Investment grade silver age2425
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Steverogers11 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Just wondering what most feel is the minimum grade for a silver age comic as possible good ROI. Besides af 15 hulk 1 or sc4 or any of the top 10 silver age books. I feel a 7.5 for most silver age comic is solid. Anyone else have a guideline they use. Thanks | ||
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TruckJohnson private msg quote post Address this user | |
| If it's slabbed, I only buy 9.8. | ||
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shrewbeer private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Investment grade is *basically highest grade available. If you can pull up 5 on ebay at any time of a certain grade, its probably not investment grade. Granted you likely wont lose money, but your ROI will not be ideal. Thats just for keys. Non-keys? 9.4 minimum grade, no two ways about it. ROI is worse than your local bank on anything lower than that in silver age. |
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Steverogers11 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| True when u put it that way | ||
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Steverogers11 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I should have said comics like asm14 tos 52 TTA 35. Those key books that are not maybe "blue chip" but sought after books | ||
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 I bought a meat grinder on amazon for $60 and it's changed my life.
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kaptainmyke private msg quote post Address this user | |
| bummer i have mostly 5.0-7.0 silver age back from CBCS. Most of the moderns I have are 9.2 that I had graded. These books I've had since I was a teenager in the 90s. | ||
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Deadpoolica private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Key books, can't go wrong with 5.0 or higher | ||
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shrewbeer private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by Deadpoolica Suppose it depends on the definition of key. Books like Showcase 4 or Hulk1 are just unstoppable no matter the grade. Stuff like Justice league 1, Avengers 1, etc are still Key, but the value isnt going to appreciate as much unless its at high grade. |
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Steverogers11 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Thanks everyone for the input | ||
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burntboy private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I would think that Key books on any of the Justice League characters (either in or hinted at in the upcoming Movie)would still be a decent bet. As a prior poster said if there are multiple unsold copies (on ebay) at a certain grade point, I'd avoid it for investment purposes. For example, It would appear that the key Aquaman books are still pretty hot in most grades. I'm still in shock at what the 11,29 and 35 are still selling for...  |
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burntboy private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I totally agree and was shocked to find the prices that are being realized. I submitted Aquaman #1, 11 (2 copies), 29 & 35 at the Big Apple Con 2 weeks ago. My first experience with CBCS. None are high grade (except perhaps for My OO copy of one of the 11's)but all are worth a lot more than just a couple of years ago... |
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
| "Quality wins out." Buy the highest grade book you can obtain...not afford, obtain. You may be able to afford lesser quality copies, but they will perform at lesser quality rates. Conversely, if you turn your nose up at higher quality copies when you have the opportunity to buy them, waiting for that HIGHER quality copy to come along, you may wait a very long time, and any "investment potential" might have evaporated. Sometimes...not always, but sometimes...it's worth a bit of a risk, when an exceptional copy comes to market. The highest quality always rises the fastest, and falls the least. During the early/mid 80's and late 90's SA drawback, the highest quality copies continued to set sales records, almost unabated. |
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jrs private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I'd say buy raw silver age books and get them graded if you want a decent return on your investment. Raw books generally go for a fraction of slabbed books for the most part and, assuming the books aren't restored, you should do well value-wise. | ||
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QuaBrot private msg quote post Address this user | |
| 9.6 or better. Silver age books in 9.8 are hard to find (not impossible, but not easy) and lower grades (9.0 and down) are pretty common. Some titles are easier to find in higher grades, and just be aware that late silver - after 1964 at a least - Marvel'were Warehoused (collectors started buying multiple copies as investments) | ||
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BrianGreensnips private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by QuaBrotYes, but on a much smaller level than Bronze Age and everything newer than that. |
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QuaBrot private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by BrianGreensnipsYes, but on a much smaller level than Bronze Age and everything newer than that. Absolutely, difference being that Bronze Age after late 70's it became widespread (and by the time I started collecting in early 80's it was just common practice) and Silver Age had a few people doing it, but doing it hard core (stories of people going to printing press in New Jersey and buying pallets at a time and literally storing them in Warehouses. My LCS used to buy back issues from those guys and I get some nice copies from him) |
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BrianGreensnips private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I have read stories of people buying multiple copies as early as Conan #1 but nothing earlier than that. If they did that would be one awesone score. | ||
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burntboy private msg quote post Address this user | |
When I bought My first Overstreet in 1976, I went looking for the "Multiple (5) Copies" of Daredevil #1 that I had planned on buying. Turns out it was just a plan and I'd not spent the additional 48 cents for the four extras.  That was in 1964, so I'm sure there were smarter folks than I picking up a handful of the new Marvel Titles in the early 60's - it just wasn't the common practice it became years later. Thankfully My one copy was well preserved and I managed to pick up a couple others about 10-12 years ago. |
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by QuaBrot It is astonishing the delineation between ultra high grade (9.8+) and "everything else" that took place right around 1975. Example: I bought tons of Starlins in the late 90's/early 00's. Tons and tons. I've had little trouble getting 9.8s out of many of them, Strange Tales #180, 181, Warlock #9-15. Granted, they're TOUGH...but not impossible. I bought Starlin Captain Marvels...same sellers, same time frame...and not a single copy has come back better than 9.4. Not a single one. Dozens of copies...not a single one higher than 9.4. Forget 9.8s. It's not that they don't exist...they do...but the explosion of ultra high grade that is possible, especially in Marvels, from 1975 on is astonishing. It's not difficult...at all...to complete a 9.8 run of X-Men #94-up. It's nearly impossible to do so with, say, Defenders, or FF #100-#150, or Daredevil #80-120, or...you get the picture. Even Spideys aren't easy to be had from the early 70's in 9.8. People just started to take much, much better care of the copies they had, people were buying multiples of many books and storing them well...it was just a confluence of factors that resulted in the ease of ultra high grade copies from this time forward. Of course, pressing has had a marked effect on that, but books have to be in an underlying condition that will allow pressing to 9.8 to work in the first place. |
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JWKyle private msg quote post Address this user | |
| If it's just about making money then any book or books bought at the right price can have money made on them. And if you buy at a good enough price you can build a empire. | ||
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
| By the way...the astonishing rise in value of early Silver Age Marvels was like nothing that has ever happened in the comic collecting industry, before or since. Action #1, Tec #27, these books generally had to wait until the 60's to be recognized as "collector's items"...and by then, most of them had been recycled during the war, thrown out, or otherwise lost to attrition. "Comic book collecting" wasn't really a "thing" until the 60's, for the most part. It just wasn't something that any but a small handful of people, almost entirely young men and boys, did. But FF #1, AF #15, and everything else...that was something special and unique. By the time FF #1 was just nine years old, it had a price guide value of $30 in "mint." Think about that. That was 250 times cover price, for a book that was only 9 years old. For a modern $2.95 or $3.95 to perform the same, it would have to be worth $750 to $1,000. Now, certainly, there ARE some books that do that...but they're almost entirely variants, not normal, everyday books you could buy off the stands in any quantity you wanted for cover price. The only book of the modern era that has even come close to performing that well, so soon after publication, is Walking Dead #1. No other book comes even close to doing what FF #1 and AF #15 did so quickly. It really was an amazing time. |
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QuaBrot private msg quote post Address this user | |
| @DocBrown you are right, it was an amazing time, and that is in part why some argue that the Silver Age didn't really start until FF#1 (as opposed to Showcase 4), and others just call the time after FF#1 the Marvel Age. The closest you can come to the impact a few comics had on the industry/culture was Action 1 with the introduction of the Superhero as we know it, and to a lesser degree EC comics in 1950 in that they lead the industry into Horror and was the grandfather (father?) of the underground comix of the 60's - not to mention Mad's impact on our culture. But insofar as collecting, again EC's were collected and traded by devoted "Fan-Addicts" who started the first Comics Fanzines in the early 50's and traded with each other for back issues, but otherwise it was individuals or people who were probably aficionados of other overlapping genres - Horror or Science Fiction fandom comes to mind. Don and Maggie Thompson were collecting before 1960 (very late 1950's I think is when they started collecting, if not before when they were kids), and they were able to put out a fanzine that started in 1960, again before FF#1. What did change was that the Marvel Universe created a huge fanbase, an interconnected universe, and comic books became something even college kids would read (X-men and Dr. Strange were some of the older crowds favorites), which meant that they became more mainstream. As we see with the Movies today, mainstream means big bucks! |
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
| True, but as Roy Thomas has said, the EC collectors started and ended with EC. It didn't create the "collector culture" that we know today. It was essentially devoted to EC, and once it died off, that would be the end of "organized comics fandom" for that decade. As I noted, there were certainly a handful of people collecting before "Comic Book Collecting" (in caps) became an official "thing" in the 60's...but they were only a handful, like Don and Maggie, Roy, Jerry Wiest, and others. It can be (and has been) argued that Action Comics #1 didn't impact the culture, so much as Superman did. While people could tell you who Superman was, they probably couldn't tell you where he first appeared, because the idea of collecting comics was a foreign one to most people at the time. Action Comics #1 didn't become "ACTION COMICS #1!!!!" until the 60's, when comics collecting became widespread and mainstream. Odd to consider now, but certainly true then. There's a tale somewhere of someone who bought his copy of Action Comics #1 from a used bookstore in 1950 for 35 cents...quite the hefty premium for a used magazine...here it is: http://www.today.com/popculture/away-rare-superman-comic-sale-wbna29407097 |
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burntboy private msg quote post Address this user | |
| Somehow I never heard that story before. Does anyone know what that book then sold for at auction? Back around early 1963 I set off on the #23 Bus from Orange NJ with the O'Brien brothers to visit 2 used bookstores on Market St in Newark. I was specifically looking for a copy of Fantastic Four #4 (1st SA appearance of Sub Mariner). I had copies of all the books by then probably up to #11 or so, but #4 had never gotten to Sid's luncheonette where I bought most of my SA book collection. Found a mid grade copy at the second store and had to pay full 12cent price because the owner hadn't cut off the top 1/3 of the front cover as a remainder. It was and is one of My favorite books ever... |
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by burntboy Sid's Luncheonette... :cloud9: I don't know what that copy did, but I bet Richard Evans would know. |
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FN_2199 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| You could grab an old Overstreet Price Guide and see for yourself, the research has already been conducted. Keys in any grade or high grade non-keys will have the most return on investment. *The definition of "keys" will change from decade to decade **This strategy suggests that past performance = future results  |
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by FN_2199 With the very important caveats that: 1. The Overstreet Price Guide has, for at least 25 years, been both resistant to dynamic market changes, and reactionary to price trends. This has always been true of the OPG, but it is markedly so since the dawn of the internet. 2. Because of the point above, deflationary periods in the values of "key books" have been mostly understated. After all...people aren't happy if they see the value of what they own has gone down, and having a product that makes people unhappy means having a product that people won't continue to purchase. For instance...the great drawback of the late 90's was grossly understated in the OPG. Yes, between 1997 and 1998, they slashed prices on the "Good" and "Fine" categories, true...but the "NM" category remained essentially unchanged, even though the market was telling a wildly different story, especially for common, but key!, books from the 60's-80's. Anyone telling you "Amazing Fantasy #15 has NEVER gone down in value; it's a sure winner!" is both telling you something that isn't true, and probably trying to sell you one. |
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I_AM_IRON_MAN private msg quote post Address this user | |
| You can turn a profit by investing in any comic book that you purchase for the right price. | ||
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DocBrown private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by I_AM_IRON_MAN Sure, but that's not investing...that's just flipping. Investing is buying something at "fair market value" now, in the hopes and expectations that it will rise in price and beat inflation (at the least.) If I stumble on granny's old 'Tec #27 that she insists I only pay her $10 for, I haven't really invested anything. Won the lottery, sure. but a sound investment strategy that does not make. |
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