Where it's at October 2006
Posted 10/14/2006

I can happily report increased sales across all the eras of comics. Collectors were very active all year and our in store sales and convention sales of old comics both increased over last year. Here's a minor breakdown of the comic eras.

Golden Age has picked up since I wrote last, leading the way are big logo DC books with major heroes in them, Timelys have always been hot and anyone lucky enough to have some 40's Captain Americas can get any price they ask for. Funny animal stuff from the Golden Age is still slow but early Ducks and early Bugs appearances in Four Color get respectible prices, these books are an important part of comic history (and American pop culture) and the characters are here to stay. Iconic covers of any genre still command the best prices, books like Witches Tales #25, Black Cat #50, Superman #14, Detective #35 etc. always sell fast namely due to their cover appeal, people just have to own these covers. Golden age is ripe for the picking at this point, be sure to go after grade, here to stay characters, and great covers. You can get lots of this stuff well below guide and I don't think you can lose in the long run.

Silver Age comics sell well in high grade with only some major titles enjoying good sales in any grade (Amazing Spiderman, Batman, Superman and X-Men for sure). Collecting in this era is very grade driven, you'll see very high demand for a Flash #150 in 9.4 grade but almost no demand for it in 4.0 grade (unless it's half guide or less). This disparity has relegated a lot of lower grade weak title Silver Age books into the bargain bins since that is the only way to turn these books quickly. When you're investing in Silver Age, always look for high grade and try to stick to characters still popular today (a 9.0 grade Matamorpho #3 is probably not a good place to put your money but a 9.0 grade Amazing Spiderman #50 is). Of course the Silver Age still has an active base of run collectors and these collectors are still buying issues to complete runs (here investment is secondary to collecting). Again titles still active with characters still popular do the best. A guy walking in selling a 4.0 grade run of Metal Men won't get much from me because I'll send all of them into the bargain bins but a guy bringing in a 4.0 grade run of Amazing Spider-Man will get a good price from me because I know there a a lot of people out there working on their Spidey run. What's important here is that these people working on the Spidey run range in age; 10 year olds start on the Spidey run and you know they'll be trying to knock off the early issues years later. The same can't be said for Metal Men or even Adventure Comics.

Bronze Age: most of the current investing activity is still in this era. Books like Hulk #181, Batman #232, Giant Size X-Men #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #129 are blue chips and will continue to rise in value. Beware the books de jour in this era, books like Marvel Spotlight #2 went hot but then turned cold and a lot had to do with the character involved (think a Werewolf vs a Wolverine). So I say be careful of current hot books like Werewolf #32 (1st Moon Knight). Will Moon Knight be anybody 10 years from now? Run books from this era in mid grade sell well due to the fact that they're nice and cheap and thus can be easily collected. Marvels are more collected than DCs and there is a healthy submarket for Harveys, Charltons and Gold Keys from the Bronze Age. With Bronze age you have to go higher in grade to attain a better long term investment, most books in 9.6 grade get multiples of guide.

The mid 80s and 90s books are swill, 99 percent of books from this era are bargain books. Amazing Spiderman and Uncanny X-Men are really the only titles from this era that can sell above bargain prices. Books from this era sell much better as story arcs than they do as individual issues (we can't sell a Legends of the Dark Knight for a buck but we'll get $6 for a nice four issue story arc). Unfortunately 9 out of 10 collections walking through the door are books from this era, we've turned many away.

The current comics market is healthy because it's mainly based on entertainment and not on investment. Today's readers enjoy the books they read and generally do not expect to resell them for a profit later. We see nobody ordering 20 copies of some new #1 anymore and that's a good thing. There is a worrying sign out there though, variant covers are starting to appear way too often and are selling for way too much. If you're playing the variant game then play it now, do not store them and expect them to increase in value 5 years from now. Comics are event driven and the nature of events is that they come and go. Who's hot for the old Origins mini series now? Who's going to be hot for Infinite Crisis 3 years from now escpecially since there'll be several other mega events between now and then? Be careful out there.

Comics are great entertainment. The current quality of writing and art has enabled comics to compete as a scource of entertainment for the masses and today we see a vast majority of buyers have little interest in collecting (ie paying above cover) old comics. For those of us in the collecting and investing game, always remember to go for high grade, go for good titles and go for 'here to stay' characters. 

2005, the year in review.
Posted 12/14/2005

I'll use this report to recap the year just past. I'll stick to back issues though I'll try and add the new comic market to my spring report.

2005 has taught me the following;

-It's very very hard to sell a mid grade run book from the Silver Age at anything close to guide unless it's Amazing Spider-Man or X-Men.

-It's almost impossible to sell run mid grade Dells and Gold Keys for over half guide.

-Mid and low grade bronze age keys (Marvels especially) sell all day at well above guide. I'm talking about books like ASM 121, 122, 129, Spotlight #5, Ghost Rider #1, Iron Man #55, Hulk #181 and the like.

-High grade Bronze Age and Silver Age (Marvel and DC) sell well above guide regardless if they're run books or keys.

-People are willing to spent up to $5.00 just to read an old comic, once you introduce prices like $12.00 on a comic it jumps into the realm of a collectible. The market for collectible comics is a fraction of the market for 'comics for entertainment'.

-Based on the above, one should not price a non key run book over $5.00. The dilemma is what to do with that VG+ Metamorpho #2 that's  a $30.00 book in the guide. You may have luck putting $15.00 on it but this only caters to the collectible market which is small to begin with. If you were able to price it at $4.00 you'd probably find a buyer for it that had no idea it was actually "worth money". This is good to know for sellers of books that guide out at say $6-$12, slap $4.00 or less on them and watch them fly or keep the price firm and watch them sit.

-From a collectibles view, it's better to have 5 copies of Hulk #181 versus Hulk #102 -- #200.

-Golden Age main line heroes actually sold OK for us this year. We couldn't sell some no name crime or funny animal book for the life of us but we sold all the Batman, Detective, Action and Superman books from the 1940's we had (over a dozen) for respectible, close to guide prices.

-The book of the year for us was Batman #232, we sold at least 5 of them including a CGC 9.6 for $1100 US and an unslabbed high grade copy for $600 CDN. I bought one at the Chicago con in August for $80, brought it back to my table and sold it not even an hour later for $115. I think this book still has a bit of room for more gains.

-The current power books of the Silver Age are Amazing Fantasy #15, Amazing Spiderman #1, Fantastic Four #1, 5, 12, and Hulk #1. No DC's make my list because none can match the insane demand that these books currently enjoy. We sold 2 copies of Spidey #1, both for about 20% over guide and I offered a guy 85% guide on an Amazing Fantasy #15 and he turned me down. I bought an FF #5 on a Thursday and sold it by Friday. These books are very good long term investments.

-I see a bleak future for very high grade CGC'd comics (post 1970 at least). This high grade market is much too dependent on the CGC census for determining a price. Remember that 9.8 Hulk #181 that got something like $17,000 US a year or so back? Well, I believe there were only two 9.8's at the time, today there are 6 and there's a 9.9 now as well! There are a lot of high grade Bronze Age books still out there, it's a very dangerous game to be paying insane prices on the assumption that your CGC 9.6 X-Men #94 will always be one of the 10 best copies out there. For my money the 9.4 is the way to go. Let's face it, a 9.4 is often just as good as a 9.6 at half the price. Build yourself a portfolio of solid 9.4's (do go for the white pages), pick key solid issues then sit back. This way you won't be checking the census every 5 minutes to see if they've posted another 9.8.

Back issues. Where it's at, late summer 2005!
Posted 9/10/2005

High grade Bronze Age books are the story of 2005 so far. Books like Amazing Adventures #11, Marvel Spotlight #5, Ghost Rider #1, Iron Man #55, Amazing Spiderman #129, Hero For Hire #1, Fantastic Four #112, Defenders #10, Tomb of Dracula #10 and Batman #232 are on fire if they are in high grade. We had a collection of high grade Bronze Age early in the summer and it was scary what they were selling for. Savy buyers are easily willing to pay 3x guide for raw books they feel will CGC high. This is a change from say even 2 years ago, back then the guy holding the raw high grade book would have had to send it down for grading himself if he was to have a chance at realizing multiple guide prices. Today you can get the multiples for the unslabbed copies! The scariest part is that we thought we got amazing prices only to hear the book came back a CGC 9.6 and the buyer doubled his investment. All the power to him of course, he took the risk and thus deserves the reward.

This summer saw the rise (though it's been done for a while now) of the 'pressing of books'. Pressing is a form of enhancment that involves eliminating tiny flaws like small creases (with no color breaks) and such by steaming them and pressing the flaws out. Books pressed are not considered restored and thus will receive the Universal blue CGC label. We did several major conventions in the U.S. this year and we can report some very heavy buying activity by guys with real good eyes looking for books that might score higher after a light press. There were guys stepping over each other to have a peek and all our high grade books. Is the Bronze Age market being inflated by this speculation? Probably? Will it eventually lead to no good? Probably? Are there people cracking open their old CGC 9.2's and 9.4's and sending them in for a press and then resubmitting? You bet there are. There are a lot of people making money on this so bet on it to continue for the next little while.

Golden Age books are slow. We are not noted Golden Age dealers but we do carry a respectable amount and we seem to be able to sell old Detectives, Batman and early Actions. Most secondary character titles (Captain Marvel, Blue Beetle, Plastic Man etc.) just sit and collect dust. Funny animal and generic Crime and Horror titles are slow as well (though classic, iconic covers like Black Cat Mystery #50 get multiple guide). Surprisingly, original Classic Comics do well for us. Generally though very few dealers have the ability to carry enough Golden Age to actually be able to consistently turn them over, most of the time it's shlemps like us who happen upon some GA and then put them up and watch them sit.

The Silver Age market has slowed, Bronze Age books are now drawing the money that was buying Silver Age a few years ago. Many books have priced themselves out of range (does anyone really want to pay hundreds of dollars for some mid grade non key Spidey). My theory is that most Silver Age collectors are relatively caught up with their collections and new buyers entering the market will choose to focus on Bronze Age because that's the demographic they fall into and because they think aquiring complete Silver Age runs from scratch at this point would be too much for the wallet. These are generalizations of course. High grade Silver age is a different story, they continue to fetch record prices and I think there is still room for increases. Amazing Spiderman is the best selling Silver Age title for us, Batman is the best selling DC title.

It's never been harder to sell old comics, buying trends don't seem to last as long as they used to so your reaction time must be quicker. Fall asleep on the job and you're sitting on a whole bunch of unsold New Gods #1s. This of course is good for the buyer, if he or she is patient, bargains abound. And I believe this is good for the hobby because the people left dealing comics will be lean, mean and able to better respond to the public's demands.

Posted by Walt