About a week ago, I blogged about taking a deep dive into GoCollect’s new Big Spenders Club CPI. I wrote about what my own personal CPI for a Big Spenders Index might look like. Today, I’m taking a deep dive into GoCollect’s CPI for the Golden Age.
GoCollect’s Golden Age CPI consists of some of the great comic books in history.
As you might expect, the Golden Age CPI consists of some of the most sought after and rare comics books of all-time. In fact, some of them are so valuable and historically significant (e.g., the first appearances of Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Robin, and Archie), I argued they should be included in the Big Spenders CPI instead of here.
Some great issues that I think should be included in this CPI include Sub-Mariner #1 (Sub-Mariner's first solo series published in 1941), Detective Comics #225 (first appearance of the Martian Manhunter), and Punch Comics #12 (classic pre-code horror cover with a skull; only 33 Universal copies available). I was surprised to see that Captain America #3, the very first comic Stan Lee ever worked on, wasn't included here. I'd personally include that in the Big Spenders Club even though it's all-time high sale doesn't even crack $100,000. That book may be undervalued in my opinion.
Which books would you have included (or excluded) in the Golden Age CPI?
The CPI shows that the comic boom of 2020-21 had little impact on the Golden Age.
If you take a quick look at the CPIs for the Silver, Bronze, Copper and Modern Ages, and select the five-year view, you will notice a clear trend among all of them: the comic boom of 2020-21 and the subsequent crash in 2022 to present day. Fueled by stimulus funds and bored adults confined at home, old and new collectors alike invested billions of dollars in collectibles - including comic books. The market then crashed when stimulus funds ran out and people could spend on other leisure activities besides collectibles.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the comic boom didn’t have a perceptible impact on the Golden Age, at least according to the data that we can see in the CPI. Beginning in June 2019, about nine months before the pandemic, the Index sat at 3,589. Today it sits 4,792, a 33% increase in five years. If you can afford these books, these are pretty good returns. The Golden Age CPI has risen in a fairly predictable and steady fashion through present day. You could set your watch to it.
Even with stimulus checks, most everyday investors can’t afford the books that make up the Golden Age CPI. The Golden Age CPI probably more closely tracks the S&P500 since only wealthier Americans tend to own stocks (in addition to those in their 401ks). As Ken Goldin, the King of Collectibles himself said a couple of years ago, it's a lot easier to sell expensive collectibles when the S&P is at 4,000 instead of 3,000." Well, the S&P500 recently notched another all-time high of 5,500. Will we see that money trickle back into the comic book market?
