How many DC Completionists are left?

[VintageComics]

I didn't realize there were more than 3 people that collected DC comics.

 

[G.A.tor]

@gator

 

Assuming you have had Detective 1 up, then you have had, at one time or

another, about half of the issues I am missing and about half of the issues I

have that are incomplete.

 

But I am just a poor old man with a limited budget which is why many of the

Overstreet 100 are on my missing/incomplete lists. Up until recent times,

the books I want have been ones you can get if you have a lot of time but

not a lot of money (or a lot of money and not much time). I have put in the time;

now at least half of the books are ones that require a lot of time AND a lot of

money.

 

Why try to complete something possible? What do you do then?

I have had detective 1,2,3,8, etc...all the "tough" issues... at one point or another, all 26 issues were attainable...

 

but, like you, I am on a budget and I complete a run, then typically would sell the run off to go after another run... I could never go after the entire publisher, though I would like to at some point, have at least owned them all (or most all)

[Bronty]

@gator

 

Assuming you have had Detective 1 up, then you have had, at one time or

another, about half of the issues I am missing and about half of the issues I

have that are incomplete.

 

But I am just a poor old man with a limited budget which is why many of the

Overstreet 100 are on my missing/incomplete lists. Up until recent times,

the books I want have been ones you can get if you have a lot of time but

not a lot of money (or a lot of money and not much time). I have put in the time;

now at least half of the books are ones that require a lot of time AND a lot of

money.

 

Why try to complete something possible? What do you do then?

 

first of all congrats on having come so far

 

wouldn't you rather stop buying all the new stuff though and put that money towards filling in the holes on the old stuff?

 

I can almost hear the fatigue in your posts in terms of trying to keep up.

[HouseofComics.Com]

It seems to me that if you were buying $5000 a year in modern DCs, you could also "let them go" for a few years and then pick them up on the secondary market for less. Call it $1500 to $2000. That would increase the budget substantially over five years for picking up the pricier GA issues that still elude you.

 

I collect Batman titles but don't worry about buying them all every month. Rather every couple years or so I pick up a big batch for less effort and $$.

[Norrin_Radd]

Agreed. (thumbs u

 

Completing any long DC title (GA-Present) is an amazing accomplishment.

[Larryw7]

Very interesting topic. I know for myself, I set a goal of every Batman and Detective. I finished the Batman run, but the Detective run proved too costly to complete so I gave up. If you have limited funds, it is just too much effort to complete.

 

I'm trying to do a Batman run,though only up to around 300(may go further; lots of great Copper and Modern stories). 'Tec I'm gonna try to do from #327(first New Look to sometime in the Copper age), and get select copies of older issues. But I was looking through Gerber last night, and some of those early Detective issues are pretty enticing. I just wish that 'Tec had better backup features. I hate having a 64 page book with only one really good story(yeah, I like looking at the interiors of the books as well as the cover).

[chromium]

Very interesting topic. I know for myself, I set a goal of every Batman and Detective. I finished the Batman run, but the Detective run proved too costly to complete so I gave up. If you have limited funds, it is just too much effort to complete.

 

I'm trying to do a Batman run,though only up to around 300(may go further; lots of great Copper and Modern stories). 'Tec I'm gonna try to do from #327(first New Look to sometime in the Copper age), and get select copies of older issues. But I was looking through Gerber last night, and some of those early Detective issues are pretty enticing. I just wish that 'Tec had better backup features. I hate having a 64 page book with only one really good story(yeah, I like looking at the interiors of the books as well as the cover).

 

Same here...now that I'm nearly finished with Marvel I've been slowly putting together a Batman #1 to #400 run...

[HouseofComics.Com]

I just wish that 'Tec had better backup features. I hate having a 64 page book with only one really good story(yeah, I like looking at the interiors of the books as well as the cover).

 

I love getting Detectives with no centerfolds. Such a discount and I'm not going to read the Air Wave story anyway. I've never read an Air Wave story in my life, actually.

[Sal]

It seems to me that if you were buying $5000 a year in modern DCs, you could also "let them go" for a few years and then pick them up on the secondary market for less. Call it $1500 to $2000. That would increase the budget substantially over five years for picking up the pricier GA issues that still elude you.

 

Scary...this is exactly what I was thinking

[HouseofComics.Com]

Yeah, why pay the "newest of the new" premium if there's no thrill in that for you? And it's not like he has a complete DC collection he'd be temporarily ruining, he only has 99%.

[Larryw7]

I just wish that 'Tec had better backup features. I hate having a 64 page book with only one really good story(yeah, I like looking at the interiors of the books as well as the cover).

 

I love getting Detectives with no centerfolds. Such a discount and I'm not going to read the Air Wave story anyway. I've never read an Air Wave story in my life, actually.

 

I have a couple of those super scarce 'Tec's from the mid fifties without centerfolds. They never show up for sale at all, so I grabbed 'em when I saw them.

[seank]

Very interesting topic. I know for myself, I set a goal of every Batman and Detective. I finished the Batman run, but the Detective run proved too costly to complete so I gave up. If you have limited funds, it is just too much effort to complete.

 

I'm trying to do a Batman run,though only up to around 300(may go further; lots of great Copper and Modern stories). 'Tec I'm gonna try to do from #327(first New Look to sometime in the Copper age), and get select copies of older issues. But I was looking through Gerber last night, and some of those early Detective issues are pretty enticing. I just wish that 'Tec had better backup features. I hate having a 64 page book with only one really good story(yeah, I like looking at the interiors of the books as well as the cover).

 

If you're not concerned with getting 9.4+ copies of 301+, then a 301 to present Batman run is not expensive. Many, if not most of those issues can be found in dollar bins. Even many HG slabbed copies can be had of most issues for not more than the cost of slabbing.

[HouseofComics.Com]

I'd suggest at least going through 400 if you like those comics at all.

[jerome34]

At one point years ago, I skipped buying the comics new and relied on the

"25 cent box" to get them later. I found that I could get about 75-90 percent

of the books real cheap. The remaining ones too years to get, cost from

25 cents to double cover and took a lot of time to find. Eventually I decided

that the cost of time was just too much. Remember, this was back when dealers

used "I can sell 25 of this issue, I will order 30." Now with dealers useing "I

can sell 20 of this issue, I better order 19."

 

Which makes more sense: a) getting (almost) everything at a large discount

when it comes out; or b) wait six months and get most books at a larger discount

but spend 3 years and two hundred hours to get the remaining books?

 

Say getting a period of 4 months as they come out costs $1500 and spending

three years getting the same books costs $1200. It would mean that when I

go to a convention to buy books, I would spend 95 % of my time digging in the

cheap boxes and, if I was lucky, 5 % of my time seeing if there were any GA

books to get.

[jerome34]

Still no more names for the list? Nobody willing to be outed? Nobody

knows anyone? Everyone else stopped when they were forced to

move to the booby hatch? Or what??

[comicdonna]

Still no more names for the list? Nobody willing to be outed? Nobody

knows anyone? Everyone else stopped when they were forced to

move to the booby hatch? Or what??

"booby hatch"

[bigfiver69]

Dude, hats off to you for even trying!

 

I've flirted with completing the DC war runs (I'm about 65% there) and that alone is a ridiculously hard accomplishment. Particularly as you mentioned, the books from the 1950s.... I'll probably never be able to do it.

 

$6000 a year for modern DCs? Wow, that's more than I would have expected.

 

Shep

 

 

 

 

[Sal]

At one point years ago, I skipped buying the comics new and relied on the

"25 cent box" to get them later. I found that I could get about 75-90 percent

of the books real cheap. The remaining ones too years to get, cost from

25 cents to double cover and took a lot of time to find. Eventually I decided

that the cost of time was just too much. Remember, this was back when dealers

used "I can sell 25 of this issue, I will order 30." Now with dealers useing "I

can sell 20 of this issue, I better order 19."

 

Which makes more sense: a) getting (almost) everything at a large discount

when it comes out; or b) wait six months and get most books at a larger discount

but spend 3 years and two hundred hours to get the remaining books?

 

Say getting a period of 4 months as they come out costs $1500 and spending

three years getting the same books costs $1200. It would mean that when I

go to a convention to buy books, I would spend 95 % of my time digging in the

cheap boxes and, if I was lucky, 5 % of my time seeing if there were any GA

books to get.

 

I'm not making a judgment call about your collecting in any way, it's just that I would have long ago picked an end time to my collection...like all DCs from 1933-2003, and once I got them I would worry about the plethora of moderns.

 

 

But that's just me. Spending a ton of money to stay up-to-date with modern issues while never being able to fill in the back issues I was missing seems like a strange way to go.

 

I suppose you could just say you're collecting all DCs from 1945 on or something along those lines, if the uber-uber keys are too pricey to consider

[FlyingDonut]

My hats off to Jerome and Ian and Christine. That's just an insane undertaking - I don't think you could do it now.

[jerome34]

I know that I am highly unlikely to complete the collection. That has

been clear from the start. If I had stopped at the end of 2003 (70 years)

or 2009 (75 years - which was very tempting), the money saved would

allow me to get a few missing issues or upgrade a few issues but would not

make it possible to complete the collection. To do that I would have had to

stop at about the end of 1984 (50 years), save exactly every cent I have spent

over all of these years and as soon as I had enough to buy a low grade

Action 1, get it. Then save for years until I could get a Detective 27. Continue

building my collection one book at a time grabbing the most expensive book

remaining. After 20 years, I would have had a collection of maybe 15 books

and then I could start going after the remaining 14,985 (approximately) books.

 

By this date, I suspect I would still be missing about 200 comics and most

would be scarce but not high priced in the guide. The net result of either

approach would be that I would be missing about the same number of books.

With the approach I used, the missing items are more expensive but, for the

most part, easier to get. And I have all of the books published in the past 25

years. Some of these recent books are even fun to read.