I'm also in my 50's and although I've been collecting for a while, I never took them serious until lately.
First, I sorted and inventoried every comic I had (about 1100). I used an app on my phone called CLZ Comics, it's simple to use and pretty accurate but doesn't do a very good job with variants.
Then, I did some searching on "most valuable", "sought after" comics and "key issues" in a run.
I then took the most valued books and paid to have them graded (11 books). Some of mine are 9.8's to 6.0's but having them sealed and graded, keeps them forever.
I plan on doing another run later but that first run cost about $350 (grading and shipping) but I feel it was well worth it.
This is just from my own experience and worked for me, good luck.