(opening jingle)
- (gasps) The death of Superman.
I can't believe I found one.
I'm going to sell it
for millions and retire
early and put my kids through college.
Yeah, okay, maybe not.
(hard rock intro music)
Welcome to comic misconceptions, the show
that takes you into
details about the things
you think you know about
comics, I'm your host,
Scott Niswander and
we're going to be doing
another kind of different
style episode again,
this week because you
really seemed to like
the last one we did
about secret identities
and in light of this
happening, I feel like
I really want to talk about it.
So, in case you haven't
heard, your mint condition
of Action Comics number
one, a comic book that
many would consider to
be the most important
comic book ever made,
recently sold for 3.2 million
dollars.
This no doubt has sparked
some interest in the market
of collecting comic books.
You know, like when
Buzzfeed tells you that
your Game Boy color is
worth over $1500 so you
search through all of
your things to find it
and put it up online to
find out that it's really
only worth $20.
A very similar thing
happened to comic books
in the 90s and the industry
almost died completely
because of it.
So first off, full disclosure,
if any bias is shown
during this video because
I never really got into
the whole collecting comic
books thing, I'm almost
all digital for a long
list of reasons that I'll
probably make a video about
sometime in the future,
but the main one being
that I find having a lot
of physical copies of
comic books lying around
to be pretty cumbersome.
My dad gave me a chunk
of his collection when
I graduated college and
I really do want to read
them all and I'm going
to, but for right now,
they're just kind of sitting
in my closet in a couple
of long boxes taking up valuable space.
Not that I don't appreciate
it, Dad, if you're watching,
I do, thank you.
But, what I hear a lot
from my friends who do
collect comics, is that
digital comics, unlike
their physical copies,
don't have any resale value,
and yeah, that's true,
most if not all digital
comic book retailer use
agreements, like Marvel
for instance, clearly
state that you do not own
the digital comic book
you buy, but rather have
unlocked a private viewing session to it.
But that doesn't inherently mean that your
physical comic book
collection will be worth
thousands or millions of
dollars, in fact, there's
a great article in Business
Week that says that
comic books that you
have just sitting in your
basement are, to be
blunt, probably worthless.
Even if they tell stories
of a few people who have
collected thousands and
thousands of comic books
only to turn around and
sell them for just a couple
hundred dollars.
The problem is that the
media doesn't really
report these things
because, well, they're not
that interesting.
Instead, the media promotes
these rags to riches
stories of ordinary people
finding rare and valuable
comic books and selling them
for millions of dollars.
And this could
unintentionally warp someone's
perception and make them
believe that all comic
books have a high value.
This is exactly what happened
in the comic collector
bubble of the 90s, but
before we get into it,
I'm going to put on my
imaginary generalization
cap that will let you
guys know that I might
skip over some details that
you think are important,
so if I do, please let me
know in the comments and then
we can all kind of learn
a lot more things that I
didn't have time for in
this video community.
It also starts with the
creation of the first
comic book shop.
You see, comic books were originally sold
on newsstands, but in
the 70s, several stores
opened up that would sell
back issues of comic books
as collectibles.
It wasn't long before
publishers took their new
comic books off the streets and into these
specialty comic book shops,
but more on this later.
Jump to the 90s where
speculators were coming in
and seeing how people were
buying and selling old
issues of comic books for
many times their cover price,
especially hearing stories
of golden and silver age
comic books originally
a few cents at the time,
now going for six figures.
To them, that sounded
like an amazing investment
opportunity, so they went
out and bought multiple
copies of individual comic
books in the hopes to sell
them one day and become rich.
That on its own might not
be that bad, but here's
where the problem sets in.
People were buying more
and more of these books
because they saw value in them and because
they were buying more
and more, publishers were
printing more and more,
and then you're selling
millions of books to half a
million readers and you're
over-saturating the
market, and that doesn't
really work out so well for investments.
Strongly generalizing
once more here, the value
of something is determined
by its supply relative
to its demand.
So, let's take a look at
these two factors of the comic
book world of the 90s.
So first off, let's look at demand.
Now there are a lot of
ways to create demand, but
I want to look at another
failed collector industry
of the 90s, beanie babies.
One of the key factors in
creating demand for beanie
babies was that they
avoided being distributed
in main stream chain
retailers in favor of small
gift shops.
This helped the product
seem rare and prompted
people to buy soon as
they could, thus creating
a high demand.
You can't just buy
Quackers the duck anywhere,
so if you find one, you
better buy that thing quick.
Sound familiar?
This is exactly like
those comic book shops
we were talking about earlier.
Publishers were selling
their comic books through
these small specialty
shops because there wasn't
really anywhere else to
sell them and this might
have made them seem rare
to speculators which only
drove up the perceived
worth of the comics,
but the reality was that
they weren't rare at all,
this is where supply comes in.
There were millions of
copies of these comic books
laying around and speculators
hadn't caught on yet.
Publishers started putting
out these variant covers
and shiny foil editions
and all sorts of nonsense
that would make you believe
that your comic book
was valuable and it was
going to put your kids
through college some day.
So, here's an example from
the collection that my dad
gave me, this is, Venom,
Lethal Protector number one
from 1993.
It's got that nice shiny cover,
just the way God intended.
The cover price for this
comic was $2.95, but today
you can buy it on eBay for
six cents or you can splurge
and get the whole series
for just two dollars, which
is still cheaper than
this one comic was back
when it first came out.
The Death of Superman in
1992 was a huge contributor
to the crash of the comic book industry.
People were buying this
thing, three, four, five
issues, all for themselves
thinking that they're
going to hold onto it,
sell it for millions
because they have the last
Superman comic ever made,
but it didn't really turn
out that way, in fact,
today you can get four
copies of that comic book
for around 20 dollars on eBay.
Some consider this to
be the big tipping point
of the comic book crash.
Speculators had all these
comic books that they
thought were valuable but
they couldn't sell them.
If everybody already has
three copies of The Death
of Superman, who's going
to buy your copies?
These comic books were
everywhere and because
of that, they weren't worth anything.
Suddenly comic book were in
high supply but low in demand,
these speculators who were
buying four, five, six
copies of comic books
suddenly stopped buying them
altogether, but the publishers
were used to printing
millions of comic books,
so they still printed a lot
but now nobody was buying
them and they're not making
enough return on their
investment and the industry
was hit very, very hard.
So, why did the birth of
Superman go for 3.2 million
but the death of Superman
only goes for a few bucks?
Well, it's because
Action Comics number one
is genuinely rare, as are
all golden age comic books.
In the 40s, during World
War II, people back home
really wanted to help with
war efforts in any way
they could, and one of the
best ways was by donating
all of their scraps, including
paper to the war efforts.
Paper drives were held and
anything deemed useless
scrap paper was sent to
help the efforts, including
comic books, that's why
the original 200,000 copies
of Action Comics number
one, less than 50 exist
to our knowledge today.
Pair that with the fact
that it was no only
the birth of Superman but
the birth of the super hero
genre and you get a comic book
that's worth a lot of money.
So, the idea of collecting
comic books nearly
killed the medium itself.
But why am I even talking about this?
Am I trying to tell you to
stop collecting comic books?
Absolutely not, chances
are, if you are watching
this video, you have a
genuine interest in comics.
The reason the market
crashed was because of these
speculators who weren't
buying them because they liked
comic books, but they
were only buying them
as investments, and I
think that's important.
Collecting something not because you want
to make money off it
someday or prove that you
were a fan to your friends
because you have a certain
issue or a toy or a
holographic whatever, but just
because you have a real
sincere love for it.
So, I don't really have
a question that I want
to ask you this week.
Instead, I just want to know your thoughts
on collecting comic books
and the industry crash
as a whole.
There was so much that I
had to skip over for this
video, but I want to know
what your opinions are
on it and I'll be right
down there in the comments
all day today just
talking with you guys, so
look forward to seeing you down there.
And if this is your first
time hanging out with ys
here at Nerddync, we do
weekly comic book videos
every Wednesday and I
don't want you to miss
out on any of it, so please subscribe.
Once again, I'm Scott and
I'll see you next week
for more things you thought
you knew about coms.
See ya.
Doctor Doom was created
in 1962 by Stan Lee
and Jack Kirby as were
probably all of your favorite
classic Marvel characters,
but it seems like these
two had different opinions
about what Dooms face
looks like under the mask.
I want to believe that they
both started out thinking
that Doom's face is
hopelessly disfigured as we
can see in Fantastic
Four number 10 when we
get this reaction of
Doom removing his mask.
