Stocks vs. Comics

[UnrulyAppendage]

Speculation on Moderns:

 

Instead of trying to hit a homerun, wouldn't it better to get runs on popular characters/books? With the low print runs, it would seem NM runs would be the way to go. Of course, that would also depend if there are actual buyers in a few years and you would have to be patient. You do not see too many moderns in the backissue bin as dealers are ordering for their customer base. Your mainstay characters have a better chance of being around for movie deals and more recognition.

 

With that being said, I don't see any signs of new collectors/readers getting into comics. I think for the most part is you have old readers coming back after the 90's gimmicks. The rise in sales is due to old collectors getting back, not new collectors coming in.

[joe_collector]

Many dealers at the Creation conventions stated that no Silver Age comic would ever break the hundred dollar mark. Then it was the thousand dollar mark.

 

Here's a piece of advice: With very few exceptions, dealer know squat.

 

If I had listened to those ninnies, I'd own a ton of Independants (which I never had any interest in), I wouldn't have sold my Valiants, and I'd own a few boxes of Micronauts, Battlestar Galactica and John Carter #1's.

 

I'm speaking in terms of collectors, and since kids were a major force in comic readership up until the late-80's, you'd have to resort to physical force to make us think that our "keys" we grew up with would be worthless.

 

As long as tons of kids are reading and enjoying comics, you will never have to worry about the market.

 

But once that thrill of youth is gone, all you have left are grey-beards hoarding Moderns with the hope of selling to... more grey-beards?

[valiantman]

The danger in choosing to speculate on anything (whether it's comics or gold or tech stocks) is that you don't know who else is... If you are the only one, you've got a great chance at success...

Good point... I think I'll speculate on early Valiants!

(No one else is in 2003, that's for sure!)

[shadroch]

 

I have more faith in the future of comicbook back issues than I do in Social Security. So exactly when are you planning to sell your soon to be worthless books?

I wouldn't look to an obese person for advice on dieting,nor would I take advice from someone who is so sure his hobbys market will soon crash yet refuses to sell.Your remark about dealers knowing squat shows an unbelievable amount of hubris.You know the market is going to crash,you know the top dealers are lieing when they say business is good,you know when Marvel announces unit sales increases that they are fudging numbers.

You do seem to know an awful lot about back issue comics but you don't seem to be listening to your own advice.

If you've answered this before,just post a link, but I'm really curious why someone who is so sure the market is gong to crash doesn't sell everything, secure in the knowledge he will be buyng it back for pennies on the dollar in a very short time?

[joe_collector]

Your remark about dealers knowing squat shows an unbelievable amount of hubris.You know the market is going to crash,you know the top dealers are lieing when they say business is good,you know when Marvel announces unit sales increases that they are fudging numbers.

 

1) Maybe my dealer comment was off-line, and better stated as "dealers tell you what they want you to hear", rather than painting them all as .

 

2) Business is good, but many dealers are lying when the project these insane price spikes of 200-2003 over the next decade, and proclaim double-digit returns for prospective investors.

 

3) It was already covered off earlier, that Marvel sales are actually down, but revenue is up due to higher cover prices compared to last year. That's the old "cooking the numbers" at work, as companies only want to show the numbers that make them look good.

[Timely]

Joe...is your cup EVER half full?!?

 

Timely

[Illiterati-migration]

On a completely unrelated note, I just read in the paper today that Brian Singer is in talks to direct X3!

[duncan36]

I cant comment on a crash, all I know is what I know, I've recently sampled most popular Marvel/DC books lately just to see if books are experiencing a 'renaissance' as some people are trying to infer, and I only found about 3 titles readable: 100 bullets, Batman, and uhmm cant think of the third one.

New comics suck I personally dont believe more than 10% of comics bought are actually read, if that doesnt set off 'arooga' warning sounds for people well it should.

[lighthouse]

3) It was already covered off earlier, that Marvel sales are actually down, but revenue is up due to higher cover prices compared to last year. That's the old "cooking the numbers" at work, as companies only want to show the numbers that make them look good.

 

Oh, I am laughing now!!

 

Sales - Units Sold

 

Revenue - $$$ Volume

 

So if Marvel and DC raise cover prices, and sales fall, revenues may actually rise slightly.

 

Cooking the numbers as usual.

 

I just got back from Christmas shopping or I would have responded to this much sooner... Give me about fifteen minutes to pull together my recent copies of Comics and Games Retailer and I will post all the data you need to see that this is incorrect.

 

Dollar sales are up and unit sales are up. And the trendlines have been positive for three years in a row now...

 

Give me a few minutes to find my copies...

[lighthouse]

Okay... there's about twenty pretty charts and graphs for me to scan. I'll get those scanned and uploaded for your viewing pleasure...

[delekkerste]

Great posts all around!!

 

Don't get carried away by the comics growth numbers, guys. CBG #1570 reports that $ sales for the Top 300 titles are up 27% (unit sales are up 22%) in October 2003...but that's ONLY versus October 2002!!! IT SPECIFICALLY INDICATES THAT IT IS ONLY A COMPARISON OF TWO MONTHS, NOT TWO YEARS. I bet that much of that gain is solely due to JLA/Avengers, a book with a very high $ price and is doing very high volume. Lies, damned lies and statistics at their worst!!!

 

CBG reports that "overall, dollar sales of comics and trade paperbacks for the first 10 months of 2003 were nearly even with those for the same period in 2002". Nearly even? That sounds like positive spin for "slightly below". In any case, it is a far cry from the misleading 27% headline number. New comic sales are NOT surging, folks. And, even if we did see some big gains one of these years, so what? The industry is doing 80% lower volume than a decade ago...the vast majority of those sales are not coming back and any pick-up is likely to be cylical/temporary, because without bringing young readers into the hobby, the long-term fate of comic sales is sealed.

 

So, I scoff at Gary Dolgoff's assessment of the comic industry...and his goofy hairdo too.

 

Gene

[lighthouse]

From the December 2003 issue of Comics and Games Retailer:

 

The first graph shows the unit sales of the top 300 comics on a month-by-month basis for 38 months from July 2000 to September 2003. That dotted line with the gentle upward slope is the trendline... The white line shows the total of the direct market, and then each of the relevant publishers has its component graphed as well...

 

 

The second graph is the dollar value of those same 300 comics in the survey...

 

 

The third graph shows the combined total dollar value of both new comics and new trade paperbacks. (This does not include reorders of backlist trade paperbacks such as Watchmen).

 

 

In all three of the graphs, there is a vertical red dotted line between January 2003 and February 2003. Beginning with February 2003, Diamond began reporting actual final sales data by title, rather than releasing indexed sales data tied to Batman as they had done for many years (since Batman was considered the most stable seller of all the major titles). The data after February 2003 is exact, the data prior to then is accurate to within 0.5%...

 

I have the C&GR issues going back four years, with data going back to 1996, and the first time the 3-yr trendline was positive was in late 2001, after the market rebounded from the freefall evident in the first 10 months of the charts above. It's been positive ever since...

 

I'll leave you guys to argue over which months were what percentage higher or lower than which other months. But I am tired of people acting like they have access to all the numbers when they clearly do not. If you've just come down off the mount with the stone tablets, fine. But don't stand there with empty hands and expect us to believe you.. Now we can ALL see what's been going on the last 38 months, and talk about reality instead of fantasy...

[Illiterati-migration]

From the December 2003 issue of Comics and Games Retailer:

 

The first graph shows the unit sales of the top 300 comics on a month-by-month basis for 38 months from July 2000 to September 2003. That dotted line with the gentle upward slope is the trendline... The white line shows the total of the direct market, and then each of the relevant publishers has its component graphed as well...

 

 

The second graph is the dollar value of those same 300 comics in the survey...

 

 

The third graph shows the combined total dollar value of both new comics and new trade paperbacks. (This does not include reorders of backlist trade paperbacks such as Watchmen).

 

 

In all three of the graphs, there is a vertical red dotted line between January 2003 and February 2003. Beginning with February 2003, Diamond began reporting actual final sales data by title, rather than releasing indexed sales data tied to Batman as they had done for many years (since Batman was considered the most stable seller of all the major titles). The data after February 2003 is exact, the data prior to then is accurate to within 0.5%...

 

I have the C&GR issues going back four years, with data going back to 1996, and the first time the 3-yr trendline was positive was in late 2001, after the market rebounded from the freefall evident in the first 10 months of the charts above. It's been positive ever since...

 

I'll leave you guys to argue over which months were what percentage higher or lower than which other months. But I am tired of people acting like they have access to all the numbers when they clearly do not. If you've just come down off the mount with the stone tablets, fine. But don't stand there with empty hands and expect us to believe you.. Now we can ALL see what's been going on the last 38 months, and talk about reality instead of fantasy...

 

Someday I hope to wear your skull as a football helmet.

[delekkerste]

I think most of us already knew that the freefall after the post-early '90s bust had stabilized and that sales increased somewhat in 2001 and 2002 (I was a little surprised to learn that we didn't bottom out until 2001...I thought we had started turning up in 1999), with 2003 on track to do similar numbers as last year (as per the CBG article). If you look through the noise in the data, the rebound is actually less impressive than I thought. I thought that the CGC speculative slabbing boost and titles like Origin, DK2, etc. that the publishers put out in the last couple of years to juice speculative buying of multiple copies would have made a bigger impact on the charts. Anyway, the 7.4 million units sold in October (more recent data than the graph you've shown) only takes us back to the levels seen last summer. So, yes, I would agree that the industry has stabilized and is improving, but much less dramatically than the headline numbers would have you believe. In any case, I'm convinced that it's a cyclical/temporary upturn in a secularly declining industry.

 

What's really shocking is that X-Men #1 in 1991 sold more copies than the Top 300 titles combined did in September 2003.

 

Gene

[lighthouse]

Someday I hope to wear your skull as a football helmet.

 

With all the trepanning I've done lately that might not be too safe... unless you were playing against the Jayhacks...

[lighthouse]

I think most of us already knew that the freefall after the post-early '90s bust had stabilized and that sales increased somewhat in 2001 and 2002 (I was a little surprised to learn that we didn't bottom out until 2001...I thought we had started turning up in 1999), with 2003 on track to do similar numbers as last year (as per the CBG article). If you look through the noise in the data, the rebound is actually less impressive than I thought. I thought that the CGC speculative slabbing boost and titles like Origin, DK2, etc. that the publishers put out in the last couple of years to juice speculative buying of multiple copies would have made a bigger impact on the charts. Anyway, the 7.4 million units sold in October (more recent data than the graph you've shown) only takes us back to the levels seen last summer. So, yes, I would agree that the industry has stabilized and is improving, but much less dramatically than the headline numbers would have you believe. In any case, I'm convinced that it's a cyclical/temporary upturn in a secularly declining industry.

 

What's really shocking is that X-Men #1 in 1991 sold more copies than the Top 300 titles combined did in September 2003.

 

Gene

 

The order totals did come up in late 1999 and early 2000 before dropping again through spring of 2001. There wasn't really an appreciable trend there, just the market going sideways... It's easy to pick out a data point and see whatever trend you like. We're up around 38% over May 2001, or we are down 18% from August 2002, or we are up 16% over June 2003... All those comparisons are valid and all are them are pretty much irrelevant.

 

I intentionally did not use the data for October 2003 (which includes the biggest month since '98) because the data was clear that there was a gentle upward trend even before that spike, and I didn't want to listen to speculation that the one month pulled the whole trendline upward...

 

And yes, the comparison with X-Men 1 is more than a little frightening... but I think the data shows that comics, while a niche industry, are a stable niche with gentle healthy growth.We'll just have to see how long it is before the next significant downturn, and how much growth we have before that happens...

[Darthdiesel]

Did you maybe think that 27% could possibly have something to do with everyone buying extra copies of books so that they could submit them to third party grading companies and get high, high marks on them and sell them for ridiculous multiples of what they paid for them off the rack? Just SPECULATING. Get it?!?!? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

Who would ever do such a thing?

[fantastic_four]

and the store owner would've gladly give you that ASM from 1963 sitting on the wall with the big price tag that never moved.

 

There are comics like this sitting on the walls of local comic shops at this very moment which don't move there at Guide prices but sell for multiples of Guide on ebay; I say this because I've been buying comics like these off the wall of a few local comic shops every few months over the last few years. Couldn't the problem with that Spidey on the wall be that it didn't have enough exposure to the right buyers?

 

Am I jumping the gun by saying that selling vintage comics at brick and mortar shops is a thing of the past? And that if it isn't in some local comic shops, it should be?

[Lantern]

Quantitative Analysis

[Aman619]

the big surprise to me in those Comics Retailer charts was the bnumber of DC and Marvel title included in the top 300:

Marvel had 58 and DC had 91. Marvel always seemed to have way more titles in the top 300, no?

Or was it (as it is again) that Marvel has far more top 100 tiltes but fewer all told...

 

Which is it Lighthouse? You probably know..