Taking Profit and Selling a Comic Book when its Up in Price - Opinions? 0

[Sentral]

Hello All,

  So recently Ive been thinking of selling some comics to take profit.  For example i bought a tales of suspense 52 ungraded a few years ago for 350 dollars and it came back as a CGC 6.0, and now its worth maybe 1500 to 2000?  So that does seem like quite a jump to me.  i have always sucked with this sort of thing.  Thats why i was bad a stock trading and never took profit.  So how do you feel about this?  There is that fear it will keep going up or go down after the movie.  What are some times you sold a comic to make money and then it kept going up, or sometimes you sold it and it went down?  Thanks

 

Jason

[Hamlet]

With the recent rise in prices, I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

I think you have to answer a few questions for yourself-

1.  Why do you collect?

2.  What is core to your collection, and what are books that bought because they were good values that you aren't really attached to at current prices?

3.  What effect would the money have on your life?

I'm of the opinion that with prices as high as they are, if the money is something that would be meaningful to you, now is a great time to sell.  Could prices go dramatically higher?  Yup.  Could they go dramatically lower?  Yup as well.  No matter what people tell you, comics are a very risky thing to put large amounts of money into.  There is nothing magical that prevents comics from going down to the prices they were at two years ago.

Do this thought experiment--  If the book was damaged and you got an insurance payment for its current market value, would you go out and buy a replacement?  Or would you do something else with the money?  If you wouldn't consider buying it at today's price, IMO you should consider selling it.  You'll want to take the work and costs of selling into account of course.  And you will want to avoid trying to guess what the market is going to do for books that are core to your collecting.

For example, I think ASM 13 has been pumped up by movie hype.  If it was all about money, I'd have sold my copy right before the movie came out.  If the comic continued up, oh well, I made plenty of money.  If it dropped back down, I could buy it back if I thought it was cheap again.  However, ASM is my primary collecting focus.  I'm always going to want to own a copy of that book, unless it gets priced to the point where it doesn't make sense to own given my finances ( see AF15 ).  That $1200 for my CGC 6.0 isn't an amount of money that changes my finances that much.

On the other hand, I've collected a lot of books because they were cool for the price point that are now dramatically more expensive than when I bought them.  I'd rather have the money, and I wouldn't be in the market for them at anything approaching current market prices.  They are now many multiples of what I paid for them, and they aren't core to my collection.  I feel like I should be selling them.

Of course, its work to sell comics, and I don't like work, so they may just continue to sit in the boxes in my spare bedroom.

[namisgr]

Which would you rather have in your possession, the money or the comic?  If you have a clear answer either way, go for it.  Only you can judge whether having the money would make a difference to your finances.

 

Edited July 30, 2019 by namisgr

[alexanderjk]

19 hours ago, jaysteig1 said:

i have always sucked with this sort of thing.

If you do sell it and make $1350, you clearly DON"T suck at "this sort of thing." Yes, it might increase in value, but that $1K+ is still an admirable return for your $350 investment. And even if it does drop a bit, so what? You're still up by a few hundred dollars.

But it pretty much boils down to: Do you need the money right now, or not? If not, I say hold onto it. It will always be a highly coveted book.