History is Repeating Itself...How Comic Books are the New BaseBall Cards
Key Take Aways
Baseball cards in the late 1980's and 1990's were over produced and today are worth very little.
Disney has stimulated the comic book industry with the release of its movies. However due to over production, increases in price, reboots of existing series with those of politically correct characters and multiple spinoffs of beloved characters over saturation in the comic book market has probably already occurred.
Collectors holding onto comic books issued after the 1990's for value may be in for shell shock long term when they go to sell.
People purchasing comic books for the story and art will probably still be deeply satisfied.
I want to again thank the Steemit community for an opportunity to post about things I am passionate about. For this article, I am writing about a subject I very much enjoy comic books and baseball cards.
In 1989, I was at baseball card convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. One vendor had multiple stacks of Upper Deck #1, Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie Cards for sale. There were easily 500 or more on the table. Although Griffey would later go on to become one of the best baseball players of all time, My friend and I as we saw the stacks of cards laughed amongst ourselves. Griffey had just broken his finger in the shower and would miss the rest of his rookie season. While I cannot recall what the vendor was charging per card at that show, I am positive it was under $10.00, in fact the card may have been as low as $4.00. Anyone who followed baseball cards knows the price for this card eventually climbed all the way up to $100.00 Today, the price has come all the way back down and the card can currently be bought for $10.00
https://www.beckett.com/news/1989-upper-deck-ken-griffey-jr-history/
In fact a friend of mine was fortunate enough to sell his highly graded version of the Griffey Jr. rookie card for several thousand after Griffey hit his 500th career home run. Speaking to him recently, he said the card dropped to just a few hundred and he had sold at the right time.
The reason why baseball cards such as the Griffey Jr. rookie card fell in price were simple, supply and demand. There were projected to be at least 1 million of those cards possibly made. When Griffey Jr. stopped playing there ceased to be a demand for any of his cards. It didn't matter he was a first ballot hall of famer. Because of over pricing and mass quantity, people stashing away their baseball cards in hopes that these cards will one day be valuable should take a walk through the farmers market sometime and see the rows of old cards from the 1980's to 1990's sitting in the sun at bargain basement prices below the price originally paid for them.
Why am I bringing this up? Because, I believe in my own opinion, comic books are going or have already gone the way of baseball cards. Baseball cards were collected or still are collected by individuals who believe these collectibles will one day increase in value. The comic book industry in the 1990's went into a similar phase over producing books and constant re-start of #1 issues. The comic books Death of Superman and the multiple X-men cover #1 from the 1990's certainly fall into these categories. At the time Death of Superman was issued, people who stood in line to buy the issue believed they would be able to sell this comic in the future and pay for their children's college education. Today one can find the Death of Superman in abundance at the local comic store for not much more than it was originally sold for, maybe at most $10.00. The X-Men #1 can still probably be had for less than $4.00.
Comic Books Today
Comic books today have seen quite a resurgence since Disney bought Marvel and movies such as Iron Man, Captain America, the Avengers, Thor, Ant-Man have become blockbusters. As a result a fresh generation of kids and first time collectors have begun collecting comics of their favorite characters. However, a change has quietly occurred with Disney. It was something Disney has done to the Stars Wars franchise and is now doing to the Marvel Universe. Disney is killing off or replacing older characters, which generations have loved in favor of bringing in new characters to replace them. The philosophy is simply this new characters will equate to new buyers or consumers.
For Marvel this has meant replacing older heroes with newer more diverse younger characters. (Think Politically Correct as well.) It has also meant that every so often Marvel will reboot a franchise and set the issue numbers back to #1, probably in hopes to increase sales for that issue. (#1 issues or first appearances tend to sell better.) The best example of this has been the Amazing Spider-Man has been reissued to #1 twice since 2014, before picking up/ resetting to get back to issue #800 and issuing 400,000 copies. There have also been several reboots or spinoffs of Captain America, Deadpool, and Batman.
http://www.cbr.com/may-2018-sales-amazing-spider-man/2/
Overpricing in comic book industry has also played a serious role in the poor return on value attributed to comic books. Most comic books today sell between 3.99 and 4.99 an issue. In 1990, the price was $1.50. According to the CPI calculator $1.50 in 1990 would purchase $2.97 in 2018. Or roughly the comic book industry is now charging more than $1.00 to 2.00 more than was being charged 28 years ago. This may not sound like much, but with Federal Minimum Wage at $7.75 an hour, most teens cannot afford these issues today. One economic advisor I can recall saying the only worse instant purchase you can make (aside from buying comics) is buying a new car that loses 50% of its value when you drive it off the lot.
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=1.50&year1=199001&year2=201806
Lastly, while movies today are very good and can/ have greatly influenced the price of comic in a positive manner. (I should note I really have enjoyed these movies.) I believe several key characters will need to be re-cast following the next Avengers Infinity Wars movie. As a guess, at least Robert Downey Jr., and Chris Evans will probably retire. Hugh Jackman I believe will also hang-up the role as Wolverine. With these stars "retiring" from these roles the result could lead to over saturation with movie reboots such as we saw with the Amazing Spider-Man films when Tobey McGuire left and Andrew Garfield taking over the franchise. (Although I do admit I was a huge fan of the more recent Spider-Man Homecoming.) But other re-boots such as the Fantastic Four and Punisher movies did not fare so well at the box office after their respective reboots. (I again admit I am a huge of the Jon Bernthal Punisher on Netflix.)
If movie fatigue does set in following the departure of these stars from these series, the collectible items and comics associated with them that collectors have been banking on could possibly see their values decrease unless it is a low print run (Think Walking Dead #1) , has artist signatures, is an older comic pre-1980, or the first appearance of a pivotal character.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/12/comic-books-value-in-hot-market.htm/
"Investing in comics only makes sense if you know what you're doing, because 99% of comics have no real value to investors." Brandon Zvern of Austin books and comics.
Putting History into Perspective
For the week of July 4, 2018, DC comics launched Batman 50. (Batman marries Catwoman.) The comic book shop I go to had a midnight launch for the issue. (I picked mine up two weeks later.) Batman 50 sold a total of 121,836 issues that week alone. Despite this obviously being a key issue one must look back into history and ask is this the next "Death of Superman" or the next Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck rookie card and if after contemplation your answer is yes, then I believe you must sell if you are in comics as a collector looking to turn a quick buck. If you enjoy the story, the characters and the art then by all means continue as you were just don't look to make any money from your investment.
Author note: It is not lost on me my moniker for both Steemit and Twitter is @themookknight1977. I am a fan of both Comic Books (especially Moonknight) and Baseball cards however, I do not believe this should interfere with profit. I am NWBO long. I am not a financial expert and this article is my opinion only and should not be relied upon as financial advice or predictive behavior in terms of collectibles.