I think it's probably safe to say that a portion of the folks who joined the comic-collecting community during the comic boom did not have the knowledge about grading a book themselves and so made a number of submissions to CGC where the grades fell well short of their expectations, resulting in financial losses. Expensive lesson to learn. Great vid!
I personally find slabs stupid, but I am totally fascinated by all the YT videos I watch regarding them. I've always only thought of a comic as something to read & keep, but I understand that, at some point, my kids will likely need to slab my keys so they can sell them. I appreciate all the great info / advice in this video, and hope that newbies to this hobby are paying attention.
There won’t be a sale of a 7.5 of a ’90s foil book for the next 300 years at least. That belongs in the trash to increase the value of the other half million survivors by a tenth of a cent, hah!
I’ll go lower for a book that still sells in a 9.8, a book I want in my PC, or a book I think has the potential to pop in the future due to a first appearance or something.
It's weird, for sure. There's a person on ebay who has slabs up but they aren't keys. They are just slabs of random issues of Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, Rom. And they start at a penny! 98% of those slabs sell for under the $25 it took to slab them! I don't get it. It makes no sense.
He probably bought them in a larger collection so spent pennies on them. I’d do the same if they were part of a larger collection and wanted to move them on.
@@bronzevillecomics2581 Maybe. I thought I read in one of that person's posts that he had stuff coming back from CGC so I took it that they had submitted the books, but who knows. Your theory seems more plausible.
Definitely a big red flag to see tons of mediocre slabs done during the boom times that means they are going to massively overvalue the collection and you'll never get a good deal on it. Hate to say it but there's a ton of those collections trying to move out there and they probably won't sell until a relative who isn't attached to them is forced to do something with them.
A lot of great points made Jim. Slabbed comic books are great for presenting and preserving books, but like you said, they're also heavy and take up a lot of space. Certainly for more valuable books, it's a great tool for buying/selling, but collectors really should restrain themselves from slabbing $10 books in the hope they'll get a 9.8 and 'making it more valuable'.
Great video Jim -- I learned a huge amount of knowledge from it. I love collecting the special runs of comics too - those I've already read, I get great joy flipping through the covers, and then a run of say a DC run of Neal Adams or Berni Wrightson House of Mystery and House of Secrets covers -- my current obsession 😅
Homer learns a hard lesson in that episode when rainfall dissolves the sugar and he is left with nothing. Very reminiscent of Hemingway's classic "The Old Man And The Sea".
Great video. I’m so glad I got back into the hobby AFTER the 2021-2022 boom. I researched and followed a dozen YT channels like yours. I learned a lot. And I have managed to avoid all the missteps of others. I just submitted my first set of high grade Copper Age/Modern books for cleaning/pressing and grading. The cheapest of the books has an FMV of $300 at a CGC 9.6. I hope the market is leveling off now so by the time I get back my slabs, I wont feel I wasted my time and money.
Great video Jim. Your comments regarding how once the collection gets to a certain size, and it would be unlikely for us to ever read them all again, really hit home. I just hit my 60th year, and although I like some of the new titles (especially Star Wars), I still prefer comics from the mid-1970s, when I started reading and collecting them. I love everything about those bronze age titles, including the ads, letters pages, and even the smell of them. There are certain favourites that instantly transport me back to my childhood, such as the JLA 100-pagers, Omac, Kamandi, Witching Hour, Boris Karloff, and many others. I would probably be happy just keeping those favourites, and letting the rest go. Perhaps it is time to downsize?
I am glad you passed on that collection & recognized it wasn’t worth acquiring. As a collector (Dimestore toy soldiers) I fight the urge of buying figures at the flea market sometimes bc I want to make a purchase and not “strike out” in my weekly flea market trip. I think fighting the urge of making a purchase when the quality of the purchase isn’t there especially if you are in a “dry spell” of good finds.
I've always thought for the most part people buying books for 5$ that were printed in 2024 then slab it for a 9.8 and sell it for 150$ is just ridiculous to me but I'm a silver age guy so Idk
I've loved and collected comics since I was a kid. I dipped out for a long time in my early 20's but got seriously back into collecting in the last ten years. Like Jim, I love the experience of looking at the books and handling them, smelling the old paper and actually reading them. I'm sorry to say that lately, I've been thinking A LOT about the 'what now'? What am I going to do with all my books? Eventually it's going to come time to liquidate. My children could care less about comics and I wouldn't want to saddle my wife with the books after my demise. She knows nothing about comic books and would probably be ripped off if she tried selling them by herself. I've actually lost sleep sometimes thinking of all the money I've spent that will probably never be recovered-if that makes sense. I still love comics but unfortunately, there is a downside. This was a great video. I would like to see what Jim's thoughts are on selling collections and pricing, etc. Maybe there's already one?? Thanks!
CGC just increased their carry capacity by changing their gading scale and encouraging a pile of re-submissions for high grade keys. You're going to see a bunch of poor examples at grade on the market going forward. Old labels will sold at a premium....😒
I wish i had a dollar for how many times i've seen a comic slabbed and thought"why in the world did they slab that?"
Nearly all comics are going to zero when the boomers pass away 😔🪦
I think it's probably safe to say that a portion of the folks who joined the comic-collecting community during the comic boom did not have the knowledge about grading a book themselves and so made a number of submissions to CGC where the grades fell well short of their expectations, resulting in financial losses. Expensive lesson to learn. Great vid!
I personally find slabs stupid, but I am totally fascinated by all the YT videos I watch regarding them. I've always only thought of a comic as something to read & keep, but I understand that, at some point, my kids will likely need to slab my keys so they can sell them. I appreciate all the great info / advice in this video, and hope that newbies to this hobby are paying attention.
There won’t be a sale of a 7.5 of a ’90s foil book for the next 300 years at least. That belongs in the trash to increase the value of the other half million survivors by a tenth of a cent, hah!
I'm lucky to learn my lesson on this topic. I only graded 2 books I should not have. But I learned VERY quickly on how to play the game.
I totally agree with your logic. My threshold is $150
I’ll go lower for a book that still sells in a 9.8, a book I want in my PC, or a book I think has the potential to pop in the future due to a first appearance or something.
It's weird, for sure. There's a person on ebay who has slabs up but they aren't keys. They are just slabs of random issues of Spectacular Spider-Man, Daredevil, Punisher, Rom. And they start at a penny! 98% of those slabs sell for under the $25 it took to slab them! I don't get it. It makes no sense.
He probably bought them in a larger collection so spent pennies on them. I’d do the same if they were part of a larger collection and wanted to move them on.
@@bronzevillecomics2581 Maybe. I thought I read in one of that person's posts that he had stuff coming back from CGC so I took it that they had submitted the books, but who knows. Your theory seems more plausible.
Definitely a big red flag to see tons of mediocre slabs done during the boom times that means they are going to massively overvalue the collection and you'll never get a good deal on it. Hate to say it but there's a ton of those collections trying to move out there and they probably won't sell until a relative who isn't attached to them is forced to do something with them.
A lot of great points made Jim. Slabbed comic books are great for presenting and preserving books, but like you said, they're also heavy and take up a lot of space. Certainly for more valuable books, it's a great tool for buying/selling, but collectors really should restrain themselves from slabbing $10 books in the hope they'll get a 9.8 and 'making it more valuable'.
It’s not the $10 books as much as the $1-$3 books.
I did not have transactional relations with that comic collection.
Great video Jim -- I learned a huge amount of knowledge from it.
I love collecting the special runs of comics too - those I've already read, I get great joy flipping through the covers, and then a run of say a DC run of Neal Adams or Berni Wrightson House of Mystery and House of Secrets covers -- my current obsession 😅
Homer learns a hard lesson in that episode when rainfall dissolves the sugar and he is left with nothing. Very reminiscent of Hemingway's classic "The Old Man And The Sea".
Great video. I’m so glad I got back into the hobby AFTER the 2021-2022 boom. I researched and followed a dozen YT channels like yours. I learned a lot. And I have managed to avoid all the missteps of others.
I just submitted my first set of high grade Copper Age/Modern books for cleaning/pressing and grading. The cheapest of the books has an FMV of $300 at a CGC 9.6. I hope the market is leveling off now so by the time I get back my slabs, I wont feel I wasted my time and money.
Great video Jim. Your comments regarding how once the collection gets to a certain size, and it would be unlikely for us to ever read them all again, really hit home. I just hit my 60th year, and although I like some of the new titles (especially Star Wars), I still prefer comics from the mid-1970s, when I started reading and collecting them. I love everything about those bronze age titles, including the ads, letters pages, and even the smell of them. There are certain favourites that instantly transport me back to my childhood, such as the JLA 100-pagers, Omac, Kamandi, Witching Hour, Boris Karloff, and many others. I would probably be happy just keeping those favourites, and letting the rest go. Perhaps it is time to downsize?
I am glad you passed on that collection & recognized it wasn’t worth acquiring. As a collector (Dimestore toy soldiers) I fight the urge of buying figures at the flea market sometimes bc I want to make a purchase and not “strike out” in my weekly flea market trip. I think fighting the urge of making a purchase when the quality of the purchase isn’t there especially if you are in a “dry spell” of good finds.
I've always thought for the most part people buying books for 5$ that were printed in 2024 then slab it for a 9.8 and sell it for 150$ is just ridiculous to me but I'm a silver age guy so Idk
Great advice. Excellent video. Thank you.
I've loved and collected comics since I was a kid. I dipped out for a long time in my early 20's but got seriously back into collecting in the last ten years. Like Jim, I love the experience of looking at the books and handling them, smelling the old paper and actually reading them. I'm sorry to say that lately, I've been thinking A LOT about the 'what now'? What am I going to do with all my books? Eventually it's going to come time to liquidate. My children could care less about comics and I wouldn't want to saddle my wife with the books after my demise. She knows nothing about comic books and would probably be ripped off if she tried selling them by herself. I've actually lost sleep sometimes thinking of all the money I've spent that will probably never be recovered-if that makes sense. I still love comics but unfortunately, there is a downside. This was a great video. I would like to see what Jim's thoughts are on selling collections and pricing, etc. Maybe there's already one?? Thanks!
Great analysis. Keep up the good work.
A lot of good information
Nice pass.
carrying capacity
CGC just increased their carry capacity by changing their gading scale and encouraging a pile of re-submissions for high grade keys. You're going to see a bunch of poor examples at grade on the market going forward. Old labels will sold at a premium....😒