Things I tried:
If you are just looking to toss your old comics see if your favorite hipster bar would like 'em.
I had a ball one day when I discovered a stack of comics at one of my favorite watering holes, I stayed a lot longer (and had quite a few more) than I normally would.
Cherry Poptart is hardly considered modern.
That’s why the Ebay store was the perfect solution for me. Making a little (emphasis on little) bit of money was a bonus but mostly it was to avoid the hassle of having to deal with them myself as it quickly became apparent that it wasn’t worth the time. (As an aside, that Ebay store is out of business now because that is a horrible business model. Are there any of those open anywhere these days?)
For those of you who end up just chucking them, consider my cover idea! Even if you don’t end up binding them, a stack full of awesome covers takes up less space than a stack full of books that are just going in the trash anyway. Pop art for the win!
Yeah, see Desslock’s post. Part of the problem is that nobody wants them.
The 3rd edition “dual-lands” from your MTG collection are worth plenty!
Man, I find it mind boggling that a comic store wouldn’t offer something for a collection of 1200 comic back issues. I mean, even if it’s only $120, $0.10 each, there would probably be enough to cherry pick out of the lot that they’d make back the $120, and then the rest could be thrown in the $0.25 special longboxes to hopefully eventually make a few bucks. Desslock said his were even bagged and boarded, so even if you burned the comics themselves 1200 bags and boards must be worth offering something, right?
Maybe I’ve just been an Ebay junk dealer for too long, but the thought of 1200 bagged and boarded comics tossed down the trash shoot makes me all sad inside…
Because the comics store gets people trying to dump these exact same collections at least once a week.
I tend to only read comics that have continuous narrative arcs done by a single author, because this continuity bullshit that infests mainstream comics is ridiculous. (Viz. DC’s gratuitous reboot.) It also leads to all superhero comics being worthless because who ultimately cares what happened to Spiderfuck in 1998? And the Death of Superman – shit, how many times has that motherfucker died already?
Plus I like degenerate weirdness of all stripes – Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis are pretty much no-brainers for me.
So Hellboy (and anything in the Hellboyverse), Goon / anything by Eric Powell, RASL / anything by Jeff Smith, Invincible, and The Boys are my current buys. I am collecting them because I dig them, and one day when my kids are 13+ (16+ for The Boys), I will turn them loose in my old boxes and let them get some Real Education.
I am nebulously hoping that the fact that these runs have some kind of coherent artistic identity/integrity will make them have longer-term value than the churning morass of demented superhero revamps. We’ll see.
Good point. I guess I still tend to think of comics as collectible and thus retaining more value, when instead they’ve become no better than paperback books, which if you take them to most used bookstores (hello Half Price Books) you are lucky to get 2% of the original cover price in cash or trade on most of them.
It’s like baseball cards all over again. All the cool collectible stuff of my youth ended up corrupted by speculators and printers/publishers so that now it’s all worthless. Bah! Bah I say! Excuse me, I must now yell at someone to get off my lawn…
I think they’ll hold their value about as well as paperback books, which is to say, not at all. With trade collections always in-print and available (or at least un-rare), it’s easy for anyone who wants to read the story to get at it; and if there’s no “natural” collector, then the secondary collecting market doesn’t have a sustainable base to build on.
I mean, maybe there are exceptions – is a complete run of Sandman worth anything? – but they’re going to be rare.
(Plus, there’s the whole digital transition; only antiquarians are going to want paper books around shortly.)
True enough, I suppose. Thanks for the reality check. At least I will enjoy re-reading them :-)
During my last spate of unemployment I was working at a friend’s comic shop (since sadly closed) for trade, and honestly just as an excuse to get out of the house. We’d have a steady stream of people dropping off their comics, most of which was the same glut of comics like Desslock’s, but every now and then there’d be something interesting, so we’d always take a look. Most of the collections were just that - collections from fans who either outgrew the hobby or just didn’t have the room for them anymore, and these guys tended to be realistic about what the stuff was actually worth.
But every few weeks we’d get some dirtbag off the street that would bring in mouldy* boxes of comics in worthless condition. Water damaged, ripped pages, missing covers. The kind of condition where a sane person would be too embarrassed to put them out for a garage sale, never mind bring them to a comics shop. And invariably, the following things would be true:
The dirtbags would always describe their comics as “mint”.
They were all absolutely convinced that this mouldy box was worth an absolute fortune, because they heard that a Superman comic went for a million bucks and some of these have Superman in them.
So I’d patiently explain that, while some very rare comics do indeed go for a lot of money, these particular comics are worthless because a) they’re not rare, and b) they’re damaged and/or filthy. And then they’d call me an idiot, because they knew the comics were worth tons of money, and I’d end the conversation by saying “Well, in that case you should have absolutely no problem selling them on your own.”
Fun times.
Yeah, even people who grab a catalogue and expect that they should get “those prices” for their used, read, comics must be really annoying - let alone people who have even more surreal expectations.
In my case, I wasn’t even looking for cash from the comic store - I was willing to accept store credit, and have a really good relationship with that store - but it’s too much hassle even for them to bother sorting through the stuff they don’t have 20+ copies of already. They have their own storage problems.
Selling complete runs, or even complete “events,” can earn you some money - but there’s probably less than 100 comics post-1983 that are worth more than $20 - so it’s not really worth investing a lot of time. I basically stopped once I realized that my old computer games, which I also wanted to pare down, were worth a hell of a lot more than volumes of comics, and were probably a better use of time if I wanted to ebay. I did get an offer of $130 for a complete run of Wolverine, but shipping costs were almost the same price which nobody is keen on. Canadian shipping rates seem to stink compared to US rates.
Yep, check to see if you have any of these from 3rd edition (4th wont have them). They go for $50 to $90 a piece and are easy to sell.
There really aren’t any other money cards though. Fastbond, Wrath of God, Fork and Nevinyrral’s Disk are all worth about 5 bucks.
When I got out of comics (due to DC cancelling everything I read) I just gave em all to Goodwill
Indeed. While I suspect Gord embellishes just a tad, especially in the stories of him roughing up teenagers, there is a great shining kernel of truth on that site.
Now I found all my baseball cards and Marvel superhero cards.
Why did I keep these since 1989-1991? Also, RANDY JOHNSON ROOKIE CARD? THAT IS WORTH AT LEAST $2!
Oh man I’m so depressed. I had a complete run of every issue of Micronauts from Marvel and Devils Due in mint or near mint condition. They were destroyed by a basement leak this winter and I just found about it.
The irony is that the apocalypse of comics going on now will, in 20 years, lead to the “cool ones” be ing uber valuable.
Good luck figuring out which ones.
Meanwhile, I have a ton of comics I need to get rid of next week in Portland.
Who want’s 'em?