Is the gold the only way to gold? 2 2

[thehumantorch]

On 6/8/2024 at 10:01 AM, Hepcat said:

On 6/8/2024 at 7:22 AM, sagii said:

Does anyone know if Charlton print runs were on a par with Marvel and DC during the Bronze (and even Copper age, though that's when they folded)?

If sales data are any reflection of print runs, no where near as many Charlton comics were printed.

Agreed, I don't believe Charlton was selling well.  I sure don't see a lot of them in collections.  And Charlton had some wonderful painted covers.  Yet most of it is dirt cheap

[thehumantorch]

On 6/7/2024 at 11:21 PM, Cman429 said:

Applying logic to the comic book “business” seldom will work out for you or anyone. Scarcity should dictate value. Period. Just like with precious metals or coins or stamps. But for what ever reason(s), it doesn’t translate to comic books. 90s comics had print runs of literally half million plus yet you’ll still see people plunk down $1k for ASM300 or NM98. Stan Lee did dozens of cons per year for almost 30 years and didn’t stop until his despicable handlers couldn’t push him out in front of people anymore. Yet people will act like a signed Stan Lee book is a rare and precious artifact. 

So, yes, logic would be if you viewed comics as a commodity the ones from 50-75 years ago that managed to survive are the “valuable” items but it just never seems to follow in the real world.

Scarcity and demand.

If you think about a book like New Mutants 98 there are probably in excess of 500,000 copies out there.  Most were sold at LCS' to collectors and most of those were placed into bags and boards.  They aren't scarce by any standard, aren't scarce in high grade, yet worth a decent amount of money because there's strong demand.  Everyone knows about Deadpool and his first appearance and that overwhelms supply.

If you think about a book like Startling Terror Tales #11 it's fairly hard to find.  I wouldn't consider it rare but perhaps scarce and I think I would consider it rare in high grade.  GPA shows 2 copies selling so far this year, one mid grade and one very low grade.  GPA doesn't track all sales of a book, and only graded books, but it does capture ebay and heritage and I don't know how many other dealers and it's a pretty good indication of supply.  If you wanted a nice midgrade or better copy there's probably only been a few copies for sale anywhere so far this year.  Maybe Harley and Bob Storms and the big boy dealers have copies and there's 5 or 10 copies for sale in the wild right now.  Maybe.

Yes, Startling Terror Tales #11 has a great LB Cole cover and it and other similar precode horror books benefit from the current love of horror.  Halloween has grown in popularity and people currently seem to love the horror genre.  Even movies like Alien and Aliens are what I would think of as horror movies and they are hugely popular and I believe that's a strong indication of current trends.  There's no guarantee that horror will stay relevant, that LB Cole will stay popular, and no guarantee that prices will continue to increase or not go down for any book or genre from GA to MA.

If I were to call up Heritage Auctions and tell them I had a New Mutants 98 I wanted to auction they'd probably say we have 4 copies in each of the next 3 auctions so we'll get it in the fall auction.  They wouldn't give me a reduction in their fees.  They really wouldn't care.  If I was to offer them some classic GA they'd get them in the next available auction.  They'd give me a reduction in their fees.  There likely wouldn't be any other copies for sale and the results would be hopefully wonderful.

And sorry, getting pretty wordy here.  A buddy had chased most of the classic Precode Horror books.  Most in 5.0 to 7.0.  He brought them to shows and priced them at what he thought they were worth based on recent sales and give or take 10 x what he paid for them 5 years previously.  A local flipper bought a couple, Tomb of Terror #15 and Black Cat #50 I believe.  We're talking around $6k per book.  He put them on ebay at double that and waited for offers.  He ended up selling them for about $10k each within a week.  He knew that the demand was high and the supply was virtually zero and he knew he could literally dictate the price within reason and push it higher.  He was right and I learned a real lesson about supply and demand.

[Stefan_W]

On 6/8/2024 at 3:20 PM, thehumantorch said:

Scarcity and demand.

If you think about a book like New Mutants 98 there are probably in excess of 500,000 copies out there.  Most were sold at LCS' to collectors and most of those were placed into bags and boards.  They aren't scarce by any standard, aren't scarce in high grade, yet worth a decent amount of money because there's strong demand.  Everyone knows about Deadpool and his first appearance and that overwhelms supply.

 

Hulk 181 may be an even better example of this. There are a gazzilion copies out there but everyone loves Wolverine so the demand always seems to outstrip copies available. Every time I listed a complete raw copy with MVS still intact in my FB group it was gone within the hour. NM 98 is also usually a guaranteed sell, but it is still readily available in the wild and you can tap out the local market if you list enough of them over the course of the year. 

[Sigur Ros]

On 6/7/2024 at 10:36 PM, unclezebo said:

what about funny animal romance?

Is there a serious animal romance genre?

[Scrooge]

On 6/8/2024 at 5:09 PM, Sigur Ros said:

Is there a serious animal romance genre?

[Scrooge]

[Scrooge]

[Hepcat]

On 6/8/2024 at 1:21 AM, Cman429 said:

Applying logic to the comic book “business” seldom will work out for you or anyone. Scarcity should dictate value. Period. Just like with precious metals or coins or stamps. But for what ever reason(s), it doesn’t translate to comic books. 90s comics had print runs of literally half million plus yet you’ll still see people plunk down $1k for ASM300 or NM98. Stan Lee did dozens of cons per year for almost 30 years and didn’t stop until his despicable handlers couldn’t push him out in front of people anymore. Yet people will act like a signed Stan Lee book is a rare and precious artifact. 

So, yes, logic would be if you viewed comics as a commodity the ones from 50-75 years ago that managed to survive are the “valuable” items but it just never seems to follow in the real world.

On 6/8/2024 at 11:55 AM, shadroch said:

Scarcity is essential, but demand is the key.   If no one wants something, it doesn't matter how rare or common it might be. Stan Lee autographs are valued because people want them.   

On 6/8/2024 at 12:21 PM, Robot Man said:

Exactly. Demand is everything. Why else would people pay the prices they do for ASM 300?

Scarcity matters little if no one wants it.

Prices for anything including comics are a function of supply-and-demand. What's made the equation different for comics in comparison to stamps or coins is that certain individual comics, titles and genres are far more popular with comic fans/collectors and thus in much higher demand than are others. For example the horror and Marvel superhero genres are far more popular than most other genres. In contrast demand for any country's individual stamps doesn't vary that much across these individual stamps. A collector typically wants them all so scarcity is therefore the primary determinant of price for stamps.

But there's another factor that's become a major determinant of comic mag prices. Because comic prices have risen in the marketplace, they've attracted the attention of investors/speculators whose interest is profits not comics per se. This has added enormously to the demand for comic mags and has thus pushed their prices up exponentially. This has fed on itself as many/most comic investors have taken past price increases as the rationale for future price increases and thus extrapolated past price increases on into the future. In the investment world this type of technical investing is called trend following, i.e. "the trend is your friend".

But statistically nothing can grow to the sky. Such "follow the crowd" behaviour creates a bubble which eventually bursts when prices "hesitate" for whatever reason. (Read the investment literature on price bubbles throughout history including the Great Tulip Bulb Bubble.) When all the trend followers decide the game is up and try to get out (dump their "investment") at the same time, the quantity supplied to the market is enormous and the price crash is cataclysmic.

But the speculation in comics has not been evenly distributed across the board. It's not much impacted those titles collected by relatively few comic enthusiasts, e.g. Patsy and Hedy, Homer the Happy Ghost, Andy Panda, Jughead, Atomic Mouse, A Date with Judy, Flippity and Flop, Fox and the Crow, Submarine Attack, Hot Rod Racers, etc, etc.

Thankfully there's a quick and easy way to determine which comics have seen the greatest influx of speculative demand and are thus most vulnerable to a price crash without the necessity of painstakingly tracking and comparing prices over the decades. The comics for which there has been the most speculative investment demand have also been the ones most often slabbed to make them fungible, i.e. a commodity that can be exchanged for an identical commodity. So check the census data if you want a quick proxy for the comics whose prices have been most inflated by speculative demand. The comics with the largest census numbers are the ones most vulnerable to a cataclysmic drop in price.

Edited June 9 by Hepcat

[Nick Furious]

On 6/8/2024 at 12:21 AM, Cman429 said:

Applying logic to the comic book “business” seldom will work out for you or anyone. Scarcity should dictate value. Period. Just like with precious metals or coins or stamps. But for what ever reason(s), it doesn’t translate to comic books. 90s comics had print runs of literally half million plus yet you’ll still see people plunk down $1k for ASM300 or NM98

Assuming that Scarcity means simply a minimal supply, I think your proposed equation of Scarcity=Value is too simple to work.  It ignores the key variable of Demand.  I think the comic book business will make more sense if you instead use the equation of Supply/Demand= Value.  I suspect this is also true of precious metals, coins, sports cards and stamps.     

Edit:  Looks like I'm just repeating the same thing that was said in several different ways in this thread.  

Edited June 9 by Nick Furious

[Hepcat]

Any and every Economics textbook demonstrates how the intersection of supply and demand determines price.

 

[Poekaymon]

On 6/8/2024 at 7:26 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

Buy what you enjoy. You can make money by flipping hot books, but no comic book is a long-term investment. There's a real risk of price stagnation or even steep declines across the board once the Gen-Xers start to age out of the hobby. (The Boomers are already starting to leave, and they're the ones holding most of the nicest books. You're going to see a flood of grade-A material on the block over the next 10 years.) There will be some Millenials and Zoomers in the hobby just like there are some Gen-Xers who collect 78 RPM records and Hummels, but the number of serious collectors will shrink. The passion in the hobby comes, by and large, from the guys who grew up buying comics off the rack every month. That doesn't describe many Millenials or Zoomers.

Had a longer, more negative reply, but maybe we don't need more negativity.  I generally agree with you, and it's hard to be too optimistic.  I don't think superheroes are going anywhere, so if humanity survives that long, I think kids in 2124 will know who Spider-Man and the Hulk are.  It just depends on how many comics can really cross the cultural threshold to be desirable collectibles by anyone, regardless of interest or involvement in comics, for decades or centuries to come.  Action 1 and AF 15 are there.  Will see how many others can make it over the next 20 years.  

 

 

Edited June 10 by Poekaymon