Ive been getting books at deals... especially with offers and in auctions. Got a Sandman 8 CGC 8.5 at 49.99 yesterday. Bought a VF/NM Wolverine 1 1982 for under 100 bucks!
As someone who still thinks that $100 is a lot of money, I remain amazed by how much people spend on comics. I was astonished during the boom when I sold off my 70s collection, and it seems that prices still haven't dropped nearly enough to make most comics a sensible purchase.
@@MetalBum I know. But multi millionaires know how to protect their investments. In the art and rare book worlds, many auction sales are faked (sales inflated in-house or between colluding rich people) in order to create excitement around a market that is declining. I suspect that happens with comics too.
Flippers are moving to toys, cards, and retail exclusives, which are becoming more profitable. That’s why comics are being left behind and prices are dropping. I couldn’t be happier about this because now I can afford silver age keys! I hope it drops further.
I would agree with they’re moving to toys and cards, but retail exclusives are barely profitable and they’re coming out with much less now. A lot of exclusive stores are struggling
Switch out the kool-aid. Big money plays a negligible role in the comics market. What matters is discretionary income and the economy is horrid as evidenced by constant bank failures, an inverted bond yield, anemic growth and unchecked inflation.
The best time to buy stocks is not at their all time highs. I just think spec is dead as disco. Popular movies drove the spec market. Now the movies aren’t popular. Bronze and Silver keys are still doing ok.
@@StoneyMaloney1 I don't know what fantasy world you're living in or who your investor is. My portfolio has stunk for 5 years. I'm heavily invested and not making squat.
The summer is usually slow for collectibles. Comics have dropped a lot since the comic boom, and many keys have mostly bottomed out. Auctions are up and down depending on who’s bidding, but I don’t see any more huge drops on the horizon. It’s a great time to buy if you’re willing to hold on to your comics for years.
i want to get back in to comics, but its hard when you have 4 different xmen comics, 3 spiderman comics, you have avengers, avengers twilight and now ultimate avengers. and comics constantly being rebooted (deadpool)
*_As I am "Near Done" or "Almost Collection Complete", or just haven't been active in my collecting past year or so; I do remember there was(still is?) FALSE date floating around. Data in the way as if you bought a book for $100,000 in July 2021, but had not paid the book down before July 2023; the sale was not plotted in before July 2023._* *_Say the book was only worth $80,000 in July 2023, suddenly there's a $100,000 sale that bumps the book up in price-but this is a 2-year-old sale that was not added to the data pool before July 2023._* *_Similar, real-life decisions, by (GoCollect I believe?) of not adding the sale when the book was bought, but in fact not before the last cent of the book was paid off; really messed up the values of some High End books._* ---> *_Now, does this still happen, or are the sales now added when the book i sold/traded hands?_* Edit: wrote wrong month in example.
A hobby is a hobby. If I bought all the time, it would be a full-time job. I have one of those. I will get on plane and go someplace nice in a week for a few months. Use the monies for my relaxation. It is a good time to snap up some books though. I am giving books to the granddaughter.
Summer causes alot of industries to dip, hopefully it rebounds. Last weekend at Denver Fan Con there was a ton of people meeting creators so I have some faith.
How many times must we emphasize that we're in a recession impacting the comic book market? Sales have declined for many key books, a trend likely to continue for the next 12 to 24 months. While a few titles may defy this downturn, most won't. In essence, it's currently a buyer's market. It is most important to note that the money you use for purchases must be expendable/disposable income.
Comic Price are going to continue to trend downward, however, certain key or covers are still going to be hard to get because the Sellers will not lower prices, not unless they have no choice to do so. Most collectors are only buying the retail exclusives 1:10 1:25 1:50 1:100 etc There are too many new comics being printed to get those exclusives so eventually there will be a big crash, but who knows when that is going to happen?
Still havnt found a replacement copy of tmnt #1 that isn't beat to hell that I can afford...hasn't been much slip on that one ..probably the 40th anniversary helping it out ...im gunna find one eventually ..
Swaggle, thank you for the video. Many people will say money is moving to stock market or bitcoin, but I believe that is a small sample. Rather, inflation is still real and disposable income is shrinking. In California you know wages are increasing (fast food min wage and projected ballot increase in November) and this is spiking costs. I see people holding on to cash, getting by with increase food costs and rent. I don’t think we see a rebound until Q2 of 2025.
Swag, have you done a look at how the funny book market performed in the last big recession? It's still unclear if there will be a big recession but many would say it's somewhat likely. A recession could take the market to unexpected lows (since we are already in a down market) which could be a great time for collectors with available discretionary funds to get a few books at great prices. Also, it could be helpful for comic investors to see in advance a recession dip in prices can occur if it has in the past.
I respect all your hard work building the indexes to display 6 years of data; however, I wish you would show a 12-month graph instead and zoom in. It isn't easy to read.
Not everything is dropping. I've been hunting for a Journey 83 and a Tales 39 and have had no luck. They both are going back up. When they come up for a good price they are gone in seconds. I got lucky last year when I snagged an X-Men #1 for a great price. That books has gained thousands in 1 year. The mega keys don't feel the downturn these other books are feeling. I saw Hulk 181 on the list which is definitely down. I'm hoping to grab one after the movie heat dies down. Werewolf 32 is another book I'm stalking. Nobody seems to budge on that book in a good grade.
Forgive my ignorance -- but with regard to your figures for "non sales" -- is that both slabbed and unslabbed? Just slabbed? I am wondering if there is a way of telling whether raw book sales have actually increased (something I am hearing anecdotally) -- and that it's the slabbed books that are slowing down? Or vice versa? Or is there no way to tell? I ask because it does seem to me that maybe we are at an inflection point with regard to slabbing and this might be influencing the figures you are presenting ...? Perhaps? Bear with me for a while, here -- this is a long one -- but would you broadly accept the following characterization of what has happened in world of third party comic book grading over the last several years? I think the original impulse behind third-party grading was probably good: rooted in a desire to protect buyers and collectors by providing a useful service assessing the condition of fragile collectibles that were sometimes subject to amateurish forms of restoration and other dirty tricks. But the job of assessing condition was (and is) much more challenging than perhaps most people realize (because it actually takes time and training to do any kind of highly specialized work, and the requirement of time and training cuts into profits). As a result, whatever the original impulse, the grading business got sidetracked, and "slabs" became most useful as a marketing tool capable of transforming common 1970s, 1980s and 1990s comic books that were not really worth a whole lot of money into something more desirable. They did this by essentially manufacturing a new kind of rarity -- that elusive 9.8 label. And work was easier, cheaper, and much more immediately profitable (for a lot of people) than the work of providing a consistent high quality assessment of genuinely rare (and fragile) items. I should emphasize that shift of focus doesn't have to be a bad thing in and of itself -- the phenomenon of "manufactured rarity" has a long tradition in many fields (from colored vinyl LPs to limited edition handbags to signed and numbered fine art prints) and it's not necessarily always a scam. But after a while there was just too much money to be made in rapidly grading hundreds of not very rare comics in order to "manufacture" the rarity of the 9.8 -- just too much money to be made churning out those cases and labels -- and this led to a a breakdown of standards: longer wait times; ethically dubious sliding payment scales based on the perceived value of the book; inadequate holders (given the archival function they are supposed to serve); special favors to bigger clients (I really am amazed the community is willing to stand for this, but the vids over at automatic comics do seem to suggest that is what is happening); lack of consistency in grading practice, with the difference between high grades such as 9.4 or 9.6 or 9.8 often left unexplained (if not deliberately mystified); and just a general lack of transparency and accountability when things go wrong. BUT even as standards have slipped and scandals have rocked the faith of the collecting community, many people remain heavily invested -- or perhaps, over leveraged? -- because they have just sunk too much money into the slabs, and cannot afford to face the truth that maybe it is all a bit of a Ponzi scheme, and that CGC in particular is not providing the "guarantee" they claim to provide? The collapse of the Covid comics bubble, while unrelated to CGCs failings, might also make it hard to swallow such a bitter pill. It's a double whammy for anyone who has invested many hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars in high-end slabs. So people grumble about the wait times, complain that the distinction between a 9.4 and a 9.6 or 9.8 doesn't always made sense (even in the absence of grader notes), and are rightly horrified by things like the re-holder scandal -- but they also continued to tolerate these abuses and failings, because getting a few 9.8s in a big batch of submissions still seems like a way of turning dross into gold. It just makes that much of a difference to what people are (or were) willing to pay. And this brings us to our present moment, and in particular the proportionately massive increase in 9.9 books, starting a few months ago. Would you agree that by adding all these new 9.9s to the market, CGC is risking hurting their most loyal customers -- the same people who have invested so much in pursuing 9.8s -- because surely there is no way that an increased volume of 9.9s won't have some consequences for the value of 9.8 books? It seems to me that CGC has initiated a policy that will almost certainly diminish the desirability of what was, up to now, the most important "product" in their inventory -- the 9.8 grade -- in an effort to manufacture a new "product" in the form of the 9.9. And that is surely going to hurt their best customers -- many of whom are already smarting from the post-Covid crash. So: Is this an inflection point? Is this a moment where enough people say "no" -- and change the game? Could the collecting community (particularly collectors with genuinely rare and precious older books, who have the most at stake) start demanding more from the entire industry of third party graders? Will we (as a community) start having conversations again about the difference between conservation and restoration, and the best ways to extend the life of fragile objects from decades past? Will we start taking on more responsibility for grading ourselves, rather than completely outsourcing a significant aspect of the hobby? And will more people decide that many comic books just don't need to be graded at all in order to be appreciated? Are they already doing so, and might you being seeing that in your figures? (Is there any way to look for that, or are the market monitoring systems too skewed towards slabbed books? I genuinely don't know the answer to this, but I figure you might?) I asked a similar version of this question over at Automatic, since you guys between you seem to be some of the more astute surveyors of the market out there. I'm genuinely curious what you think, given the way you are clearly carefully watching these trends. Anyway, thanks for bearing with me, if you have even read this far.
ASM 100 9.0 sells for 400 on EBay - Sale reported to GPA. 3 Weeks later ASM 100 9.0 on sale on Heritage. Buyer sees last GPA sale at 400. Buyer takes into account the 25 pct buyers premium and settles on 300 as fair price to pay SOLD! On Heritage for 300. Sale reported to GPA at 300. GPA enters data at price point of 300 Now ASM 100 9.0 looks like it took a $100 dollar dive with a red arrow going down. Perception now is the book has gone cold where in reality it did not. Next EBay buyer now pays 275 for next book. If my theory is correct the system is setting things up for failure.
I don't think that is accurate at all. Heritage reports the full purchase price the buyer paid. So a book at hypothetical $300 and a 100 buyers premium would show up as 400 on GPA.
People thought buying comics would make them rich like the 90s. Hey this F list Character is going to be in the MCU so let me put the book up for 10x what it was before it was rumored. 2nd influncencer omg this F list character is the new BATMAN !!!!!! Actually he is better than Batman because he KILLS !! Ok let's put our copy 20x more than the other guy. Now it's back to people who want the books or to collect the series. I read full runs of series I like so usually wait for a series and buy the whole thing or buy the whole year on ebay. . Precovid, during covid, after covid bulk books are $1 on ebay or on Facebook marketplace. Bigger keys are still expensive. Not insane like during Covid but more than the average person can afford. Average person makes 50-60k pretax. So a 5-10k comic is just never ever going to happen unless they are super financially irresponsible. Comics are a hobby and lose value instantly that $5 book you bought off the shelf (hopefully with a discount because its on your pull list) is worth 56 cents when you try to resell unless some influencer goes OMG this is the biggest thing to ever happen to Spiderman !!! Then his minions buy every copy of the book then cry that little kids don't read comics.
If you're buying for investment you have to look at the long-term. You're going to have to think about looking at holding those books for a decade or 2 plus!
@@Rhett-Christopher long term, you can do better in stocks. Comics won't take off in a short period like they did during covid. You won't miss an investment opportunity in comics....
