Rolex had a price dip in the late 90's as the culture from that era rejected the culture from the 80's. This happens every decade and that's why items that are representative of a decade is rejected in the next one as a form of rebellion. The thing is that there's a 20 year nostalgia factor, so a lot of those things that were popular in the 70's, then unpopular in the 80's, made a comeback in the 90's. It happens with many pop culture items/people/shows/etc.

Something else to consider is that ebay and e-commerce in general wasn't really accepted until the mid 2000's. While sites like ebay and Amazon had their start in the 90's, many didn't understand or trust doing business on the Internet, where the views on credit card security were considered risky by most people. That's why the early adopters of e-commerce and by this I mean the customers, were able to get incredible deals on sites like ebay as there wasn't nowhere near as much activity as there is today. Back then, I used to get key back issues for cents on the dollar. I own four NM copies of Caliber Presents #1 (first appearance of the Crow) which I bought on ebay for $1 a piece. That's how ridiculous it was back then.

(On a huge tangent).

Back in the day, my experiences with hardcore pedantic types was mostly in pen-and-paper gaming type niches and some highly technical specialties. I left the comics niche early enough that I never got around to encountering any extreme pedantic comic book "gatekeeper" types at conventions.

Decades ago when I briefly attended some local/regional gaming type conventions, the extreme pedantic types were almost always the hardcore chits-and-hex wargamers playing stuff made by Avalon Hill and SPI back in the mid/late-1960s and 1970s. Most of these guys were 15-20 years older than me, who were extremely vocal about their contempt towards tabletop role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. They didn't have much to talk about, other than how much they really really hated D&D and how it was "destroying" the market for old style chits-and-hex wargames. They generally hated kids/teenagers, seeing them as spoiled brats who don't know what a "real game" is.


In hindsight after reading about the history of wargames, I now realize that the extreme pedantic chits-n-hex wargamer types never got over the fact that TSR completely destroyed SPI by a very unfair "predatory loan" completely backed by SPI's assets without any of its liabilities (ie. lifetime subscriptions, etc ...). The few now-AARP age chits-n-hex wargamers I have encountered over the past decade or so, are still extremely angry about the abrupt demise of SPI almost 40 years ago, and later the Hasbro buyout of Avalon Hill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula...ications,_Inc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_%26_Tactics

(Going even further on a huge tangent on "gatekeeping").

The other big niche I encountered where hardcore pedantic types were standard fare, was in the field of cryptography in the civilian world. (Excluding classified and/or military cryptography).

Though in this case, the "gatekeeping" wasn't done actively by the hardcore pedantic types. It didn't have to be done actively anyways, due to the nature of the niche having an extremely high technical "barrier to entry". Basically anybody who is recognized in cryptography, has to show that they can come up with new cracking methods which nobody could do previously (whether partial or in full).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis

To become "anointed" into the niche's "pantheon", one has to impress the hardcore pendantic peers who were the previously "anointed". (Being a mathematics or engineering professor doing research in cryptography at an elite university like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Cambridge, Oxford, etc .... is simply not good enough).

(To be more specific).

Back in the day, I only really went to local gaming type conventions when they were usually held over a long weekend.

There was usually a vendor room, but I rarely ever purchased anything. Typically vendors would be selling miniatures, old inventories of Avalon Hill + SPI wargames, used D&D modules/books and other less popular non-D&D rpg games, etc .... In those days, less popular non-D&D rpg game books were harder to come across if you didn't know about dedicated gaming shops which carried many such non-D&D titles.

Over these long weekend conventions, we were usually playing D&D and/or other tabletop pen-and-paper rpg (or chits-n-hex wargames to a lesser extent) campaigns which lasted two or three days long. Frequently this was best time to try out and play non-D&D rpg gaming campaigns which hardly anybody ever played in their regular groups.

The only reason I ever knew about such local/regional gaming conventions, was that I played regular D&D games with folks who were more tuned in to the local scenes than I was. In contrast, I didn't know about any local comic conventions during the whole time I was collecting comics regularly in those days.


It turns out the first comic convention I went to, was shortly AFTER I had already stopped collecting comics. At one gaming convention I attended, it turned out by coincidence there was a local/regional comic convention booked at the same convention center during one day in a different larger room in the same building.

So during lunch I dropped by the comic convention room where I noticed almost half of the giant room space was taken up by a single vendor from out of town which I didn't recognize. (This giant room space was likely larger than the size of a basketball court or hockey rink, but not as large as a football field). Apparently this single vendor had tons of longboxes of inventory of titles from the late-1970s to the mid-1980s, which they were selling issues for cover price as a convention special. They all appeared to be direct market copies which were not in plastic bags, and no Uncanny X-Men titles before issue #150.

However tempting it was to buy a lot of these near-mint condition back issues at cover prices, I had to say no at the time. I didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight it was obvious this particular vendor was likely using conventions as an easy way to unload tons of inventory which was not appreciating much in the back issue market.

(Thinking about this more).

If I had to guess, this particular large vendor which took up a large space covering almost half of the room (the room slightly larger than the area of a basketball court or hockey rink), was either a giant chain comic retailer from another town or was a regional distributor.

In a more general sense, how common was it for a distributor (whether Diamond or its predecessors) to be unloading tons of old inventory at comic conventions back in the day?

How many of these ebay prices back in the mid/late-1990s -> early-2000s, was reflective of the fallout of the comics bubble bursting dragging a lot prices down? (ie. Not necessarily the result of less eyes/bidders).

Hard to say. Don't remember many store owners/comic book dealers setting shop on ebay early on. Most of the people I saw selling books online were just the ones that wanted to dump their collections, had gotten offered pennies on the dollar for them at their LCS, so they went to ebay to at least get a little more. The bubble bursting affected the collectability of books from the 90's, but people still search for those key issues like the first appearance of Punisher, Wolverine, Giant Size X-Men 1, all of them which were selling between $100-$300 each back then. You have to see too that CGC didn't exist yet at that time, so basically anything in regards to grading was done by the store owner or the person in charge of purchase. Silver age key issues still traded for decent money back then, but most of them didn't pass the $5000 mark with the exception of Showcase #4, which at that point it had already passed $10K when sold through in-person auctions or at comic book shows. Golden age were the golden goose back then as the availability of almost any superhero book from that era back then scarce. eBay actually helped decrease the prices for some of these books as collector's realized that there were more copies in existence that what Overstreet and traders had in mind.

eBay really disrupted the comic book collecting/dealing.

I can remember, back in the early days, that you would have people trying to dump certain books that might have a guide value of $50, and all of these auctions for those titles just sitting there with few takers. If the auctions started low, then they might sell for ten dollars. It was really eye-opening.

And then there were books that the guides undervalued, like Miracleman #15. That book had a guide value of, at the time, maybe ten or fifteen dollars, but I would see them sell at auction for anywhere from $50-$75.

I remember that I could never find a copy of Miracleman #15, and when eBay came out, I could find them, but couldn't afford them. Ended up buying a full run of Miracleman #1-24 and the four TPBs in mint condition for barely over cover price off of usenet.

Another odd one is Hellblazer #27 (the Gaiman/McKean issue) that was a hole in my collection for the longest time. That book typically sold for about thirty dollars on eBay. For some reason, Mile High Comics had it as a two dollar sale book on their website. I bought ten copies of it, then eBayed the other nine for between $25 and $35 a pop. I called that move the "Reverse Rozanski."

I'm actually kind of baffled how Hellblazer #27 became a two dollar sale book at MHC. Chuck must have bought several cases of them in a warehouse sale, and the system automatically put them on sale because of overstock.

Another weird thing about Hellblazer #27 was that the same guy bought most of my copies of the book I put up for sale. He seemed to be buying up nearly every copy of Hellblazer #27 that showed up on eBay.

Both of these anecdotes are from, I think, the 1998/1999 range. Interesting times.

Sounds like a horder type guy.

(On a tangent).

The weirdest case of "hording" hobby items I've heard of, were some folks who would buy up dozens (or hundreds) of copies of the same D&D modules from second handed bookstores, garage sales, ebay, craigslist, goodwill, etc .... Some of these modules are almost completely worthless, such as B2 "Keep On The Borderlands" which came in the basic D&D box sets that were widely available on the mass market in the early 1980s.

Some people collect things which they know have little collectible value. I go after every Leonard Cohen CD manufactured across the world despite most of them being rather cheap, including foreign duplicates. They will never be worth much and I'm fine with it.

Pretty sure that module was my introduction to the game back in junior high. Would love to read thru it again for nostalgia.

Diamond got attacked this past weekend by ransomware and the repercussions of this is that most stores either received their shipments late or have not received them at all. The LCS in my area have not received their books from Diamond but received everything from Lunar and PRH last week. This makes me wonder how much longer is Diamond going to keep up with the bullshit of sending their books so that they arrive to stores on the Tuesday before release day instead of doing like Lunar and PRH, which sends the book the week before so if there are any shortages or damages, they can be fixed by release day.

Diamond has been slow to adapt. It took them way to long to setup pullbox on the site. The printer delays are not helping either.

Diamond suing Gamestop is no surprise at all, since Gamestop has been trying to reduce their Diamond orders dating back to 2019

Dark Horse is going on o Penguin for single issues. The previously had an agreement for trades and HCs

Image will distribute exclusively through Lunar starting in September, leaving Diamond as just a wholesaler for their product

https://www.cbr.com/diamond-comics-bankruptcy-chapter-11-explained/

Diamond files for chapter 11

...to the surprise of nobody who has been paying attention the past couple of months.

I think most expected this to eventually happen once DC and then Marvel ditched them. This would be more significant if the comic book market was thriving but Penguin has seemingly replaced Diamond without much issue.

There are major issues, though, as Brian Hibbs laid out last month, particularly for smaller publishers:

https://www.comicsbeat.com/tilting-a...l-market-2024/

I generally enjoy Hibbs' takes on the industry, but he is very anti-Lunar, so I'd take his criticisms of that company with a grain of salt. He has a big problem with a competing retailer handling distribution, which probably isn't entirely unfounded.

It does sound like a lot of smaller publishers might get screwed over when Diamond goes down because the other distributors like PRH and Lunar don't want to bother with them.

I do wonder if the smaller publishers could band together as some sort of collective that the distributors would be willing to deal with, but that sounds like it might end up as someone trying to herd cats.

Someone might be able to throw together a distributor for indie books like the old Cold Cut, but it would probably be difficult to get enough retailers to sign on.

It's a tough spot for comic book retailers. I doubt any single entity will replace what Diamond was doing for indies.

I suppose that some of the bigger self-publishers like Abstract Studios or Cartoon Books (are Terry Moore and Jeff Smith even doing any books these days?) could publish through Image if it came down to that.

I am watching a YouTube comic guy and he says Diamond just received an infusion of something like 40 million, so that should allow them some time to figure out how to turn things around.

ETA: It is court approved debtor in possession financing