And today’s speculator market is wholly different than the 90s speculation boom/bust. In the 90s you had guys buying tons of books as an inexpensive investment. The books were printed in the millions and those speculators were not going home and selling to a secondary market online. They bought tons of copies and didn’t even know if there was a market to resell too. There wasnt. Now, we have speculators who buy 1, or a few, copies and they are selling them in quick time to a market that is so hot right now, that it drives prices up on these Main title books that now have print runs in the tens of thousands, instead of the millions. If there was no market, there would be no speculators. And the market is raging atm.
Oh I know, I was only focusing in on the reader market. If comics had more readers, like, way more regular readers… we would still find comics in such places. Now kids have the internet, they don’t need to go find something at the store when it’s on their phone or tablet.
Too many dynamics nowadays to really narrow down who’s reading, collecting, speculating, mix of two or all, etc
Print might of been up last year but this is now just a direct collectors market which I think is only going to get smaller and smaller as the older folks who are holding out either stop collecting or die off.
You mean flippers? There were flippers, just on a different scale and likely more local to themselves only. But with the internet and online selling, it just seems like there are more. But there were flippers back in those days, ask @Anthony when he started flipping books… 
But seriously, @Anthony I think says his first flip was back in the 80s and he realized he could buy books to sell and then use that money to buy more books.
Agreed. But that is really hard to guage. There does seem to be a disparity between the ages that now buy comic books, but is that because the books are too expensive for kids now? Or because kids don’t like them? I feel like a certain percentage of kids who read online will evolve into collectors and in turn they will start buying floppies when they reach an age with a disposable income. Humans love to collect things and humans love super heroes. Neither of those two facts have changed very much since we first saw Superman back in the 1920s.
No, I mean speculators. The guys in the 90s were planning on sitting on those 90s books for a decade or two and to resell at inflated prices. Flippers are a sect of today’s speculators. Buying a book at 10 am and selling it to an already hot market is not speculating, that is flipping. 
We live in a visual age now. I have kids myself and as big as I am into comics, read to them, got them to buy and read early, they’ve already moved on and have zero interest in comics. I think it’s more than price and it’s more than just reading. Now, the daughter still loves some kid graphic novel books but comics, neither have the desire to collect.
I think a lot of people now are, why do I need to read and collect when I can just watch the movies.
I think we’re still a dying breed and print is on it’s way out. I don’t think it’ll truly ever go away cause yes, some people love to collect things but comics just don’t have the appeal like they once did I think. Maybe it’s the stories within. They’re pretty sophisticated and convoluted nowadays for at least Marvel and DC. You gotta buy this book to understand what’s going on in this other title… Publishers got their creators to go all complex instead of keeping it simple stupid and I think that’s a factor in why kids don’t care like we once did.
But when your children are 30, 40 years old, they may have similar nostalgia to what we now have, and maybe they do start collecting. I didn’t start collecting until I was 35.
Comics don’t require the same interest that they enjoyed in the past, in order to remain in print. The market is niche now, very niche. But that niche market is relatively healthy. And I don’t need the market/industry to last forever. I need about 15/20 more years before I am out of here.There are new publishers starting up every year. That doesn’t happen in a bad/dying market. And you don’t see new Magazines being published or collected in the same manner that comics are.
That’s normal in any industry. There’s a lot that crop up and then wither away as fast as they arrived. I get some are trying to do something a bit different to revive or get their stories out there but that’s not signs of a healthy market, that’s just signs of any market. Brick stores in general are dying but we still see new ones going up…
Healthy on the level of it’s very niche, yes. Healthy as in a whole, not so much. If it continues to become so niche, it will only grow smaller and smaller to a point where most big publishers aren’t going to waste their time publishing books. The indies will stick around, the big guys will find something else for the new generation.
To some degree, I suppose. But, not too many industries like comic book publishing has a direct off shoot industry that profits annually in the Billions. The entertainment industry. Hollywood. Comic book publishing is an idea farm for IPs. The comic industry serves a greater purpose that most other dying industries don’t have the benefit of having.
The market for speculation and flipping is very different today than in the 80’s and 90’s. The big difference is availability of selling platforms. I have been buying and selling since I was a kid. As Poyo stated I did my first flip in the mid 80’s purchased a copy of Batman 234 in a collection of books from a yard sale (first appearance of modern Two Face.) I sold it to a shop because I needed a skate board. Mine had broken. Flash forward I was going to Another Universe in 1992, buying all of the variants they had on clearance for a dollar, and selling them to shops in Dover Delaware at a much marked up price. I paid for comics and other things out of this money. I didn’t have to work because I would do a weekly trip to Another Universe, loot their bins, and flip them. One time i purchased a metal Amazing Spider-Man trash can full of very early ASM comics in great shape and ended up damn near paying for a semester of college off the sale. I have been doing this for a very long time. My wife (girlfriend back then) flew to Buffalo New York, crosses the border over to Niagara Falls, and proceeded to purchase every copy left of the Amazing Spider-man #8 Niagara Falls variant the Marvel place had left (close to 200 copies) back when they were selling for $80-$100. I traded some to a local shop for credit, sold a few on eBay, and had a large retailer hit me up with an offer of $40 each for the remaining copies. Done. I sold them all. The sale paid for the trip, and paid off the credit card I was carrying a balance on.
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My wife says that physical comic copies will die out soon. This is the year of digital age. So she wants to keep collecting comics so that when we become grandpas we will be the “cool” grandpas lol. She is also collecting animated series cuz of streaming services and later on they won’t be available.
Sorry, I worded your quote and my response wrong. You read what I was saying about flippers vs speculators. At end of quote, where you said… “There wasn’t” people flipping… That’s why I brought up flippers, cause there were flippers at this time, not just speculators. I know the difference…
We are certainly moving towards the age of, sure you can read or watch anytime but you have to pay a monthly service for access to such things.
What’s the difference between a trade and a comic book? The trade is generally cheaper ($20 MSP trade typically has 6 $3.99/$4.99 books, right?). And why should one buy the comic rather than wait for the trade? I typically don’t start reading and arc until it’s complete, but that’s me. Remembering what happened in part 1 six months later is not possible for me.
I used to buy trades exclusively…if even go for the first print hardcover…the whole story was there under one cover, they were easy to sell and get most of my money back when I was done.
My daughter (8) has no interest in comic books, but loves trades. Mainly because you are given hours of entertainment under one cover and a full story vice 15 minutes and a partial one. She doesn’t understand why you have to wait 15 to 28 days for the continuation.
I have to imagine most young readers see this the same way. Comic books of old were mostly self contained stories under one floppy cover. No kid in the fast pace of the modern era wants to wait for installments. They lose interest too fast.
Maybe when they have more disposable income later in life they’ll want to own the original comic/key of a beloved character…but that’ll only be major keys like EotSV2 and UF4.
I don’t know where I’m going with this rambling other than comics are an adult thing and likely will never appeal to the younger generation even when they’re growing into adulthood. This current market is a movie and nostalgic driven business which probably can’t be sustained long term.
And yes, some day when we’re old grampas and grandmas we’ll dog out those old books and grandkids will look at the floppies in awe saying “cool…I’ve heard of these things but never seen one!” And then Proceed to snatch your raw 9.8 copy of Batman 89 and create many bends and greasy fingerprints in it as they flip through…all the while saying “Who is this strange looking character at the end?! You can only see a part of her face?”
”Good thing that book’s value dropped back to cover price a few months later,” you’ll say to yourself…
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I’m not saying only speculators drive the hobby, I agree that it’s 99% collectors. I guarantee you that if only “readers” were buying print comics, the industry would fold overnight- and the few readers with a pull list are mainly the same ones from 20 years ago. Agree to disagree I guess.
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God help me, I bet you anything that Overstreet cover will become “desirable” in a few years like everything McFarlane Spidey. Or maybe I’m wrong, how well does that Campbell Vampirella overstreet guide go for?
