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genuine_article_comics Posts: 44
2/28/2016
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Hi Everyone,
As the title suggests I'd like to get everyone's input on whether you believe comic book market values have peaked or is there still room for growth?
I realize this is a very general question because I truly believe comics like Action 1 and Detective 27 will always increase in value, forever. My question is more general. Overall, are comics still increasing in value? Is there still room to continue an overall upward trend in value? Are we headed for a "crash" in the near future? How long can this upward trend continue? Etc..
Thanks!!!
edited by genuine_article_comics on 2/28/2016
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Robbie Posts: 159
2/28/2016
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Comics that are expensive because they are the hot current thing will mostly drop or crash. I think a lot of the new comics will be less than cover price in 10 years. And most of the comics that were in 4/$1 boxes 10 years ago are $1 ea or more.
The movies have a lot to do with the increased awareness. Disney will stop or scale back their MCU as soon as three of their superhero movie in a row lose money. Then people will stop buying new comics faster than new fans are added...
Western comics are mostly crashed.
Lots of the funny animal books are in low demand.
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Oxbladder Posts: 487
3/1/2016
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Well, let me put it this way. People have asked this for the 37 years I have been collecting and values have never dropped. Depending on the era and genre some books will stagnate but until comics cease being published in hard copy there is such a wealth of material out there that it will be very, very difficult for values to plunge. The standard trend is when certain books become largely unattainable by the bulk of collectors they move on to another group of books. People here just love to bash modern books. It is the favourite past time (and it is not contained to this forum). However, they always fail to note that several years down the road (usually more than 10 years) people actually start growing nostalgic for that material they so loved to hate and values go up.
When I started collecting in 1979 people were ragging on how crappy most of the books from the late 60's to 1979 were. Then they were complaining about the 80's, then the 90's and so on. There are not many books left from the 70's and 80's that are not going up in price. Definitely not as much as previous decades because there was definitely not as much attrition as there was pre-direct market, but they are still climbing in value. People are realizing now that despite the lower attrition rates they are still having a much harder time finding the highest grades because the books were shunned, crammed in bulk boxes unprotected and manhandlded by hundred or thousands of people so they are not in high grade.
Now you are saying well so what if only a handful are only in the hundreds, or more, dollars range? Well, if you purchased and took good care of those books in at the time or when they were cheap you can make a killing now. You it can take time to sell the expensive books and in that time you can often make way more money selling those books that are far less money but are still many multiples of value more than your initial purchase value. That's how the bulk of stores stay afloat, selling mostly new books and hundreds and thousands of cheaper back issues.
People are always wanting the really expensive books or the newest hot item when, if they play the game right they could make much more selling far more of the cheaper books that people want.
Myself value is an added benefit. I really do not look at any book as worthless. I have made money on all sorts of books that many collectors here would thumb their noses at.
Anyway, I digress. Right now it would take a lot for the comic market, as a whole, to crash and that is the only way values would take a nose dive across the board. There are some bad habits that collectors are enabling that could cause a lot of harm but, again, that would not be enough on its own to kill the hobby.
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CapnDoug Administrator Posts: 151
3/1/2016
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The comic book market is probably just like every other commodities market. From time to time there will be adjustments, but over all there will always be some form of demand to drive prices. I keep spouting off the mantra of "Everything is worth what the buyer is willing to pay for it." As long as there are people who want the product, they will have some value. It may not be the high values that some guides suggest, but it will be something.
My current concern (and I think this is one of the things that Oxbladder is referring to) is the almost ravenous demand for keys that the market has. I mean, I benefit from that demand in that a lot of the collections I buy have keys in them, and the sellers are unwilling to piece out the collection, but it's still a very narrow focus. I took Kairi to the LCS while she was here last week and she wanted to get the new Deadpool series. She got everything really easily, except for #6. Talked to the owner and it seems that any time there is a new key released, people come in and buy multiple copies in the hopes that it will go up in value. As a result, people who actually want to read the issue are out of luck until a trade is released. This is something I hear over and over again. It's not even that the issue is worth more than cover price, it's just that it's the first Deadpool 2099, so it might possibly at some point be worth something. I've started a number of people collecting over the last year and always tell them "collect what interests you." I never tell them to concern themselves with value or anything, just collect what you like. Increasing in value is just a bonus. Then again, I still run into people who think the box of comics they've been holding onto since 1991 will finance their child's education...
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genuine_article_comics Posts: 44
3/1/2016
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Thanks guys for your input.
I think there's room for continued growth. I'm not sure for how long but probably several years. I think a valid question to ask is; who are the collectors? Who's collecting? Who's collecting the Golden/Silver/Bronze age books? Are young people collecting? Is there a generation of collectors coming up behind the current crop of collectors buying all the expensive books now? There has to be a generation of people who care and are willing to buy these books after we get out of collecting. I think for the foreseeable future these comics will continue to increase in value but I also think the collector population will shrink thereby impacting the value of these comics.
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sargon Posts: 50
3/1/2016
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I have noticed that the local back issue "convention" held here in Raleigh 4 or 5 times a year (Sunday only) have seen a huge growth in the number of people who are attending them and what they are purchasing. It used to be that I could swing in after church lunch and it would be lightly attended with some nice items to potentially purchase. Since the rise of the Marvel movies, the attendance is up a lot and there are people everywhere. It looks like they are buying all sorts of books and many of the dealers talk about the new faces, mostly women and minorities, they are seeing in their stores. That is why a lot of the lesser known books and hard to find items from the 1960's and 70's are becoming hot and hard to grab hold of (Mod Wonder Woman, Lois Lane "I am Black", Friday Foster, etc)
I think we will see more collectors out of this influx of fans because the hobby has lost a lot of the stigma it had for so long. Now I can talk about owning comics and not have people look at my wife wondering why she married me (plus there are plenty of other reasons for that).
Sargon
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genuinearticlecomics Posts: 19
3/2/2016
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Excellent!
I guess a major factor in trying to determine if these comics will continue to climb in value is; " Is there a generation of collectors coming up behinds us"? I'm 44 years old and I'm guessing that the majority of collectors here are around my age give or take 15 years.
I'm interested in knowing if there are teenagers or younger interested in collecting these Golden/Silver/Bronze age books? Is there a future in collecting beyond the current crop of collectors? I think the answer to this question, in part, answers whether comics will continue to increase in value.
sargon: your observations on your comic convention are promising.
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/2/2016
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/2/2016
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Robbie Posts: 159
3/2/2016
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Will the current teens and 20s want comics in the distant future?
It's an interesting point. Right now they mostly don't care about physical stuff. Gigantic collections of movies, music, games... all downloaded or on the cloud. Will they want real world stuff when they get old?
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genuinearticlecomics Posts: 19
3/3/2016
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Robbie wrote:
Will the current teens and 20s want comics in the distant future?
It's an interesting point. Right now they mostly don't care about physical stuff. Gigantic collections of movies, music, games... all downloaded or on the cloud. Will they want real world stuff when they get old?
The answer to that question is the future of this hobby/industry.
If you believe the answer is "no", kids will not want physical product as they get older and the current crop of collectors "age out' of the hobby then at some point the market will crash....probably crash hard.
If you believe the answer is "yes" than we're probably safe and the market will continue a general upward trend in value.
If you equate music CD's to comics (not really a fair comparison...) then we know what happened. Massive drop in CD sales. Maybe vintage vinyl is more of an accurate comparison. Vinyl (I believe) has been on the rise after a huge drop.
Are there better examples to compare to comics?
UPDATE: This is not to suggest that even if the values of the old comics crash that the collecting hobby ceases to exist. people collect because they love the art form.
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/3/2016
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/3/2016
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/3/2016
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genuinearticlecomics Posts: 19
3/3/2016
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Does comicspriceguide have any data on members collections and people under the age of 30? How does that data compare with people's collections over the age of 30?
edited by genuinearticlecomics on 3/3/2016
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Oxbladder Posts: 487
3/4/2016
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I spend a decent amount of time in my LCS every Saturday and there are plenty of young folks that come in and who are subscribers. What is more promising is that for the youngest the parents are very cool with them wanting to buy comics. This was not the case five plus years ago and when I was younger.
There are also more women.
What I find most promising is that if you do not want Marvel or DC fares there is a great wealth of good reads out there. While the smaller publishers still have a hard time getting noticed it is largely their offerings that make this one of the very best time to actually get into comics. You can buy almost any genre and actually get a quality read. There is nothing more important to have than a robust offering of quality material.
IMHO whether all comic fans want physical copies or not really doesn't matter as long as they are buying what they like. There are are always going to be physical comic collectors out there to keep the market going as long as there are people spending money on comics in all forms.
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