When did the bubble burst?

[zryson]

Its funny reading about the trading cards. I still have a box full of them - or rather a plastic tub full of them (since some of them still are wrapped with the now stale bubblegum inside). I think the oldest ones I have are the Star Wars ones which were insanely popular at the time. I remember reading about how stores would limit the more popular cards to one per pack because the demand was so strong. Then a few years ago I read a letter from somebody in Wizard magazine about if they were worth much and basically the answer was no. But still some segments of the collectors market still love them. Occasionally a box of old cards (like Kiss or Star Wars, Superman etc) will fetch a pretty good price. But its very hit and miss.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

And just to show that no one learns their lesson, it appears that Marvel is bringing back trading cards as an incentive (like variant covers) with their launch of Guardians of the Galaxy.

http://www.newsarama.com/php/multime....php?aid=48788

-M

They are trying to expose as many people to the characters with a movie looming. I doubt it really works. Because the characters haven't really done much since the 1990's. So this trading card variant deal will fail.

It's funny how the sports card market followed a parallel path to the comic book market. I remember back around the same time that companies were putting out foil and holographic variant covers and upstart indies like Image comics were putting out books with glossy paper and computer coloring, the sports card companies were producing premium holographic cards, foil embossed cards, etc. etc. It was also the time when gimmicky "error" cards were skyrocketing in value. Everyone thought they were going to get rich off their baseball card collections, and now those cards from 90's are worth nothing.

Yep its pretty insane really. I remember one dealer discussing how there is just so much of a glut of 90's cards it totaled the industry. I have heard that with less companies doing cards and all , the industry has managed to rebound some . But not at the peak it once was at.

[icctrombone]

I think the death of Superman (#75) was the moment when you're non comic fan saw comics as an investment. What followed was people buying comics for the wrong reasons. That's the book that made people "aware" of comics.

[MDG]

Newsstand editions are still around but I wouldnt say they are alive and well. More like sitting there on the racks hoping somebody will buy them. Its usually Batman and a couple of other titles at best.

I was in Wegmans last week and wandered over to the book section to see if they still had a comic spinner. They did, but two of the four sides were filled with Mad Libs books.

[dan bailey]

Haven't paid any attention in years, but I remember being surprised a few years ago to note that some of the single issues racked at Books-a-Million were cover-priced $1 higher than the same issues at nearby LCSes. It's as if the companies were afraid of selling to anyone from outside the fan community.

[Parch]

It's funny how the sports card market followed a parallel path to the comic book market.

The collectable markets have similar strategies and flaws. Attempting to add value to new products might make immediate business sense, but it's been proven over and over that it's not an effective long term strategy. Creating fake value combined with mass sales defeats the whole point of collectability. Even the "limited edition" hype has limitations to the long term value. How's the price of beanie babies lately?

It's unfortunate that Marvel fell for the sportscard hype with Skybox especially when the two industries share the same type of "fake value". In a way they believed their own propaganda. They failed to see the cycle and bought at the worst possible time.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

From the articles my mind remembers , Perelman over Marvel thought he could make the company into the next Disney in a way. By buying things and inflating its value to stockholders . That they would stay happy and believe Marvel was a good money generating company. But beyond the comics , everything was taking hits.

When they bought Malibu you knew that deal was fucked up. Because they didn't buy the company for its characters. Because they didn't give a damn for the characters. They wanted the computer coloring they had. So they bought a smaller company to just get that.

[Cei-U!]

It's as if the companies were afraid of selling to anyone from outside the fan community.

Well, after all, nobody likes to hear their work is inbred, masturbatory crap.

Cei-U!
I know I don't!

[destro]

It was interesting to me watching this all play out, as I was in high school at the time and had a front row seat for how quickly things changed.

Early 90s as a freshman, I 1st started to notice some of the cooler kids who previously would not have been seen with a comic book starting to read them and show up at school wearing comic book t-shirts. The popular books and shirts at the time were X-Men, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Batman.

When the 1st series of Marvel trading cards came out it caused quite a stir and I'd say a good 25% of the school got into collecting and trading the cards. People started to approach me, since I was always known as a guy who liked comics and asking me about which books would be "hot" or have a high turnover. This was a completely new idea to me at the time, I never thought about them being valuable things.

I remember a local comic shop starting up around this time and it became kind of a cool hang out for a year or two. A lot of the talk in there was again based around predicting which books would be hot or valuable in the short term. I remember certain books being limited to 5 (haha, wow 5 copies of one comic) due to high demand.

Fast forward a year or two and suddenly the fad is over, comics are out of style and nobody at school was talking about them or wearing the shirts anymore.

[Ramage]

--I personally blame anime style. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that was the major problem inciting the event. But I think the reason comics have never completely come back is due to anime style art and decompression.

[Venomous Mask]

The mid-nineties trading cards were awesome; I remember the Spiderman cards that were drawn by Mark Bagley.

[randle-el]

It was interesting to me watching this all play out, as I was in high school at the time and had a front row seat for how quickly things changed.

Early 90s as a freshman, I 1st started to notice some of the cooler kids who previously would not have been seen with a comic book starting to read them and show up at school wearing comic book t-shirts. The popular books and shirts at the time were X-Men, Ghost Rider, Punisher, Wolverine, Spider-Man and Batman.

When the 1st series of Marvel trading cards came out it caused quite a stir and I'd say a good 25% of the school got into collecting and trading the cards. People started to approach me, since I was always known as a guy who liked comics and asking me about which books would be "hot" or have a high turnover. This was a completely new idea to me at the time, I never thought about them being valuable things.

I remember a local comic shop starting up around this time and it became kind of a cool hang out for a year or two. A lot of the talk in there was again based around predicting which books would be hot or valuable in the short term. I remember certain books being limited to 5 (haha, wow 5 copies of one comic) due to high demand.

Fast forward a year or two and suddenly the fad is over, comics are out of style and nobody at school was talking about them or wearing the shirts anymore.

I have similar memories from that era. In particular, I had lots of friends who got into baseball cards and comic books who didn't watch baseball, nor read the actual comics. They were convinced that their polybagged copy of Spider-Man #1 was going be worth millions. Meanwhile, I who actually read comics (but didn't have parents who doled out a lot of spending money with which to purchase comics) was forced to rely upon said friends to trade for issues that I didn't have so I could keep up with the stories. I just wanted to read stories, but those trading sessions ended up being huge haggle-fests because of their view that certain issues were going be worth a lot.

As for those trading cards -- a lot of the sports cards I kept since I actually was a baseball and football fan, and some of them I have framed in my office. Even though they aren't worth much, they have a lot of nostalgic value for me.

On the other hand, I use the superhero trading cards as bookmarks.

[shaxper]

I have similar memories from that era. In particular, I had lots of friends who got into baseball cards and comic books who didn't watch baseball, nor read the actual comics. They were convinced that their polybagged copy of Spider-Man #1 was going be worth millions. Meanwhile, I who actually read comics (but didn't have parents who doled out a lot of spending money with which to purchase comics) was forced to rely upon said friends to trade for issues that I didn't have so I could keep up with the stories. I just wanted to read stories, but those trading sessions ended up being huge haggle-fests because of their view that certain issues were going be worth a lot.

As for those trading cards -- a lot of the sports cards I kept since I actually was a baseball and football fan, and some of them I have framed in my office. Even though they aren't worth much, they have a lot of nostalgic value for me.

On the other hand, I use the superhero trading cards as bookmarks.

I kind of think it was my generation that killed everything. When I was in Elementary school, baseball cards were at their height, and then the bubble burst. As I moved to middle school, the same happened with comics. When I was in high school, it was Star Wars Power of the Force figures. When I got out of college, it was the vintage toy market on ebay (especially Transformers).

Seems like my generation never figures it out. I got out of comics at the right time (though I'll admit I was surprised to come back and find my Valiant collection worthless) and have been pretty smart about avoiding bubbles or getting out of them before they burst (except the housing market. Bought our dream house 3 years before it all fell apart!), but all the collecting bubbles seem to have hit my peers the worst.

[Jezebel Bond]

From the way Chuck was admiring his biological comic book glow in recent Mile High newsletters, he says the comic market is doing better these days and is reminded of some robust times from the 80s.

I hope it stays that way...it's better than having another bursting bubble looming...

[shaxper]

From the way Chuck was admiring his biological comic book glow in recent Mile High newsletters, he says the comic market is doing better these days and is reminded of some robust times from the 80s.

I hope it stays that way...it's better than having another bursting bubble looming...

Well, I think there are three separate comic book markets these days:

1. Sales of new issues: I know the Nu52 was a major shot in the arm for the industry. I hear sales have dropped considerably since then, but still, overall sales do seem higher. Only a few years ago, having 20,000 copies of a book sell in a given month was pretty decent. Diamond's sales reports definitely reflect significantly higher sales for the top 100 books in 2012.

2. The market for variants and other new comic book collectibles: I don't know enough about this one, but it certainly sounds like a bubble to me. I've started to see a few older variant covers being sold on discount at my LCSes.

3. Sales of back issues: We're nowhere near at pre-bubble prices, but I think you can attribute some of that to the age of ebay. Still, I'm seeing a lot of prices steadily increase, and a lot of key issues I bought less than a decade ago have doubled in price in that time.