giantcheeto

Awesome cake!

I'd have to agree that most collectors and dealers don't care about Marvel westerns or western comics in general. I think that you can still get deals on key silver age Marvel westerns because dealers don't always realize the significance of certain key issues. For example, the Two-Gun Kid #60 that I purchased for $30 at the San Jose Big Wow convention was sold to me by a pretty well-known and well-established dealer. I'm guessing he didn't realize the significance of the book or he would have probably priced it higher. I mean, it's only listed at $30 in Fine condition in the current Overstreet guide. So it just leads me to believe that key Marvel westerns are just way undervalued in general.

Here's my other recent Marvel western purchase. Though not technically silver age, I recently picked up this copy of Kid Colt #1 for $70 on ebay (shown with the copy of Two-Gun Kid #60 I picked up at the Big Wow show). The Kid Colt front cover looks great but there is tape on the back cover. Even though I hate taped books, I figured I wouldn't ever be able to find an affordable copy of Kid Colt #1 that presents as well as this one. I think the tape on the back cover scared off other bidders. I was surprised that I was the only bidder. Total investment for the Kid Colt #1 and Two-Gun Kid #60, exactly $100. I'm very happy with both purchases.

Congrats, KirbyJack on your great pick up. I also recently scored a copy of Two-Gun Kid 60, Got it at the Big Wow show in San Jose a couple weeks ago. Mine wasn't $15 though. Mine was double the price. I paid $30. Didn't even need to haggle.

As a long-time paperback collector who has recently got back into collecting comics after a long dormant period, I wanted to give my perspective on the paperback collecting hobby. The thing that’s cool about collecting vintage paperbacks is that it is ridiculously inexpensive when compared to collecting comics. Your collecting budget goes a whole lot further. The key books in paperback collecting rarely exceed a couple hundred dollars. And there are a lot of great books you can pick up for $25 or less. There are very, very few vintage paperbacks (probably less than a dozen or so) that regularly command more than $1,000. In paperback collecting, I’ve managed to accumulate most of my paperback holy grails and only once did I ever spend more than $500 for a single paperback (Reform School Girl vintage paperback digest). Unless I win the lotto, I’ll never be able to afford any of the major comic book grails. In pursuing vintage paperback, I never felt l was priced out of the marketplace. I could actually afford a lot of the key books in the hobby. Because there are so much fewer paperback collectors, competition and pricing for key books is much lower than for comic book collecting. On the other side of the coin, I don’t particularly think that collecting vintage paperbacks is the way to go if your primary concern is investment. From my experience over the past 15 years or so, vintage paperback prices have been pretty flat. I haven’t seen any of the wild increases that you see in the comic book hobby. Demand and pricing for vintage paperbacks seems slightly lower than when I started collecting. EBay brought a lot more vintage paperbacks to the marketplace. At the same time, I think vintage paperback collecting as a hobby is on the decline. Most of the serious paperback collectors seem to be in their 40’s or older. Younger generations have little or no interest in vintage paperbacks. Unlike comic books, where you continue to see an infusion of new collectors, you don’t have the same in paperback collecting. And realistically, I don’t see that trend changing. Without the interest of younger collectors, paperback collecting will eventually die off or become an even smaller niche. (You could argue the same will happen to the comic book hobby a generation or two down the road, but that’s a topic for another thread.) On the plus side, if your primary concern isn’t investment, collecting paperbacks is a great hobby. If you’re patient and know where to look, you can put together an amazing paperback collection for not a lot of money. That’s what’s cool about collecting paperbacks. It’s not about making money or chasing the next hot book. It’s about the love of collecting. Kind of what collecting baseball cards or comics used to be like. [/img]