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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #8 5 Mar 03 |
Against Speculators |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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On the day Superman #75 was published in late 1992, the collector’s
edition was already being sold for $25.
Some stores reportedly didn’t even put any copies on the shelves,
seizing the opportunity to sell the copies they’d ordered behind the counter
for multiple times the price. |
Comics in the early nineties were full of
collectors, people who bought comics not to read them but to collect
them. And comic book companies
catered to this market, printing multiple covers, foil-enhanced covers, holographic
covers. The death of Superman in Superman
#75 was published in late 1992 in two editions: a normal one at a dollar and a collector’s edition in a black
plastic bag with a bleeding red Superman logo, a bag containing the same
issue with a different cover and additions like a cheap armband to
memorialize your loss, all cover-priced at $2.50. On the day it was published, the collector’s edition was
already being sold for $25. Some
stores reportedly didn’t even put any copies on the shelves, seizing the
opportunity to sell the copies they’d ordered behind the counter for multiple
times the price. In response, comic
book retailers in early 1993 ordered both editions of Superman’s return in Adventures
of Superman #500 in astounding numbers, planning to set aside dozens upon
dozens of copies. Of course, everyone
else did the same thing, and millions of copies were consigned to quarter
bins. The speculator market suddenly
tanked, comic stores closed, and a whole industry went into freefall for
years. You’d think we’d have learned our
lesson. Multiple covers never utterly
went away, and one can understand if certain zealous fans -- who read the
comics -- want to own variant covers.
Dynamic Forces, a company that mostly sold signed editions through
catalogues (itself a strange phenomenon), has expanded to sell variant
editions with “Dynamic Forces cover”s.
Wizard magazine has expanded not only to sell its own comics
and to buy own the largest comic book convention, but to offer “Wizard Ace
Editions” reprinting old comics with new covers. |
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The worst incarnation of this new speculator boom is Comics
Guaranty Corporation (CGC), a company that grades comics on a 10-point
system. |
The worst incarnation of this new
speculator boom is Comics Guaranty Corporation (CGC), a company that grades
comics on a 10-point system. In
theory, this is a worthwhile service that corrects for individual
inconsistency between comic book shops:
it provides a supposedly objective third party to grade the condition
of comic books. It evaluates comics
with rubber gloves, ascertains a grade, and then heat-seals the comic in a
plastic pouch with a grade above the comic book itself, also sealed within
the plastic. Sealed within plastic,
of course, no one can read the comic.
The comic is thus purely reduced to a commodity. Perhaps worse, the seal is not utterly
airtight, and the plastic allows light through, thus allowing the comic book
to continue to deteriorate, while its marked grade remains the same. Surely, this is of no use to intelligent
people who can grade their own comics -- hardly that difficult a process --
or to people who buy comics to read them.
CGC has even branched out, offering a “Signature Series” of comics
creator signatures authenticated as legitimate by the company. |
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Captain America (forth
series) #1 was published in 2002 with a wide circulation and is overpriced at
$7.50, let alone $35.50 sealed in a heat-sealed plastic pouch. |
Yet CGC-graded comics have become very
popular. They sell in online auctions
for multiple times their value, even at the grade indicated -- the added
price apparently indicating the added value of CGC’s third-party
authentication. Wizard
magazine promotes CGC-graded comics relentlessly, including routine features
in the backs of their magazines featuring prices for a few books at
particular CGC grades, as well as news stories on particular comics at
particular grades. Wizard #136
(January 2003) featured a promotional inset showing how Captain America
(forth series) #1 is priced at $7.50, whereas a copy grade by CGC at 9.8
sells for $35.50. This is
ridiculous: comics arrive to stores
in boxes and are sometimes mutilated in shipping; a fold or slice on a comic
is one thing, but the CGC standards distinguish between new, undamaged comics
and perfect comics. Surely, at this
level of apparent precision, the difference in UPC code or lack thereof
between newsstand editions and those bound for comic book shops, which
essentially produces two different editions with different circulations,
would merit noting in terms of worth before attending the difference between
new comics and CGC grades of 9.9 or 10.
Moreover, this process of authenticated grading seems to be applied
mostly to recent comics: Captain
America (forth series) #1 was published in 2002 with a wide circulation
and is overpriced at $7.50, let alone $35.50 sealed in a heat-sealed plastic
pouch. Absurdly, CGC-graded editions
of new comics are now sold already graded so that once can buy a new comic
already sealed in an inviolate plastic pouch with a grade already attached. |
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Of course, all of this relies upon the reliability of CGC. Who grades the graders? |
Of course, all of this relies upon the
reliability of CGC. According to anecdotal
evidence, people have resubmitted the same comic book to the company and
received a different grade -- a fact the company acknowledges, as differences
inevitably exist between individual graders.
Yet no careful investigation of the company and its grading process
has occurred. Scandals have been
alleged in which powerful people have arranged to have grades attached to
large masses of books. I do not mean
to lend legitimacy to such allegations, and I certainly think people have a
right to buy or sell such material, but one has to recognize that the value
of CGC-graded comic books rests upon the continuing reputation of that
company, which has not itself been graded.
Who grades the graders? |
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The trouble is when comic books are treated not as literary
artifacts but as baseball cards, any content between the covers being
irrelevant. |
Whatever the reliability of CGC, its
services are distinctly targeted for collectors, for people who just have to
have a copy of Ultimate Spider-Man with a 9.9 grade attached. I am myself a comic book collector who
owns dozens of thousands of comic books, but the idea of not being able to
open them and read them appalls me. I
like having rare but important graphic novels in the same way that I like
first-edition novels. The trouble is
when comic books are treated not as literary artifacts but as baseball cards,
any content between the covers being irrelevant. And that is not only an offense to comic books as art, but a
part of the market that one cannot rely upon, as past crashes of speculative
markets have indicated over and over. |
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You buy a Picasso because it’s a Picasso, to stare a genius ready
on your wall, and because it’s a privilege to own, not because someone has
told you it’s worth money. |
When I go into a used book store, I am
elated to find editions that I want but do not have, but I am elated first to
be able to read a work I find important and second to be able to add to my
library a particular edition of some historical importance -- as I define it,
based on my own sense of merit. Comic
book price guides evolved precisely for this purpose -- for people who
appreciated an under-appreciated art form and needed some measure of
determining, in a budding convention culture, just what old comic books should
sell for. Overstreet, that pioneer of
comic book price guides, was similarly accused of immorality, of hording
particular comics and inflating their listed prices. Again, we should have learned our lesson
by now -- though that requires knowing our history. As Neil Gaiman has reminded us, they sold tulips too. You buy a Picasso because it’s a Picasso,
to stare a genius ready on your wall, and because it’s a privilege to own,
not because someone has told you it’s worth money. |
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