Forbes article 2 2

[delekkerste]

19 minutes ago, Bronty said:

  Farthest thing from my mind because I know you undervalue and don't take seriously collectibles you aren't interested in... same point I'm making today almost 10 years later.

I embraced that general 'Donut' message about generational change 17 years ago.   I'm not sure you're all the way there yet (wrt to anything other than comics).   

Here's some Donut-style free advice: you saying the above repeatedly doesn't make it any less wrong the more times you say it. 

I take everything seriously. 

Edited July 8, 2019 by delekkerste

[Bronty]

2 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

Here's some Donut-style free advice: you saying the above repeatedly doesn't make it any less wrong the more times you say it. 

I look forward to you posting your black lotuses and sealed Donkey Kong Maths.

[vodou]

16 minutes ago, Timely said:

What's stagnant or basically dead? BLB, anything Western, stamps, pulps, Obediah Oldbuck.

The one I never got, going back to the late 1980s (and throughout the 90s) was all those old radio shows on cassette, The Complete Shadow, etc. Oh man...Bud Plant tried so hard to push that stuff, it must have sold, but I'm betting to nobody under the age of 50...then!

[vodou]

12 minutes ago, Bronty said:

I look forward to you posting your black lotuses and sealed Donkey Kong Maths.

Question: On the collectible game boards, do they bash comic art all day long?

[exitmusicblue]

Holy crappola.  Food fight !!!

In somewhat related news, just happily received an OA page by my fellow Korean-American Jae Lee.  Love his Namor period art.

https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1562723

[Bronty]

6 minutes ago, vodou said:

Question: On the collectible game boards, do they bash comic art all day long?

 great question.   Nah.   Those boards have their own issues but bashing other stuff doesn't usually come up.

So guess what's the most popular discussion?  (and what has always been the most popular discussion there going back 15 years despite it being a young hobby?).     Bubble bursting threads.      As far back as the websites have been open.    When things that are 10,000 were 400, and the average collector age was like...22....    the 'bubble was bursting' even then.       

Gene you would be right at home  

Some element of any collecting population seems to have a permanently negative outlook on prices.    Sometimes for good reason, and sometimes not so much.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Bronty

[batman_fan]

26 minutes ago, Timely said:

If you are looking to invest, try to pick the things that keep going, from generation to generation. Mainline... Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, TMNT, Transformers.

IE: I watched Transformers & played with the toys when I was 12.  My 8 year old watches the cartoons, new movies & loves the toys. 

 

What's stagnant or basically dead? BLB, anything Western, stamps, pulps, Obediah Oldbuck.

YOU FORGOT PEANUTS !

[Timely]

18 minutes ago, batman_fan said:

YOU FORGOT PEANUTS !

Peanuts is not dead!!!

[batman_fan]

14 minutes ago, Timely said:

Peanuts is not dead!!!

I meant as part of that continue to go generation over generation 

I always got to get my Peanuts plug in and John Buscema (but that is just for Tim)  

[suspense39]

2 hours ago, vodou said:

The one I never got, going back to the late 1980s (and throughout the 90s) was all those old radio shows on cassette, The Complete Shadow, etc. Oh man...Bud Plant tried so hard to push that stuff, it must have sold, but I'm betting to nobody under the age of 50...then!

Ha! I bought some of those for driving back in the 80s! I was maybe 19 or 20.......

[delekkerste]

13 hours ago, Bronty said:

I look forward to you posting your black lotuses and sealed Donkey Kong Maths.

Nahhh...I don't collect things because they're hot, or even because I think they're undervalued. The few times I've done that in OA, I ended up buying things that I realized I didn't really care enough about to hold them for the long run.  And that, my friend, is why I focus primarily on collecting art from books that either came out or that I was exposed to (via reprints, back issues, etc.) in the 1983-1986 timeframe.  Not because I don't appreciate other art, or because I think this art has the most price appreciation potential.  Quite the opposite, in fact - it's because I'm quite sure that no one who didn't grow up with this stuff I'm buying will ever appreciate this material as much as me and the other kids who grew up with it.  As such, I collect this art because I know that I, personally, will never love anything else in the hobby more, and that most of the pieces that I buy from this period will be among the very last to leave my collection.  

I'm not harboring any illusions that the things I'm collecting these days are ever going to be more appreciated in the future than by those of us who grew up with it appreciate it today. I'm assuming that most of it will probably decline in value over the very long run, if not outright, then at least after adjusted for inflation.  My concession to that inevitable reality is that I've stopped putting fresh money into my collection and have capped my lifetime spending on my collection at 2015 levels (everything I've acquired since then has been funded through sales and/or trades).    

12 hours ago, Bronty said:

 great question.   Nah.   Those boards have their own issues but bashing other stuff doesn't usually come up.

So guess what's the most popular discussion?  (and what has always been the most popular discussion there going back 15 years despite it being a young hobby?).     Bubble bursting threads.      As far back as the websites have been open.    When things that are 10,000 were 400, the bubble was bursting then.       

Gene you would be right at home  

Some element of any collecting population seems to have a permanently negative outlook on prices.    Sometimes for good reason, and sometimes because have their heads up their behinds.

Jeez, it seems as though I've become your straw-man punching bag for all of your grievances with this hobby.   

In any case, sometimes it's hard to tell apart a fad, a bubble and a hobby that is truly in its early stages.  

And, like I said - even if MTG has legs, some of the prices now are like 100x to 1000x where other hobbies were at comparable stages of development. Just being "young" in terms of longevity doesn't have to mean "young" in terms of price discovery.  And, although MTG debuted a little before the Internet started to disrupt everything, it's not like it's immune to everything that has happened to other analog hobbies.  Let me be clear: I'm not making any predictions here, just playing Devil's Advocate and asking questions.  Questions that I suspect a lot of people just using traditional Rule of 25 playbooks aren't even thinking to ask...  

Edited July 9, 2019 by delekkerste

[Bronty]

I was being facetious Gene  I know you’d rather set your money on fire than buy into things you’re not interested in, and that’s cool.    I’ve always believed that if you try and force interest in something you’ll make all kinds of mistakes anyways so why even try?   You’ll be spending money on stuff you’re not into and making mistakes to boot.    Losing money while not having fun.   

I don’t know if the price of video games , mtg,  etc is good bad or indifferent at this moment in time and I’m not particularly interested in that debate because I did my buying 15 years ago.    The go-forward prices will go up and down and sideways over time I’m sure.     But if you’re being honest with yourself you were pointing at these things being fads that wouldn’t amount to anything ten and fifteen years ago.    At some point they stop being fads.    At some point it’s demographics and actual interest.    Sure the internet has sped things up.    But “nice action 1” money in those hobbies is still only 100k.     Action 1 money in comics is 2 mil.     5%.      That’s entirely as it should be but don’t kid yourself, they *are* young in both duration and price discovery compared to comics.       A 25 or 30 year old hobby with a 100k price point for top items is not out of line, nor is it particularly different than comics, which weren’t collected in any real way until the early 1960s.   25 to 30 years after that, the top price point was.... about 100k...     Multiply for inflation and divide for pre internet illiquidity and we are back where we started at 100...

Edited July 9, 2019 by Bronty

[vodou]

8 hours ago, Bronty said:

But “nice action 1” money in those hobbies is still only 100k.     Action 1 money in comics is 2 mil.     5%.      That’s entirely as it should be but don’t kid yourself, they *are* young in both duration and price discovery compared to comics.       A 25 or 30 year old hobby with a 100k price point for top items is not out of line, nor is it particularly different than comics, which weren’t collected in any real way until the early 1960s.   25 to 30 years after that, the top price point was.... about 100k...     Multiply for inflation and divide for pre internet illiquidity and we are back where we started at 100...

I was just a little too old to get into home system games (and a bit later CCG) the way Bronty and younger folks did - in the 1990s. So I understand why I'm not crazy for them, ever, or now. But I also know that I couldn't believe how crazy everybody was -back then- about that stuff, kids a few years younger than me then. They were not about comics, as much, especially as that period is also marked as the speculator collapse of comics 95-2000ish?. It's not a leap to imagine CCG and home gaming to take the lead now (for momentum) and eventually surpass comics/art in time. All this in an clean echo chamber though, back in the gritty real world  how the demographics and economic picture play out affects everything at a higher level...if you don't have it, you can't spend it, plain and simple.

[Bronty]

Simplest way to look at the changeover is this:   There will never be a 70s game that approaches the value of the best 70s comic.    And there will never be a 1980s or 1990s or later comic that approaches the value of the best 80s or 90s game or ccg items.   The changeover is already there plain as day.    It’s already reflected in the market; it’s already happened.

Tmnt 1 is the closest contender but it can’t hang, ultimately. 

Edited July 9, 2019 by Bronty

[vodou]

14 minutes ago, Bronty said:

The changeover is already there plain as day.

Yep, I think that post nailed it.

[Bronty]

21 minutes ago, vodou said:

Yep, I think that post nailed it.

Thanks.    Its a simple illustration that gets lost in all the BS.    The changeover is not some theoretical based on future extrapolations.    Its present fact.

[jaykza]

12 hours ago, vodou said:

I was just a little too old to get into home system games (and a bit later CCG) the way Bronty and younger folks did - in the 1990s. So I understand why I'm not crazy for them, ever, or now. But I also know that I couldn't believe how crazy everybody was -back then- about that stuff, kids a few years younger than me then. They were not about comics, as much, especially as that period is also marked as the speculator collapse of comics 95-2000ish?. It's not a leap to imagine CCG and home gaming to take the lead now (for momentum) and eventually surpass comics/art in time. All this in an clean echo chamber though, back in the gritty real world  how the demographics and economic picture play out affects everything at a higher level...if you don't have it, you can't spend it, plain and simple.

I was very much into video games through the 80s and 90s. There was one game in particular on NES that I was obsessed with. The title was called "Baseball Stars' and for some reason it's production was very limited (may have been because of NeoGeo). This game was groundbreaking at the time because it would allow you to create and save many teams on the cartridge. You had the ability to create your players down to their batting stance or pitching form. It also allowed you to create leagues of user created teams over 162 game season. Every game you won, you received money, which then allowed you to power up your players in various areas. The gameplay was ahead of it's time as it was extremely fluid and allowed you to dive and jump the fence out on the field. 

My dad would take my brother and I on a search of every flea market in NJ in the hopes of finding a used version of this game. After over a year, we finally found it and it was the greatest day of my life. To this day, to me, it's the greatest game of all-time along with giving me incredible memories of the search with my dad and bro and enjoyment once attained.

Even with all this backstory, if it popped up in an auction, I would not give two sh!ts . Why? Because it's a piece of plastic. If I wanted to play, I could download it and experience a high degree of nostalgia. I'm only a single data point so take that for what it's worth but the reason I care about say comic art over something like a video game cartridge is that even if you strip away all the feelings of nostalgia, with comic art you are still left with a piece of art crafted by an artist that is singular and attached to a narrative form that has and will probably continue to impact generations of humans. 

Am I making a case that comic art will always retain it's value? Not at all. Nobody knows and it's useless to predict, imo. We have no idea how the world will look 20 years down the line. Looking from the standpoint of nostalgia, of course it's easy to say nobody will have nostalgia for some of this stuff down line. However, art has been appreciated and admired for many generations so I don't believe overall that people will ever use it for toilet paper. For me, the question comes down to whether, as we transition away from nostalgia (or the thought of OA as just a collectible), connoisseurs of comic art will evolve in the depth of their analysis and appreciation. I am hopeful as I see more and more content these days based around evaluating and appreciating the depth of artwork from past masters from individual artists and others interested in the medium. What does that have to do with value? I don't know, but anything that helps more people appreciate the form and the medium will more than likely help it to survive on to the next generation as more than just a collectible. 

Edited July 10, 2019 by jaykza

[Bronty]

Lots of people have that view point and that’s fine just like lots of people read TPBs of Xmen 1-10 where others want the originals.   FWIW baseball stars is freaking amazing.   You have great taste.

Edited July 10, 2019 by Bronty

[Captain Canuck]

On 7/8/2019 at 4:54 PM, batman_fan said:

YOU FORGOT PEANUTS !

Went with a friend and his 6 year old son to a local theme park. They had Snoopy walking around, he looked at Snoopy and then turned to his dad and asked him where was the Paw Patrol characters? Which the park didn't have any of. He didn't really know who Snoopy was or care for him. When the strip ended, so did the fascination in Peanuts. Snoopy is popular in Japan, but not enough to continue to drive the demand and prices for Peanuts OA. The prices will eventually start to drop for the art. Can't see the next generation paying $20,000 for a Peanuts Sunday Strip.

[Bronty]

20 is for dailies now