I should make a series entitled "I Told You So" but that seems a little overly aggressive and snide. Anyway, a recent Businessweek article confirmed what I, and many others (apparently), have been saying for some time now: That your prized comic book collection - the one you'd hoped would pay for your home remodeling project one day, or whatever - is probably worthless.
The article gives a few reasons this is true but shies away from the real reason: The industry literally devalued them to change the way they pay authors. For the most part, comic books are considered "work for hire" and creators receive a one-time payment. However, creators are now receiving residuals for their works, especially for reprints. Furthermore, a lot of the comics that were once considered so rare have been reprinted so often that they are no longer "rare" (a point the article does mention).
But do not fret! The comics market has always been unstable. It's certainly far more stable than the stock market or many other investments but comics' values have always fluctuated. For the most part, they tend to be pretty solid; once a comic hits, say, $100 in value, it rarely dips below that although it may never rise higher. Again, this is not always true; several comic books that were once worth a small fortune can now be had at a sliver of their former going-price and this has a lot to do with the popularity of the character(s), the title, the creator(s) involved, and so forth.
The best example of this would be Ghost Rider in the 1990s. I suppose many readers are too young to remember what a mega-hit that series was in its time and prices for both the new and old series soared. Now most of those issues can be had for a fraction of the 1990's prices.
I guess I'm fairly lucky in that I definitely have a dozen or so high-dollar comics in my collection of thousands but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I've been less than enthused about the going price of most of my collection.
© C Harris Lynn, 2013
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