eBuying Comics: Week 78

This week I am taking a look at the steps one needs to take to become a fully-fledged comic book speculator. I want to stress this is purely a research piece, speculators have already killed the comic book marketplace once before and maybe they are dangerously close to doing it again? They are the scourge of real readers, people who fall in love with comics because of compelling storytelling and breathtaking artwork. On the other hand you do have to admire their hustle, it really does fascinate me how much time and money one can dedicate to it and I have a lot of questions on the topic. Some of the answers to my questions may seem obvious, but my thought process was to get all my content on the culture of comic speculation in one place. That way I don’t have to do random posts in the future, ranting about how and why a certain issue has taken off. Ideally, as a follow-up to this piece if there are any speculators reading this I would be well up for them walking me through their process and perhaps making counterpoints to what I put forth here. Comment on this post if you are interested or hit me up on Twitter @IanWells87. The first thing I did was search “How to be a comic book speculator” into Google. It turned up some interesting articles, each taking on a different tone and offering up varying levels of what you need to do and pitfalls to avoid.

How do you stay ahead of the curve? How far ahead of the curve do you need to be?

Luckily, at the time of writing this, two news stories about upcoming comic book movies broke allowing me to illustrate this point better. The MCU has always been this well-orchestrated jigsaw of movies. Fans often make correct predictions about the way the jigsaw pieces will fall into place. Last week it was confirmed that a Thunderbolts movie is on the horizon. There has been rumour of such a movie since the post-credits scene of the Falcon and The Winter Soldier final episode, so prices of Thunderbolts-related stuff probably saw a spike back then. The problem I have with it is that we all know the MCU Thunderbolts will not resemble their comic book counterparts in any way, so what issues will get the spec treatment? Thunderbolts’ first comic appearance from 1997 is currently at £30 for a 9.4 NM whereas a newer incarnation of the team including Winter Soldier as team leader is at £3 for the same grade. It is the same argument with the recently announced Joker 2. Is ‘Mad Love’ going to reach new heights of desirability as the movie will bear no resemblance to any comics? One of the things I found in my Google search was the existence of speculator sites. Now I am not surprised in the least that they actually exist, I’m just surprised it took me this long to discover them. While I said this instalment would be a full stop on my speculator talk I may have to do a deep dive on them, but I wouldn’t want to be repeating myself.

How big are the profit margins?

Why do it if you aren’t going to make money right? Perhaps the answer to this question lies within how far ahead of the curve you have to be. In my opinion, there are two types of collectors. The first is someone who actually wants to read a key issue. To them it represents comics history, its interest in a certain character and to see how the comics may differ from any upcoming big or small screen appearances. Then you have the person who wants the key issues at the highest grade and the best price so they can flip them the sooner the better. We have all had the dream of going to a car boot or yard sale and finding a person selling comics who doesn’t really know what they have. We dream of ceasing that moment and either filling holes in our collection or picking something up with the view of making a tidy profit on a flip. Obviously, the people with the biggest profit margins are the people who had this stuff when it originally came out and are willing to part with it. One of the benefits of there being so many media adaptations of comic books is that they are drawing on more modern material that it is easier to find better condition comics and for the right price if you strike at the right time (There’s that curve again). Like I always say I am a reader first and a buyer/seller very much secondary. There is not one issue in my collection I would ever consider selling no matter how hot it got! I buy and re-sell for fun and creating content for this blog, I am never going to break the bank doing it my way. Of course, I have thought about pursuing it more seriously but being a speculator takes patience, knowledge, good contacts and building a reputation to name a few attributes. If money was no object I would love to dedicate say £100 to this blog and just buy and sell for a year. Making money and content in on hit! A lot of the articles I read said things like “you don’t need to buy every comic.” and “you don’t need to buy expensive comics.” The counterpoint to that is that the trends in comics are changing on a near-weekly basis because of all the ‘Hollywood’ interest which leads to my next question.

What has more impact on a comics price, a new comic story arc or a new movie/TV release?

Back in the heady days of the 90s’ comic boom and bust, it seems funny to say but comics were dictating what was hot and not. All speculators had to worry about then was what Wizard magazine thought was an issue that was going places. Publishers would print on the cover “Collectible First Issue” and the vultures circled. Now it’s when and where will such and such character appear on the big or small screen? Depending on a character’s longevity first appearance issues are going to be in the realms of the ridiculously priced already. So then it gets broken down into specific story arcs, an appearance of a certain costume or weapon. Essentially anything nowadays can make an issue hot! I recently read that the Spider-Man foe Spot had made a reappearance in one of the second-tier Spidey titles. Then a few days later I read he would be appearing in the Spider-Verse sequel. I wonder which one of these moved the needle more for speculators. Comic book solicitations are released what, 3/4 months in advance of the release of an issue? Real readers wouldn’t have thought twice about him reappearing after a hiatus. They would just think it is a creator trying something different. If the readers enjoyed his appearance then they may be tempted to seek out more of his appearances including his first in Peter Parker Spectacular Spider-Man #99. But they would have to move quick because he is coming to the big screen. Currently that issue is valued at £15 on Zap Kapow Comics. Seeing as we have seen a still image of his movie appearance I did expect that to be higher. Even though it is not as high as I thought I bet it is a lot higher had he just had a notable comic appearance and not the other baggage. Will that issue see a spike with the release of the trailer?

To wrap things up I thought I would take on the role of a speculator and make some bold predictions. I keeping my selections to movie-related issues as that is the zeitgeist at the moment if we like it or not. Now there are already movies and TV shows announced that I could make selections on but perhaps the needle has already moved on related issues to those projects. So I am going big and a few years in the future, you can thank me later if you take my advice! As ever all current prices are provided by Zap Kapow Comics for 9.4 NM. I will revisit these comics whenever any of the attached movies drop big news.

• Cable & Deadpool #38 – First appearance of Bob agent of Hydra – £15.42
  Purists will say he appeared in the first Deadpool movie, but now Fox is part of Disney they can do this cult character justice, the full green suit!

• Batman (2016) #25 – First issue in War of Jokes and Riddles story arc – £3.08
  Having recently watched The Batman for the second time, this story arc is where my mind went after that scene in Arkham. All the players from the movie feature heavily in this arc and it is in tone with the movie already.

• TMNT: Secret History of The Foot Clan #1 – £3.08
  This one is more wishful thinking than anything, would love to see this mini-series adapted. As it retells the origin for the IDW era it makes perfect sense to me to use it in any future movie to avoid any of that ‘alien’ BS Michael Bay went through!

• Master of Kung Fu #77 – First appearance of Zaran – £7.71
  The Shang Chi sequel no matter what the plot will need a colourful henchmen, preferably one with a martial arts background to tie the movie at least in some way its comic book origins.