I could feel my checkbook quivering in fear as I pulled out all those X-Men.
There’s a half-joking observation I’ve made, in-store and later shared on Xwitter (R.I.P.) and repeated on Bluesky, in which I said that someone bringing in Grandpa’s collection used to mean Golden Age books when I started in this business, but now it usually means the same twelve or thirteen issues of Spawn everyone seems to have.
The dichotomy is not always quite that drastic. There were times at the previous place of employment in the ’90s when we’d be told on the phone “oh, I have a bunch of really old comics my grandpa used to own!” and they’d come in with, like, post-Liefeld X-Force.
And at my current (and hopefully final) shop, I’ve seen my share of older books, but more on that in a moment.
For years there was an opinion, one I believed first voiced to me by pal Dorian and that I shared, that there would soon be a huge influx of Golden Age books into the general funnybook population as their older owners…uh, went to that great quarter box in the sky.
And…I never saw it. At least not around here, not locally. I’ve had Golden Age books come in dribs and drabs, usually Disney books. But by and large if there was a sudden injection of these books into the secondary market, they all probably got snapped up from estate auctions or otherwise dumped out of the inheritors’ lives and went straight to gradin’ and slabbin’.
So I don’t see a lot of Golden Age books come through. Even 1960s Silver Age comics seemed like they were in short supply, though I’ve had some really good collections come through the door over the last couple of years. One collection held 1960s first issues on up through the 1970s of many major Marvel series (including an Amazing Fantasy #15 and an Amazing Spider-Man #1), a good handful of which were in beautiful VF to NM condition.
But that’s the exception. Most collections for sale that come in that have any age to them at all are generally 1970s-1980s. (I do see a lot of books more recent than that, too, of course.) “Bronze” and “Copper” Age books, as the Comics-noscenti would dub them…all those issues of Ka-Zar and Human Fly and Tarzan and sometimes even comics people would want, like X-Men and Spider-Man and Batman.
In other words, it was beginning to look like it was the Bronze Age collectors who were now…um, divesting themselves of their own collections and going to live on a farm upstate to leave their relatives to deal with the books.
I mean, I’m extrapolating a lot from my singular data collection point of “guy who once managed one comic shop and now owns another comic shop.” But it’s the trend I’ve been seeing over the past few decades, that as older collectors sell off their books, there is a general movement forward in time of the general age of their comics. Just, y’know, overall, when dealing with original owners buying books new off shelves and restricting back issue purchasing to the “more recent stuff” of their time.
I was thinking about this because yet another large collection made it into my hands over the weekend. A nice lady with eight longboxes that belonged to a recently passed family member brought them in for me to peruse and this is what I acquired:
That works out to about three longboxes’ worth of stuff, by the way. It was primarily 1970s through mid-1980s books (the most recent I believe being some issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths), with a smattering of 1960s books (a handful of Daredevil, some of DC’s space comics).
What was interesting was that this also appeared to be someone’s Investment Opportunity. To wit:
…that John Byrne Silver Surfer oneshot from 1982…
…this issue of Wonder Woman guest-starring the New Teen Titans…
…and shockingly, a whole bunch of part two of that “Days of Future Past” story from Uncanny X-Men. And believe it not, there were more copies of this comic than pictured here.
I realize those photos may be slightly reminiscent of this ancient post, but hoo boy, just look at those. It wasn’t all duplicates, but there was a whole lot of obvious speculation goin’ on. I didn’t buy the 1/3rds of a longbox full of New Teen Titans #16, featuring the Captain Carrot insert. And that issue of Wonder Woman pictured above? That’s only 10 copies out of the 30 or so I could have bought.
This is on top of another collection I bought not too long ago, which was another investment accumulation, filled with ’90s books like the X-Men #1 with the gatefold cover, of which there were about 20 copies.
Once again, I’m just one guy with one small comic shop, so I’m working with a small dataset here. But these collections, both owned by folks no longer with us, could be an indicator of a possible trend. As blogging brother Andrew put it on Bluesky:
Is there a burgeoning influx of investment books about to enter the market? In a way, we’ve already seen it with the dumping of heavily-speculated ’90s books that are basically just landfill waiting to happen, like Brigade or, well, most short-run and forgotten Image and Image-a-like titles. But that sort of thing isn’t going to affect the price of books that already hold no value in the seconday market.
But what’s going to happen when, say, collections with three dozen F to NM copies of Uncanny X-Men #142 start getting dumped on the market? A comic that traditionally is a pricey book suddenly theoretically facing an increase in supply.
Likely, I’m worrying about nothing…now. It’s possible even as speculation stocks from private collections show up in the back issue market, it may increase local supplies here and there, but no single book is going to be hit hard enough to affect value industry-wide. Especially since most comics collections are preserved poorly and NM copies can remain harder to acquire. Even this newest collection, where most of the duplicated investment books are nice, very few grade at a NM.
What I’m saying is that we’re not likely to have a repeat of the Heroes, Inc. situation, where an enormous warehouse find in the 1970s of uncirculated copies drove the price down to essentially nothing. But your local retailer may soon find himself with, say, four dozen copies of Moon Knight #1 (1980), or 50 copies of 2001: A Space Odyssey #8, and more similar acquisitions.
Maybe in the long run we’ll experience a repeat of the Shazam! Effect, where a heavily speculated book (DC’s Shazam! #1 from the 1970s) is dumped into bargain bins, where it primariy stayed for years. Then suddenly it was realized “hey wait, nice copies of this book are hard to find now!” and they were pulled out of the bins and if they could find any mint copies, those were slapped with premium prices.
Not that anyone’s going to dump Uncanny X-Men #142 into a dollar bin…I’m certainly not, and even as many copies as I’ve acquired I don’t expect them to last long. But maybe the day will come when even, say, Brigade #2 is a rare find in NM and my 152-year-old self will price it up at 50 space-credits and put in my case.
Interesting food for thought. I have noticed GA books drying up on Ebay here in Europe or just being priced way too high.
These Byrne X-Men books always command high prices and I don’t count on ’em dropping off a whole lot. It’s great reading and if you get into collecting chances are you will want as many of these as you can.
But is all that Venom/Carnage spec gonna remain strong? Early Wolverine after the mini? Signal? Gwenpool? Ghost Rider Punisher or Weapon H?
And what about the market of books with a much smaller demand which command high prices nonetheless? I happily forked over 30 bucks for my “Oh Wicked Wanda” ten years ago but I have seen it on Ebay a couple of times since then and maybe whoever wanted that book has got one by now?
On the plus side, that kind of market will continue to have the bargains and super finds that make hunting so great!
Part of what got me thinking about it was my wife’s estate sale adventures, where the past couple of years have seen a significant shift from stuff that you’d expect to see in my grandparents house to stuff you’d find in *my* house.
The pandemic almost certainly factors into that, but also my own weird health scare from a year ago.
Just this past weekend, my little brother scored a crate of boxed NES games at an estate sale, which was even creepier to contemplate.
(Wow, I’m just full of cheer today.)
Oh, and on the upsurge of inventory affecting prices:
I doubt it will come to much because there’s still enough of us around who missed out on, sold off, or came late to the stuff and now have a little more discretionary income and a nostalgia itch to scratch.
All the while, the items themselves are still accruing perceived value because of their reputation and age.
Giant-Size X-Men #1 is coming up on its 50th anniversary next year!
Anecdotally, I see a lot more junk golden/atom age (junk in the sense of not-marvel-dc-fawcett-ec) going cheap in reader quality for sure.
But no, I never find the good stuff any less than I would have paid ten years ago. But the good stuff, and the non-good-stuff, is all available in nice hardcovers so I care less.
Uncanny X-Men #142 is one of those books that I have to talk myself out of buying every time I see it. I own it, and I know that I own it. But something inside of me wants to buy it *again*. Like New Mutants #18 or JLA: Classified #1, it’s a totally perfect issue that represents everything I love about superhero comics. Seeing so many copies of it all together like that is very satisfying.
When I was unloading my collection ten years ago, it was predominantly from the 1980s, but over the years I’d obtained a number of choice Silver and Bronze age titles (most of the FF from 4-100, X-Men’s that weren’t Giant Size or 94, but came right after, etc). But mixed in was a number of Golden Age titles I’d acquired at garage sales and auctions in the 1980s, when they were starting to turn up for sale, but before people thought they were worth anything.
The shop owner I was selling to picked out all the Golden Age titles and handed them back to me. Said he couldn’t do anything with them. They were mainly non-superhero, aside from the first issue of something called Golden Lad and some very worn Shazams. Then he started complaining about how the price guides listed Golden Age westerns as being very valuable, and he said something like “Who gives a fuck about Hopalong Cassidy any more?”
Ah, the Quarter Bin of my childhood Comics Purveyor. Around 1987-1990.
Literally all the OMAC, and PREZ, and 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and SHAZAM! (70’s run) you could ever want, they were begging us to take that stuff off their hands.
OMAC #1 NM for a Quarter, kid please buy 8, get them outta here.
Jack Kirby? Yuck, who wants those?
I attended a séance this past Halloween where my friend attempted to reach the spirit of his father to find where he had hidden his copies of The Death of Superman in the poly bag with the armband.
@Chris Wuchte
Several years ago I bought a few Hopalong Cassidy Fawcett Comics for about $5 a piece just because I thought the cover art paintings were really nicely done. I’ve picked up a few other Golden Age Westerns from Dell (Red Ryder) and Avon (Jesse James) again for the cover art and just because they are emblematic of a genre which was once huge in American Popular Culture. Also, some of them have really nice art by the likes of Raymond Kinstler, who went on to become a portrait painter who painted several presidential portraits. Ultimately, I’m just as happy if Golden Age Westerns remain relatively cheap to buy.
“Ka-Zar”.
Hey, the Bruce jones ones are pretty good!
“John Byrne Silver Surfer oneshot”.
Cool!
“and shockingly, a whole bunch of part two of that “Days of Future Past” story from Uncanny X-Men”.
OK, THAT was a genuinely good investment, as well as being a really cool book!
“2001: A Space Odyssey #8″
Was that the first Machine Man?
” But maybe the day will come when even, say, Brigade #2 is a rare find in NM “.
MAYBE. But I can’t see their being much demand for it. Cheesy entertainment that it is, nostalgia for some of us, part of the appeal was that I could buy a big stack of them fairly cheaply. (The second series was better than the mini series, BTW).
“GA books drying up on Ebay here in Europe or just being priced way too high.”
There’s almost none in my collection- i can’t afford the fucking things! And there are a few I would like to read. Marvel’s HC reprints of their WW2 era books has satisfied some of my curiosity. WASN’T ALEX SCHOMBURG AMAZING?
“These Byrne X-Men books always command high prices and I don’t count on ’em dropping off a whole lot.”
Nope- they’re X-Men in their prime, AND Bryne.
“But is all that Venom/Carnage spec gonna remain strong? Early Wolverine after the mini? Signal? Gwenpool? Ghost Rider Punisher or Weapon H?”
The Wolverines, I’d say yes. The rest, I doubt. MAYBE Venom.
“I attended a séance this past Halloween where my friend attempted to reach the spirit of his father to find where he had hidden his copies of The Death of Superman in the poly bag with the armband.”
Spooky voice: *They’RE hiDDen undER the YOUngblooD #0’s*
“and just because they are emblematic of a genre which was once huge in American Popular Culture”.
Interesting, isn’t it, how mega-popular Westerns WERE: Pulps, Novels, Comics, movies, tv shows, and now, just NOT AT ALL.
@ Snark Shark
Yes, Alex Schomburg was amazing!
By the way, for those who don’t know, probably one of the least expensive comics with a cool Schomburg cover that can be easily acquired is Invaders Annual no. 1. I think that might also be the last comic book cover that he ever drew.
“Invaders Annual no. 1”
Neat! I didn’t know he did any non-Golden Age work.
My one and only Schomburg cover is a Thrilling Comics, which is painted in a style that’s totally different from, say, his Americas Best or Marvel Comics covers. Which means I will have to hunt for one of those, too.
@philfromgermany
That’s cool that you have a Thrilling Comics with a painted cover–is it one of tfs airbrushed covers where Schomburg signed it “Xela”…? Which number is it?
Can you see this? https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20240409/39c416a47ac7079660ab3cfe92d82c2e.jpg
I think it is #43 or 63, and yes, it is signed XELA.
@philfromgermany
It is issue no. 63 of Thrilling Comics. Nice score! That “Xela” (Alex spelled backwards) Schomburg cover is cool! It looks like you picked up some great Wally Wood illustrated Weird Science and Weird Science-Fantasy EC Comics as well! Congratulations!
Thanks, Sean. The Weird SF was a grail book since it Is my favourite EC cover. That haul was the best and most expensive in at least ten years.
NICE!
“Spa Fon?”
“Squa Tront!”
“XELA.”
“Oh, Xela/You’re Breaking My Heart/You’re Breaking my confidenc, baby” – Ximon & Carbuncle.
Love the fact that you have moved to bluesky as Xwitter has become more balanced between conservative and liberal voices.