LonelyPost

If the above numbers were recalculated without the buyers' premium and assuming that the seller was not charged the 10% commission, the results would be very different. Could also run another scenario, but with with a seller commission of 10%. The results might be interesting. A big congratulations to the new owners who bought those books at pedigree at prices lower than HA - it would be great to know who they are. I was on pedigree site, put 3 bids. Those that were below HA's prices were instantly outbid. The one I won was one which I bid till it exceeded HA's price. I think my experiment confirmed my theory. Overall, I do not think this was a flip.

As I am an international buyer, I would like to share my experience over the last 12+ years buying from the Boards. I offer references, either from past sellers or friends who familiar board members. Alternatively, I provide my office reference for them to call to validate (this would only be useful it the firm is a global firm and well established). Paypal F&F is not an option which is available in many countries in Asia (where I am based) due to banking regulations. I usually top up to cover the pp transaction fees. For big purchases and only with reputable sellers, bank transfers are much cheaper (around 5% to 8% if you include foreign exchange spread between PP and bank rates). However, bank transfers are extremely risky for the buyer as there is no protection once the money is remitted. Hence, this should only be done with reputable and well established sellers. Hope this is useful.

What is frightening about this, is how infectious it is and the speed that it spreads. Italy was only 21 cases on Feb 21 - 28 days later, it is 41k, indicating that it approximately doubles every 2.8 to 3 days. See the chart below (source: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus) ;What this means that a healthcare system which is coping at, say 25% capacity, will within a week be overwhelmed by the sheer number of new infections (assuming that it doubles every 3 days). And the mortality rate is around 10%. It doesn't help that the incubation period is 14 days which mean an undetected carrier can go spreading and the impact would only be know in 2 weeks which by then may be far too late. We are experienced the 2nd wave now and getting ready for the 3rd wave. These waves are a result of a couple of religious gatherings, wave 2 was 16k people from Feb 27 to Mar 1 and the next wave will be from another gathering on 30k on March 6. With an incubation period of 14 days, it will take that long for the new infections to show up. Anti-malarial drugs are still in testing stage. Hot weather do not kill the virus - where I am based, it is tropical weather all year round, 85 to 95 F. Our rate of infection is similar to Italy's. Hence, why our entire country has enforced a restricted movement order, a step away from a complete lock down for 2 weeks, starting on March 18. Nothing gives immunity unless you get it first and recovered but then you may be susceptible to another strain. If it is party as usual, the consequences will be deathly due to incubation period. Parties and social gatherings will just encourage new infection clusters. Hence, lock down and minimising social interactions (based on what South Korea, China and Taiwan did) will help to break the cycle of replication. UK has seen a big u-turn in their policy, from March 12 when their strategy of herd immunity was introduced. 5 days later, they u-turn and adopted an aggressive strategy of self isolation and limiting social interactions (probably frighten by the fact that cases were doubling every 2 days). Over my working career of 25+years, I never had to work from home over an extended period (now 2 weeks but potentially could stretch to a month). So it is very hard to anticipate what will happen next but the scale and scope of this economic standstill will have an enormous resultant impact. Let's see how this pans out by May 25 - Memorial Day. The weeks to come will certainly be memorable. Apologies for the long rambling note but the staying at home is making me extremely bored.

This one is going to be very different from the recessions of the past 50 years. It is unusual as economic activities are accelerating to a standstill due to the flurry of stay at home directives across Europe and US (with NY and California initiating this). Without work, demand will disappear. With interest rates close to zero, oil prices below US30, this may turn into a deflation which would adversely affect asset prices. Businesses are going to find it extremely challenging to cope with the disappearance of business activities and subsequently getting business back to normal levels - all these are going to take time. It is only just mid March 2020 but 2020 is looking very much like a write-off. I am extremely interested to see how the May auction pans out as this will be a barometer for the things to come.

Failed coup - forced trade deal - face palm .... economies today are all interconnected - if europe and asia are badly affected, rest assured, US will also be similarly impacted.

It is early days. Just wait out. No reason to hurry. My thoughts: What is frightening about this, is the speed of how this spread and the mortality rate. It must be pretty bad if China needed to shut down a major province on the eve of Chinese New Year - they should have done it earlier, nevertheless it helped to stem (or delay) the tide. If you look at Taiwan, despite their proximity to China, Korea and Japan, the number of cases there is extremely low - I suspect the years of drilling and getting ready for war with China had imbued the population with discipline. COVID 19 at this juncture, based on the number of global cases and deaths reported, the mortality rate is around 3%. Assuming long term mortality rate is 1%, the numbers would be devastating. Comparing this to the last pandemic, H1N1 in 2019 (from April 2009 to Aug 2010), H1N1 was estimated to impact 24% of global population, with US reporting around 61 million cases - death toll was around 280k and US was 12.5k - the mortality rate was around 0.2. This was also helped by the discovery of a vaccine in Dec 2009. So if you extrapolate from that pandemic to this, which WHO recently declared to be a pandemic and no vaccine, and based on its trajectory from Dec 2019 when it was first reported - it is still early days but the trajectory looks worrying hence, why governments are worried. I have seen a couple of flu epidemics such as SARS, H1N1 that went thru Asia, but I have never seen one which has such a big impact to economic activities.... as well as curricular activities. This one, could be far worse than the recessions that world went thru over the last 30 years or so. It is also interesting to see how China copes with this given that they had yet to experience a recession since Deng Xiopeng reformed China's economy in 1978.

I am primary a buyer. Have been buying on the forums since 2008 and i am based overseas - I wish more stuff could be sold on CGC boards, thus removing the middleman and thus giving greater savings for both buyers and sellers. That said, I am also a frequent customer of CC, Clink and HA. HA has the best selection of books as well as excellent reach via their catalogs. Clink and CC for me as the buyer, have lower transaction costs. For CC, the main drawback is the long long auction period. Main thing on buying on these boards, the seller must be reputable as my payments are generally via wire transfers rather than paypal to reduce the 5% transaction fees. Ebay on that score, also have extremely high transaction costs. Buying on the boards, is very much like fishing - you wait and check, wait and check till you see something that catches your fancy - that needs patience on a daily basis.

Speaking to my kids who are now 19 and 16, drove home your above observations. Although they are surrounded by books, comics and comic related stuff, they have zero interest in comics. None of my friends are into comics and neither are their children. We are a dying breed.

very well said and illustrated !!! Will use this for future reference with fellow OA collectors

Nothing goes up forever. Collectors have limited funds (unfortunately). Pieces which go for record highs in auctions may end up with the winners' curse. 2008 may not be a good starting point as this is when credit became relatively easier to obtain due to the quantitative easing measures taken by central banks. Record low interest rates helped push up prices. Production prices in China have also increased as quality of life improved resulting in higher prices asked for new pieces (statues and toys). In the past 10 years, there has not been a major recession or downturn - it will be interesting to see how the OA market (and the larger comic market) fares when the next major downturn happens. Another factor which is pushing up prices would be the collectors aged between 40 to 55 who are now at their earning prime. They may be buying OA for nostalgic reasons, reminding of their childhood memories (I am guilty of that) hence, paying beyond rationale. A collector who collected GA OA, commented that he saw the same crazy buying for GA OA years ago, only to see subsequently limited interest for GA OA. I think whether today's OA prices can continue to sustain would be whether the next generation of collectors (the 20 to 40 cohort) will have the same interest and where would be the subsequent generation of comic collectors come from - my children are not into comics, they are simply too distracted by other stuff on the internet ...

Possible to PM who it was sold to in Singapore - I am a collector in Malaysia, north of Singapore. As it is rare to bump into a GA collector in this part of the world, was just wondering whether it was someone I know or not - Either way, it will be good to touch base with him or her.

as per PM Avengers 29, DD 32 and 39. Thanks Andy.