Forbes article 2 2

[Twanj]

Whether comic art loses all value doesn't concern me.

I'm more worried about Florida being underwater in the future.

[vodou]

2 hours ago, romitaman said:

Back in 2001-2003 or so..probably 10% of the art i sold left the USA....Now it is easily 1/3 of all art i sell leaves the USA for other countries... This "IS A BIG DEAL!!!!

Good contra-comments overall Mike, but this part: when the EU/EUR collapses into factioned currency wars, all that art will be repatriated (assuming Asia doesn't particularly want to outbid us for our own material). 2025 is still on track and may even be a bit late. Expect major problem beginning next year continent wide + Brexit. Whoever holds the highest offices here, President but also House, will have to manage a soaring dollar...great for imports, but awful for exports and our own federal, state, local debt and obligations service.

[delekkerste]

3 hours ago, romitaman said:

I told him  that in 2025 i planned to start selling over time parts of my collection slowly, and when he asked me why i chose that 2025 year...i told him (back in 2001) that guys my age would be 60 years old in 2025...... (and guys my age and maybe 5-8 years younger than myself)  we are the very last of the hard core guys who worked our asses off with paper routes and odd jobs as kids and biked or walked to the local deli or candy store to buy our comics and smell the pages and all that.

And we didn't have video games and all that...Comics really were a huge part of our childhood and because of our love of comics back then...and comics not really being bought much by kids anymore.....I felt that the art market would begin to falter after guys my age hit 60......(2025)

I think there's a lot of us in that 5-8 years younger bracket who are still part of the generation that used our paper route money to buy comics, myself included!  I used to deliver a weekly newspaper in Colorado for the princely sum of $5 (that had to be far below minimum wage given how many hours it took to bag and then deliver the papers) and used that money to buy comics.  

As such, I don't think there was ever any definitive sell-by date in 2025.  Not that an inflection point couldn't have (or still could) occur then, but, it would likely be caused by other forces than the Gen Xers cashing out (e.g., severe recession).  I think you have to age out the entire generation (so, add 5-8 years), and, then, 60 is probably too low for the median cashing out point, I'm assuming more like 65-70 (in fact, some of the biggest collectors in the hobby have told me that they intend to sell at 65), which probably gets you to more like 2035 (and the effects may not be obvious until sometime after that, say, 2045 instead of 2025).  Though, I do wonder if it's going to take the Xers actually cashing out to actually tip the scales, or whether just their tapering off their buying over time will eventually cause a structural supply/demand imbalance?  I don't know, but, for now, I'm giving the market the benefit of the doubt and assuming, as a base case scenario, that it will actually take the liquidation of the Xers to inflect the long-term trend. 

There's no doubt that the impact of Hollywood and globalization has helped turn this into The Golden Age of Comic Art (tm)  that we have been/are enjoying. I am just skeptical that it will extend the demographic/generational cycle. On the one hand, the market has more reach than ever before, but, on the other hand, it's helped pushed prices higher and farther than they otherwise would have gone. And, more to the point, I've yet to see a big change (any change, really) in the age demographics of the vintage hobby - seems like it's mostly been a bunch of similarly-aged collectors, just from other countries, that have joined the party.    

[vodou]

5 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

some of the biggest collectors in the hobby have told me that they intend to sell at 65

FWIW I'll be flat all speculative material, only Wall Keepers, "by 65". I'd much rather be five years early than one day late getting out.

[batman_fan]

4 hours ago, romitaman said:

I used to live on street named  "CLIFF DRIVE" from 1992-2003....does that mean anything? LOL

 

....about this thread.....

Around 2001 or so......A very very prominent art collector and myself had this exact discussion of when we should start selling our art collections.....

I told him  that in 2025 i planned to start selling over time parts of my collection slowly, and when he asked me why i chose that 2025 year...i told him (back in 2001) that guys my age would be 60 years old in 2025...... (and guys my age and maybe 5-8 years younger than myself)  we are the very last of the hard core guys who worked our asses off with paper routes and odd jobs as kids and biked or walked to the local deli or candy store to buy our comics and smell the pages and all that.

And we didn't have video games and all that...Comics really were a huge part of our childhood and because of our love of comics back then...and comics not really being bought much by kids anymore.....I felt that the art market would begin to falter after guys my age hit 60......(2025)

But i never took into account or could have known the impact  in 2001 of..........  "The MARVEL MOVIES!!!!!"

AND

Disney buying MARVEL......

This to me has changed everything........ And I believe the comic art market in general, slowing down, has been pushed back 10-15 years at the very least from my original thinking...as the MOVIES have brought a lot of new collectors into our hobby.

Speaking just on the "BUSINESS" side of comic art .......

Back in 2001-2003 or so..probably 10% of the art i sold left the USA....Now it is easily 1/3 of all art i sell leaves the USA for other countries... This "IS A BIG DEAL!!!!

And this is a huge reason why comic art sales have grown by leaps and bounds over the past 2 decades...... With the internet in full swing now..... and getting our art hobby seen by more and more people who didn't know it existed previously is a big reason for current growth...With the movies.

Just my 2 cents and take it however you choose...

Mike "ROMITAMAN"  Burkey

 

So have you reset your date for starting to sell off your personal collection?

[Bronty]

42 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

I think there's a lot of us in that 5-8 years younger bracket who are still part of the generation that used our paper route money to buy comics, myself included!  I used to deliver a weekly newspaper in Colorado for the princely sum of $5 (that had to be far below minimum wage given how many hours it took to bag and then deliver the papers) and used that money to buy comics.  

 

Me too.   Bought what was then considered a high grade Iron Man #1 (not sure how it would grade today; sold it a long time ago) with three months of paper route money ($75!).

Edited July 11, 2019 by Bronty

[FlyingDonut]

On 7/8/2019 at 2:47 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I am and you should be as well. Look at what's happening to the prices of early- and mid-90s video games, Magic, and Pokemon cards. 

Here - I'll give you a freebie. Buy first generation Yu-Gi-Oh cards from this series. Put them away for a while. I speak from personal experience watching my 12 year old son in 2007 go NUTS for Yu-Gi-Oh cards. 2032? He'll be buying them left and right.

Well look at that.

[delekkerste]

12 hours ago, FlyingDonut said:

Well look at that.

That article was published before your post on the subject.  

[FlyingDonut]

6 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

That article was published before your post on the subject.  

Showed up in my email from PSA yesterday.

[delekkerste]

6 minutes ago, FlyingDonut said:

Showed up in my email from PSA yesterday.

Shure, shuuuuure, I believes ya... 

 

 

I'm just busting your balls.   

Edited July 17, 2019 by delekkerste

[exitmusicblue]

It's baaaack... restating from another (unrelated) thread, for visibility:

 

Tsk, tsk... this tired subject again?

If any doomsayers can explain or rationalize in their universes why Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's works are so celebrated and collected to this day, give it your best shot.

It's a shame OA boardies themselves don't realize that the best OA isn't just any sort of asset or collectible.

It's art. And I too will be thrilled if the day comes when I can pick up Jim Lee X-Men on the super cheap.  Sadly, I don't see that day coming any time soon.

[Bronty]

Oh it’s art!   Why didn’t you say so!  

[exitmusicblue]

52 minutes ago, Bronty said:

Oh it’s art!   Why didn’t you say so!  

The stamp comparisons, for one.  And gold, and western books, and and... -.-

[VintageComics]

On 7/8/2019 at 3:04 PM, delekkerste said:

I said that Ferrari F40s were vastly underpriced back in the 2011-12 timeframe (I have made references to it at least once or twice in The Water Cooler).   I was right - they quadrupled in price at their peak (although have started to come back down). 

I have made plenty of bullish comments about art & collectibles.  You're just never around when I make them! 

 

Just for you. I saw one on the road today. I'll probably never see another.

 

[AnkurJ]

1 hour ago, VintageComics said:

Just for you. I saw one on the road today. I'll probably never see another.

 

I know a guy who ones one. Takes a lot of experience to control this car. Very easy to lose control.

[VintageComics]

2 hours ago, AnkurJ said:

I know a guy who ones one. Takes a lot of experience to control this car. Very easy to lose control.

I was telling Gene, I used to try to get in to work at a local Ferrari dealership in Toronto called Gentry Lane in the early 90's and the owner had one. He also had a Ferrari 288 GTO (my fave Ferrari BTW) and he did a charity event where he allowed a professional driver to take people who made donations around the track for a few laps.

The driver lost control of the F40 on a lap and crunched the rear quarter panel.

Luigi never fixed it because it comprised the entire rear engine cover (it was one massive piece) that cost something like $80K at the time for just the piece.

He ended up passing away a few years later and his daughter inherited everything. She ended up selling the business and once Luigie passed, the dealership lost it's attachment to the Ferrari franchise and it went to another company called Maranello.

Blast from the past.

[exitmusicblue]

Hard to believe over a year has passed since this thread was started... I was such a rabble rouser back then.

[vodou]

5 hours ago, VintageComics said:

Luigi never fixed it because it comprised the entire rear engine cover (it was one massive piece) that cost something like $80K at the time for just the piece.

Uh huh, it's often not the purchase price but the upkeep that ruins The Ferrari Experience (or any exotic brand). I first garaged mine long term and then eventually just sold because routine maintenance like replacing the cam belts (note: not chains, which don't age over time!) required the engine to be pulled, something like 8-10k* licensed shop job...back in the mid-90s. Naturally, little shops wouldn't touch it and, really, did I want them to anyway? Similarly, I can work on cars - but not monkeying around myself pulling a Ferrari engine! IIRC.

Another memory was picking up an amazing condition (CGC 9.4?) 1982 Maserati Quattroporte (basically Italian Rolls Royce of the day) for $6k and then, this many years before it qualified for grandfathering out of state inspection smog requirements, required new exhaust, cats, etc, from the header all the way back. Hey, no problem, I can bang that out myself over a weekend, just need the parts. Oh well - $5k just for 'the parts', all the way from Italy. N O B O D Y domestic had stock. Trust me, pre-internet days, smaller world, I called everybody in the US that stocked Italian exotic parts before giving up and putting that one up on blocks too.

 

* It's been 25 years, memory could be off, but the lesson isn't

[AnkurJ]

They’re not easy to manage. I had a 599 but eventually sold it just due to the maintenance costs and if God forbid anything major went wrong. I call them a BOAT.

[vodou]

45 minutes ago, AnkurJ said:

and if God forbid anything major went wrong

Ha ha. Yes. The two I mentioned, both great "buys" from the previous owner but it wasn't hard to see that regular upkeep was a 15k/+ per year proposition and then you'd eventually bump into milestone maintenance and 'anything major' and whoosh...made just buying another car look better than repairing. Interesting world. And now -for the rest of you- you know how/why there are so many low mileage exotics around, even all the way back to vintage 70s and 80s models...no, the odometers have not been gamed (usually!), just nobody could justify driving them up into that first milestone maintenance. Save that for "the next guy" (usually "me"!)

And, of course, if it was a Northeast car, even lower mileage as only mad fools would drive them in winter conditions anyway, what with all that over-engineered hp and torque on tap...Spin City indeed