inflation comic book salesReaders of my articles know that I study sales data to conduct research for my articles.  In recent months, I have been tracking comic book sales to try to get ahead of the market.  I am concerned about rising inflation and my short-term books.  Here are a few of my observations.

A HISTORY LESSON

I. Covid Impacted the Comic Book Marketplace

inflation comic book salesCovid was a greater influence on the comic book marketplace than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. People were not going out to eat, nor attending concerts.  Disposable income increased because many people were not having to travel to their jobs.  Comic book investors and collectors put this money into comics.  Prices rose generally across the board.  The question people should have asked was if these prices were transitory.

II. Things Return to Normal..ish

July 2021 was the timeframe when people started to trickle back to a semblance of their normal lives.  Workers returned to work and bills started to become due again.  Income that was once discretionary now became normal operating capital.  People's personal budgets constricted because of this new outflow of money.

III. Inflation Influences Even The Comic Book Markets

Inflation is a nasty word in even the comic book marketplace. People's ability to spend decreases as the price of goods increases.  In addition, retailers start to pass on the costs to consumers.  One out-of-state auction house I review increased its buyer's premium and handling fees. Buyers' dollars were being spent on other goods at a higher rate than before. The squeeze was on and not even the comic book marketplace was immune from this economic trend.  When I started to review sales data I started to see things that I did not like. I needed to know more

STUDYING THE DATA

IV.  My Methodology Explained

I always have a list of target books that I watch.   These are books that are movers in the marketplace I can use to see trends.  These books include, but may not be limited to first appearances, first issues, key comics, artist keys, and last issues. I eliminate books with ties to the  MCU, DCEU, or other media platforms that could impact the data.

The volume of sales of these issues also plays a factor.  I require a large sampling so that one silly or suspect sale will not influence my data.  Next, I eliminated the highest of the grades of these books see limited sales.  I understand that buyers will pay a premium when high-grade books come to market.  Spawn #1 is the exception to this rule.  The reason is because of the sheer volume of the high-grade books that exist. This negates buyers paying a premium for a select few books

V.  My Targets

I have many targets that I use because I need a larger sampling to see patterns.   I can not provide all my targets, but here are a few of them I regularly utilize for my assessment of the marketplace:

X-Men #4

This book was selected as a nice Copper Age book for my needs. X-Men titles are always sought after by collectors.  In addition, the first appearance of Omega Red is a nice bonus.  Finally, this book has an affordable FMV that makes it not out of the reach of most hobbyists.

Captain America #100

This is the "first issue" of his self-titled series in the Silver Age.  This book comes to market often and is sought after by collectors who cannot afford his Golden Age appearances.  The FMV again is not that prohibitive to appeal to a wide cross-section of the market.

Tomb of Dracula #1

A Bronze Age first issue is always desirable to review.  This issue also has the benefit of containing the work of such artists as Neal Adams and Gene Colan.  In addition, when studying the market you should not focus on only one genre.

Spawn #1

This book has it all.  Multiple in-story first appearances in a first issue drawn by a superstar artist.   Finally, this book has a large sampling size for sales of graded books to allow for the assessment of high-grade book sales without having those numbers skewed because of the large population.

THE RESULTS

VI.  What I Saw- By Comic Book Age

I started to see books that were not driven by movies or television see a slight slipping in their sales prices.  Those that were not slipping did not experience an increase in sales prices I expected. This was really evident in some books.  The books I was interested in started to see "slippage" in prices.

COPPER AGE

X-Men #4 saw a decrease in sales prices across the board for its 1 year, 90, and 30-day averages for all graded books for the most part (as of the writing of this article).  This was a pattern for most Copper Age books I use as my markers.  Spawn #1 saw slipping in the higher grade books for the same period as X-Men #4.  What was an interesting development was that the books in between 9.0 and 8.0 saw an increase in their sales prices. People seemed to still want to buy but were looking for undervalued grades to buy.

BRONZE AGE

The Bronze Age seemed to be holding better. Tomb of Dracula #1 was up and down, no matter the grade.  I saw this hold true with other books in the Bronze Age.  Wolverine #1, another book I use for my personal market assessment, had the same pattern of some grades going up and others going down during the 1 year, 90, and 30-day averages.  Prices seemed to be slowing, though, for some of my guidepost books.

SILVER AGE

 The Silver Age was an area I believed would have a  distinct pattern.  There are fewer books in the census based upon the age of the books and thus, I believed that even if I saw decreases, the losses would be stunted.  I saw in many of my books the same increase and decrease across the board, regardless of grade.

There were no patterns as some higher grades went up while others went down.  The lower grades experienced the same patterns. Captain America #100 is a book I have long looked at to give me insight into the market.  Review the data and you will see it is all over the place.  This pattern kept emerging in my target books.

FURTHER RESEARCH NEEDED

I do not expect the comic book market to collapse.  I review the marketplace regularly on a micro and macro level to determine how it impacts my books.  I never want what happened to baseball card collectors during the hobby's implosion to happen to me.

VII. GoCollect's Impact

GoCollect Tools Help

The biggest question I am looking to answer is what will happen next.  I love the GoCollect tool where I can see a graph of the sales for each grade across the time periods I am reviewing.  On many of my markers, I've seen the growth in value. Many peaked around August 2021 and have started to go down.  I am curious if this trend for many of these books will continue. Will the gains these books received before now be lost?

My Observations

I have observed in some of my books that those grades that had appreciated in value had an influx of books come to the market.  Around August 2021 demand went up as did the supply, so prices were going up despite the increase in supply.

Then I noticed that there were more books coming to market than buyers.  I saw Golden Age books start to come more frequently to market.  I saw some of my rarer independent titles from different ages start to appear.  Prices on my market test pole books started to dip around this same time.  This was when the "I" word and Omicron started to hit the press.

VII. Important Future Data

I want to tell you that FMV is not the data you should look for on GoCollect.  The area I  review in greater detail now and in the future is the number of sales.  We may see an influx of books come to the market if inflation continues.  The spike in values may not continue if the supply of books available increases and there are fewer buyers.  If that happens you may become a seller instead of a buyer.

SO WHAT NOW?

VIII. Conclusion

I study the market to glean from the data what impacts me.  Anyone reading this article should do the same.  There is no one-size-fits-all analysis of the market.  If you compete in the market you need to use the tools at your disposal now more than ever. Dollars are being squeezed and choices will need to be made.

In the analysis books I use I am not seeing the growth I saw over a year ago. Furthermore, some of the books I expected to grow are, in fact, selling for a lot less.  You need to know what is happening because the economy is changing and those changes will impact the comic book marketplace. Everyone can make money when times are good, but you need to really put forth the time and energy when times are tough.  Now may be that time.

If you don't have a free GoCollect account yet... now is the time!

inflation comic book sales*Any perceived investment advice is that of the freelance blogger and does not reflect investment advice on behalf of GoCollect