A Foreigner's view

[Mushroom]

Let me state up front that this is not a US bashing thread but simply an alternative view around the myopic threads that have recently been appearing about the CGC market. Let me also state that I lived for 4.5 years in the US am married to a Georgia Peach and have two young boys who are both US citizens.

 

CGC for all its' inconsistencies is not just a service that provides a check on whether a book has been restored or not. For those of us living in other countries it provides a safer means of obtaining books in the grades we require and protects said books from adverse exposure to the US and local postal services. Availability of high grade material (in OZ at least) is virtually nil and therefore if you are a comics freak then CGC is a god send.

 

The issue that keeps coming up in this forum is whether the CGC market is sustainable. Constant comments about there being truckloads of high grade books out there that haven't been graded and that the CGC census does not reflect this are not supported by fact. Ask any DC GA or SA collector and they will tell you how difficult it is to get high quality books. As an example, let's take two keys ASM 100 and Bat 200. ASM has 426 graded of which 37 are 9.6 or higher (almost 10 %) whereas Bat has 107 of which only 4 are 9.6 or higher (less than 4 %). Do the math and it is obvious that the Bat is more difficult to obtain.

 

The Bat 155 @ 9.2 currently on ebay is already above guide with 6 days to go on the auction. It has attracted 9 different bidders, the bulk of whom are members of this forum. Why is it then if people really believe that there is so much good raw stuff out there that such furious bidding exisits.

 

The other point I would like to raise is around sustainability of high grade CGC's. For all those stateside why don't you take some time and notice where a lot of the high grade books are going. If you did you would see that a significant number are leaving the US (probably never to return). In my own collection I have over 40 top census rated books (the bulk of these are DC GA and early SA). A lot of these books may never be beat in terms of grading (especially my beloved non super hero Brave and Bolds).

 

Ebay has opened up a much larger market and the american sellers are more than happy to fuel the appetites of foreign buyers with their best material. It will be interesting to see the quality of SA and GA books at comic cons in 3-5 years.

[ninanina]

Interesting point of view as it mirrors some of the posts where I suggested a growing WORLDWIDE acceptance of the hobby. As your post suggests, CGC and e-bay has had a lot to do with the changes over the last few years.

 

I have also heard that sellers (G. Dolgoff ?) have over the last few years sent a lot of low-grade stuff over-seas. These won't be coming back to North America any time soon either. To hear that hi-grade CGC's are leaving as well to a growing community of collectors, is very satisfying.

 

It's a positive outlook for the hobby that I share. Always nice to read a positive post on the future of the hobby. However, I am sure ComicInvestor if he were still here, would have a field day with your (and my) point of view.

 

Perhaps there will come a time when so many hi-grade silver/golden/bronze age comics will be CGC'd that the difference in price between a raw and CGC copy may become insignificant. I mean if the hobby is inundated with collectors that can grade as well as anybody else can, who cares if it's CGC'd or not. There's been a lot of surprises in the hobby over the years, so who knows what 10 years down the road will bring. All you need to do is look at the difference in the general acceptance to the lack thereof of restored books over the last few years as an example as how trends in collecting change over the years. CGC is definitely in now but lets not count out the future of "RAW".

 

My 2 cents.

[kryptonitecomics]

I don't disagree with most of what you are both saying. I think that the populations of the better grade GA and SA books will hold up pretty well over time. I agree that their are more out their, but I just don't see a case of anything coming on to the market from those era's that would flood the market. With regards to the Bronze through Modern age of comics, their is a ton of nice stuff still out there, with the exception of some of the more obscure Bronze Age titles. I think that we can use the graded coin and Baseball Card markets as a pretty good indicator of what the future holds for the prices of CGC books. Example, PSA Hits the market, and Card prices start to soar and a card fresh out of a pack isn't good enough anymore, now everyone has to have a GEM Mint 10. Now fast forward 10-15 years, and the availability of most cards is huge, but the demand is not. RC's and harder to find vintage cards still pull decent money, but a PSA 10 Michael Jordan Rookie card that pulled $35,000 3 or 4 years ago, can now be had for $7,000-$10,000. I don't think the difference will be as dramatic for comics, since Action Comics #1, Detective Comics #27 etc will always be in high demand no matter what the grade due to their rarity. What I am convinced of is that these 9.4-9.8's that having been pulling 2, 3, or even 10 times guide will not continue on this pace for the long term. I can't say for sure if the market on CGC'd books will level out 2 years from now or 5 years from now, but we have already seen a leveling of a lot of common and modern books.

[COI]

I agree with your post, but to be fair, most of the negative comments about the CGC market and the so called "inevitable crash/correction" have mostly been directed at the more common stuff, especially over-speculated moderns in 9.8-10.0. From the conversations I've had with people all over the hobby, from dealers to investors to collectors, I think the general consensus has been that rarer/high demand stuff will hold strong. After all, the majority of price stats that are discussed on this board, and in the market as a whole, are from ebay and other auction sources. And it isn't a select few who are bidding strong, but a wide range of buyers with different goals. I also believe that there will not be much flooding of HG material to the market on most pre-66' books, and the farther back you go, the less likely it becomes. The census #'s on 9.2+ books may rise from time to time, but I seriously doubt there will be much more early Silver and G.A books coming in, and the amount that does show up will only continue to feed the demand, but not satisfy it.