Hamlet

Well, its not like I buy any and all drek. I pick out what looks interesting to me or I feel has some small potential to have value in the future, which actually is a pretty small portion of what people are selling. I go to small local conventions as often as I can, but that is really only 5-6 per year tops. One of the guys that is at all of these conventions ( he actually runs one of them ) gets a bunch of tables and has a huge number of long boxes that are $20/50 books. At the last convention I bought 50 books from him. That means I passed on probably 5000 other books. There is a LCS that has a bunch of 3/$1 boxes. The last time I was there I bought 36 books from those ( along with some Warrens and a few TTA and TOS for my runs that I paid actual money for ). At the convention before that I bought about 100 books because one guy had a 3/$1 box that had a bunch of stuff I felt like grabbing at that price ( stuff like 80s Avengers, X-men 285-299, some ASMs in the 370s-380s, etc). I also rescued a bunch of nice Byrne FFs from someone else that was selling them in their 50 cent boxes. If something is pretty drekky, I also tend to be picky on condition ( although I often will grab a few ugly books in a run so I can just read the run without gaps ). That actually weeds out a large portion of books, as many of these aren't bagged/boarded. So if I keep this up, I might be buying a couple of long boxes a year, which isn't going to kill me space-wise.

Yeah, I haven't found a dollar box with much good stuff ( low grade SA/mid-grade BA ) lately. Most of my low-end purchases lately have started coming out of 3/$1 or 50 cent boxes these days, and have been more low-demand Copper books that seem kinda cool for the price. Stuff like New Mutants, X-Factor, Byrne FF, Simonson Thor, Spectacular Spiderman, Web of Spiderman, and a lot of junk that I never bought back in the day. It's pretty funny to think that I am buying comics with a $1 cover price for 3/$1 after 30 years of inflation. Most of them aren't great, but I've been pleasantly surprised by a few of them. Honestly, at this price, if I buy 50 comics and 5 of them are pretty decent, I win compared to buying new comics at $4/each. It entertains me.

It's funny, I was all set to sell my mid-grade SME 15 and 16 on the boards a few years back. I had them scanned and ready to list on the boards. I was expecting them to sell for like $20-25 as a lot, and since I didn't collect them I figured that would be decent money for me. I actually read them, and really liked the Starlin art, so I never got around to selling them. Fast forward to the movie announcement, and suddenly my copy of SME 15 is a $200 book. I got it to MCS as fast as I could, and cashed in for $180 after fees. I don't have interest in owning a copy of it at anywhere near current prices. Likewise for the Eternals run. I'm happy to sell any that I get into the movie hype.

A couple of Ebay books-

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They graded my Topix higher than I had expected. I ended up getting about $20 in trade for the 3 of them. I'm pretty happy with that, as I have no idea where I got them and don't have much collecting interest in them. I'll get myself a nice Vampirella that I don't have yet with the credit.

It’s always nice to exchange Christmas presents with Randall Dowling

I love it when I discover a key I didn’t realize was a key or that I even owned. “Hey, I wonder if MyComicShop will buy any of these random Valiants I found buried in one of my long boxes? Eternal Warriors 4 is consignable? First Bloodshot? Cool, adding it to my consign pile. I have absolutely no idea how I ended up with it.

Mine were from 1949. I sent them expecting the “Good” price ($2.88 in trade) based on what they were grading the other issues they had . They haven’t graded them yet. I think they were a little better than that, but it’s hard to grade these. They appear to have been printed without any special cover stock/gloss. Am I correct in that assumption?

I discovered that MyComicShop will buy some Treasure Chests ( as well as Topix, another similar title I had been caring around for decades with absolutely no personal interest in)

I’m planning on building my coffin out of longboxes of drek.

I’m actually going thru my collection trying to organize it right now. I have had my more expensive core runs in mylite2s and halfbacks for awhile, but my other stuff has been in a complete mishmash for decades. I had convention stock in the late 80s/early 90s that I’ve never really bothered to deal with. I finally went thru and bagged and boarded the quarter box stuff from then. A lot of it is still worth about that 🙂 Going thru it all got me nostalgic for all of that 80s drek though. I started digging through 3/$1 boxes and buying more of it. After buying a bunch of duplicates, I decided I should really organize things so I could properly inventory my collection. So I’ve started getting it in order. I’ve probably got about 1500 books that have some real value and about 2000 more that are pretty darn drekky. Why shouldn’t I own bunches of 80s Rom, Conans, New Mutants, X-Factor, West Coast Avengers, Punisher War Journal, etc? It’s not like it is going to be worth selling. I’m not bumping into space constraints, as we bought a big house and I’ve been given one of the extra bedrooms for the collection. So I’ll be buying some more drek to fill in those runs once I get them organized so I know which ones I’m missing.

I can probably do it for 10-15 years at the current pace before space becomes a problem. My plan is to then sell them as dollar books in retirement ( minus the few books I actually did well on ) at the small local conventions to the next guy like me.

I’ve developed a real sickness lately. Dollar boxes are for the big spenders. I’ve been going through 3/$1 and 50/$20 boxes lately. I’ve been pulling mostly Copper drek out of them. Stuff like X-Factor, Byrne FF, New Mutants, Web of Spiderman, Spectacular Spiderman, Avengers, Iron Man, etc. I’m not talking about the occasional minor key that gets missed. I’ve bought a couple hundred books that are not in demand at all, and probably aren’t going to be in demand anytime soon. Some of them I’m buying to read or to complete runs, but a lot of them I’m buying simply because I think they should be worth at least a dollar. Heck, most of them have a cover price higher than what I’m paying, and they are 30+ years old. How can I not buy another copy of X-Factor 41 ( 1st Alchemy with pretty neat Art Adams art - story pretty bad though ) for 40 cents ? Shouldn’t that be worth a dollar or two to someone? On the plus side, I can buy pretty much every comic in a 3/$1 box I have even the slightest interest in and it will break my back before it breaks my bank account. It feeds my need to be collecting something at a very reasonable cost.

I saw those books pop up on MCS, and I wondered who bought them so quickly. I should have known 🙂 Nice books!

That’s what I get for posting instead of watching the sales threads. 🙂 Nice grab!

I think that there is real potential for a lot of these books to go from generally available at reasonable prices ( outside of higher grades ) to pretty darn expensive in a fairly short period of time if they ever become more than a pretty specialized niche. These print runs aren’t huge for the time period, and I suspect they weren’t saved at as high a rate as comics since they were not as convenient to protect and store. Who had magazine bags handy in the 70s ? That could just be the enthusiasm of a new collector talking though. I’ve never bought magazines in the past because I like the color of comics and I felt that the magazines were harder to store. Turns out a Frazetta cover makes up for a lot of color and a magazine box is not hard to find these days. Plus, these are what ECs turned into. How could I not collect them?

I can read all the numbers as is. Randall probably just doesn’t want to put on his readers. 🙂

Got these today at a LCS. Mid-grade books, but nice enough looking to me -

This is perfect. Thanks!

Is there any information anywhere about what the print run numbers were for Warren magazines? Even just rough order of magnitude numbers?

Yeah, generally I don’t think it makes sense to sell them books directly if they are consignable unless you need the money very quickly. You can almost always get a lot more via the consignment route. I think even if you have to sell them as a lot and have to pay the 25% commission rate, you are still probably going to beat the direct selling price they offer most of the time. I’ve actually just submitted my first direct sale of a small group of books. They are books that fit three pretty specific criteria- they aren’t expensive enough to consign, they can’t really be grouped as a lot that is worth enough to consign, and I have so little personal interest in them that I don’t mind selling them at a pretty low price. I actually find it kinda fun to look thru what they are willing to buy at what prices. They actually will buy a lot of “drek” for a buck or two if they don’t have it in stock. You also have to accept that they will be buying at their insanely tight grades, so you have to make sure you are okay selling VFs at their FN price, for example. I’m curious to see how my expectations of their grading will match up with this batch.

"What if there is a movie with <random obscure character> in it? I should really hang onto these just in case."

“When will I ever find that nice a copy of <random issue of something I don’t collect> again?”