I don’t want to alarm anyone, but we may be on the verge of shifting to an economy based on vintage comics and Smurf collectibles.

Oh, I tried to warn readers of this weeks ago, but did anyone pay attention? Now I know how Cassandra felt.

Today sees two stories about the rising value of decades-old comics — and presumably much younger alpacas — and the apparent wisdom in sinking your money into vintage copies of Action Comics or Beano instead of, say, the stock market.

The U.K.’s This Is Money notes that Action Comics #1 is valued at more than £500,000 ($789,000 U.S.), an increase of 9 percent from last year. Amazing Fantasy #15 is priced at around $47,000. Of course, if nobody has the money to pay you for those comics, the actual value is probably somewhere closer to … zero.

Oregon’s KVAL, meanwhile, touts Golden Age and Silver Age comics as “hard assets.”

“Superman and Batman; golden age, silver age comics are steady investments that are really, really healthy,” says Darrell Grimes, owner of Nostalgia Collectibles in Eugene.

That story mentions alpacas, too. However, they don’t fit neatly in longboxes.

And BBC News focuses on the lasting popularity of Peyo’s Smurfs, which celebrate their 50th anniversary this week. Some of the little blue collectible figures are reportedly going for as much as $1,500.

So while the economy circles the bowl, I’ll be in the attic searching for Smurftastic Hallmark figurines and a set of Hardee’s drinking glasses from the ’80s.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Comic Books, Fandom, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.