42 1st print 9.8 TMNT.
5 sales in 3 years: 175k average, low of 120k

Hulk 181s, 16 sales in 3 years.

3.6 times more hulks than tmnts 
3.2 times more sales of hulks than tmnts
but hulk low is 66k, tmnt low is 120k, I mean, just a bad comparison, but based on these, hulk181 should be 40k. And that makes sense to me. I think it will live forever at 40k, with 155 9.8s

 

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by D2

[Chip Cataldo]

Wasn't someone posting recently about a fellow collector that had a full long box of Hulk #181s? I'm sure this stuff already exists, the books just aren't on the market.

[shadroch]

When I started collecting, Marvel Comics 1 was in the elite group. Then, Motion Picture Funnies was discovered and briefly was the most expensive book.

Adventure 247 was right up there in the SA with FF 1 and AF15.  The first Martian Manhunter was on par with Showcase 4.  Several funny animal books were in high demand.

Times change. 

[Robot Man]

On 11/24/2023 at 8:06 AM, shadroch said:

When I started collecting, Marvel Comics 1 was in the elite group. Then, Motion Picture Funnies was discovered and briefly was the most expensive book.

Adventure 247 was right up there in the SA with FF 1 and AF15.  The first Martian Manhunter was on par with Showcase 4.  Several funny animal books were in high demand.

Times change. 

Yep. The usual big books were the things of dreams as they are now. But in addition. The first appearances of Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Buck Rogers and strip reprint books like the first Famous Funnies were also very big. The values of these were comparable to the first appearances of Superman. Batman and others. Superman 1 and Batman 1 were almost more popular than their first appearances in Action and Detective.

I remember going to little local gatherings and seeing them unbagged on tables. GA DC, Timely, Barks Ducks and  EC books were hot and “table” books. Post war and ‘50’s books were in dollar boxes under the tables. I bought loads of PCH, Crime and GGA stuff out of those boxes.

[D2]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:06 AM, shadroch said:

When I started collecting, Marvel Comics 1 was in the elite group. Then, Motion Picture Funnies was discovered and briefly was the most expensive book.

Adventure 247 was right up there in the SA with FF 1 and AF15.  The first Martian Manhunter was on par with Showcase 4.  Several funny animal books were in high demand.

Times change. 

Someone made a video/post about superheroes… kind of in line with what you’re saying, basically summarizing the current public opinion on them. 

They got to Wolverine, and said he was your dad’s favourite superhero. 

Meaning, not cool anymore, but means a lot to an older generation. 

A bit of me died that day, knowing that my favourite character may not be so loved anymore for future generations. 

[stormflora]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:06 AM, shadroch said:

When I started collecting, Marvel Comics 1 was in the elite group. Then, Motion Picture Funnies was discovered and briefly was the most expensive book.

Adventure 247 was right up there in the SA with FF 1 and AF15.  The first Martian Manhunter was on par with Showcase 4.  Several funny animal books were in high demand.

Times change. 

On 11/24/2023 at 11:21 AM, Robot Man said:

Yep. The usual big books were the things of dreams as they are now. But in addition. The first appearances of Flash Gordon, Tarzan, Buck Rogers and strip reprint books like the first Famous Funnies were also very big. The values of these were comparable to the first appearances of Superman. Batman and others. Superman 1 and Batman 1 were almost more popular than their first appearances in Action and Detective.

I remember going to little local gatherings and seeing them unbagged on tables. GA DC, Timely, Barks Ducks and  EC books were hot and “table” books. Post war and ‘50’s books were in dollar boxes under the tables. I bought loads of PCH, Crime and GGA stuff out of those boxes.

Sadly, as a newbie collector, I have no idea what comics are considered valuable. Even if I dropped by some yard sale that had tons of vintage comics for sale, I wouldn't know which ones were valuable or not for resale. Perhaps someone could provide me with some summarized pointers for what would be must-buys if I ever encountered them.

[shadroch]

On 11/24/2023 at 1:13 PM, stormflora said:

Sadly, as a newbie collector, I have no idea what comics are considered valuable. Even if I dropped by some yard sale that had tons of vintage comics for sale, I wouldn't know which ones were valuable or not for resale. Perhaps someone could provide me with some summarized pointers for what would be must-buys if I ever encountered them.

You have a phone, I assume. With access to the internet. You can look up any comic on ebay and see its sales for the last thirty days.  There are a number of apps that will tell you what is hot and what is not.