Collectors

I've been selling some comic books lately. I have titles I bought because I thought they might be valuable in the future but didn't necessarily like the character. Some of the books are valuable. most are not. I collected comics because I like the characters or the stories or the universe they were in. It was bought to be read and enjoyed and I would talk about what I read with my other comic geek friends.

Now some of what I collected are valuable. But like anything of "value," to sell it you have to find someone else who also thinks its valuable. For example, the Hope diamond is purported to be worth $350,000,000. But you'd have to find someone willing to shell out that ridiculous amount for a hunk of carbon.

Back to comics. The comics I collected for decades are in bags in long comic boxes. They were all carefully read when I bought them. In fact I held them with a folded piece of typing paper so the oil from my hands didn't damage the cover. It wasn't a thing where I planned to sell them and put my kids thru college, but I didn't want to leave finger prints on the covers. Comics now are sold at comic shops with bags and boards to protect them. It keeps the spines of the comics from getting damaged and the pages from getting creased.

I was working a job and talking to a guy I know who goes to comic conventions. I said I had some books to sell. He asked for titles and I gave him a list I had made for a comic dealer I met at wonder con. (Dude, if you had ever called or emailed me back we could have made a deal.) The lists took a long time and encompass the 2100-2300 comics I have in 7 boxes.

The guy at work looked at the list and wanted to see about 20 books. Specific issues of certain titles. I went to the Overstreet's comic buyers guide and looked up these books. They were first appearances of a few character which have become popular. Lobo. Doomsday. Things like that. I looked on eBay to see what the going rates are for the issues he wanted.

When I'm at SDCC I look at the vendors with comic books. They have big walls of books in plastic bags or better yet graded by a company called CGC. And I look at the prices. I have a lot of books which are pretty valuable; if I were able to get the prices they have on their walls.

So I haggled with him about prices. He is a collector of toys and comics and lots of pop culture things apparently. He kept coming back to the condition. Granted he's trying to get the best deal he can, but I, as a seller, don't want to feel like I'm getting taken advantage of just because I need cash.

Eventually I sold him a number of books. It helped my bank account but not as well as I would've liked. He commented later to me saying he had looked at some of the books with a magnifying glass. And there were creases. I found that odd. A magnifying glass. It's a comic book. One that is anywhere from 10-20-30 years old. It's brightly printed newspaper which no one who originally printed them back in the 1930s thought they'd have any value.

I wanted to ask if he read it. If he enjoyed it. I didn't because he was looking for flaws on his newly acquired investment, not as a book to be read and enjoyed.