Press and Flip -- Why the SA market is going to crash . . . 3 3

[2beerStan-migration]

 

 

X-men 1 in 9.0 and 9.2 prices have doubled over the last couple years even with more high grade copies added to the census including two 9.8's

 

Semi and non keys will probably fall in silver age and definitely bronze age.

 

 

[tth2]

well, big spread between 100K and 10K.... thats a crash to me.

 

9.4s are selling for $25k+. I don't see $10k for a 9.6 happening in this reality. Maybe world war and the end of the dollar as a currency, but not much else.

 

Next fall I would be surprised if these prices don't go south.

I've been hearing a similar refrain in the hobby for decades. Still hasn't happened (at least not over the long run).

[tth2]

 

X-men 1 in 9.0 and 9.2 prices have doubled over the last couple years even with more high grade copies added to the census including two 9.8's

The 2 9.8s have been in the census for much longer than 2 years. For all practical purposes, one of them (the Curator) will likely never emerge, and the other (the PC) is known to be a resubbed 9.6.

[tabcom]

Nearly 8 years later, I'm curious if any original contributors to the topic have changed their opinion of the topic. Is there market data to confirm or reject the original debate of 2011?

I am now ambivalent. My collecting habits are limited to local estate auctions.

[Sweet Lou 14]

Thanks for bringing this thread back from the archives ... it was a good read.

I was a very active SA collector from 1998 - 2007, buying almost exclusively raw books in the 8.5-9.4 range, with a few exceptions (probably my best purchase ever was a CGC 9.4 Hulk #181, for $1,500).  I did major renovations on my house in 2008-2009 and my collecting really slowed down, to the point where I stopped buying books after a while.

I got serious about my collection again in 2017, submitting entire runs and upgrading where necessary to try to put together the best collection I could.  At first, I did a lot of kicking myself for not having invested in high-grade CGC books a decade earlier, but I was having fun and I decided not to think about that any more.  After all, I could have put a bunch of money into Amazon stock in 2007, too.

In the two years since I got back into the hobby I've already seen some big swings (up and down) in the value of certain books.  Especially when buying at auction, there have been times where I've bought a book well above GPA and wondered if I was being really foolish or really smart.  Because I'm buying to hold, and I'm definitely not in the press-and-flip business, I generally spend more time tracking prices on the books still on my want list than the books I already have.

But from this thread, and from some other anecdotal data I've seen in GPA, it seems like the prices I'm buying at now, while higher than they were in 2007, are (at least for some books) markedly less than they would have been in 2011.  Since it was mentioned earlier in the thread, here's Avengers #4 in 9.4 as one example:

I've worked hard to educate myself and I think I've become pretty attuned to the market on the books that I collect, but especially when buying mega-keys I always worry that there's more history to the book I'm buying than I realize.  When I see a conversation like the one going on in the AF #15 thread about a 9.0 that (presumably) got pressed to a 9.2, I wonder if there are books in my collection that knowledgeable collectors would talk down because of some background info that I wasn't aware of.  The good news is that I'm going to be holding these books for a long time, and should the day ever come to sell, I'm hoping they will have at least retained their value.  If they enjoy substantial appreciation in value, all the better -- but I collect because I genuinely love the books.

[SECollector]

56 minutes ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

I've worked hard to educate myself and I think I've become pretty attuned to the market on the books that I collect, but especially when buying mega-keys I always worry that there's more history to the book I'm buying than I realize.  When I see a conversation like the one going on in the AF #15 thread about a 9.0 that (presumably) got pressed to a 9.2, I wonder if there are books in my collection that knowledgeable collectors would talk down because of some background info that I wasn't aware of.  The good news is that I'm going to be holding these books for a long time, and should the day ever come to sell, I'm hoping they will have at least retained their value.  If they enjoy substantial appreciation in value, all the better -- but I collect because I genuinely love the books.

I can definitely relate to that - and it probably affects me even more, being still a relatively newbie. I started educating myself about the market for the first time in 2016, the same year I also purchased - some months later - my first ever graded book (from eBay mind you), my AF15 CGC 4.5. I then went all in and got most of the really big Marvel books, within a couple of years. I had in the meantime become confident about what I was looking for each book within the grade I felt comfortable with, but didn't have the slightest clue about the potential history of it (well, except my X-Men 1 than according to the label, was owned by Nic Cage and it is probably unpressed since its in an old label, but then again after reading here, who knows?).

I had my similar moments as yours - but at the end I am happy with those books, really really happy that I did buy them when I did since I would probably not afford some of them today (just a couple of years later) and even if one or two of them has a... secret, dark and guilty past (lol) it doesn't really affect me. I am not really planning on selling them, probably not in my lifetime.

But I always read with a pinch of awe similar stories like the 9.0 / 9.2 copy you mention and admire both the incredible memory and the extensive detective work those finds are based on.

[jcjames]

[Sweet Lou 14]

On 6/13/2019 at 5:04 PM, tabcom said:

Nearly 8 years later, I'm curious if any original contributors to the topic have changed their opinion of the topic. Is there market data to confirm or reject the original debate of 2011?

I am now ambivalent. My collecting habits are limited to local estate auctions.

Coming back to this question, in 2012 / 2013 was there a perception around here that the market was in a "crash"?

[namisgr]

52 minutes ago, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Coming back to this question, in 2012 / 2013 was there a perception around here that the market was in a "crash"?

Not that I can remember, outside of the annual dire warnings about an upcoming crash that never materialized.  Rather than a 'crash', there was discussion at that time about how the SA and BA market was favoring keys and classic covers, while most non-key issues were declining in value.

Also, in the early years of the Boards, there was a popular phrase that emerged following the major auctions that "the madness begins at 9.6", but with pressing becoming a cottage industry 9.6s became much more commonplace, and so that by 2013 and on you'd probably modify the phrase to "the madness begins at 9.8".  This grade inflation is another factor driving prices down for non-key comics.

Edited June 16, 2019 by namisgr

[paul747]

Thread got that wrong for now, but at some point a clock is right 2 times a day. Every year someone says it will crash I think they need to take the "R" out or crash ! One thing is certain Prices are crazy!

[tabcom]

The motivation for the topic back then was due in part to CGCs normalizing pressing of comics. There was a large segment of collectors that felt pressing was an unethical practice that would ultimately damage the market value.

In hindsight, I assumed the collector market was stagnant and pressing was a price inflating gimmick. Not realizing the impact of the trending superheroes movie industry would effect the demand as greatly as it did.

I'm not making any more predictions. Just a question. . .

If superhero movie's faulter, will comic values follow?

[Mmehdy]

On 8/19/2011 at 7:32 PM, tth2 said:

I've been hearing a similar refrain in the hobby for decades. Still hasn't happened (at least not over the long run).

how about the last 40 years....it's been that way since FF1 broke $100....there are only so many high grade SA/GA..and that's where I would put my collection emphasis on...white pages a super premium.

[Straw-Man]

14 hours ago, tabcom said:

The motivation for the topic back then was due in part to CGCs normalizing pressing of comics. There was a large segment of collectors that felt pressing was an unethical practice that would ultimately damage the market value.

In hindsight, I assumed the collector market was stagnant and pressing was a price inflating gimmick. Not realizing the impact of the trending superheroes movie industry would effect the demand as greatly as it did.

I'm not making any more predictions. Just a question. . .

If superhero movie's faulter, will comic values follow?

if superhero movies tank, it'll be your faulter. 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Straw-Man

[zosocane]

On 6/17/2019 at 2:32 PM, Straw-Man said:

if superhero movies tank, it'll be your faulter. 

Weird to think that the SA market pretty much hinges on what one guy -- Kevin Feige -- will do post-Endgame.  If you want to trace it all to one person, over an 11-year time period with 23 films in there (excluding the DC/WB films), he's the cause in fact for the boom in SA books.  

[NoMan]

On 6/15/2019 at 8:37 AM, Sweet Lou 14 said:

Thanks for bringing this thread back from the archives ... it was a good read.

I was a very active SA collector from 1998 - 2007, buying almost exclusively raw books in the 8.5-9.4 range, with a few exceptions (probably my best purchase ever was a CGC 9.4 Hulk #181, for $1,500).  I did major renovations on my house in 2008-2009 and my collecting really slowed down, to the point where I stopped buying books after a while.

I got serious about my collection again in 2017, submitting entire runs and upgrading where necessary to try to put together the best collection I could.  At first, I did a lot of kicking myself for not having invested in high-grade CGC books a decade earlier, but I was having fun and I decided not to think about that any more.  After all, I could have put a bunch of money into Amazon stock in 2007, too.

In the two years since I got back into the hobby I've already seen some big swings (up and down) in the value of certain books.  Especially when buying at auction, there have been times where I've bought a book well above GPA and wondered if I was being really foolish or really smart.  Because I'm buying to hold, and I'm definitely not in the press-and-flip business, I generally spend more time tracking prices on the books still on my want list than the books I already have.

But from this thread, and from some other anecdotal data I've seen in GPA, it seems like the prices I'm buying at now, while higher than they were in 2007, are (at least for some books) markedly less than they would have been in 2011.  Since it was mentioned earlier in the thread, here's Avengers #4 in 9.4 as one example:

I've worked hard to educate myself and I think I've become pretty attuned to the market on the books that I collect, but especially when buying mega-keys I always worry that there's more history to the book I'm buying than I realize.  When I see a conversation like the one going on in the AF #15 thread about a 9.0 that (presumably) got pressed to a 9.2, I wonder if there are books in my collection that knowledgeable collectors would talk down because of some background info that I wasn't aware of.  The good news is that I'm going to be holding these books for a long time, and should the day ever come to sell, I'm hoping they will have at least retained their value.  If they enjoy substantial appreciation in value, all the better -- but I collect because I genuinely love the books.

Thanks for posting this screenshot. Pretty sobering. 

[VintageComics]

On 6/18/2019 at 7:54 PM, NoMan said:

Thanks for posting this screenshot. Pretty sobering. 

There's always a story behind the story.

Avengers #4 is a very interesting example because about 10 years ago a 9.6 copy sold at auction for about $96K. We talked about it on here indepth because it shocked everyone.

Because of that sale, the marked popped for that book for a while with everyone thinking their 9.6 copy was worth $100K

In fact, if I have my details correct, the buyer of that book purchased it thinking it was going to upgrade to 9.8 and paid the price to roll the dice on it.

Since then the market has settled back into a steady, upward climb for the book.

I remember watching an eBay auction for an Avengers #4 CGC 9.4 back in the early 2000's when I was new to eBay and was utterly shocked when it sold for $6K! Today, about 15 years later it's a  $13K book.

Has the market crashed or did it just correct after the small bubble that the 9.6 sale affected the market with?

[NoMan]

1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

There's always a story behind the story.

Avengers #4 is a very interesting example because about 10 years ago a 9.6 copy sold at auction for about $96K. We talked about it on here indepth because it shocked everyone.

Because of that sale, the marked popped for that book for a while with everyone thinking their 9.6 copy was worth $100K

In fact, if I have my details correct, the buyer of that book purchased it thinking it was going to upgrade to 9.8 and paid the price to roll the dice on it.

Since then the market has settled back into a steady, upward climb for the book.

I remember watching an eBay auction for an Avengers #4 CGC 9.4 back in the early 2000's when I was new to eBay and was utterly shocked when it sold for $6K! Today, about 15 years later it's a  $13K book.

Has the market crashed or did it just correct after the small bubble that the 9.6 sale affected the market with?

I'd love to read some kinda study done Re: when a Book X sells for a ton of dough (taking folks by surprise) if other copies come out of the woodwork, owners thinking "I've got Book X and based on that last sale, now's the time to sell." If statistics reveal that was a good time to sell or not. 

[VintageComics]

42 minutes ago, NoMan said:

I'd love to read some kinda study done Re: when a Book X sells for a ton of dough (taking folks by surprise) if other copies come out of the woodwork, owners thinking "I've got Book X and based on that last sale, now's the time to sell." If statistics reveal that was a good time to sell or not. 

That's normal economics. It happens.

[NoMan]

1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

That's normal economics. It happens.

I understand that. Curious if it is a good strategy is or not.

[VintageComics]

Back in 2009-2012 the pressing / comic crash threads were coming to a climax and pressing was blamed as the major contributor for a depression in prices because supply was increasing of higher grade books.

I brought up several facts that people dismissed out of hand, that I thought were very valid.

1) fear drives behavior and simply the discussion of pressing spooked collectors into spending money. It's simple logic. Not enough time had passed for the census to swell but word of pressing could and would move faster than the actual census itself

2) we had more 'SA/BA Pedigree' finds during that time period than any other that I can remember. I can't even remember them all. Sucha News, Twin City were two of them. There was the Mound City find. We had the Billy Wright Pedigree come shortly after. We literally had several HUGE pedigree finds in a very short period of time. I argue that simply the wealth of material coming to market alone would have depressed prices as several issues of the same book in high grade started to appear.

3) I argued that the depression of the world economy (remember the crash of 2008?) caused many people to either stop buying altogether or start selling their collectibles to cash in to pay bills as people lost jobs, homes, etc. Either one of those things would cause a depression and  both together would definitely affect the market

Here we are years later. The Pedigree finds have slowed down and the market seems to have absorbed it all.