Do you have $10,000 lying around?

5 ounces or so of Gold to exchange for some paper encased in plastic?

If so, let me tell you a funny book that you can buy, and watch your “investment” dwindle away over the next few years.

I recently posted about a CGC 9.9 copy of The Walking Dead #1 that sold for $10,100. Pretty amazing.

I applaud the earlier buyers that rolled the dice and took the gamble a greater sucker would come along, because they did.

But where will this end?

The history of modern comics is littered with these flavor of the month casualties, and unfortunately they all seem to end the same.

I know zombies are all the rage right now and the Walking Dead is one of the hottest properties on TV. Heck, outside of Mad Men (now on hiatus), it’s the only fiction show I watch! It’s my little guilty TV pleasure. But will the popularity of the TV show continue to support these elevated prices?

In my opinion, this too will pass.

It always does.

Let me tell you a little story of a hot comic I once owned and sold.

Back in the 1990’s The Crow was all the rage. I picked up a run of Crow #1-#4 speculating on the movie, probably one of my first comics+movies=cash plays. I would say they would probably grade Very Fine today.

I sold the set for several hundred dollars.

Flash forward to 2006 and you could get a Crow #1 CGC 8.0 for $11.

When modern comics fall, they tend to come down hard.

The question is where’s the top and how much will this comic fall? Are you feeling lucky? At this point, a purchase of The Walking Dead #1 is a gamble – a gamble that someone else will up the ante one more time.

I’ll be watching and reporting this story from the sidelines.