WI: No Baseball Card/Comic Book Collectors Bubble in the 90s?

I don't know how many are familiar, but in the 90s, there was something like this giant things of businessmen/speculators/investors getting really involved in Baseball cards and Comics, saying that if the industry produced droves of them and people collected them, they'd become worth a lot in a few years. This was based on the fact that older Baseball Cards and Comics were valuable if people collected them.

The problem was this was an ignorant idea: the older Baseball Cards and Comics were valuable because they were limited and rarer; not everyone collected them, and there were only so many out there even for those who did. So when the Comics Industry and Baseball card industry started producing these droves of collectors comics/baseball cards, with -for comics- different cover variants and these "first issues" that were supposed to be something big, and specialty issues, etc, and -for baseball cards- different versions and halogram versions and so forth, or even just the issue of overproducing to the point where the market was saturated and everyone owned a card or comic making it worthless (and that can be blamed on consumer ignorance too), or convincing people to buy cards that weren't worth anything to begin with, the market eventually bubbled and collapsed. And it nearly destroyed both industries. Today, comics are lucky to sell a few tens of thousands issues when they could once (and even before the bubble started, I believe) sell millions. And baseball cards as an industry is totally dead; there's no trust anymore to give value to any new cards.

So what if this all was avoided? And how could it be avoided?
 
Well, the whole comic book distribution industry probably would not have been turned on it's head in the mid-90's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_City_Distribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_World_Distribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Distribution#Heroes_World_and_Capital_City_Distribution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_market#1990s

Trading Card Games appeared around this time too. Although they came from the game companies, not the big card companies, so I don't know if they're development is at all related to this.

But, suppose if they'd been invented earlier, and the sports card companies started them instead, or worked closely with the game companies to invent them. It's a much more sensible way to get people to buy new cards then convincing them they're collectible.

EDIT: that article on the Direct Market has some other ideas: if you keep the direct market from developing (at least not in the same way), you keep cards and comics from being pushed almost solely into specialty stores, you still have them appearing in newstands, convenience stores, department stores, etc, and you don't lose your hook to bringing in new customers.
 
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Probably Image will not exist or at least will be a force a lot less influential and Marvel will not be bankrupted so we can butterfly away the collapse of Marvel animation and the Jamas/Quesada EoC period.
 
Not only changes in distribution, but there is a full maturation of the genre and the people who grew up with the changes having enough disposable income to drive these prices up. The changes that came to the genre after the successes of The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen (mature=dark and violent), as well as the idea that you had to have big regular events in the industry that developed after Crisis on Infinite Earths in DC and Secret Wars in Marvel helped to push the event comics that everyone had to have. Everyone wanted to be the next COIE or Fall of the Mutants, but we got things like Gorilla Warfare (not a mis-spelling) or Captain America being turned into a werewolf.

Torqumada
 
TV Tropes says that Magic came after the crash, not at the same time:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheGreatComicsCrashOf1996

I don't see anything about Magic on that article. But, that article says the crash went from about 93-97. Magic, the Gathering came out in 93, so if Tropes is right it was actually at the beginning of the crash.

EDIT: Oops, reread and saw the end of the article. "Ronald Perelman... his attempts to get comic book stores to sell collectible Marvel-themed card sets meant a small card-game company out of Washington had a ready-made market for their upcoming smash hit."

But the article's description of the timing is a little off. And I'm not sure about the accuracy of the statement. Comic book stores were already selling trading cards, as were gaming stores, before that. The overlap in the audiences for all three products was quite large -- large enough that Capital City and Diamond both started branching out into more cards and games (and novelties, too) during this time in efforts to keep their heads above water in the midst of the crash.

Also, Magic was introduced at GenCon in '93, and immediately became a hit. It did this by selling alongside games, as it's audience is obviously gamers. I'm sure it gained something by selling alongside comics, but that's not the sole driver behind their success.

EDIT EDIT: Also, I wonder if you could mitigate the crash by having Ron Perelman make a few different decisions, or let someone else buy Marvel from New World.
 
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Maybe it could have been avoided had DC and Marvel struck a better deal with the in-coming generation of artists and thus prevent the rise of wannabe-third party companies such as Image, Top Cow, Valiant, etc. The whole craze seemed to begin with the creation of such companies. So you'd really only have DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse (as it had been created before this stupid mess).

That and maybe finally dropped the Comics Code Authority, (or rewritten the damn thing) because by this point in time nobody was really taking it seriously anymore. Thus no appeal towards "BloodDeathGunPunch" comics because they're not "held down by the CCA".

Thus guys like Todd McFarlane would still be working in comics, (and maybe becoming Jack Kirby-esque legends) and not have gotten such ridiculously inflated egos. Guys like Rob Liefeld would probably improve their art style in a quicker fashion (unlike OTL where it took them a decade to finally improve) due to pressure from the higher-ups or challenges from having an actual SCHEDULE. Oh wouldn't THAT be grand, the idea that SCHEDULES would still be important!??! Thus no lazy-ass artists/writers sitting on their butts doing other things, and delaying issues longer and longer (aka: the ONE lingering problem from the 90's still effecting us).
 
I imagine the comic shops near my home would not have had to struggle so much over the last few decades... perhaps a national chain like GameStop might have formed, they are always fun to hang out in.
 
Rob Liefeld would probably improve their art style in a quicker fashion (unlike OTL where it took them a decade to finally improve)

Rob Liefeld's artwork improving even .3% requires the ASB's ASB.
 
@Swan Station: OK, I'm not that deep into American comics, or MtG. Unless maybe they meant that MtG only took off after 1996.
 
Here's another possibility. Without that crash , the penetration of Manga into America might be severely weakened . On the other hand , a larger customer base for comics might mean that quantitatively speaking , manga sales in America might be higher than in OTL .
 
One of the consequences of no crash in the market, is that I am not left with dozens of long boxes of books in storage that no one wants. No one is buying anything right now. Look at Ebay. Gold and Silver age books in good condition have auctions that expire without a single bid.

Torqumada
 
@Swan Station: OK, I'm not that deep into American comics, or MtG. Unless maybe they meant that MtG only took off after 1996.

Heh, neither am I. I just happened to have been in the right place and right time to learn a little about this stuff as it was happening. I know almost nothing outside of 1996.

As for when MtG took off, I'm a bit biased by the fact that it became quite popular among my circle of friends starting in 1993, mainly due to the diabolical machinations of one particularly cruel early adopter in that circle. However, considering how quickly Wizards of the Coast grew and started accumulating other gaming companies immediately after it came out with the game, I would say it definitely took off very soon after it came off.

I should point out that one of the messages going around at the time was that the comic industry ran in a 30 year cycle, starting with the Golden Age beginning in the '30's, with comics slowly going down in quality until the height of the Silver Age in the '60's (combined with the rise of Marvel Comics, and a proliferation of underground comics -- Robert Crumb and all that). Therefore, despite the fact that two in a series doesn't make a pattern, it was seen as inevitable that the comic industry was going to go through a complete change in the '90's. According to these prophets, this was manifested by the rise of Creator-owned comics, such as those from Image, and the beginnings of the Japanese invasion. They saw the change in the comics industry as a result of these 'revolutions'. I'd take this with a grain of salt, though.
 
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