Question on comic book worth

I was just wondering with the increase in digital comics and trade paperbacks how this impacts the worth of individual comic books. I was thinking with fewer individual comic books being sold if this means the worth of individual books goes up because fewer exist. Thoughts?

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There’s more learned folk on here than me, but I suspect not. The value would be determined by supply and demand, so if more people have access to what they want through whatever platform, then they’ll be less demand for it and the value wouldn’t increase. However, if the market were to boom again at some point, than value of comics with lower print runs could be worth something. As with stocks, value is always going to be up and down depending on the health of the market.

That’s, of course, assuming your premise is correct and fewer comics are being sold due to digital and trades and I’m not sure that’s the case. For example, there’s several DCUers on here that have said they buy more comics because of interest raised by this specific app.

I’m just making all that all up as I go, though. Just my instinct.

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well with the price of paper/ink/artists increasing or whatever comics are pretty expensive nowadays.

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Also not an expert. The reason older comics are worth so much is no one “collected” them. They were disposable entertainment. Even with lower print runs, today’s collectors bag and board every issue they buy so there is a greater percentage of quality product available. Add in that the collectors are not being replaced by a new generation of comic readers and there is less demand today than in the past.

I’m sure there will be rare issues and odd collectors in the future who will pay for them. My mother collects pink and green depression glass. For her they are a reminder of her childhood and she loves them. I don’t share that love and other than hard core glass collectors I don’t see them increasing in value. The people who truly love those collectibles grew up in the depression and are slowly dying off.

Will the next generation be more interested in vintage game consoles, cell phones, and other “things” that brought them pleasure when they were young? Probably. Just because something is old doesn’t make it collectible or valuable.

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Wait… some people don’t? My store sells them with bag and board… I thought they just kinda came that way for easy organization.

Some vintage game consoles already fetch a pretty price.

Nowadays, there are alot of factors to the subjective worth of a comic. Print run/scarcity, significance, graded or raw, and a whole bunch of other metrics that won’t matter to alot of people. I think the after-market is in this weird and maybe unstable place where speculators are trying to tout anything as “hot” and seeing what actually sticks.

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