More about the speculator market

ArtNet News is telling more about what's been sold round and round on the speculator market, which consists mainly of pamphlets from the most classic series, in another example of what's become a very unimpressive form of hobby that doesn't make a good substitute for entertainment value and readership. The following is very eyebrow raising:

Just last month, the so-called “Rocket Copy” of Action Comics No. 1, which introduced the world to Superman, changed hands for an astonishing $3.4 million in a private deal brokered by collectibles marketplace Goldin.

That comes just months after the same comic sold for a record $3.2 million at Dallas’s Heritage Auctions in January (to a buyer who clearly wasted no time flipping the high-profile acquisition).

So if I can understand this correctly, the very same copy gets sold to one buyer after another, and the previous owner's not particularly interested in keeping it around in his collections for years, but rather, selling it again as soon as possible to another investor? Well, that should say all you need to know this whole buy-and-trade habit is a farce. It's not money that should matter, it's entertainment value that should. And even then, these would-be investors seem more interested in seeing how much more they can sell these vintage copies for, which appears to be at least $200,000 extra in the above example of an exchange.

“When you look at the cover of this comic and see Superman lifting a car, you feel a little bit like a superhero yourself,” Ken Goldin, the company’s founder and executive chairman, said in a statement. “That’s why superheroes were invented, to inspire people to be the best versions of themselves.”

Well I honestly don't see how buying a comic only to sell it again to other speculators soon after, rather than read it for the story inside, is being the best version of yourself. Or setting a great example. And if you take a look under a magnifying glass at modern storytelling, it doesn't inspire to be the best at all. The industry today's been reduced to a politicized mess. Sadly, none of this is bound to mean anything to speculators.