Time for a war story from the trenches!

Over the years, I've had some mild successes with estate sales.  My best find up to this point was a complete run of 7.0 to 8.0 copies of Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths for a buck a book.  A nice enough score to keep you out there looking for opportunities, that's for sure.

During my routine check of local listings, I came across an announcement for a camera/comic book store that was going out of business in Milford, Michigan.  That's about 30 minutes from my house, so definitely worth a gander.  The preview pictures showed a three story storefront loaded with piles and stacks of "stuff" all over the place.  One table had a collection of about 30-40 Famous First Editions spread out, as well as what looked liked the corner of the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali book!  Another table had some Lois Lane's on it, so at this point I was all in!

My wife is a photographer, so she was happy to tag along on this one.  Along with my son and mother-in-law (who was staying with us for the weekend), we made the trek out there early in the crisp November morning.  I was number 37 when we arrived, so I thought for sure all the good stuff would be gone by the time I was allowed in.  To my surprise, they let the first 40 in at once!

We headed down to the basement, since the pics I saw had a "basement" feel to it.  Right away I spy some books and begin looking.  Nothing good.  All common, mid-grade copper stuff.  I move on and find the table with the Lois Lane's.  While flipping through those, I hear my Mother-In-Law yell out from across the basement "Hey Tom, are these the first editions you were looking for?"  

Instantly, there are now a couple of other collectors converging on the table off in the corner.  By the time I get there, I see the Muhammad Ali book getting tucked away in someone else's stash.  So close...

I did, however, manage to get quite a few of the Famous First Edition's to fill out my collection.

Famous 1st Edition #C-26 from 1974 and #C-61 from 1979.  Not high grade, but nice looking mid-grade copies.  I also managed to pick up all of these as well...

An almost complete run of Famous 1st Editions.  I think the only one I'm missing is #F-7, which reprints All-Star Comics #3.  It's a shame, as after the Superman ones, that's probably the one I want the most.  Oh well...keep hunting...

So how much did I pay for these gems?

By the time I had rummaged through all three floors, I was carrying a long box full of books around with me.  I was unsure what the pricing strategy was going to be, so I figured it was best to snag everything that I thought I may want, and then whittle it down when I figured out how much they were going to charge me.  I think the guy at the checkout was already warn down at this point (and the sale had only been open for a couple of hours, lol).   He took one look at my longbox (and the other items that the wife found in her quest) and said "How does $100 sound?"  I don't think I've ever produced a $100 bill faster than that.

After I split the cost with the wife, and averaged it out, it came to about fifty cents a book!  Quite the bargain indeed.

I later ended up selling a few of the early Punisher mags and Batman 80-Pagers from this haul on eBay that didn't quite fit my collecting focus, and ended up more than recouping my investment!

So what else did I get for fifty cents a book?  Stay tuned for the rest of this week and we'll go through it.