Is it happening? Are we in and around the bottoming out of the comic market? I’m not sure but my Spidey sense says maybe. I’ve noticed a few sales on our eBay auction this week that point to things stabilizing. We sold a CGC 8.0 Silver Surfer #1 above the previous sale as we did for a CGC 9.6 Marvel Team-Up #141 and a Who’s Killing the Children #1 in 9.8. Normally if only one of these bucked the trend I wouldn’t be so bold as to even think it but these three, plus some other results I saw on other auctions look promising. No doubt there are still books heading south but that’s always the case, even in good times. The whole thing is self-perpetuating: you get some good sales data that buoys the buyers back into the market which pushes future sales upward. If this is the case at the moment then the big question is which books do we target for some robust growth in the coming months/years. I still say look to late 2019, early 2020 GPA data for the best guess as to where the price support for most of these books sits.
So I’ve been saying George’s name wrong all along. From here on in I’ll say Perez with the “Accent on the First E”. I know this thanks to a great portfolio and bio book called “Accent on the First E” which highlights some of George Perez’ best work. This, from my next week’s eBay pile, is our cover of the week.
Our splash page of the week comes from the pages of Secret Six #7. Jack Sparling gives us a great two-page spread: the piece reminds me of those short videos you watch of female athletes and then at the end the person asks “what # was on her jersey”. I never know the answer!
Our ad of the week goes way back to 1944. From the pages of Action Comics #79, we get this cute Wheaties ad. The ad makes me realize that Wheaties have been milking “breakfast of champions” for decades.
On Sunday night another icecollectibles weekly eBay auction ended with some interesting results. As I mentioned above, I was happy with how well our Marvel Team-Up #141 did: CGC’d at 9.6 it fetched $300 USD, well above the $288 sale prior and even more above the 90-day average of $252.
Of course I hope the market is turning. I think it is in a confused state. Two confusion drivers: 1) Is the economy really going south? I think this call is turning into Yogi Berra’s “so popular that nobody believes it anymore”. People are getting tired of letting bargains slip by while they wait for the bottom to fall out. 2) Is Quantumania the start of something new and big, or a nail in Disney/Marvel’s coffin? Excitement around new Disney offerings seems to be lacking. This has been the backbone of the appreciation, I believe.
As I have said before, I see scarce/cool books doing quite well, and common blue-chips and mid/low-grade run books still taking it on the chin. I have no qualms about buying cool scarce Golden Age books, but it would take some very poor judgment to get me to buy something like a questionable ASM #129 9.8 at this point (just to pick an item totally at random).
I used to be a big Perez fan, but it was because I think the late seventies was a pretty dry spell for art. I really have no interest in his work now, and that cover does nothing for me.
The number on her jersey is two.
My daughter use to row so I sort of dig the ad, but all that text – come on! A) You’re trying to sell me a cereal that tastes like cardboard based on some questionable claims on how it will give me strength and stamina, B) you are going to do it by forcing me to read a bunch of text in a comic book. Ok this is Action Comics so probably the alpha males are reading, but still. Just show panel A: guy eating wheaties; panel B: him beating the crap out of Biff. ’nuff shown.
The total value of all books on my list is about $100M. Last January 2022 the first Auction / sales results increased that value by $10M, the remainder of the year increased it by an additional $8M, mostly inn the first quarter.
This year the first 25 big auction results knocked that number down by $1M. Then the Rocket copy Action 1 sold again and we were back even and we have stayed even. Well, that list of comics is up $150,000 after six weeks.
Since 1982 the two biggest comic growth years were 1995, 1996, which were approaching 25% increases. The 1997 to 1999 increases were 16%, 10%, 7% – 1999 was the worst year for growth ever, beating out 2007 by fractions.
The 3rd and 4th biggest years since 1982 are 2021 and 2022, which approach 20% increase per year. So that is a 40% plus increase in two years. I will say that Four Favorites has four of the top 13 comics for increases in 2023 so far. The dropping comics are those comics that were “overpaid” in the last ten years. Some of those droppers are very desirable so keep an eye out.
Lots to learn from in these comments, I remain optimistic.