While thinking about the current state of comics and the future of my collection, I've decided to invest in high grade Silver Age books and get them certified. This is how I got here ...
I've been collecting for a long, long time and have amassed a huge collection. Mostly Flash, Fantastic Four but over the past few years, that's expanded to JLA, Amazing Spidey and the main Superman and Batman books, plus thousands of other books I haven't "collected" by going through back issue bins, but I managed to pick up along the way after reading comics for almost 30 years now. There's a couple of longboxes at my house, plus at least a dozen more at my parents' house.
I'm getting older and ready to start a family while looking around at all these books I've accumulated. I've decided to try and purge as much as I can and focus on a high end collection that's certified that allows me focus on books that will, in theory, retain significant value and hopefully appreciate in the years to come. Filling in the holes with random 90s Superman comics is probably not going to dramatically increase the value of the entire run that much. Buying a raw Near Mint Superman 233 and getting it certified would yield a better return and would be cheaper over the long haul than buying and maintaining the entire run of Adventures of Superman, as an example.
I've been thinking about this method all summer after DC announced their new 52 program. Although initially angry, it didn't take too long for me to realize that rebooting Action and Detective essentially freed me from the mentality of buying to continue "the run." Every other book I collect the run of has been rebooted at least once in their run, and The Flash has seen four restarts in five years. Now it just seems silly to me to show collector loyalty for books I enjoy less and less that take up space and rarely appreciate in value. Most depreciate, I suspect, but I'll find out soon enough as I try to unload many modern books.
I feel not only does this switch in collecting mentality allow me to focus on books that retain value and possibly appreciate over time like a good share of stock, but also appreciate the art form of comics. I love the Silver Age art of Kirby, Romita, Ditko, Infantino and others, and I believe I will really enjoy framing those amazing covers in CGC cases. Even some Bronze, Copper and Modern classics would look good in those cases.
Over the next few weeks, I'm going to pull all my Silver Age books and check out which ones will be suitable for grading, and then start working on selling all the rest. There's a few books I'm going to hang onto, notably the entire Wally West Flash series (I'm pretty proud of that run), but as far as I'm concerned, all the good stuff like Byrne's FF run is all available in trade so there's not much to miss with the old collection.
With comics collecting, I feel making the change is the first step. Joining up with CGC is the second, and I'm looking forward to continuing the journey here.
