Comic Books

[diethx]

Your mom sounds like a total asshole, Anticor. Just saying.

[AnticorRifling]

Nope, she's pretty awesome. Just clueless about some things.

[Atlanteax]

Guess it did not faze your mom when people snatched up all that stuff for $1 each and was 'sold out'.

[Kitsun]

Back when I collected sports cards and comics, some of the local shop owners were crediting the internet for really putting a hurt on the market. When you can essentially trade globally from your seat at home, some of the 'rare'/hard-to-get factor is taken away, which is a big part of what makes these sort of things valuable. That was probably over fifteen years ago. On a side note, the comics started killing me when every other one started having 'special' covers that tripled the price.

There are quite a few other factors contributing to the decline of value of collectibles like comics and cards.

1. In the 80s, people started to realize that these things could be worth more over time so they actually started to take care of them.
2. More issues are printed
3. Very few new brand name carrying characters have been developed
4. By and large, the industry pillars don't pump out comics that are worth dick and shit years down the road. They aren't creating new things that stick and they can't/won't kill off the ones they have. They always reset to a zero state so it doesn't matter if you're reading comics made this year or 5-10 years ago, the same characters are being recycled.
5. More freely available graphic novels. No one needs to hunt down issue X because it is the only place to read the content. If a story arc is a hit, they just collect it all and Amazon gets to sell it at a fraction of the cost of the MSRP of the normal comic.

Selling comics is a huge hassle. Listing fees on Ebay will eat you alive. Trying to sell bulk to retailers and I've been offered as little as like 7 to 20 bucks per long box. F that noise. I'd rather give them away. It isn't even worth dragging the boxes to a destination at that price.

[Ardwen]

Modern paper also tends to last forever, so the 1 million of a book that was printed in 1987 tons of them survive, old books decay because the paper was trash. And badically all main stream books are available either as CDs or thru online subs non books needed

[Back]

Yaeh, I would blame the mass production of the late 80s and 90s for the drop in rarity. The internet IS making these books more available to trade across a wider audience and that certainly drops the rarity. However, these books are NOT on the web themselves. Meaning, you can not find the content of these books on the web anywhere, so that gives them SOME value.

Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1 is a perfect example. They cranked out millions of them, even with different covers, so they are worth crap. Only one of the 5 covers they published is worth anything and that was the one with the lowest publishing count.

[Drew]

I wonder if the rise of e-comics on tablets might eventually reverse the trend. Generally once people know things are valuable they aren't anymore. People threw out comics because they thought they were trash. If you want to own something valuable figure out what exactly it is that someone who is 15 right now want but cannot possibly afford. Buy some of those, wait 40 years.

[RSR]

I wonder if the rise of e-comics on tablets might eventually reverse the trend. Generally once people know things are valuable they aren't anymore. People threw out comics because they thought they were trash. If you want to own something valuable figure out what exactly it is that someone who is 15 right now want but cannot possibly afford. Buy some of those, wait 40 years.

Let's see...what does a 15 year old boy want but can't afford?

Somehow I doubt a hot 20 year old woman will hold her value after 40 years.

[Warriorbird]

My comic books, baseball cards, atari and games, all my nintendo systems and games, etc. were all sold in a garage sale while I was in boot camp because "You never played with that stuff so I just got rid of it". RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEE

My grandparents sold my Dad's comics in the 1970s for $200 or so. Included were good copies of Daredevil #1, X-Men #1, and The Hulk #1. They thought they were really turning a profit on them. I feel your pain.

Me, I pretty much limit my collection to Conan the Barbarian comics and copies of original magazines of The Shadow these days.

[msconstrew]

Let's see...what does a 15 year old boy want but can't afford?

Somehow I doubt a hot 20 year old woman will hold her value after 40 years.

I guess it depends on your definition of "value".