MARKET REPORT: CONAN SAUNDERS & BUDDY SAUNDERS

With the books closed on 2022, I would say we are now well and truly in the post-Covid comic market. 2020 was a year of initial uncertainty followed by rising sales and rising prices. 2021 saw the comic market reach another gear entirely, driven by a potent combination of low interest rates, stimulus payments, accumulated household savings due to reduced spending on services and travel, and a soaring stock market. Together these supercharged consumer confidence and sent demand for collectibles surging. In comics this effect was felt most strongly in the prices for key books from the Silver Age to the modern era.

We first observed the train slowing down June/July of 2022. Prices were still strong, but buyers were no longer snapping up big books at ever-increasing prices as quickly as they had in the previous year and a half. If the market peaked May-July of 2022, it’s dropped relatively steadily through the end of 2022. As 2022 concludes and we move into 2023, it looks to me like price decreases have been flattening out, possibly hitting or nearing a bottom. Even with the pull-back, prices for major comic keys are still up significantly from where they were in early 2020 before Covid, even adjusting for inflation between then and now.

Here at MyComicShop, sales of our own collectible comic inventory at the end of 2022/early 2023 has been up 20%+ over the same period a year ago in late 2021/early 2022, which I think is a pretty impressive accomplishment given that we’re comparing a weaker market now against a stronger market a year ago. But, sales of consignor-owned inventory have been down a bit.

I think part of the reason why sales of our inventory are up while consignor sales have been a little down is that we as a company can respond faster to changing markets. As the markets have moved down, we’ve been relatively quick to lower our prices to where the market’s at, and as a result our sales are still strong. For some of our consignors, I think it’s harder to adjust down as rapidly. In some cases collectors who bought into the market on the way up to the peak, or at the peak, are not in a big hurry to cut their losses and lower their prices.

Summarizing: prices are down from where they were at the beginning of 2022, but from where we sit it seems like the market is still quite active and there are plenty of buyers for comics all up and down the price spectrum, from Golden Age to Modern Age. Sellers just need to be realistic with their pricing and can’t hold out for the prices they were seeing 6-12 months ago.

One other thing I’d like to cover: the condition of new comics.

This is a situation that seems to have originated with changes that happened during the Covid era. The past few years have seen major changes in comic distribution, with DC going with new distributor Lunar, and then Marvel going with mega book distributor Penguin Random House, and Diamond continuing to carry Marvels as a sub-distributor of PRH. In addition to the new faces and procedures in distribution, some publishers have also made changes to how they print comics, including what paper stock is used. In particular, the cover stock used for Marvel comics is now a flimsy lighter weight stock, the same paper stock as the comic interiors. Previously, covers used a heavier paper stock than interiors.

Comic retailers are running into more issues with newly published comics arriving with dings, bends, dents, and spine ticks. If you’re a reader focused on reading the next issue, they still look great and you probably won’t notice or care. But if you’re a grade-sensitive collector looking for only Near Mint comics to add to your collection, many newly distributed books may not meet your standards.

We’ve recently been reviewing the comics we receive from the distributors and have found that overall about two thirds of the comics we receive are what we would consider NM, and one third would be VF or lower. This can create a difficult balancing act for retailers, trying to meet the needs of collectors wanting only NM copies when getting so many non-NM books in. Here at MyComicShop we haven’t made any changes yet, but in the months ahead we may need to adjust how we handle new comics to better reflect the reality of what we receive from the publishers.

Hope 2023 is a good year for you and your family, and hope you continue to get massive enjoyment from the comics you read and collect!

The comic book market continues to be an interesting one. Covid’s impact on the market is well documented. Brick-and-mortar comic retailers, through no fault of their own, were the big loser. Government closures put them out of business for weeks and even months at a time. Internet retailers, by contrast, continue to operate and to pick up comic fans orphaned by government mandates. And in our case, and in the case of other comic Internet retailers, we benefited not just from our brick-and-mortar competition being shut down, but from the fact that other forms of entertainment and social activity shut down as well—such things as sports events, movies, dining out. We did a booming business in both new and back issue comics all through Covid.

But in terms of new comics sales for Internet retailers, that boom is over.

During Covid, MyComicShop saw a more-than-normal growth in sub-service preorders, and in orders from weekly new comic arrivals. Now, with the impact of Covid pretty much in the rearview mirror, brick-and-mortar is recovering lost customers.  As a consequence, we are seeing short term negative growth in new comics sales, which is to be expected. Although new comic sales during Covid represent a single dramatic upward spike, the graph line to either side of that period points to continued growth in our new comic and graphic novel sales.

While new comics are an important part of our business, back issue sales are and always will be the backbone of our business.  Even as our new comic sales ramped up dramatically during Covid, so too did our back issue sales. I was both surprised and pleased to see that the back issue comic sales boom has not let up and, if anything, is accelerating.