Manga as an Investment Does Exist
As I was writing this “manga as investment” series, I did some research online to verify my thinking that the original serials of popular manga, like Dragon Ball, do not exist.
To my amazement - there are sellers out there that are selling these large serials.
For example, the first Dragon Ball issue of in a serial would be the Weekly Shonen Jump #51 (November 20, 1984).
Looking that up on Ebay.com lists sellers of that serial
- all “used” of course and at a higher value than original cover price.
😮
I applaud any one collecting these weekly serials because they are LARGE - each one is easily a small phone book and they collect a lot of other series.
Seeing these listings, I have to rethink what I know about “manga as an investment” - maybe I just didn’t get into the manga subculture to find the investment aspect. Maybe this investment part only exists outside of Japan, like with the Western world that has the “comics as an investment”.
All I know is: if I want to get the first issue of Dragon Ball, I would just walk into any bookstore in Japan and buy a sealed volume of the current printing for cover price.
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