My Comic Collection! Putting my Baseball Card Money into Comics 0

[mouschi]

Selling out of a collection is a crazy thing.  You hate to see things that you did battle for walk out the door, but when the dust settles, you may find yourself in a position considering do things with the money that are outside of your comfort zone.  That’s where I found myself in early 2019, after I sold the vast majority of my Jose Canseco baseball card collection.  Here is a taste of what was outside my comfort zone that I have fallen madly in love with and have invested in: (links to more in depth articles on each are at the bottom of this article)

Vintage Baseball Cards …

Transformers …

and yes, even Jose Canseco baseball cards again …

On my evening walk in early 2019, I started thinking hard about what I wanted to invest in, and while you probably know by now that vintage baseball cards had my attention, I may throw you a curveball here:  Did you know that before I started diving into the wonderful world of vintage cardboard, I actually started getting into comic books?

A seed was planted in my head all the way back in 2012 when I saw an episode of Collection Intervention hosted by Elyse Luray.

As a summary, a man (Joe) had thousands of comics that were taking over the home of he and his fiance, Rebekah.  Eventually, he took a massive chunk of his collection to a dealer, to which the dealer offered to trade in his collection for a single comic book: The Incredible Hulk #181 – the first appearance of Wolverine.  The dealer claimed the signed raw copy should be in the 9.0 range, and should fetch $1,000 at the time.

For some reason, that book stuck out to me forever.  I would think about Hulk 181 from time to time, and cringe each time I saw the price, realizing the ship had sailed.  That’s okay though – I’m a card collector, so what do I care, right?

Years later, I saw a comic setup at the Tri-Star baseball card show, and immediately went over to them, asking about “that one Hulk comic where Wolverine was in it”.  They had a copy and I was able to hold one in my hands for the first time.  Though I loved it, I simply wasn’t prepared to purchase, because I didn’t know anything about pricing…and again… I’m not a comic collector.

I’ve done plenty of dabbling into reselling.  I’ve bought and sold thousands of comic books in bulk, without knowing really what was there.  I always had fun looking at the covers.  Here is a collection acquisition from years ago.  All those boxes are comics!

After my Canseco collection sell-off, I found myself on my evening walks in early 2019 formulating what I really wanted to do with the money.  As mentioned before, comics were first on the list – not in bulk, though – but quality over quantity.  I had a blast studying, learning, and researching what was out there.  The criteria for what I would go after was:

• They have to be slabbed/graded
• They have to excite me
• They have to so promise of being a good investment

I did pretty well staying in line with these, though my love for certain books may have overshadowed their investment potential.  Oh well – that’s how it goes sometimes, right?  Shown below are virtually all of my comic books, and why they are in my collection:

Avengers Annual #10 CGC 9.4 (First appearance of Rogue) 

I *love* the X-Men movies, and really enjoyed Rogue as well.  This was literally a product of me researching where she first appeared, and pulling the trigger.

Amazing Spider-Man #361 CGC 9.6 (First appearance of Carnage) 

As a kid, I loved the Venom/Carnage stuff, though, I don’t have many (if any at all!) memories of reading.  I always thought Venom & Carnage were cool ideas, though. Looking forward to the next Venom movie!

New Mutants #98 CGC 9.6 (First Appearance of Deadpool)

When I had the bulk of comics from buying/selling collections, the name Deadpool would come up often.  Everyone was looking for his comics for some reason.  Then, we watched the movies (on Vidangel, that is – a filtering service to make it more family friendly) and all fell in love with the character.  This was high on my list to get!

Amazing Spider-Man #300 CGC 9.2 (First Appearance of Venom & last black suit) 

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this cover is one of the most iconic covers of the time.  I thought it looked cool, but am very happy to get this.  Venom was a super intriguing character to me as a teenager, so I really wanted to pick up his first appearance.

Walking Dead #1 CGC 9.2

This is my lone non-marvel comic book in my collection.  Back in 2019, this would have been one of my best books, but the pricing for everything else has gone bananas, so that’s why it is here.  It was one of the first comic books on my list to pick up.  Almost literally everyone who would come over to buy comics in bulk from me would ask “Do you have any Walking Dead comic books?”  Never once did I find any, but because so many people were asking me about Walking Dead, I found myself asking about Walking Dead comics whenever I would buy collections.  Still, no luck at all.

When the “comic book switch” was flipped, I realized that I could intentionally seek out this book, so I did!  I haven’t watched the past few seasons (I typically seem to ALWAYS gravitate toward the Office these days) but it is such a great show, and I look forward to watching again.

Amazing Spider-Man #129 CGC 6.5 (First Appearance of Punisher) 

As a kid, I really like the Punisher, but my parents didn’t really like the idea of me reading his comics.  I don’t blame them, but when I laid my eyes on his first appearance in the Amazing Spider-Man (Spidey was one of my faves as a kid) it made the list of books to get.

Fantastic Four #48 CGC 5.5 (First Appearances of Silver Surfer and Galactus) 

I have zero emotional ties to this book at the moment – I just heard it was a good investment.  Plus, it helped me dip my toe in the silver age of comics!  Such a cool cover, too.

X-Men #4 CGC 6.0 (First Appearances of the Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver) 

This is my current comic crush.  I picked this up from Rene & Casey of Storage Wars fame.  We’ve chatted over the past couple years from time to time as well, so it was fun to make a purchase from a couple I watched on a TV show I enjoyed.

As for the book itself, I am a big fan of both the Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver.  One of my favorite scenes in Avengers End Game is this (well, a portion of it, anyway):

And holy cow, how can you not love Quicksilver?  I LOVED the Evan Peters version in X-Men.  Plus, something fun – last night, I found Quicksilver in an episode of The Office!

Needless to say, I am in absolute love with the show WandaVision.  X-Men 4 is one of those books that I was happy to have picked up, but love it more as time goes on!

Avengers #1 CGC 3.5 

This book makes me giddy, if for no other reason than the movies (especially Infinity War and End Game) are some of my favorite movies, ever.  I love the cover, and think this is a drastically underappreciated book!

Giant Size X-Men #1 CGC 7.0 

This was a no-brainer.  I LOVE X-Men, and was told this was a great book to invest in.

Incredible Hulk #181 CGC 7.0 (First Appearance of the Wolverine)

At long last, we come to the point in our journey where I can say that I picked up the comic book that planted the comic book seed in my head nearly a decade prior.  This was a heart purchase, not a head one.  I watched the value of this book stay steady, drop a tad, and now it is exploding once again.  There is a lesson to be learned here for me:  In spite of the fact that a comic (or any collectible for that matter) costs significantly more than it did yesterday doesn’t mean that it isn’t a bargain when compared with tomorrow.  I have all the faith in the world in this book, and love it to death!

But wait … there’s one more!

X-Men #1 CGC 3.5

I salivated over the thought of owning the first X-Men.  One night while I was in bed searching on eBay, I found a suitable copy for my collection.  I made an offer and went to bed.  When I woke up the next morning, I nearly dropped my phone – my offer was accepted!  I couldn’t believe it.

Now, I have the trifecta!

I may never get another comic book again, but I’ll tell you that my favorites to add would be #1 copies of Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Hulk, and first appearances of Spider Man, Thor, and Doom.  They seem like a pipe dream these days, but I guess you never know what can happen.  Never in a million years would I have guessed that I would own these – or that I would even have the love I do for them!

For now, I’m super thankful for what I do have – they turned out to be a very good investment, as they have more than doubled in price on average!  They are some of my favorite pieces in my collection of collectibles.  And to think I was considering selling them all not too terribly long ago.  Boy, am I glad I didn’t 🙂

As you may have read, I have invested in some other areas as well.  Here they are – I have written articles on them, and taken pictures:

Transformers
Vintage Baseball Cards
Jose Canseco Cards (coming soon!)

Last but not least, a picture of virtually every comic in my small collection together:

 

[BlowUpTheMoon]

42 minutes ago, mouschi said:

Did you know that before I started diving into the wonderful world of vintage cardboard, I actually started getting into comic books?

[mouschi]

4 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

5 points to you on posting an office gif! 

[ernieherring]

nice collection man! I love the artwork on the covers too.

[mouschi]

10 hours ago, ernieherring said:

nice collection man! I love the artwork on the covers too.

Thank you Ernie!

[RickSp]

A nice selection you have there, definitely appealing to sell off the bulk and trim down to just a handful like that. Saves a lot of space too!

[theCapraAegagrus]

Those Transformers are ing sick!

[The Man Without Beer]

Damn...Wagner, Cobb & Ruth cards...don't even collect those but grails for many in that genre. Comics speak for themselves.

[october]

Great cards, the Goodwin Champions Anson and Kelly are on my card shortlist. Narrowly missed out on an Anson not long ago in an RE auction. Love the CJ Cobb and Jackson and the Groudey Ruth as well. If you ever want to trade cards for keys comics, PM me. I have extras of TOS 39, Hulk 1, ASM 1, AF 15, Avengers 4, etc.

[Lurker89]

Very cool story and collection.

I'm in my thirties started collecting comics when I was 5 due to family members planting that seed. I stopped collecting for a few years around 12 years old but kept reading and as a teenager read most of everything Alan Moore wrote. That reignited the collecting bug in me. I didn't start getting obsessive about it again until I was probably 24. Then I started completing runs and collecting specific first appearances and keys.

I'm trying to trim my collection of over 20,000 books down and focus on the books that I can't get out of my head.... Namely HOS 92 ASM 129 and MS 5. Most of the other big targets have been aquired that are reasonable.... Those three have alway been slightly out of my reach in the grades I want but I'm in the market for mid grade copy of one of them right now.

Love the books, the hobby, and the people. Comics collecting has been a great joy for me through the years.

[speedcake]

I have ADD, like actually have it not "pretend to have it on twitter for likes" have it, and this story screams ADD to me. 

super cool books, though. Good luck in whatever the next thing is that grabs your attention!

[WolverineX]

Awesome books.  Glad you sold baseball cards instead of a jordan or tom Brady rookie card

[mouschi]

On 3/4/2021 at 7:53 AM, RickSp said:

A nice selection you have there, definitely appealing to sell off the bulk and trim down to just a handful like that. Saves a lot of space too!

Thank you!  I learned that bigtime when it came to my Canseco collection.  The feeling of "having it all" was cool for sure, but man ... it is just a *LOT* to keep/store ... and a lot that I didn't fully care about.  With my new "collections" I found that I have just as much joy with keeping only what I'm white hot about, and it also allows me to dabble in other things!

On 3/4/2021 at 8:08 AM, Angel of Death said:

Those Transformers are ing sick!

Thanks brother!  I love them to death.  My wife understands the cards ... she gets the comic thing ... the transformers is what she doesn't get, haha. 

21 hours ago, The Man Without Beer said:

Damn...Wagner, Cobb & Ruth cards...don't even collect those but grails for many in that genre. Comics speak for themselves.

Thanks brother!  

20 hours ago, october said:

Great cards, the Goodwin Champions Anson and Kelly are on my card shortlist. Narrowly missed out on an Anson not long ago in an RE auction. Love the CJ Cobb and Jackson and the Groudey Ruth as well. If you ever want to trade cards for keys comics, PM me. I have extras of TOS 39, Hulk 1, ASM 1, AF 15, Avengers 4, etc.

Thanks brother!  I'll reach out just in case - I'm not sure I could get rid of any since cards are my first love, but doesn't hurt to explore!

20 hours ago, Lurker89 said:

Very cool story and collection.

I'm in my thirties started collecting comics when I was 5 due to family members planting that seed. I stopped collecting for a few years around 12 years old but kept reading and as a teenager read most of everything Alan Moore wrote. That reignited the collecting bug in me. I didn't start getting obsessive about it again until I was probably 24. Then I started completing runs and collecting specific first appearances and keys.

I'm trying to trim my collection of over 20,000 books down and focus on the books that I can't get out of my head.... Namely HOS 92 ASM 129 and MS 5. Most of the other big targets have been aquired that are reasonable.... Those three have alway been slightly out of my reach in the grades I want but I'm in the market for mid grade copy of one of them right now.

Love the books, the hobby, and the people. Comics collecting has been a great joy for me through the years.

Man, I think that is a fantastic goal.  If there is one thing I've learned over the years - 20k cards is one thing ... 20k books is QUITE another!  Good luck on your quest!

18 hours ago, speedcake said:

I have ADD, like actually have it not "pretend to have it on twitter for likes" have it, and this story screams ADD to me. 

super cool books, though. Good luck in whatever the next thing is that grabs your attention!

LOL!  I chase rabbit trails like crazy in articles I write.  Too much passion, not enough time/space to type! 

12 hours ago, Wolverinex said:

Awesome books.  Glad you sold baseball cards instead of a jordan or tom Brady rookie card

Who are Jordan and Brady?  (HA!)  I actually sold a ton of 2nd year Brady stuffy a few months too early ... BLECH.  I have many horror stories of selling too soon, but that's part of the game, I guess!

[Lurker89]

4 minutes ago, mouschi said:

Man, I think that is a fantastic goal.  If there is one thing I've learned over the years - 20k cards is one thing ... 20k books is QUITE another!  Good luck on your quest!

Oh brother.... I mistyped  it should have said 2,000 books.... I already have 2,000 books .... And it's a problem lol. I'm trying to get that number down . I want to move at some point and the 20 short boxes is a bear to move especially when you are as neurotic about condition as I am. I started by trying to complete a couple runs and then books kept coming.

Some of our peers have well over 20,000 books though some have separate warehouses for their books. 

[mouschi]

1 minute ago, Lurker89 said:

Oh brother.... I mistyped  it should have said 2,000 books.... I already have 2,000 books .... And it's a problem lol. I'm trying to get that number down . I want to move at some point and the 20 short boxes is a bear to move especially when you are as neurotic about condition as I am. I started by trying to complete a couple runs and then books kept coming.

Some of our peers have well over 20,000 books though some have separate warehouses for their books. 

Haha hey, 2,000 books is also nothing to sneeze at.  But yeah, I *think* I had about 30k books where someone literally hired an 18 wheeler to come down the street to pick them up and bring them back to his lair. 

[rfhbv100]

Excellent collection. It seems to me that you underestimate yourself, because since you could afford X-men # 1 in 3.5 condition and many other expensive keys in good condition, then you will buy AF 15 someday. Take an example from me: I have a handful of low-grade keys, but I do not despair and hope to someday get AF 15, FF 1, ToS 39, JiM 83 and X-men # 1

[mouschi]

 

3 minutes ago, rfhbv100 said:

Excellent collection. It seems to me that you underestimate yourself, because since you could afford X-men # 1 in 3.5 condition and many other expensive keys in good condition, then you will buy AF 15 someday. Take an example from me: I have a handful of low-grade keys, but I do not despair and hope to someday get AF 15, FF 1, ToS 39, JiM 83 and X-men # 1

Thank you!  The truth of the matter is that I've never spent more than 3900 on a book - and that was x-men #1.  If I wanted one now, well ... I don't think it would happen!  I really hope so though.  

[rfhbv100]

54 minutes ago, mouschi said:

 

Thank you!  The truth of the matter is that I've never spent more than 3900 on a book - and that was x-men #1.  If I wanted one now, well ... I don't think it would happen!  I really hope so though.  

3900? this is the value of my entire collection