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Post by junkmonkey on Aug 9, 2020 10:01:15 GMT -5
With collectibles, it is not supply that determines value, it is demand. If everyone who wants a mint AF 15 dies off and no one wants one, it doesn't matter how many there are. That is much more likely to happen than the demand for gold or agricultural futures to go away. Not likely, but more likely than the others. Rare comics are a bubble in that long term demand for them cannot be assured. It's not likely to go away, but if say Marvel or DC folds, and no new material and no new fans of the characters are created for a significant amount of time, demand will disappear and those books will have no inherent value. Again, not likely, but their value is tied to demand, not supply. -M
And demand is driven in part by fashion. For years my parents and I made our livings in the second-hand / antique trade. Things that would fly out the door for silly prices one year would be dead stock the next. The trick was not to get stiffed with tooooo many Edwardian Washstand sets (or whatever). Our family moto (our private family motto) was, "We buy junk... and sell antiques". Never throw ANYTHING away. Some sucker will buy it eventually. I once sold a week old newspaper supplement on eBay for £100. I waited till I got paid and got two copies from the newspapers back issues department for £3 each and sold them to the beaten under-bidders for another £100. One man's garbage is another man's treasure.
While we're at it - this painting was worth about $10k till someone decided it wasn't a copy but the original - and suddenly it was worth $450.3 million.
I don't care if it is by Leonardo Da Vinci or not. I do know it's a crappy painting. Leonardo could draw. I love his drawings but he was a really shitty painter. There I've said it.
Meanwhile, this is my latest contribution to driving up the price of Bronze Age comics:
Not the best bit of bookbinding ever but it does the job.
It also has pushed up the vanishingly small market price of British Sabrina the Teenage Witch 2005 Annuals because that's what I hacked up to make the cover boards and spine.
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Post by codystarbuck on Aug 9, 2020 11:13:19 GMT -5
The prices may fluctuate, but rare comics are not a bubble. They aren't making any more mint Amazing Fantasy 15s. With collectibles, it is not supply that determines value, it is demand. If everyone who wants a mint AF 15 dies off and no one wants one, it doesn't matter how many there are. That is much more likely to happen than the demand for gold or agricultural futures to go away. Not likely, but more likely than the others. Rare comics are a bubble in that long term demand for them cannot be assured. It's not likely to go away, but if say Marvel or DC folds, and no new material and no new fans of the characters are created for a significant amount of time, demand will disappear and those books will have no inherent value. Again, not likely, but their value is tied to demand, not supply. -M All markets are demand driven and price is the intersection of supply and demand; but, as has been proven by Apple and others, you can influence demand by subtly keeping supply artificially low, setting a price of your choosing, then using marketing to create an artificial demand for the product, regardless of price, through psychology. No one needed an iPod, with plenty of existing mobile platforms to play music; but, Apple convinced that they desperately needed that one, that it was sexy and would fulfill all there desires and the masses forked over millions for them. There is a bubble in comics, because collecting is as much nostalgia-driven as anything else (investment, appreciation of story and art, etc). With comics becoming more and more of a niche product, the demand for old comics decreases proportionately, to the point that supply outstrips demand and prices plummet.
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Post by junkmonkey on Aug 9, 2020 11:21:25 GMT -5
All markets are demand driven and price is the intersection of supply and demand; but, as has been proven by Apple and others, you can influence demand by subtly keeping supply artificially low, setting a price of your choosing, then using marketing to create an artificial demand for the product, regardless of price, through psychology. No one needed an iPod, with plenty of existing mobile platforms to play music; but, Apple convinced that they desperately needed that one, that it was sexy and would fulfill all there desires and the masses forked over millions for them.
A trick they learned from De Beers and diamonds.
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Post by impulse on Aug 9, 2020 12:10:06 GMT -5
My wife and my sister each have garbage bags full of Beanie Babies that say something about the fickleness of collectibles as financial investments.
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Post by kirby101 on Aug 9, 2020 12:50:13 GMT -5
Beany Babies was an an example of an artificial collectable market. Different from things that are rare and not made anymore.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2020 13:15:26 GMT -5
Beany Babbies was an an example of an artificial collectable market. Different from things that are rare and not made anymore. But the Marvel keys aren't really rare. They're actually fairly plentiful because the collector market was already in motion by the time Marvel launched, and the classified pages that appeared only in the Marvel Comics of the late 60s and early 70s were a hot bed of collector activity with lots of dealers (like say Robert Bell) already hawking the Marvel keys and everyone had plentiful quantities of them available, but the ads pushed up the level fo demand. You can get any Marvel key (and likely multiple copies of it) as long as you have the money, as opposed to say some of the Silver DC keys or some of the Golden Age books which are truly in short supply because they weren't preserved, but the Marvel stuff is all fairly well preserved and had decent print runs to begin with, so scarcity is not an issue at all with them. I think I've told the story here of my "Spot in the wild scavenger hunt" I did when I was starting collecting to find copies of the Silver Age keys (both Marvel and DC) at local shows over the course of a year in '85-'86. I was looking to spot the following: AF 15 ASM 1 JiM 83 Tos39 FF1 FF5 Avengers 1 Avengers 4 X-Men 1 DD1 Showcase 4 Showcase 22 Adventure 247 B&B 28 JLA 1 Flash 105 GL 1 Over the course of 1 years worth of monthly shows, the lowest number of copies I saw of a Marvel key was ToS39 and that was 15 copies. The most of any DC key was 4 and that was Showcase 22. I never saw an Adventure 247 or Flash 105 over the course of the year, and of the rest of the DC books only B&B 28 showed up more than once in the course of the year. I saw more copies of Captain America Comics #1 (3) over the course of the year than I did of most of the DC keys. There were 17 different copies of AF #15 available for sale at those shows over the course of the year. It was a couple years later when the investment factor really took hold, and there were fewer for sale at regional shows and they started being sold by auction houses instead, but the copies are still out there. But people looking for ROI means sales are fewer because it takes a little time for prices to go up appreciably to provide the kind of ROI people want and that only happens if demand continues to increase, because the supply is plentiful. And scarcity only matters if there is demand. If there is only 2 copies of something and only 1 person wants it, there will be no increase in value or high prices for it. Beanie babies had perceived value when there was demand for them. They had no inherent value. When demand went away, so did the perceived value. Comics have perceived value because there is demand for them. They have no inherent value. If demand for them ever disappears, they will lose their value as well. -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2020 15:28:43 GMT -5
The prices may fluctuate, but rare comics are not a bubble. They aren't making any more mint Amazing Fantasy 15s. With collectibles, it is not supply that determines value, it is demand. If everyone who wants a mint AF 15 dies off and no one wants one, it doesn't matter how many there are. That is much more likely to happen than the demand for gold or agricultural futures to go away. Not likely, but more likely than the others. Rare comics are a bubble in that long term demand for them cannot be assured. It's not likely to go away, but if say Marvel or DC folds, and no new material and no new fans of the characters are created for a significant amount of time, demand will disappear and those books will have no inherent value. Again, not likely, but their value is tied to demand, not supply. -M I have a question about this. what happens when the people that want pricey books from the Golden Age all die off , do they all go to the dollar bin ?
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Post by tarkintino on Aug 9, 2020 16:48:24 GMT -5
The prices may fluctuate, but rare comics are not a bubble. They aren't making any more mint Amazing Fantasy 15s. With collectibles, it is not supply that determines value, it is demand. If everyone who wants a mint AF 15 dies off and no one wants one, it doesn't matter how many there are. That is much more likely to happen than the demand for gold or agricultural futures to go away. Not likely, but more likely than the others. Rare comics are a bubble in that long term demand for them cannot be assured. It's not likely to go away, but if say Marvel or DC folds, and no new material and no new fans of the characters are created for a significant amount of time, demand will disappear and those books will have no inherent value. Again, not likely, but their value is tied to demand, not supply. -M Interesting point. As printed comics in general are surely going the way of the dinosaur, and general public perception of its most famous assets being more tied to film and TV than paper, one can argue that there's an increasing lack of perceived value / appreciation for the medium, including what were once the guaranteed "most valuable / important" titles. Comics are not precious metals, or something that still captures collector attention like a 1925 Rolls Royce Phantom, the former being a necessary, extremely valuable commodity, the other as a vaunted piece of both automotive and cultural history.
Some comics once held a high place as part of popular culture, but again, with printed comics a mere shadow of where they once were, and many seemingly only interested in their film versions (and you can bet an audience burnout on that genre will come), one might ask what will the demand be for certain "most valuable / important" comics in say, 15 years? Not sure, but its not like the heyday of comic collector interests of decades ago, where there was a fight to buy so many rare titles not just as an investment, but due to a genuine love for the subjects by young and old. I cannot imagine that kind of love being there 15 years from now.
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Post by junkmonkey on Aug 9, 2020 17:10:13 GMT -5
I have a question about this. what happens when the people that want pricey books from the Golden Age all die off , do they all go to the dollar bin ? I suppose so. It won't be instantaneous but they will slowly dwindle in price as fewer people want to buy the things... I guess some will stay up there. I don't think for an instant any copy of Action Comics #1 is ever going to come out of whatever stratospheric levels they are at now. They have moved into a place where their rarity and iconic/cultural status is too important. The money and prestige of ownership has become more important than the actual thing itself. When you get down to it any Da Vinci painting is practically valueless as a thing. Some fabric stretched over some sticks with paint on. The one I mentioned upthread wasn't thought of as a particularly wonderful painting 'only a copy' but when they magically decided it was by Da Vinci himself the thing suddenly became of incredible value. Why? The thing didn't change. Nothing about the actual painting had changed one iota. But its attribution as 'genuine' moved it into a rarity class that made it magically 'worth' more.
That's never going to happen to Fantastic Four #1. It might happen to the original art but not the slabbed copy in any bank deposit box.
One of the things we used to hear all the time in the shop and the markets from punters was, "My granny used to have one of those but we threw it away... If we'd known they would be worth this much we would have kept it." To which we would either nod sympathetically (knowing full well anyone saying that was unlikely to buy it) or politely explain that if they had kept it it wouldn't be worth that much. It was only because people did throw them all away that they became expensive.
You don't know what you've got till it's gone.
And if enough people throw out their old Beanie Babies...
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Post by brutalis on Aug 9, 2020 17:31:48 GMT -5
The thing with comics in the future is will they decrease in purchases to becoming a "waste" taking up space waiting to sell or can they become like antiques where prices are based upon negotiating prices based upon what the seller is willing or will they be sold based upon last bought or selling price? You see here, I paid $500 based upon the then pricing guide and have had it 10 years here waiting for some sucker to pay me $1000 for it cuz' its only gone up in value since then! I gotta recoup my investment and make a profit off it mentality or does it mean hey, what you gonna offer me cuz' it's just sitting here collecting dust? Will there still be LCS or dedicated online shops like Mile High or Lonestar in the future turning a profit off used comics? If you travel the country, local used book stores where you found bargains willing to sell cheap or deal to make sales are going away as a thing of the past. Big warehouse places buying up EVERYTHING for online are pushing prices up or down daily on what is or isn't "collectibles" to buyers. It is all speculative driven. And why pay any kind of insane price for a copy to hold in your hand if you can get it digitally for a far more affordable price? I do love the Frazetta Conan or Tarzan's paperback covers but you wont find them cheap anywhere. So I have instead on my Kindle both COMPLETE series bought for $3 each as I care more about READING them than those Frazetta covers to look at.
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Post by impulse on Aug 9, 2020 18:07:11 GMT -5
Beany Babbies was an an example of an artificial collectable market. Different from things that are rare and not made anymore. And scarcity only matters if there is demand. If there is only 2 copies of something and only 1 person wants it, there will be no increase in value or high prices for it. Beanie babies had perceived value when there was demand for them. They had no inherent value. When demand went away, so did the perceived value. Comics have perceived value because there is demand for them. They have no inherent value. If demand for them ever disappears, they will lose their value as well. Yep, this is the key right here. Sure, there are fewer copies of rare golden and silver age key comics than there were Beanie Babies which were designed to be a "collectible," sure, but if there comes a day when no one cares about comics anymore, it won't matter what the intention was. I have a question about this. what happens when the people that want pricey books from the Golden Age all die off , do they all go to the dollar bin ? I suspect that with as popular as superheroes are in the popular culture that those keys won't become utterly disposable. Probably some end up in museums or passed on to family. Or acquired and hoarded by bored billionaires.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2020 18:24:27 GMT -5
Thats my point, why would it be worth anything less billions, there would be no audience for it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 9, 2020 18:54:29 GMT -5
With collectibles, it is not supply that determines value, it is demand. If everyone who wants a mint AF 15 dies off and no one wants one, it doesn't matter how many there are. That is much more likely to happen than the demand for gold or agricultural futures to go away. Not likely, but more likely than the others. Rare comics are a bubble in that long term demand for them cannot be assured. It's not likely to go away, but if say Marvel or DC folds, and no new material and no new fans of the characters are created for a significant amount of time, demand will disappear and those books will have no inherent value. Again, not likely, but their value is tied to demand, not supply. -M I have a question about this. what happens when the people that want pricey books from the Golden Age all die off , do they all go to the dollar bin ? It might be worse than that: they might go straight to the garbage bin.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 9, 2020 19:08:50 GMT -5
I have a question about this. what happens when the people that want pricey books from the Golden Age all die off , do they all go to the dollar bin ?
Well it means someone who didn't want to spent $3.5m on Action Comics #1 might finally get it for a buck.
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Post by Icctrombone on Aug 9, 2020 20:07:05 GMT -5
Todd Mcfarlane paid Millions of dollars for Mark Mcguires 70 HR ball and Sammy Sosa’s 66 HR ball. How much do you think there’re worth now? Any thoughts, shaxper ?
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