Side note: I know a guy, an acquaintance from high school, who still owns longboxes full of nineties "investment" comics, Death of Superman and McFarlane Spider-Man and so forth. He's smart enough to know that they're basically worthless, but I also believe he'll never get rid of them, because to get rid of them would be to admit that he got fleeced thirty years ago. 

All I see online is endless speculation on comics that are marginally older than a cup of coffee, like Absolute Batman. In the last week, the new craze has been the free DC Connect solicitation book from 2 years ago that contained previews of the All In/Absolute line.

Multiple printings, multiple covers... I'd say the inductry is leaning more into speculation than ever before. Same mistakes, gussied-up with new publishing twists.

The joy of coming upon a comic shop when I was a kid.  They were like finding a four-leaf clover.  Then in the early 90s, comics shops were as plentiful as pizza shops in Brooklyn: everywhere I turned back then. It was helpful in the summer of '93 when I was able to find back issues of Namor and Next Men without having to travel especially far. The industry was starting to teeter on the edge by then, but good time for collectors.  A couple of years later, they were all gone.*  

I remember about ten years ago Marvel came out with 50 different variants for a comic (Avengers?) which was one for each state and a superhero.  The covers were butt ugly and took up far too much space on the shelves.  People are still into the variants, still looking for those numbers to go up.  Still making what was once a fun hobby into soulless business.  We've said enough about slabbing and grading on here, so I won't go into it again. 

About the only variants I see nowadays that appreciate in value are some Archie comics covers as they have a limited print run to start with and the variants are even smaller in number. 

*At that time, there were several Anne Rice novels that were being adapted into comics.  They were one issue away from completing "The Queen of the Damned" and they went bust.  And it has stayed incomplete ever since.

They didn't want the competition, but failed to realize these outlets were where so many people made their First Time Buy of a comic, which ultimately led many fans to their comic shops in the first place. 

It was a good symbiotic relationship with newsstand outlets that would have drove business to their stores but they didn't want to share the wealth, and ultimately lost it.