Manga as an Investment in Japan
The whole “comics as an investment” does not exist in Japan for the manga.
Buying manga and selling for profit because of rarity isn’t there. Manga companies print manga, distributes them, collects them into volumes, redistributes collected volumes, and when there’s demand, reprints volumes and redistributes volumes.
If one were to apply the “comics as investment” strategy - the approach would be to buy first editions of the volumes.
This doesn’t really work because companies will just reprint popular series.
Dragon Ball - one of the biggest manga now, still has fresh prints in book stores in Japan.
How would one get something truly rare? First editions, yes - all reprints look exactly the same.
I would say the truly rare would be the original weekly collection of the first story that kicked off the story.
This would be the rarest appearance and hardest to obtain because manga companies would not reprint a weekly for one popular story - they would reprint the story in a collected volume and sell that.
The rarity of that serial is higher because Japanese families pass weekly serials within the family, ultimately recycling them.
Even if a story stood out to a family member, keeping the serial would not make sense because serials take space - each about the small size of a phone book (remember those??) 7.5 inches by 10 inches by 3 inches.
Collecting volumes are more effective for the stories. Collecting serials for investment are just not effective in Japan because of the size constraint and size of the serials.
Comics stores in the US would be a place to buy and sell comics as an investment. When I lived in Tokyo, I did not encounter this equivalent - all manga stores were just: stores. You could buy - they would never buy from you at a higher price.
The whole “manga as an investment” did not exist in Japan like the US for comics for different reasons - the manga culture is just different.
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