Comic Collecting (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

So, getting to work from home during the pandemic, one of the things I got to work on was sorting all of the piles of comics around the house, so now I mostly know where all my comics are within the short boxes and long boxes. Had the pandemic not happen, I doubt I'd ever have the time and opportunity to sort through everything and put all in an order that made sense to me.

In order to make the contents in the boxes "static", and I basically divided various publishers into time frames, like for Marvel, I went with pre-2010, 2010-2017, and 2017-current day, so I wouldn't have to keep shuffling books around if kept in solely alphabetical order. For DC, I went with pre-New52, New52, and Rebirth. For Image, went with 1992 to around 2015, and then 2015 to current day, did also split off the Wildstorm/Homage/Cliffhanger line the same way. Valiant was 1992-2012, 2012-2017, 2017-now, the Indies were also split into older than 2015, and 2015-current day. Seems to make the most sense. Hopefully I don't regret it. But it's been a little at a time for the past 3-4 months. Also got a work out moving those long boxes full of comics on some days.

 

[TravisR]

I was just happy to get through about a year and a half's worth of comics (probably in the neighborhood of about 200 issues). Now, I just need to keep reading them as they get released so I don't fall so ridiculously behind again.

 

[BobO'Link]

I was just happy to get through about a year and a half's worth of comics (probably in the neighborhood of about 200 issues). Now, I just need to keep reading them as they get released so I don't fall so ridiculously behind again.

Lightweight...

I'm at least 3 years behind with roughly 2 short boxes full (not bagged/boarded). I really need to catch up but every time I take a week off thinking I'll mostly read my wife comes up with stuff to do or I just veg and watch/catch up on movies/TV shows. My current saving grace is I'm down to 4 titles per month from a high of 10/week about 8 years ago. Going back to where I need to start reading to catch up it's 4-5 per week and tapers off as it progresses. I dropped most as I grew tired of the superhero ones which all started to read the same and feel like I'd read the story already. The rest are limited series that ended (and you'd think I'd have read those already since they don't require as much of a time investment).

 

[jayembee]

I recently binged through all of the Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan version). I loved G. Willow Wilson's run; not quite as enamored of Saladin Ahmed's.

Currently, I'm about half-way through the collected edition of Secret Empire. I wasn't planning on reading it, but when Ta-Nehisi Coates started writing Captain America a couple of years ago, I read his first issue and discovered that he was following from the Secret Empire storyline. So I decided "What the hell", but have been dragging my heels. Once I've finished this, and get caught up with the Coates issues, I'm going to binge through Black Panther, which I haven't read since Don McGregor wrote it in the 70s/80s. I have all of the collected editions by Christopher Priest and Reginald Hudlin, but there are still a couple between those and the beginning of the Coates run.

 

[Mike Frezon]

but every time I take a week off thinking I'll mostly read my wife comes up with stuff to do or I just veg and watch/catch up on movies/TV shows.

I think you just pretty accurately described nearly every married member of the HTF and how things work for them, Howie!

 

[Mike Frezon]

Guys,

I don't want to get this thread way off target.

But let's say someone had all their comic books from when they were a kid. This would be several hundred from the late '60s to mid '70s. Nearly all DC. They have been fairly well cared-for. But aren't bagged or graded or anything. As you might suspect, some of the older ones are in worse shape than the later ones.

But these comics don't have much sentimental value and are basically collecting dust (although have been actually well-kept in a big wooden box for the last forty years.

What would be the best way for me to sell them off in terms of payout (but combined with minimal effort)? Any ideas?

And is there a place online at which I could determine some sort of value of what's in my collection? Some sort of pricing guide, maybe?

Thanks in advance.

 

[TonyD]

Mike wow.
That will be a huge endeavor.

You’re going to need to know how many books you have.
What condition they are in.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy sale you will probably get 10-20% value in one bulk sell off.

I mentioned earlier in this topic that I had nearly 15,000 books and sold nearly 10k of them.

Only got $3100 for that bunch.
So a little more than 30% of the value.

I also , and very reluctantly, separately sold a handful of books for about $2500.

You will likely find that the books aren’t in as good condition as you expect they would be.
I’m a little concerned about them being in a wood container due to whatever acidity that might be absorbed into the books from the wood.


To sell them I made a Facebook page and listed everything I had to sell from my own spreadsheets I made with Google sheets.
Called a handful of comic shops and just got the word out.

If this link works here is an example of my database and 1 box of books I have.




Amazing Spider-Man box

 

[TonyD]

Comicspriceguide.com is an option for estimating

 

[jcroy]

For a small number of issues, I would just give it away to nearby friends/relatvies who are into comic books and/or nerdy/geeky type stuff.

Too much effort for too little in return, in selling issues which are not in pristine mint condition and/or are not "special" valuable issues.

I gave away my old collection of Uncanny X-Men issues which were in-demand, but were not in very good condition. At most I would have got $5 per issue (or less) for something which was not in good condition, but was an in-demand issue (ie. issues 94 to around 141 or 142).

 

[jcroy]

As a rough guide, anything that is not in-demand and is not in mint condition, will generally be dump bin fodder (ie. $1 or less at a local comic book shop).

For in-demand stuff which everybody in the comics niche knows about, it is highly dependent on the condition. If my copy is not in mint condition and if I can't get more than $20 net profit (or higher) for my copy, then it mind as well be dump bin fodder.

For such "dumpbin fodder", the only way to get anything for it is to sell huge lots of several thousands of issues at a time (like what TonyD has described).

 

[Patrick Sun]

Anyone following the brouhaha involving DC walking away from Diamond, and going with 2 other "distributors" resulting in higher wholesale costs, and headaches for damages and shortages? My LCS's are starting to cut back on DC titles to mostly just subcriber pulls, and not much for the shelf going forward.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

I recently binged through all of the Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan version). I loved G. Willow Wilson's run; not quite as enamored of Saladin Ahmed's.

Currently, I'm about half-way through the collected edition of Secret Empire. I wasn't planning on reading it, but when Ta-Nehisi Coates started writing Captain America a couple of years ago, I read his first issue and discovered that he was following from the Secret Empire storyline. So I decided "What the hell", but have been dragging my heels. Once I've finished this, and get caught up with the Coates issues, I'm going to binge through Black Panther, which I haven't read since Don McGregor wrote it in the 70s/80s. I have all of the collected editions by Christopher Priest and Reginald Hudlin, but there are still a couple between those and the beginning of the Coates run.

Ms. Marvel is up next for me. I just got the Ms. Marvel Team-up and Ahmed's volume 2 TPBs in the mail from Target (Volume 2 isn't even out in the direct market yet because it was a Shutdown week book and pushed back to a mid-July release, but the bookstore distributors got the book!), so I figure it's time for a reread since I've never read Team-Up and Ahmed's run so far. But first, Spider-Gwen.

As for Black Panther... McGregor is Black Panther Epic volume 1, Kirby is BP Epic volume 2, and the third Epic volume is out later this year (October) completing everything up to Priest's run. Between Hudlin and Coates is Doomwar and Man Without Fear, IIRC.

 

[jayembee]

Ms. Marvel is up next for me. I just got the Ms. Marvel Team-up and Ahmed's volume 2 TPBs in the mail from Target (Volume 2 isn't even out in the direct market yet because it was a Shutdown week book and pushed back to a mid-July release, but the bookstore distributors got the book!), so I figure it's time for a reread since I've never read Team-Up and Ahmed's run so far. But first, Spider-Gwen.

As for Black Panther... McGregor is Black Panther Epic volume 1, Kirby is BP Epic volume 2, and the third Epic volume is out later this year (October) completing everything up to Priest's run. Between Hudlin and Coates is Doomwar and Man Without Fear, IIRC.

Haven't read the Ms Marvel Team-Up yet, so I suppose I should get that.

On BP, I have the two Epic Collections, and the older Panther's Quest TPB. I assume Epic 3 is a reprint of Quest, along with the Panther's Prey mini-series. But, yeah, I have to pick up the Doomwar and Man Without Fear TPBs, as well as a couple of side titles: BP vs. Deadpool and Killmonger.

On the DC side, I need to catch up on Wonder Woman, read the two Heroes in Crisis books, and King's Mister Miracle before tackling King's Batman. I've got the hardcovers up through v.4 (the wedding), and v.5 should be out in late July. I'll probably need to fill in the rest with TPBs, so hopefully those won't take too long to come out (if not a v.6 HC). I've got the first two TPBs for post-wedding Catwoman, which I figure I'll just go ahead and read before the Batman books.

I'm actually kind of glad that Bendis is going to be leaving the Superman titles. I really liked them at first, but he's been losing me with all of the Leviathan stuff.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

Haven't read the Ms Marvel Team-Up yet, so I suppose I should get that.

On BP, I have the two Epic Collections, and the older Panther's Quest TPB. I assume Epic 3 is a reprint of Quest, along with the Panther's Prey mini-series. But, yeah, I have to pick up the Doomwar and Man Without Fear TPBs, as well as a couple of side titles: BP vs. Deadpool and Killmonger.

Yep. Epic 3 will be Prey, Quest, and whatever few random issues he appeared in otherwise.

 

[Chip_HT]

On the DC side, I need to catch up on Wonder Woman, read the two Heroes in Crisis books, and King's Mister Miracle before tackling King's Batman. I've got the hardcovers up through v.4 (the wedding), and v.5 should be out in late July. I'll probably need to fill in the rest with TPBs, so hopefully those won't take too long to come out (if not a v.6 HC). I've got the first two TPBs for post-wedding Catwoman, which I figure I'll just go ahead and read before the Batman books.

If you haven't read any of King's Batman run, you might as well just wait for the rest of it to come out. He got booted off of the main title after #85 and is supposed to be working on a 12 issue Batman/Catwoman series to wrap up his storyline. But that hasn't even been solicited yet.

 

[The Obsolete Man]

If you haven't read any of King's Batman run, you might as well just wait for the rest of it to come out. He got booted off of the main title after #85 and is supposed to be working on a 12 issue Batman/Catwoman series to wrap up his storyline. But that hasn't even been solicited yet.

And the entire storyline has been moved out of continuity, because god forbid things ever progress past 1972 at DC.

 

[Chip_HT]

And is there a place online at which I could determine some sort of value of what's in my collection? Some sort of pricing guide, maybe?

Honestly, ebay is probably the best realistic guide. It actually shows what people are paying, if they're even buying.

Best bet for unloading the collection with minimal effort is to find a comic shop that will take the whole thing. Unless you have a lot of key issues, it's not really worth the extra time and effort to unload random issues.

 

[Chip_HT]

And the entire storyline has been moved out of continuity, because god forbid things ever progress past 1972 at DC.

It works for me, since King isn't that great at coordinating stories with other writers (see the debacle around any issues tying into #50), and since DC can't even figure out what its continuity is anymore. (I mean, really, why are we four years into Rebirth and still don't have that reboot sorted out?)

 

[jayembee]

If you haven't read any of King's Batman run, you might as well just wait for the rest of it to come out. He got booted off of the main title after #85 and is supposed to be working on a 12 issue Batman/Catwoman series to wrap up his storyline. But that hasn't even been solicited yet.

Well, like I said, I have collected editions up through issue #57, and a collection with #58-69 comes out in about a month, then it's just a question of #70-85. I do plan on adding the Batman/Catwoman title to my pull list, for whenever it starts coming out.

I am, however, waiting on a collected edition of King's Strange Adventures.

These days, I'm not a continuity whore, so I don't really care that his Batman run is being taken out of continuity. Especially, as you say, DC seems to keep rebooting their continuity. Since Crisis on Infinite Earths, the reboots started around every 10 years or so, and seem to be down to every five.

For the most part, I'd been out of comics (at least DC-wise) since just around Infinite Crisis, so from my perspective, continuity is so f'd up it's not worth trying to make any sense out of it. With Marvel, it's in a sense worse, as I hadn't been reading any mainstream Marvel since the late 80s/early 90s. I'd read titles from the Marvel Knights and Marvel MAX lines, but that's about it until the last couple of years.

 

[jayembee]

Another sad day. Thursday morning, the celebrated inker Joe Sinnott passed away. Best known, perhaps, for inking Kirby's pencils on Fantastic Four.