When I was a kid, I earned money in a variety of ways, and I remember how much some of them paid me. Sometimes I’d hunt for aluminum cans to recycle. I’d serve the dual purpose of making the side of the road slightly prettier, while also stomping (to crush) aluminum cans. It happened that one can was worth about a penny at the time, so I knew that if I could collect a hundred cans, I’d have a dollar.
This is interesting that I just read another essay that came out recently that covers a very similar topic about the Time Price Calculation. His examples are that Ritz crackers are significantly cheaper these days and I ran an experiment about gas from 1970 to today using his calculator (https://caydenpark.github.io/simple-calculator/) and found that gas is currently cheaper per gallon than it was back then.
Price appreciation is so very interesting to me. You get so many nonintuitive results and it's not what you think it is, so you have to really look at the data (as you have) to get a true picture of how the world really works.
My first comic (Daredevil) was 15 cents; I remember I was able to get a comic and a big candy bar for a quarter in those days. For most of my childhood comics were 20 cents; the jump to 25 cents some time in the mid-70s seemed like a lot. They went up rapidly after that to 35, then 50 cents and by then I wasn't buying them any more.
My metric as a kid was the price of a pack of baseball cards or other cards. For most of my childhood they were 10 cents for ten cards and a stick of gum. I had complete Topps sets from 1970 through around 1973 or 74, when I stopped collecting them. Unfortunately I threw them all away!😂 Like comics, they went to 15 cents sometime in the mid-70s, then to 25, then to 25 cents for 5 cards. Wasn't worth it anymore.
haha! Oh man, I guess almost everyone threw their baseball card (or comic book) collections away. On the positive note, that's exactly why those older cards are worth so much... nobody thought all that much about keeping them and like giving them to your grandkids or whatever.
Daredevil was one of the cooler heroes during the 70s! He was a good dude, but also an anti-hero of sorts... but mainly, he just looked pretty cool.
Yeah, I always had a soft spot for him since he was the first comic I ever bought. My faves were Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandoes and, of course Daredevil. The only DC comic I ever got in to was Weird War Tales, especially when they had stories about the Haunted Tank!😂
I know all these titles, even though some of them were before my "comic reading prime", ages like 8 through maybe 17. Sgt Fury was incredibly popular before GI Joe, but I think the latter kind of ate the lunch of the former in a way.
The key thing that determines how valuable a collective is will always be how rare it is. If it is rare- such as a comic book that has lasted for far longer than its production date- a seller can leverage it to get a high price from a buyer at sale (hence them going for $250 or higher). However, if the item is commonplace and many copies are easily obtainable, the value of a single item decreases.
Yes, scarcity is one important thing, but it's certainly not the only thing! I had a lot of scarce comix that weren't worth doodly. I think it's all about supply and demand, both in equal measure.
Indeed. I might say that we can simplify this by lumping condition in with supply (scarcity). Mint condition comics are much more scarce and supply is lower, so people are willing to pay more for them.
Yard mowing helped me get Hot Wheels and baseball cards. And enough left over for Jolly Ranchers. BTW, minimum wage when I started at a discount store at 16 years old was $3.15. :-)
I also collected glass coke (coke = soft drinks of all types for us) bottles for $0.10/each.
Glass bottles were pretty much nonexistent in the South where I lived, but I would have killed for 10 cents apiece! That's a pretty good chunk of a Hot Wheels car or GI Joe!
And yes to Jolly Ranchers. They seemed somehow exotic.
At some point they were making two-liter glass bottles! We lived behind the Coca-Cola bottling plant, so I knew all about bottle returns. There was also a small market close where I would turn them in. Apparently one can get quite a sun for them now:
I might vaguely remember some weird one-liter sodas (that was very odd in the South in and of itself), but I'm not super surprised those old bottles turned collectible!
I started by collecting Mickey Mouse magazines when I was younger, then evolved to Japanese anime in my teenage years. Since then, I have collected art, old books, posters and more.
The economics of it were not considered back then, but today I see the value and challenges of collecting at a young age. I couldn't miss an issue; they were treasures. Unfortunately, I lost my first collection when I moved to France, and for many years, it was a painful memory. Eventually, I recovered and started collecting mangas instead, along with the budget that goes with it.
Not being as astute as you were as a kid, I don't recall what my standard candle was.
I will say that it takes a talented writer to make that kind of subject interesting.
I also love your illustrations. They always work, but particularly for discussions of any era when you were a kid (pun noted). Superman as a goat on the comic book cover is priceless!
I also tracked the price of gas, especially when I turned 15 and got my learner's permit. Side note: it is really, really hard to imagine that it's a good idea to allow fifteen year olds to drive! Holy bad ideas!
I have to admit that I never collected as a kid. I did love things like Ghostbusters, The Goonies, etc. but one of my brothers was a little more into Star Wars, etc. Although I also admit that I loved Spiderman and Superman, etc. the meanings behind some of the stories were wonderful to me. I loved ALOT of the cartoons that interestingly enough were made into musicals later too. I was always the musical theatre type though.
Later I started a group for card artists and there I met different artists. I loved alot of my card artists because they seemed to understand the stories behind things like Spiderman for example. He went from the nerdy boy to the powerful Spiderman! I mean, who wouldn't think that were awesome!? I know I'm female and all but I always thought that was cool. I had the idea of working with local artists that I had known from local theatre for years. I wanted to be able to pay my card artists because they too have lives! I even went to college for awhile there to try and get a better job so that I could give them the opportunities that I truly believed they deserved. Sadly, that didn't work though and I took it to heart WAYY TOO much so I pretty much stopped it for awhile there. I even donated my college books because they were just too painful to look at. I'm trying to get that group started again though. Only this time it's going to be different and based on traditional art. I want to see how that works I guess I'm kinda like Spiderman and Wonder Woman in one, only I'm Abstract bi babe!!! Abstract bi babe to the rescue, with one touch of her finger she turns pure hateful people into understanding, kind and compassionate people who do not judge.
Wonder Woman is a great example of an iteration I really enjoyed as a kid (with Linda Carter) and as an adult (w/Gal Godot). I really appreciated how they told the story during the modern iteration, and I felt like that first WW movie of the modern era nailed it.
I think my standard candle was a Star Wars figure. I don’t recall what they cost, but it seems that was the mental unit of currency at the time. Oh Zuckuss, how I miss you!
I think GI Joes were $2.99 or $3.99, depending on how new they were. Star Wars toys were similar, although they started to fade from popularity right around the time when GI Joes stepped into that void.
I financed my comics habit with newspaper routes. I had two of them.
Sold my collection in 1982 as I was leaving for the Army.
Yes, Hulk #181 was in there (more like #170 - #200). So was a run of Spider-Man that included the death of Gwen Stacy and a perfect run of X-Men from GS #1 up until the month I left for Basic.
Painful, but I bet you had some fun during that time, too. I guess the memories were what you got in return, and I did something really similar with a bunch of my old comics... although in retrospect, that funded my early entrepreneurial ventures (I mean after comic book collecting, of course).
I also delivered papers! Totally forgot about that. I need to write about having a paper route.
I moved here from Ukraine when I was 14 (turning 15) to join my dad, his third wife, and my half-sister. I grew up with my mom and it took dad a bunch of years to convince me to consider getting an education in Denmark.
And then five years later, they all moved back to Ukraine.
This is interesting that I just read another essay that came out recently that covers a very similar topic about the Time Price Calculation. His examples are that Ritz crackers are significantly cheaper these days and I ran an experiment about gas from 1970 to today using his calculator (https://caydenpark.github.io/simple-calculator/) and found that gas is currently cheaper per gallon than it was back then.
Here's the essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/galepooley/p/ritz-abundance?r=1n2iy5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Neat, and thanks for sharing!
Price appreciation is so very interesting to me. You get so many nonintuitive results and it's not what you think it is, so you have to really look at the data (as you have) to get a true picture of how the world really works.
My first comic (Daredevil) was 15 cents; I remember I was able to get a comic and a big candy bar for a quarter in those days. For most of my childhood comics were 20 cents; the jump to 25 cents some time in the mid-70s seemed like a lot. They went up rapidly after that to 35, then 50 cents and by then I wasn't buying them any more.
My metric as a kid was the price of a pack of baseball cards or other cards. For most of my childhood they were 10 cents for ten cards and a stick of gum. I had complete Topps sets from 1970 through around 1973 or 74, when I stopped collecting them. Unfortunately I threw them all away!😂 Like comics, they went to 15 cents sometime in the mid-70s, then to 25, then to 25 cents for 5 cards. Wasn't worth it anymore.
haha! Oh man, I guess almost everyone threw their baseball card (or comic book) collections away. On the positive note, that's exactly why those older cards are worth so much... nobody thought all that much about keeping them and like giving them to your grandkids or whatever.
Daredevil was one of the cooler heroes during the 70s! He was a good dude, but also an anti-hero of sorts... but mainly, he just looked pretty cool.
Yeah, I always had a soft spot for him since he was the first comic I ever bought. My faves were Iron Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Sgt Fury and the Howling Commandoes and, of course Daredevil. The only DC comic I ever got in to was Weird War Tales, especially when they had stories about the Haunted Tank!😂
I know all these titles, even though some of them were before my "comic reading prime", ages like 8 through maybe 17. Sgt Fury was incredibly popular before GI Joe, but I think the latter kind of ate the lunch of the former in a way.
The key thing that determines how valuable a collective is will always be how rare it is. If it is rare- such as a comic book that has lasted for far longer than its production date- a seller can leverage it to get a high price from a buyer at sale (hence them going for $250 or higher). However, if the item is commonplace and many copies are easily obtainable, the value of a single item decreases.
Yes, scarcity is one important thing, but it's certainly not the only thing! I had a lot of scarce comix that weren't worth doodly. I think it's all about supply and demand, both in equal measure.
Yes- as well as the condition it's in. Mint condition ones are far more valuable than damaged ones.
Indeed. I might say that we can simplify this by lumping condition in with supply (scarcity). Mint condition comics are much more scarce and supply is lower, so people are willing to pay more for them.
Yard mowing helped me get Hot Wheels and baseball cards. And enough left over for Jolly Ranchers. BTW, minimum wage when I started at a discount store at 16 years old was $3.15. :-)
I also collected glass coke (coke = soft drinks of all types for us) bottles for $0.10/each.
Glass bottles were pretty much nonexistent in the South where I lived, but I would have killed for 10 cents apiece! That's a pretty good chunk of a Hot Wheels car or GI Joe!
And yes to Jolly Ranchers. They seemed somehow exotic.
At some point they were making two-liter glass bottles! We lived behind the Coca-Cola bottling plant, so I knew all about bottle returns. There was also a small market close where I would turn them in. Apparently one can get quite a sun for them now:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/275375358215
I might vaguely remember some weird one-liter sodas (that was very odd in the South in and of itself), but I'm not super surprised those old bottles turned collectible!
I started by collecting Mickey Mouse magazines when I was younger, then evolved to Japanese anime in my teenage years. Since then, I have collected art, old books, posters and more.
The economics of it were not considered back then, but today I see the value and challenges of collecting at a young age. I couldn't miss an issue; they were treasures. Unfortunately, I lost my first collection when I moved to France, and for many years, it was a painful memory. Eventually, I recovered and started collecting mangas instead, along with the budget that goes with it.
Thank you for the time travel!
Oh no! I have heard so many similar stories of lost childhood collections.
Where did you live before France?
Not being as astute as you were as a kid, I don't recall what my standard candle was.
I will say that it takes a talented writer to make that kind of subject interesting.
I also love your illustrations. They always work, but particularly for discussions of any era when you were a kid (pun noted). Superman as a goat on the comic book cover is priceless!
Hey, thanks, Bill! I really appreciate this.
I also tracked the price of gas, especially when I turned 15 and got my learner's permit. Side note: it is really, really hard to imagine that it's a good idea to allow fifteen year olds to drive! Holy bad ideas!
I have to admit that I never collected as a kid. I did love things like Ghostbusters, The Goonies, etc. but one of my brothers was a little more into Star Wars, etc. Although I also admit that I loved Spiderman and Superman, etc. the meanings behind some of the stories were wonderful to me. I loved ALOT of the cartoons that interestingly enough were made into musicals later too. I was always the musical theatre type though.
Later I started a group for card artists and there I met different artists. I loved alot of my card artists because they seemed to understand the stories behind things like Spiderman for example. He went from the nerdy boy to the powerful Spiderman! I mean, who wouldn't think that were awesome!? I know I'm female and all but I always thought that was cool. I had the idea of working with local artists that I had known from local theatre for years. I wanted to be able to pay my card artists because they too have lives! I even went to college for awhile there to try and get a better job so that I could give them the opportunities that I truly believed they deserved. Sadly, that didn't work though and I took it to heart WAYY TOO much so I pretty much stopped it for awhile there. I even donated my college books because they were just too painful to look at. I'm trying to get that group started again though. Only this time it's going to be different and based on traditional art. I want to see how that works I guess I'm kinda like Spiderman and Wonder Woman in one, only I'm Abstract bi babe!!! Abstract bi babe to the rescue, with one touch of her finger she turns pure hateful people into understanding, kind and compassionate people who do not judge.
Anyway, interesting read!!!
Wonder Woman is a great example of an iteration I really enjoyed as a kid (with Linda Carter) and as an adult (w/Gal Godot). I really appreciated how they told the story during the modern iteration, and I felt like that first WW movie of the modern era nailed it.
I think my standard candle was a Star Wars figure. I don’t recall what they cost, but it seems that was the mental unit of currency at the time. Oh Zuckuss, how I miss you!
I think GI Joes were $2.99 or $3.99, depending on how new they were. Star Wars toys were similar, although they started to fade from popularity right around the time when GI Joes stepped into that void.
I financed my comics habit with newspaper routes. I had two of them.
Sold my collection in 1982 as I was leaving for the Army.
Yes, Hulk #181 was in there (more like #170 - #200). So was a run of Spider-Man that included the death of Gwen Stacy and a perfect run of X-Men from GS #1 up until the month I left for Basic.
Sigh. Got like 50 cents a book.
Painful, but I bet you had some fun during that time, too. I guess the memories were what you got in return, and I did something really similar with a bunch of my old comics... although in retrospect, that funded my early entrepreneurial ventures (I mean after comic book collecting, of course).
I also delivered papers! Totally forgot about that. I need to write about having a paper route.
When I started earning my own money in Denmark, I think my first yardstick were music CDs.
I remember thinking how cool it was to be able to get a whole CD after just about two hours of part-time work.
Although to begin with, I didn't keep the money and they just went to the shared family pot.
It was only after my family left Denmark when I was 19 that I got to keep and directly use all the money I earned, which felt like a paradigm shift!
Where did your family move after Denmark? We need to update your wikipedia page.
Ha!
I moved here from Ukraine when I was 14 (turning 15) to join my dad, his third wife, and my half-sister. I grew up with my mom and it took dad a bunch of years to convince me to consider getting an education in Denmark.
And then five years later, they all moved back to Ukraine.
"They all", including you, or no? You were a quasi-adult at this point, right?
Not including me. I stayed in Denmark, where I remain to this day.
"They all" refers to the people living in Denmark at the time - dad, his wife, my half-sister.
OK, good. I'm ready to find the right director for your biopic now.
Only one condition: I want to be played by The Rock.