>>19535674I don't think it was exactly the same thing. In the 90's, everybody was seeing news stories of Action Comics #1 selling for insane, lifechanging prices. So people started buying comics as investments. The problem of course was that the reason Action Comics #1 was so valuable is because nobody at the time knew it would be worth anything someday so they didn't take care of their copies, and it's extremely rare. When everybody buys a copy of the issue where Superman dies, it turns out it's not too hard to get your hands on these days.
What's happening now isn't quite the same thing. Nobody is under the delusion that comics are a good investment now, but people still do like collecting them, and some of them will buy a book from a series they aren't reading if it has a variant cover drawn by Alex Ross or somebody. So much of the business now is just the covers of the books.
Ironically, on the rare occasions where a modern comic book actually does become more in demand and valuable, it's usually the A-cover that's the one people want, not the variant covers.
