As I said, I'm not really into comics. I grew up in a real small town (population < 300) in a real rural state. Being a small town, there was only one grocery store (which just so happened to be the only place that sold comic books). The comic book section was a small display and it was not updated very frequently. It seemed all the comics I was interested in had the story line continue in future volumes. Since I was almost never able to buy those future volumes I got rather frustrated and stopped reading comics.
So,... Why am I in this board?
I had a brother who was into comics. He died 17 years ago. I went to clean out his apartment and found boxes and boxes of comics...all of them in plastic wrap and obviously never read, many of them being multiple copies of the same comic. I know that people collect comic books and paid money for issues they did not have. I shipped those boxes to my home, thinking I would go through them at my leisure and see if I could sell them. When I got home I wasn't in any mood to go through them so I put them up in my attic with the hope that I would eventually get back to them.
Well...what with my job, raising children and everything going on over those intervening years the boxes sat gathering dust and forgotten in a corner of my attic. Last summer I had some work done in my attic and had to move everything out so I became re-acquainted with those boxes. I moved them into my back patio room, thinking now that I was retired I would have time to deal with the comics.
You know how it goes; the comics then sat in the corner of my patio room gathering dust until recently when my wife told me to get rid of those stupid boxes. So now I have to take care of the situation. I thought of taking them to some local comic book store but I figure even if they would take them they would only give me penny's on the dollar so I figure I would try this out. In just a small cursory glance through CGC's boards I see people selling comics. They describe them and include a grade that apparently CGC (for a price) will assign to the comics. I know very little about comic books and nothing about grading them. The only thing I have to go on is a sticker on some of them saying they are V-F. I assume that means very fine but am not sure...and am not sure if the grade given was given by an expert or only by some booth operator who inflated the grade in order to sell them at a higher price.
My question is: Is it really necessary to have CGC grade the comic's I want to sell? Can't you tell the approximate condition by looking at the picture I would supply? It seems like a lot of work/money to have each of over 1,000 comics graded when they may not even sell at all. I don't think I want to put that much effort/money into this. If I have to do such a thing then I probably will end up advertising on Craigslist to have anyone interested come and look them over. If that doesn't work I guess I'll just donate them to the local thrift store.
Any suggestions?
