How did the 90's bubble bust impact GA sales/values? 3 3

[jimbo_7071]

1 hour ago, sfcityduck said:

Stocks and comics are an apples to oranges comparison.  Their is no "Dow" index for comics.  Further, while ever share of Nike is the same, ever Action 1 is not.   Even so, the 8.5 Action 1 which sold for $1.5M in 2010 is going to have to garner about $5M to outpeform Nike stock, which is not going to happen.  Obviously, you can pick many other stocks which have had greater appreciation.

I think for a lot of collectors, the fact that GA comics appreciate in value is the icing on the cake of being able to own and enjoy the comics.  

I don't even care whether my comics appreciate in value; I just don't want to buy comics and then have them lose all of their value. I'm sure most of my comics will be sold by my heirs, not by me, but I still don't like the idea of (potentially) squandering money. I'm not convinced that the recent high prices on sci-fi, horror, and books from second-tier publishers will hold, and those are the kinds of books towards which I tend to gravitate.

[lou_fine]

1 hour ago, sfcityduck said:

Their is no "Dow" index for comics. 

In a way, I would tend to disagree with your statement here.

I always kind of thought of the total dollar value of the Overstreet Top 100 GA Comics as being similar to the Dow 30. 

Both of them are definitely imperfect since they look at only the top books/stocks in their field and rotate out the ones that fall by the wayside over time.  Similarly, the bigger books/stocks also tend to have a bigger impact on the overall index/value, with the smaller ones accounting for less. 

Maybe it's just me, but I see both of them as an imperfect, but relative indicator or measure of the value for both markets over a period of time. 

[lou_fine]

On 3/28/2018 at 2:18 AM, jimjum12 said:

Since we are talking about the 90's, has anyone mentioned the year when OPG dramatically dropped all tiers below NM and made NM 9.2 ? As I recall, Fine plummeted from around half of NM to a third of NM ............ people were having nervous breakdowns, especially store owners who specialized in VG books. The entire SA market seemed to stall for several years. I had a friend who did real well scarfing up SA books at bargain prices then, because he still believed in them. GOD BLESS...

-jimbo(a friend of jesus)

Although that may have been the mistaken perception that many of us had, it definitely did not reflect the actual reality. 

Being a long weekend, I dug back into my old Overstreet's to take a look at what actually took place.  It looked like the change from NM 9.4 being replaced by NM 9.2 as top of guide was done in the 2004 edition.  This was based entirely on the thought that prices in the uber high grades were far too volatile to report on accurately, especially since CGC had been in place for quite a few years by then and speculators were paying ridiculous prices for uber HG books.

Being collectors and wishful dreamers, it would appear that many of us (myself definitely included here) tend to focus in on the top of guide price when we look for the valuation of a book.  In actual fact, we should be looking at the bottom of guide because that is what the valuations in the price guide are based upon.  What actually took place is that Overstreet basically not only kept the same 1:3 spread in place for Good to Fine, but also kept the prices exactly the same for the bottom 4 condition levels for most of the books listed in the guide.  He then placed a higher price (i.e. increase the spread from Good valuation) for both the VF/NM 9.0 and NM- 9.2 condition levels to reflect the increase prices being paid for higher graded books at the time. 

So yes, in relationship to the higher top of guide prices, there was definitely a drop in the percentage valuation of Fine condition books.  Yet, no actual change in the relationship to the bottom of guide prices as that 1:3 ratio from Good to Fine remained exactly the same, even up to the current edition of the guide.  So, the guide valuation in Fine condition for virtually all books did not fall when Overstreet cut his top of guide listing down to NM- 9.2.  The only exceptions to this would be the odd out of favor titles that he cut the valuations for across all condition levels, but definitely a lot more such as the SA Marvels where he continued with the increases for all of the condition levels (including Fine) across the entire condition spectrum.

Interesting to note that the first copy of the Overstreet guide generally had ratios of either 1/1.25/1.50 or 1/1.50/2.0 for Good, Fine, and Mint grade levels.  As you'll note, Overstreet continued to increase this spread in the higher grade levels over the coming years to reflect the higher prices that were being paid for the higher grade books as time went on.  With the past few guides though, he seems to be going the other way in order to reflect the recent phenomenon of record prices being paid for entry level or low grade copies of certain GA keys and/or HTF classic covers.  For example, Overstreet has increased the bottom of guide Good valuation for 'Tec 31 by over 92% for the past 2 years while increasing the top of guide NM- valuation by only 28%.  Similarly, we see the same thing with a book like Flash 86 which has increased by a whopping 377% in the bottom of guide Good valuation, while increasing by 172% in top of guide NM- valuation over the past 2 years.

So, although many collectors claim that Overstreet is out of touch with the real marketplace, it looks like he is aware of the trends and does try to reflect them in his price guide valuations. 

[Tri-Color Brian]

On 3/27/2018 at 7:35 PM, jhm said:

Thanks a ton to everyone for the feedback so far. It's been both valuable and entertaining!

So far I'm not hearing anything that says it's a good time to pause on buying my favorite niche areas of GA. Hopefully that's not my addiction passion getting the best of me;)

Re. why I think there may be a bust...

Let's just call it pure opinion. I hope I'm wrong, but my gut tells me the amount of flipping I'm seeing of books that are less than 3 months old is gaining traction and isn't likely to end well.

If you were in high school or college in the early 90s you are too young to pause in your GA buying.  I made the mistake of "pausing" in the mid-70s, and when i got back in the early 90s the prices were outrageous.  Don't be a fool.  Keep buying what you want, but be smart about it.  This hobby has endured for 50+ years beyond the day when my dad said it was a fad...

[Crowzilla]

9 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Being collectors and wishful dreamers, it would appear that many of us (myself definitely included here) tend to focus in on the top of guide price when we look for the valuation of a book.  In actual fact, we should be looking at the bottom of guide because that is what the valuations in the price guide are based upon.  What actually took place is that Overstreet basically not only kept the same 1:3 spread in place for Good to Fine, but also kept the prices exactly the same for the bottom 4 condition levels for most of the books listed in the guide.  He then placed a higher price (i.e. increase the spread from Good valuation) for both the VF/NM 9.0 and NM- 9.2 condition levels to reflect the increase prices being paid for higher graded books at the time.

A great explanation and so very true. If I remember correctly it was this basis which formed a big rift between Jon Warren and Bob during the heyday of the Overstreet Updates in the 90s. Jon's spreadsheet and input was pricing from NM down instead of from Good up the way Bob had been doing it and it was causing major discrepancies in the valuations of Fine/Good between the update and the annual guide.  Not to mention the fact that Jon tried to actually keep up with market trends in quickly raising values on hot SA books. Remember when Cap 100 started streaking over the $100 mark, but Suspense 58/59 lagged behind at $8 in the guide and I think Suspense 63 was maybe half of that? Jon was constantly being vetoed by Bob on some of the pricing decisions and it frustrated Jon greatly.

[lou_fine]

On 3/30/2018 at 11:11 PM, Crowzilla said:

A great explanation and so very true. If I remember correctly it was this basis which formed a big rift between Jon Warren and Bob during the heyday of the Overstreet Updates in the 90s. Jon's spreadsheet and input was pricing from NM down instead of from Good up the way Bob had been doing it and it was causing major discrepancies in the valuations of Fine/Good between the update and the annual guide.  Not to mention the fact that Jon tried to actually keep up with market trends in quickly raising values on hot SA books. Remember when Cap 100 started streaking over the $100 mark, but Suspense 58/59 lagged behind at $8 in the guide and I think Suspense 63 was maybe half of that? Jon was constantly being vetoed by Bob on some of the pricing decisions and it frustrated Jon greatly.

I remember being at one of my first SD Conventions in the early 90's when Jon had a small table selling off some of his comic books.

It was the same year when the first Wizard Magazine came out and I remember that he was laughing about the magazine and how it would never ever last. 

Yet ironically, it was the Overstreet Update that didn't last and I believe that Jon actually ended up working with Wizard in charge of the pricing guide portion of their hugely successful monthly magazine.