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Bronze age comics that are heating up on eBay...
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11,704 posts in this topic

17 hours ago, the blob said:

To have a "decent" enough income for all these $1-5K books you need to be making like $250-300K a year. Did these folks all show up recently? When I was making that kind of money (adjusted for inflation 20 years ago) a $1K book was a huuuge purchase. Hindsight being 20/20 in 2000 I should have plopped down $20K on as many slabbed AF 15s as I could buy with it.

I understand the money is there. I just don't get $1,000 for an eternals 1 or $90K for the Blade book. I can understanding scraping together $5K for an AF 15 or something. That's a centerpiece.

Maybe playing with 'house money?'

Many "keys" have doubled or more in past year or three - geez, I was recently forced (well, moved) to sell a CGC 9.4 SME 15 when the market price reached what I considered lofty, at over 500% what I'd paid perhaps 15 mos earlier.  That's probably an exceptional case, I know, but there's a ton of 'let it ride' money looking for tomorrow's candidates.  The 'investment' in these speculative plays doesn't necessarily reflect only earned income.

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1 hour ago, grebal said:

Maybe playing with 'house money?'

Many "keys" have doubled or more in past year or three - geez, I was recently forced (well, moved) to sell a CGC 9.4 SME 15 when the market price reached what I considered lofty, at over 500% what I'd paid perhaps 15 mos earlier.  That's probably an exceptional case, I know, but there's a ton of 'let it ride' money looking for tomorrow's candidates.  The 'investment' in these speculative plays doesn't necessarily reflect only earned income.

Sure, but those don't contribute to net buying.  You're selling an expensive book to buy an expensive book.  In theory, you're selling SME 15 should contribute just as much to driving prices down as your purchase of another key pushes prices up.

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1 hour ago, Hamlet said:

Sure, but those don't contribute to net buying.  You're selling an expensive book to buy an expensive book.  In theory, you're selling SME 15 should contribute just as much to driving prices down as your purchase of another key pushes prices up.

It depends on how long the person has had their books.  Say a person bought X-Men 94 - 142 twenty five years ago and paid $500 for the set.  Books are up across the board (some huge gains) and he sells the nice set for $4,000 and then turns around and buys a beater X-Men 1 with the money which was an all time high for the copy.  He didn't care since he invested $500 in the original books and loves his X-Men 1.  The buying power for the X-Men 1 was mostly generated by appreciation of the semi keys which i do believe is fueling a lot of the recent price increases.

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Rising tide ... Remarkable sale price for presumably very common book that I would have expected to see in the dollar box for NM.  This ones FN at best.  A 21% annual compounded return on a 1981 dollar after eBay and Paypal fees.  Who's buying?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Savage-She-Hulk-25-Marvel-Free-Combine-Shipping-/163833834873?hash=item262541ed79%3Ag%3AVT4AAOSwjEpdYu1t&autorefresh=true&nma=true&si=ZHSVTskbFAchF243tYtZZS%2BQ1Aw%3D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Edited by ThothAmon
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16 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

It depends on how long the person has had their books.  Say a person bought X-Men 94 - 142 twenty five years ago and paid $500 for the set.  Books are up across the board (some huge gains) and he sells the nice set for $4,000 and then turns around and buys a beater X-Men 1 with the money which was an all time high for the copy.  He didn't care since he invested $500 in the original books and loves his X-Men 1.  The buying power for the X-Men 1 was mostly generated by appreciation of the semi keys which i do believe is fueling a lot of the recent price increases.

The buying power for the X-Men 1 is being generated by whoever is buying the X-men 94-142 from the person in question.  It may make it easier for the person in question to justify spending the money to themselves, but ultimately it doesn't really matter to the market.

Ultimately what matters to the market is that someone is willing to put $4000 of new money into the market to buy the X-men 94-142.  The person selling the run to buy the X-Men 1 isn't driving prices of the comic market ( as a whole ) up or down.  That person is just trading one group of books for another.  Imagine that prices were still what they were 25 years ago and that person sold the group for $500 and bought the X-men 1 for $500.  The overall price level of the comic book market ( as a whole ) doesn't matter to him, and he isn't affecting it.

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6 hours ago, grebal said:

Maybe playing with 'house money?'

Many "keys" have doubled or more in past year or three - geez, I was recently forced (well, moved) to sell a CGC 9.4 SME 15 when the market price reached what I considered lofty, at over 500% what I'd paid perhaps 15 mos earlier.  That's probably an exceptional case, I know, but there's a ton of 'let it ride' money looking for tomorrow's candidates.  The 'investment' in these speculative plays doesn't necessarily reflect only earned income.

Should have held on to that one. This book will continue to climb once production of the film ramps up, and again near its release. Sellers and flippers who are dumping SME 15 are underestimating the cultural significance of the character (ala Black Panther). Predicting that Shang-Chi will be the second-highest grossing MCU film domestically (bumping down Black Panther), and internationally (bumping down IW). And predicting that the 9.0+ graded books will increase by at least a third in value by then. 

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4 hours ago, 1Cool said:

It depends on how long the person has had their books.  Say a person bought X-Men 94 - 142 twenty five years ago and paid $500 for the set.  Books are up across the board (some huge gains) and he sells the nice set for $4,000 and then turns around and buys a beater X-Men 1 with the money which was an all time high for the copy.  He didn't care since he invested $500 in the original books and loves his X-Men 1.  The buying power for the X-Men 1 was mostly generated by appreciation of the semi keys which i do believe is fueling a lot of the recent price increases.

Is this person named Gabe?

 hm

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3 hours ago, the blob said:
10 hours ago, grebal said:

Maybe playing with 'house money?'

Many "keys" have doubled or more in past year or three - geez, I was recently forced (well, moved) to sell a CGC 9.4 SME 15 when the market price reached what I considered lofty, at over 500% what I'd paid perhaps 15 mos earlier.  That's probably an exceptional case, I know, but there's a ton of 'let it ride' money looking for tomorrow's candidates.  The 'investment' in these speculative plays doesn't necessarily reflect only earned income.

I could not get 25% of guide for raw 9.0-9.2 copies of sme 15 not long ago.

Agree take the money and run. Where was the fan base before the movie announcement?

 

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8 hours ago, fastballspecial said:

Agree take the money and run. Where was the fan base before the movie announcement?

 

Agree with this...I know I may be different, but if I wasn’t interested in a character when I was a kid, it does nothing for me now...full disclosure, I don’t sell and only occasionally buy back issues...just because a movie is introduced doesn’t change my buying habits...I understand if you are a dealer but don’t if you are just a collector...

Edited by JTD
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17 hours ago, alexanderjk said:

Should have held on to that one. This book will continue to climb once production of the film ramps up, and again near its release. Sellers and flippers who are dumping SME 15 are underestimating the cultural significance of the character (ala Black Panther). Predicting that Shang-Chi will be the second-highest grossing MCU film domestically (bumping down Black Panther), and internationally (bumping down IW). And predicting that the 9.0+ graded books will increase by at least a third in value by then. 

Books like this are clearly speculators and flippers, not collectors looking to hold onto it indefinitely.

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5 hours ago, JTD said:

Agree with this...I know I may be different, but if I wasn’t interested in a character when I was a kid, it does nothing for me now...full disclosure, I don’t sell and only occasionally buy back issues...just because a movie is introduced doesn’t change my buying habits...I understand if you are a dealer but don’t if you are just a collector...

I am not necessarily in that boat. I can get interested in a character later. Black Adam seems cool. I never collected Jonah Hex.

MKF? I dunno, fans of the series say it was well done. I have a bunch of them and have never gotten around to reading them. But the series got cancelled 35 years ago and the character barely got revisited since then. I guess Bruce Lee spy just doesn't interest folks. I find it amazing because the character had TWO marvel titles going at once way back when in a world where captain America, thor, and iron man only had one each (granted, they were in avengers too).

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31 minutes ago, spreads said:

Books like this are clearly speculators and flippers, not collectors looking to hold onto it indefinitely.

 

17 hours ago, alexanderjk said:

Should have held on to that one. This book will continue to climb once production of the film ramps up, and again near its release. Sellers and flippers who are dumping SME 15 are underestimating the cultural significance of the character (ala Black Panther). Predicting that Shang-Chi will be the second-highest grossing MCU film domestically (bumping down Black Panther), and internationally (bumping down IW). And predicting that the 9.0+ graded books will increase by at least a third in value by then. 

Why is MKF all that culturally significant? I suppose he is an Asian character who got a relatively long lived series, but he is not close to being Marvel's first Asian superhero (was that Sunfire or someone else?) Yes, China is a bigger market than japan, but...

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7 minutes ago, the blob said:

I am not necessarily in that boat. I can get interested in a character later. Black Adam seems cool. I never collected Jonah Hex.

MKF? I dunno, fans of the series say it was well done. I have a bunch of them and have never gotten around to reading them. But the series got cancelled 35 years ago and the character barely got revisited since then. I guess Bruce Lee spy just doesn't interest folks. I find it amazing because the character had TWO marvel titles going at once way back when in a world where captain America, thor, and iron man only had one each (granted, they were in avengers too).

Martial arts was def a thing people got interested in for awhile.

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