Plan of attack for collecting it all? 2 2

[ADAMANTIUM]

As long as it's not groundhog day you should be good!

[1950's war comics]

plan of attack  "Operation Barbarossa"

[Ken Aldred]

5 minutes ago, 1950's war comics said:

plan of attack  "Operation Barbarossa"

That one failed miserably, though.

Overlord would’ve been better.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[1950's war comics]

7 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

That one failed miserably, though.

yes but it is a good comparison ... Russia was too big to conquer it all....to even attempt it was a huge mistake...  it is the same to try and conquer and acquire all the comics

Edited November 22, 2020 by 1950's war comics

[1950's war comics]

i have heard of multiple advanced card collectors who owned every single Topps card ... but that one is actually doable as most all  are readily available,,, no card equivalent of any Gerber type 8's 9's or 10's that i am aware of..

not so doable with comic books

[kav]

31 minutes ago, 1950's war comics said:

plan of attack  "Operation Barbarossa"

Operation Vinnie Barbarino:

[Ken Aldred]

9 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

yes but it is a good comparison ... Russia was too big to conquer it all....to even attempt it was a huge mistake...  it is the same to try and conquer and acquire all the comics

You are absolutely right.

I was thinking more ‘glass half-full’, a grinding, difficult campaign with a positive outcome.

Edited November 22, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[FineCollector]

On 11/20/2020 at 3:42 PM, D2 said:

 

Look, I mean, good for Mike, if that's what his passion is. He puts the true meaning into the word 'collect'.

Now for me, how can anyone spend enough time going through that collection and enjoy the books? Not even to read them... but just to sift through and look at them.

 

My collection is 60+ longs (plus some Bowen minibusts pictured).  I like the books I have, and few are unrelated to anything else in the collection.  Everything is ordered, boxes are labelled, the collection is documented in CLZ.  I take great joy going through my collection, and have no difficulty finding anything.

[ADAMANTIUM]

7 minutes ago, FineCollector said:

My collection is 60+ longs (plus some Bowen minibusts pictured).  I like the books I have, and few are unrelated to anything else in the collection.  Everything is ordered, boxes are labelled, the collection is documented in CLZ.  I take great joy going through my collection, and have no difficulty finding anything.

Are they all slabs, raw or mixed?

Still cool! Glad they're what you want!

[themagicrobot]

FineCollector said

Everything is ordered, boxes are labelled, the collection is documented in CLZ. I take great joy going through my collection and have no difficulty finding anything.

My collection is totally random. Only 3 boxes out of 100 are labelled. Any box is likely to contain comics from numerous Publishers and different decades.  i have started and aborted cataloguing in CLZ three times already. I take great joy in opening a random box and going through some comics I'd forgotten I owned. I have so much difficulty in finding any particular comic that if I have a sudden urge to read a comic I own I often end up buying another copy on eBay. Saying that I do have many many shelves with easier access. Mike, featured earlier in this thread has kept copious lists of every comic ever purchased including where and when. 

 

[Pantodude]

On 11/19/2020 at 5:14 PM, F For Fake said:

I'm not sure I'd be buying keys at all these days, as I don't see how the prices can stay where they're currently at. That being said, I could be totally wrong, and today's "insane" prices may prove a bargain in the long run. But as more folks age out, retire, die off, etc, we'll see more collections coming up for sale, and fewer buyers wanting them.

Howdy.  I am bored, so please indulge my long-winded .  I respectfully disagree because it depends on the underlying assumptions. 

You refer to collections coming up for sale as traditional collector's retire, and you fear that insuffient buyers will remain to gobble up the increased supply, resulting in lower prices.  Fair concern, except I would not assume that potential buyers are limited to traditional collectors defined as folks who buy only what they enjoyed reading in their youth. I primarily enjoy GA and SA goodies in my PC, with some BA sprinkled in, despite not having been lucky enough to read many of them in my youth.  Why?  Because of pride of ownership of books that helped shape current pop culture or are otherwise cool to have in hand.   I am sure a bunch of folks also collect books because of the art, stories, characters, whether or not they read the books in their youth, because they remain cool to read/appreciate.     For all we know, this group could outnumber traditional collectors some day enough to gobble up any increase in supply, even assuming general population increases aren't enough.

Indeed, we have yet to see a dip in values for the main GA categories or any of the SA superhero titles, despite most collectors today being too young to have enjoyed those books in their youth.  One reason could be that Disney/Marvel and DC have maintained the popularity of vintage comic book heroes/villains/stories/art through movies, books, cartoons, etc.   And/or folks could be appreciating history more, particulary as it relates to current pop culture, and comic books are a cool way to do that.  Because all of these folks expand the concept of traditional collector, supply might not keep up with future demand, rather than the other way around.  

I would also not assume that potential buyers are limited to traditional collectors or even collectors in general.  Whether or not younger folks apprectiate GA/SA/BA books for artistic or nostaligic purposes as did prior generations, more and more folks of all ages seek out these books for investment.  Due to the maturing of the market for vintage comic books, they have been legit liquid assets for two decades now, increasingly so ever since the advent of slabbing, eBay, and other online auction sites allowing for quick/easy sales.  This is reminiscent of graded coins/currency or stamps,  which continue to do well despite that stuff being old as heck and collectors never having used such issues to buy or mail something!   

If vintage comic books will be embraced by collectors and speculators alike going forward, simple economics suggests that they should continue to appreciate for the foreseeable future due to the limited supply.  Not every vintage book will be an AC1 or AF15, but over time, many of them should follow suit so long as the market continues to mature and remain transparent.  I think this has been true for SA/BA keys for a while already, and recent spikes suggest some CA and modern keys are joining the party.   For example, ASM300 and UF4 despite not being rare books.  Doesn't this bode well for the scarcer, long-established SA Marvel and DC keys?  

So there may be more potential buyers going forward than you assumed, even assuming pure traditional collectors become less common.    Or my brain atrophied due to boredom.    Anyway, I am first and foremost a collector (and not just comic books), so I am not as concerned with future valuation.  But it is fun to stay abreast of market prices nonetheless. The safest bet is to collect the books you like.  Here's to hoping everyone is enjoying the hobby, as we near Thanksgiving.     

Edited November 22, 2020 by Pantodude

[THE_BEYONDER]

53 minutes ago, Pantodude said:

Howdy.  I am bored, so please indulge my long-winded .  I respectfully disagree because it depends on the underlying assumptions. 

You refer to collections coming up for sale as traditional collector's retire, and you fear that insuffient buyers will remain to gobble up the increased supply, resulting in lower prices.  Fair concern, except I would not assume that potential buyers are limited to traditional collectors defined as folks who buy only what they enjoyed reading in their youth. I primarily enjoy GA and SA goodies in my PC, with some BA sprinkled in, despite not having been lucky enough to read many of them in my youth.  Why?  Because of pride of ownership of books that helped shape current pop culture or are otherwise cool to have in hand.   I am sure a bunch of folks also collect books because of the art, stories, characters, whether or not they read the books in their youth, because they remain cool to read/appreciate.     For all we know, this group could outnumber traditional collectors some day enough to gobble up any increase in supply, even assuming general population increases aren't enough.

Indeed, we have yet to see a dip in values for the main GA categories or any of the SA superhero titles, despite most collectors today being too young to have enjoyed those books in their youth.  One reason could be that Disney/Marvel and DC have maintained the popularity of vintage comic book heroes/villains/stories/art through movies, books, cartoons, etc.   And/or folks could be appreciating history more, particulary as it relates to current pop culture, and comic books are a cool way to do that.  Because all of these folks expand the concept of traditional collector, supply might not keep up with future demand, rather than the other way around.  

I would also not assume that potential buyers are limited to traditional collectors or even collectors in general.  Whether or not younger folks apprectiate GA/SA/BA books for artistic or nostaligic purposes as did prior generations, more and more folks of all ages seek out these books for investment.  Due to the maturing of the market for vintage comic books, they have been legit liquid assets for two decades now, increasingly so ever since the advent of slabbing, eBay, and other online auction sites allowing for quick/easy sales.  This is reminiscent of graded coins/currency or stamps,  which continue to do well despite that stuff being old as heck and collectors never having used such issues to buy or mail something!   

If vintage comic books will be embraced by collectors and speculators alike going forward, simple economics suggests that they should continue to appreciate for the foreseeable future due to the limited supply.  Not every vintage book will be an AC1 or AF15, but over time, many of them should follow suit so long as the market continues to mature and remain transparent.  I think this has been true for SA/BA keys for a while already, and recent spikes suggest some CA and modern keys are joining the party.   For example, ASM300 and UF4 despite not being rare books.  Doesn't this bode well for the scarcer, long-established SA Marvel and DC keys?  

So there may be more potential buyers going forward than you assumed, even assuming pure traditional collectors become less common.    Or my brain atrophied due to boredom.    Anyway, I am first and foremost a collector (and not just comic books), so I am not as concerned with future valuation.  But it is fun to stay abreast of market prices nonetheless. The safest bet is to collect the books you like.  Here's to hoping everyone is enjoying the hobby, as we near Thanksgiving.     

Who will be able to afford them?

[Pantodude]

1 hour ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Who will be able to afford them?

Good question.  No doubt, it's a double-edged sword.  Great for those who finished collecting their keys and are sitting pat, while at least a temporary pain for those getting started or still building their PCs (I say temporary if the books continue to do okay after getting them?).   And vice-versa if the market instead were trending down!    Really depends on whether you have a short- or long-term perspective.  For collectors who stay within their means, long term should be fine whichever way it goes.      

 

Edited November 22, 2020 by Pantodude

[FineCollector]

19 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Are they all slabs, raw or mixed?

Still cool! Glad they're what you want!

All but a handful are raw, I don't have room for slabs.  Not much that would excite you guys anyway.  Keepers get cracked and put in mylar, the ones I'm less pleased with stay slabbed in case I upgrade and need to sell.

I understand the OPs desire to own everything.  Comics are sequential stories, and I enjoy runs, not random, unrelated keys.  You have to like what you're buying, though.  When I was younger, I bought Frank Miller and Neal Adams because I was supposed to, but didn't really appreciate them at the time.  It was a chore, and I hated them.  Keeping books you find in collections are one thing, but buying singles you care about to plug holes is what burns.  I recommend working on, at most, 5 or 6 titles you like, and when you're close to finishing one, start on another one you like.

[Westy Steve]

If you want to try it without getting your butt financially kicked, pick an early year in the silver age and just try to do that.  My suggestion is to try to collect every book make in 1963.  If you get sick of it, you'll still have something worthwhile to sell.  If you still enjoy it, select another year and keep going.

[themagicrobot]

 

Why not start collecting comics dated January 2021 onwards. They have far smaller production runs than comics published in earlier decades and soon more people will be downloading digital editions than buying floppies. If you live another 50 years you may find you have a valuable collection in 2070.

[bellrules]

On 11/21/2020 at 12:01 PM, Qalyar said:

It's a little off-topic, but as an intellectual exercise, I was considering how difficult it would be to do this for some of the other publishers.

• Dark Horse has its early books do better than most at staying out of the dollar bins, but I don't think there's much in the way of great rarities to be had. The Star Wars: the Clone Wars #1 Dark Horse 100 edition certainly isn't cheap, but there's a lot more of them out there than comparable rarities for other publishers. Same goes for the Conan #24 nude. Unless I've overlooked something, Hellboy: Fury #3's (pretty awesome, imo) variant cover is maybe the physically rarest DH book because of the ridiculously stupid retailer ordering restrictions, but even that comes up for sale with some regularity. As with any publisher who produced them, chasing DH's late newsstand prints would be an experience, of course.
• Image would be a terrible investment, but you could probably get the bulk of the runs out of dollar boxes. There are no $10,000 books here, and very little that will be $1000 books, but it's still harder to hit full completion than expected. As a property, The Walking Dead is cooling off, price-wise, but several of the variants are still going to be really hard to physically locate (Hyundai, Last Wine, #116 3rd print). There are also Walking Dead books (especially the Here's Negan Preview sketch) in the 1992 blind boxes; all the blind box books would be annoying to hunt down. Several Spawn books run in the low hundreds of dollars, but most aren't particularly rare (#185 sketch cover, I guess), although if you go chasing newsstand variants, there's an unusually deep hole to fall into here even for newsstand collectors. Otherwise, supplies are tight for the 8house Image Expo cover, and the error issue of Wytches #4. But of course, the real challenge for a complete Image collection would be The Maxx. You've got a set of 12 colored ashcans (blue/red/yellow/black for each of #1/2/3) and then the famous blue and red foil prototypes (which, unlike most test prints, actually were sold to the public by Wizard). All told, the entire collection is probably worth less than a Tec 27, but good luck finding all the fiddly bits.
• Valiant is effectively impossible to collect for completeness with all printed variants, because the Bloodshot Salvation #12 Vin Diesel variant and Quantum & Woody (2017) #1 2nd print are both physically unique books (in that exactly one copy exists). And of course, there were the five #UNITYGOLDENTICKET comics, each of which had a print run of 1, but only three of which have ever been located (the Bryan Hitch and Paolo Rivera variants were either never found or never publicly acknowledged). The Solar gold proofs are also unique, although those weren't really every actually released, so you might or might not count them against completeness. As far as actually-obtainable material goes, the Nintendo Comics System sneak preview is generally recognized as a Valiant key. If you decided to include it, I'd consider another one of the crux pieces to be the Valiant Sneak Peak [sic]; this wasn't actually produced by the real Valiant, but by a competing Valiant (Valiant Intellectual Properties, which was actually Dynamite Entertainment/Dynamic Forces under a different name) as part of a 2007 copyright dispute over Acclaim's assets, and so it's definitely an important part of the Valiant story (had they lost the case, Valiant could not have resumed publishing its existing titles, or even use the name Valiant!).
• Counterpoint.

Stuff like Comico, Eclipse, and Mirage have a smattering of well-regarding issues, and even valuable ones, but wouldn't make for particularly impressive collections. Grendel, Miracleman, and TMNT might all be cool,desirable, and at times even expensive books, but I don't think many of us want to dedicate collection space to Justice Machine, Zot, and Xenotech. Antarctic Press, even more so; sure, Strangers in Paradise is a good book, and #1 is rarer than you'd expect (as is Gold Digger #1, for that matter), but a publisher-complete collection would include boxes of specialist furry titles like Genus and Hepcats.

A challenging but potentially plausible publisher subset would be all the Whitman distributed issues. All of the 1980-81 books are at least fairly difficult to locate. The 1981 books (and Flash Gordon #30) also have 40 and 50 cent price variants (the former are much rarer). At times, books also exist with white label and yellow label variants (which is essentially direct market / newsstand). Gold Key Whitmans also come with a large selection of price variants and reprints, and it is very likely that not all printings have been widely recognized at this point. None of this is extremely expensive (there might be a couple $1,000 books) unless you chase high-grade exemplars, but it would probably take years or longer to assemble them all.

 

The Whitman books published from 8/80 to 12/80 are all tough to find. The Flash Gordon 30 doesn’t have a price variant, it’s a second print. The original 40 cent cover was released in October 1980. The 50 cent cover was released in Jan 1981. Same goes for Bugs Bunny 222. (You can tell by the ads) To confuse things even more, some books Whitman released in 1/81 have error price variants. Part of the print run of certain issues have 40 cent Price tags, while the later part of the run has 50 cent cover prices. The 50 cent cover versions are thé more common versions. The books that had error price variants are Bugs Bunny 223, Little Lulu 262, Uncle Scrooge 182, Huey Dewey and Louie 67, Walt Disney Comics and Stories 484, Donald Duck 225, Super Goof 63 and Pink Panther 78. Another fun subset for Whitman is the Canadian Price variants from 1984.