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My experience with fractional ownership of comics: JIM #83 / $215,000
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444 posts in this topic

9 minutes ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

Hmmm....

So how does the OA to Hulk 181 come into play?  There can be no Hulk 181 comic if there was never any OA....

That's its own concept - "Original art for the 1st Full Appearance of Wolverine" and it has a collective value equal to the value of all the pages.

Whether there is one owner for all pages, or a few owners with one or more pages each, the collective value is the same... the number of people involved is the variable.

Fractional ownership, as a concept, would increase the number of people involved - which was already a variable anyway - but not the collective value... (unless having more people capable of participating in the market would increase/decrease the value... and it is likely that it would.)

Edited by valiantman
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9 minutes ago, F For Fake said:

Can't believe you nerds are fighting about owning pieces of a comic, when you could be buying up PIECES OF THE MOON!

While you suckers are enjoying your paper scraps, I'll be frolicking in the Sea of Tranquility! Sayonara! I'm gonna be rich!

https://lunarland.com/

Travel fees...

Conspiracy theories. - Imgflip

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It occurs to me that some of you may be caught up in the terminology.

"I bought some shares in some comic books and sportscards for a few bucks through a new company online for fun"  makes a bunch of you feel icky.

So, how's this...

"I am a silent partner in a multi-million dollar holding company, which wholly owns dozens of LLCs registered with the SEC and manages several assets including some of the most valuable collectibles on the planet."

:kidaround:

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8 minutes ago, valiantman said:

It occurs to me that some of you may be caught up in the terminology.

"I bought some shares in some comic books and sportscards for a few bucks through a new company online for fun"  makes a bunch of you feel icky.

So, how's this...

"I am a silent partner in a multi-million dollar holding company, which wholly owns dozens of LLCs registered with the SEC and manages several assets including some of the most valuable collectibles on the planet."

:kidaround:

tenor.gif?itemid=10205657

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18 hours ago, valiantman said:

It occurs to me that some of you may be caught up in the terminology.

"I bought some shares in some comic books and sportscards for a few bucks through a new company online for fun"  makes a bunch of you feel icky.

So, how's this...

"I am a silent partner in a multi-million dollar holding company, which wholly owns dozens of LLCs registered with the SEC and manages several assets including some of the most valuable collectibles on the planet."

:kidaround:

Day dreaming is free.

No need to send $20 to some hucksters in jersey.

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46 minutes ago, miraclemet said:
20 hours ago, valiantman said:

 

What if you would like to put $10,000 into comics of your favorite three characters?  Now you have to decide if you want a $5,000 book and two $2,500 books or $3,333 each or whatever.

Then you've got three books, most likely not the highest grade first appearances of those characters... just three solid four-figure books.

 

but you dont have three books, You have some shares valued at a price that corresponds to the value of a book that you dont own. 

The first biggest problem I see here is in their initial valuation of these offered books. 

They buy a X-men 1 CGC 9.4 for $134k. They immediately release it for IP at $136,500. The "market price" for their book was set by their own purchase price, nothing else. Then they immediately boost the value $2500 in their valuation for their offer (so assuming a 100% sale of the stock they've made $2500 with NO OTHER MARKET INPUTS).Think of it like a BIN on ebay. If a book has a market value of $1000, but some whale comes along and his a BIN on a copy that's listed for $1500, every other copy of the book isn't suddenly worth $1500, because we all know it was only worth $1500 to that one guy (otherwise it wouldn't have been sitting there with a BIN forever). These guys hit a BIN on a book with no other recent market history. I actually think this is intentional. A book with little market history is easier to inflate. Books that are easier to inflate make for quicker money for them. 

People buying in are thinking "cool I could never buy an X-men 1 for $134k, but this way I can spend $750 for 10 shares of an X-Men 1 CGC 9.2" but those 10 shares are only worth $750 if the market agrees with the valuation. 

Problem #2 is that most of these setups are buying books that rarely trade, so their valuations are not based on market sales, but rather 3rd party "valuation" sites like "gocollect" or such. And many of those sites have less than rigorously tested valuation algorithms. Many of them can easily be boosted or dropped by a single sale, OR a spurious sale because again, not all of them do good data validation. 

So we have questionable valuation to start, questionable valuation in the middle, and now we get to the problem of selling. 

In regular stocks selling is not a problem because the market is flush with buyers and sellers. If you want to sell a stock today, no problem. Put in a sale. Sold. Now yes you can put in a sell @ price and say at what price you're willing to sell at or a price that you want to use as your "dump at" price. But with most of these fractional collectible sites (as you point out) you have to have a BUYER interested in buying at your price when you want to sell. So with new listings each day, why would someone buy into the current high water mark on a book (and buy the stocks you're trying to sell) when they can instead buy an IPO fresh on the market. If you dont have a buyer, you arent able to cash out. And do you really want your money tied up in something that you dont have the ability to cash out on? This isn't an IRA, this isn't insured money, but you are taking on all the risk and adding the inflexibility of maybe not being able to cash out if you cant find someone wanting to pay $120/share for the stocks you paid $75 a share for. Or worse case scenario, what if the stock starts to drop, and there arent any buyers? You watch your stock go down from $120 and wanna get out ASAP, but with no buyers you're forced to ride it out until you find a buyer. 

In the end it's not like buying a comic (cause you dont actually own the physical thing), and it's not like buying a stock (because the mechanics around it havent scaled to the point of being "like" a stock style market. And the cherry on top is that it is all based on a valuation that is questionable from start to finish.

All of that is correct - and the current alternative is to never own any part (fraction or whole) of a high grade X-Men #1.

Some collectors are satisfied with lower grades (which still cost thousands of dollars), some are satisfied with never owning any part of the book, and some will be satisfied with owning a fraction.

In the event that you could purchase an X-Men #1 for $134K, you'd have $134K tied up in it, with no option whatsoever to take out 20% and put it elsewhere.  To sell, you'll need to find someone with not only the $134K that you paid, but also cover the cost of commission or else you're taking a loss even selling at $134K.

Those are all standard problems with the high grade comic book market, limitations based on who can afford to play in those games, and expected losses when it comes to resale and commission.

The game is risky, no matter how you play it.

I'm not saying there's no risk and I'm not saying it isn't ridiculous.  I'm saying that we've already accepted ridiculous things in this market. We've already accepted that people will pay +50% for a 0.2 grade increase on certain books. We've already accepted that you'll need to have six-figures of disposable income to play with the "big boys" in this hobby.  Those are all ridiculous things, when there could be alternatives like "everyone gets to play" and "if you can't buy the whole book you'll pay a little extra".  Buy a slice of pizza, it's more expensive to buy single slices than buying the whole thing.  Ridiculous?  Probably.  What else is new?

Edited by valiantman
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2 minutes ago, vheflin said:

Day dreaming is free.

No need to send $20 to some hucksters in jersey.

How anyone spends $20 shouldn't matter on a comic book discussion board.  Just ask the rest of the world and no one here has ever spent $20 wisely on disposable paper.  We're all hucksters if we think trash is treasure.

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Hard to convince Comic Collectors or even Comic Sellers, because a lot of them really like comics. At first, I was really skeptical, but as you say, your risk is minimal. You like the idea, so it is a good thing for you.

I am curious to look at my JIM 83 now... 

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25 minutes ago, valiantman said:

It took almost a week, but they got the $215,000 needed from 934 investors suckers, including me.

James Bond and Jack Kerouac have been available much longer.

rallyrdCGC94JourneyIntoMystery83initialoffering_20210108.thumb.png.5fbfcd875ec3533ecafabeb059a5b048.png

So how does the books value go up from $215,000?

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2 hours ago, THE_BEYONDER said:

So how does the books value go up from $215,000?

It remains to be seen whether the first "open trading day" will have the price per share change from the $20/share starting point on the CGC 9.4 JIM #83.

For other books, such as the CGC 5.0 Captain America #3 (1941), the initial offering was $37 per share (1,000 shares) on July 24, 2020.

The first "open trading day" occurred on November 17, 2020, and the price per share went up to $42.

During that day, there were enough buyers who wanted shares for $42 or higher and enough sellers that asked for $42 or lower that $42 was the price that satisfied the greatest number of both.  No trading fees were charged to either buyer or seller.

The next open trading day for CGC 5.0 Captain America #3 will be February 11, 2021.

Edited by valiantman
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31 minutes ago, valiantman said:

It remains to be seen whether the first "open trading day" will have the price per share change from the $20/share starting point on the CGC 9.4 JIM #83.

For other books, such as the CGC 5.0 Captain America #3 (1941), the initial offering was $37 per share (1,000 shares) on July 24, 2020.

The first "open trading day" occurred on November 17, 2020, and the price per share went up to $42.

During that day, there were enough buyers who wanted shares for $42 or higher and enough sellers that asked for $42 or lower that $42 was the price that satisfied the greatest number of both.  No trading fees were charged to either buyer or seller.

The next open trading day for CGC 5.0 Captain America #3 will be February 11, 2021.

Were there any other trading days on Cap #3 between 11/17 and 2/11?

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13 minutes ago, mattn792 said:

Were there any other trading days on Cap #3 between 11/17 and 2/11?

Nope.  RallyRd has hundreds of assets - lots of cars, several items in sports memorabilia, Hermes handbags, Rolexes, comic books, video games, 1st Edition novels, and wines.

Currently, they're trading about 10 or 15 items per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You can only trade a particular item when it has a trading day (90 days after initial offering, then every 30 to 90 days afterwards).

If you have lots of items in your portfolio, odds are that something of yours is trading every week - so there's the potential to "cash out" an item or two each week (or a dozen, if you owned everything).

It would take up to 90 days to "cash out" of everything or to "cash out" if you only own one item and you need to wait until the next trading day, but there would be trading days along the way for your other items.

Currently there are no trading fees, so you would profit or loss based on the sale price on the day you cash out.

A few items have more than doubled, but most started very small... maybe $1 per share... and so it was a tiny "investment" (maybe $10) that has paid for itself.

Example: I bought $10 worth of $1 shares on a sportscard, sold 4 of them when they hit $2.50 each.  I now have $0 invested in that sportscard and 6 remaining shares worth $2.50 each.

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1 minute ago, valiantman said:

Nope.  RallyRd has hundreds of assets - lots of cars, several items in sports memorabilia, Hermes handbags, Rolexes, comic books, video games, 1st Edition novels, and wines.

Currently, they're trading about 10 or 15 items per week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

You can only trade a particular item when it has a trading day (90 days after initial offering, then every 30 to 90 days afterwards).

If you have lots of items in your portfolio, odds are that something of yours is trading every week - so there's the potential to "cash out" an item or two each week (or a dozen, if you owned everything).

It would take up to 90 days to "cash out" of everything or to "cash out" if you only own one item and you need to wait until the next trading day, but there would be trading days along the way for your other items.

Currently there are no trading fees, so you would profit or loss based on the sale price on the day you cash out.

A few items have more than doubled, but most started very small... maybe $1 per share... and so it was a tiny "investment" (maybe $10) that has paid for itself.

Example: I bought $10 worth of $1 shares on a sportscard, sold 4 of them when they hit $2.50 each.  I now have $0 invested in that sportscard and 6 remaining shares worth $2.50 each.

I see what you're saying, but man that's a long time to keep your money on ice just to gain a few bucks a share.

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3 minutes ago, mattn792 said:

I see what you're saying, but man that's a long time to keep your money on ice just to gain a few bucks a share.

True, but I have hundreds of CGC slabbed comics that I've kept in storage for 10 - 15 years.  90 days is like "fast turnaround" compared to my normal collecting habits.

Slab Storage - Any ideas besides the obvious? - Page 2 - Comics General -  CGC Comic Book Collectors Chat Boards

Edited by valiantman
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6 minutes ago, valiantman said:

True, but I have hundreds of CGC slabbed comics that I've kept in storage for 10 - 15 years.  90 days is like "fast turnaround" compared to my normal collecting habits.

Slab Storage - Any ideas besides the obvious? - Page 2 - Comics General -  CGC Comic Book Collectors Chat Boards

I’ll buy a fractional share of that :idea:  

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Just now, ThothAmon said:
7 minutes ago, valiantman said:

True, but I have hundreds of CGC slabbed comics that I've kept in storage for 10 - 15 years.  90 days is like "fast turnaround" compared to my normal collecting habits.

Slab Storage - Any ideas besides the obvious? - Page 2 - Comics General -  CGC Comic Book Collectors Chat Boards

Expand  

I’ll buy a fractional share of that :idea:  

lol

Like I said earlier... I have less than 1% of my "hobby money" in RallyRd - and there are certainly things they could do better - but I'm having more than 1% of my hobby fun over there right now. (thumbsu

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