Comics in Plastic Coffins: Vindicated at Last

I caught this video recently about the diminishing market for so-called “graded” comics, which are comic books that have been professionally evaluated by a neutral third party and then encased within an ultrasonically-welded plastic case to preserve their condition. Apparently, sellers can’t offload these anymore, because no one wants them.

If this video is accurate, I’ve finally been vindicated after 20 years of saying that putting comic books in little plastic coffins flies in the face of why people value comic books.

People like comic books because they’re books. You can hold them, open them up, smell them, and read them. The entire sensory experience is the selling point for comic books, especially in contemporary times. I can read just about any comic book I want on my tablet or computer, so if I want a physical comic book, it’s because I want it for the experience of holding it in my hands and reading the actual book.

Placing it within a sealed plastic case completely defeats the purpose of owning a comic book, unless your only intent is to sell it. By sealing it off, all you have now is an investment piece that’s only valued and desired by other people who want to flip it to make money themselves. This is obviously a limited market.

It’s not like flipping houses. People need housing, so even with market downturns and whatnot, there’ll always be a market full of people wanting to buy what you’re selling. No one needs comic books, especially ones that are now uselessly sequestered within a plastic case. The market itself is already limited and the market for that particular type of item is even smaller, so at a certain point, you’re only trying to sell to other people like you. There are very few new people coming in.

And that’s the real trick. This is a thing that requires a constant influx of new, naive people to enter and it doesn’t have that in the numbers it needs to keep the train going.

I’d wager that 90% of all the money that’s going to be made from selling graded comics has already been made, because it’s something that greatly benefited the early adopters first, who were able to offload their initial low-cost investments at inflated prices. This continued for maybe a few more cycles, but now people are trying to find and flip these things for relative pennies on the dollar, because the market is other people like them who’ve been left holding the bag at the end of this chain.

I also have to assume that the penchant amongst that community to have everything graded has likely flooded and depressed that whole market as well, but I think the fundamental flaw goes back to the actual process itself: having someone grade a book on its physical flaws and then encase it like a fly in amber.

Personally, I like comics that have flaws. I want to see those creases, stains, and other things that graders see as flaws. To me, those are the markers of that comic book’s life. It’s been through some shit and it should show. That’s the book that I want to see and read. It means it was read by someone who was really into it at that time. Most importantly, because they kept it and bdidn’t toss it in the trash, that thing traveled across space and time to find itself in my hands as its new custodian.

I might accidentally leave it out in a spot exposed to the sun for too long and it gets faded. Or maybe I put a crease in a page that wasn’t there before. Or I put it in a bag and store it in a cool, dry place after I read it. Whatever the case, whoever gets it next will adopt a book with not only the original story and art, but also the story of its life written across its pages and cover in the form of supposed flaws and imperfections.

I may be in the minority on this, but I’d much rather have a book with some character and history, than a flawless beauty hermetically sealed away for the rest of its life as a bauble to be passed around amongst speculators.