I Am Changing My Collecting Focus 4 4

[Math Teacher]

By the end of this week, I will have a combination of 272 CGC and <other company> slabs. I am looking for, at most, eight more slabs ([Justice League of America #3, #8, #10], [Atom #3, #8], Batman #232, Showcase #30, and Giant-Size X-Men #1, plus I will be sending in my raw copy of My Greatest Adventure #80 for grading.

After that, I really think that I will be done with obtaining issues that I don't currently have. My focus is going to change to upgrading issues that I already have in my collection. I have already upgraded several issues (ASM #13 and #14, DD #7, FF #4, #6, and #12) already this year. My two priorities for upgrading will be ASM #4 (currently I have a CGC 3.5) and Strange Tales #110 (currently I have a CGC 3.0).

My next upgrades are going to require a lot of scrimping and saving. I would like to have nicer copies of ASM #1, FF #1, and X-Men #1. Even if I sell my current copies, it will still require substantial sums of money to get the grades that I am looking for.

At one time, I thought that I might work toward obtaining both ASM #1 - #50 and FF #1 - #50 in slabs. However, the fact of the matter is that I just don't have room for another 45+ slabs. I truly envy people like @Straw-Man and @WernerVonDoom with their magnificent copies and runs of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but I just don't think that would be a good use of my money. 

My wife and I are both in our mid-60s, and there are still a lot of places that we want to see before we are too old to travel any more. I think spending $20,000 on a trip to China or Japan or Great Britain or France would be a better use of our money than for me to spend $20,000 to obtain an FF #1 in CGC 5.0.

Has anyone else reached this point in your collecting careers? Do you find that it is as much fun as obtaining issues that you never had?

Anyway, that's my plan, and I hope that I can stick to it. Only time will tell.

[KCOComics]

 

Good luck with the new focus! Through out my life, my collecting focus has changed and evolved several times. 

I think you'll enjoy the challenge of upgrading. That might require selling down parts of your collection to help fund the upgrades - but enjoying the process is all that really matters! 

[WernerVonDoom]

On 6/18/2024 at 9:43 PM, Math Teacher said:

By the end of this week, I will have a combination of 272 CGC and <other company> slabs. I am looking for, at most, eight more slabs ([Justice League of America #3, #8, #10], [Atom #3, #8], Batman #232, Showcase #30, and Giant-Size X-Men #1, plus I will be sending in my raw copy of My Greatest Adventure #80 for grading.

After that, I really think that I will be done with obtaining issues that I don't currently have. My focus is going to change to upgrading issues that I already have in my collection. I have already upgraded several issues (ASM #13 and #14, DD #7, FF #4, #6, and #12) already this year. My two priorities for upgrading will be ASM #4 (currently I have a CGC 3.5) and Strange Tales #110 (currently I have a CGC 3.0).

My next upgrades are going to require a lot of scrimping and saving. I would like to have nicer copies of ASM #1, FF #1, and X-Men #1. Even if I sell my current copies, it will still require substantial sums of money to get the grades that I am looking for.

At one time, I thought that I might work toward obtaining both ASM #1 - #50 and FF #1 - #50 in slabs. However, the fact of the matter is that I just don't have room for another 45+ slabs. I truly envy people like @Straw-Man and @WernerVonDoom with their magnificent copies and runs of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but I just don't think that would be a good use of my money. 

My wife and I are both in our mid-60s, and there are still a lot of places that we want to see before we are too old to travel any more. I think spending $20,000 on a trip to China or Japan or Great Britain or France would be a better use of our money than for me to spend $20,000 to obtain an FF #1 in CGC 5.0.

Has anyone else reached this point in your collecting careers? Do you find that it is as much fun as obtaining issues that you never had?

Anyway, that's my plan, and I hope that I can stick to it. Only time will tell.

Sounds like a good plan. My want list back in the 80s and 90s was every Silver/Bronze Marvel in highish grade. For the past 15 years, I've exclusively focused on upgrading my FF run and it's still as fun as ever. My only problem is that I'm down to only 22 books I think I want to upgrade and they are all crazy rare or $$$$.

[silverseeker]

On 6/18/2024 at 9:43 PM, Math Teacher said:

By the end of this week, I will have a combination of 272 CGC and <other company> slabs. I am looking for, at most, eight more slabs ([Justice League of America #3, #8, #10], [Atom #3, #8], Batman #232, Showcase #30, and Giant-Size X-Men #1, plus I will be sending in my raw copy of My Greatest Adventure #80 for grading.

After that, I really think that I will be done with obtaining issues that I don't currently have. My focus is going to change to upgrading issues that I already have in my collection. I have already upgraded several issues (ASM #13 and #14, DD #7, FF #4, #6, and #12) already this year. My two priorities for upgrading will be ASM #4 (currently I have a CGC 3.5) and Strange Tales #110 (currently I have a CGC 3.0).

My next upgrades are going to require a lot of scrimping and saving. I would like to have nicer copies of ASM #1, FF #1, and X-Men #1. Even if I sell my current copies, it will still require substantial sums of money to get the grades that I am looking for.

At one time, I thought that I might work toward obtaining both ASM #1 - #50 and FF #1 - #50 in slabs. However, the fact of the matter is that I just don't have room for another 45+ slabs. I truly envy people like @Straw-Man and @WernerVonDoom with their magnificent copies and runs of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but I just don't think that would be a good use of my money. 

My wife and I are both in our mid-60s, and there are still a lot of places that we want to see before we are too old to travel any more. I think spending $20,000 on a trip to China or Japan or Great Britain or France would be a better use of our money than for me to spend $20,000 to obtain an FF #1 in CGC 5.0.

Has anyone else reached this point in your collecting careers? Do you find that it is as much fun as obtaining issues that you never had?

Anyway, that's my plan, and I hope that I can stick to it. Only time will tell.

It's nice that you have a focused plan and know the books you want to acquire/upgrade.

I'm going through the same thing right now, and plan to start selling books for titles where I know I won't be able to complete the runs I wanted to acquire.

Good luck!

[BA773]

Well I just had a great change of mindset too a week ago, I'm now looking only for coverless or eventually poor... just want a nice inside and complete... my goal is now to acquire the most stories of the charachters I'm collecting, it's so funny to hunt for them because we dont see these gems often, yeah coverless can be more hard to find than good condition books who are just easier to acquire if you put the money on the table... i look everywhere to find some GA,SA coverless keys, the idea to get piece of history for a penny is so enjoyable!

[BA773]

On 6/19/2024 at 10:07 AM, BA773 said:

Well I just had a great change of mindset too a week ago, I'm now looking only for coverless or eventually poor... just want a nice inside and complete... my goal is now to acquire the most stories of the charachters I'm collecting, it's so funny to hunt for them because we dont see these gems often, yeah coverless can be more hard to find than good condition books who are just easier to acquire if you put the money on the table... i look everywhere to find some GA,SA coverless keys, the idea to get piece of history for a penny is so enjoyable!

Maybe a day a first Bat or Supes? Who know? But at the moment is just a dream, I'm a random guy from the middle-low monetary class, an affordable goal and a personal graail would be an All star 3

[Ken Aldred]

It’s natural for your focus to evolve over time. I’m in a very different place to where I was 15 years or so ago when I joined the boards. A lot more comfortable and stress-free, which is a good situation to aim for, however you find that pathway.

Edited June 19 by Ken Aldred

[OrangeNemesis]

Be excited you have an actual plan! I always think i have a collecting focus plan and it always goes to the wayside when i discover something new i hadnt seen before etc. Its alot of collectors problem. I def agree that a travel experience at your age would be a better idea than a new book. Go see the world!

 

[Stefan_W]

I've shifted focus a few times over the years. At first I wanted to complete the entire first series run of Fantastic Four that I started when I was a kid. I got to within 5 issues of completion when I realized that the cost of getting the last of the books I needed would be roughly the amount of buying a new car. Cant drive a slab to work every morning, so I decided to sell off my FFs to diversify my collection. 

The latest shift that happened within the past year or so is I started to sell off most of my books under 1k and focus on consolidating proceeds from that into more valuable comics I enjoy. It is mostly about freeing up space since many hundreds of slabs take up a tremendous amount of room. 

I'll almost certainly shift again at some point. If someone offers up an AF15 for a few 3-5k slabs I would probably do it. 

[comicginger1789]

I’ve evolved over the years as well. Something I always wonder is “what if I really buckled down and worked to acquire ASM 1-600. And maybe Spec Spidey (entire run) and Marvel Team up. 
 

To do this though would require me to sell off around 2500 books (for which I would definitely get enough moolah from to get a 2.0 AF 15 and similar for ASM 1 as well as the others I need early in that run). My issue is I love many of those 2500 books. I worry that I would miss them more than completing that run. It’s a hard commitment to make as I am really happy collecting the best bargain and books I can find that suit my many joys. Pigeonholing into one (albeit a big one that many love) is something I don’t know if I could do 

Edited June 19 by comicginger1789

[Robot Man]

On 6/18/2024 at 9:43 PM, Math Teacher said:

By the end of this week, I will have a combination of 272 CGC and <other company> slabs. I am looking for, at most, eight more slabs ([Justice League of America #3, #8, #10], [Atom #3, #8], Batman #232, Showcase #30, and Giant-Size X-Men #1, plus I will be sending in my raw copy of My Greatest Adventure #80 for grading.

After that, I really think that I will be done with obtaining issues that I don't currently have. My focus is going to change to upgrading issues that I already have in my collection. I have already upgraded several issues (ASM #13 and #14, DD #7, FF #4, #6, and #12) already this year. My two priorities for upgrading will be ASM #4 (currently I have a CGC 3.5) and Strange Tales #110 (currently I have a CGC 3.0).

My next upgrades are going to require a lot of scrimping and saving. I would like to have nicer copies of ASM #1, FF #1, and X-Men #1. Even if I sell my current copies, it will still require substantial sums of money to get the grades that I am looking for.

At one time, I thought that I might work toward obtaining both ASM #1 - #50 and FF #1 - #50 in slabs. However, the fact of the matter is that I just don't have room for another 45+ slabs. I truly envy people like @Straw-Man and @WernerVonDoom with their magnificent copies and runs of Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, but I just don't think that would be a good use of my money. 

My wife and I are both in our mid-60s, and there are still a lot of places that we want to see before we are too old to travel any more. I think spending $20,000 on a trip to China or Japan or Great Britain or France would be a better use of our money than for me to spend $20,000 to obtain an FF #1 in CGC 5.0.

Has anyone else reached this point in your collecting careers? Do you find that it is as much fun as obtaining issues that you never had?

Anyway, that's my plan, and I hope that I can stick to it. Only time will tell.

I completely agree. I have gotton to the point where I already have what I want, have had what I want or can’t justify finishing up what I still want.

I have taken up mostly upgrading and just to keep the thrill of the hunt, buying pulps. So many I have never seen before. Kind of like when I first started collecting comics.

And yeah, traveling. So many “bucket list” places I want to still see. Since I retired I’ve been all over Italy, Egypt and even Easter Island on a surfing trip. I’ve been all over the US, most of Europe Australia/New Zealand and a lot of South America. There are a few other odd places still on my list. Experiences trump “stuff” at this point.

[wiparker824]

I’m getting very close to a similar place. I’m nearly to the point of “having every book I want”. Of course there’s exceptions to that, like I’d like a Tec 27 but I’ve already resigned myself to never affording such a book. That sort of thing aside, everything I’ve actually put on my collecting list I’ve nearly obtained entirely. I’ve thought about upgrading copies as my next venture and there are a couple I’ve already done and a couple more I’d like to do but really I’m just not as into that personally. I like my low grades, mid grades, etc just fine and don’t get the thrill to get a small bump in quality to really chase those too often. And a lot of these low grade big books I own I can pick up and get the nostalgia of when I bought that particular issue, the hunt, the cost at the time, all of it. And that means more to me than a grade bump. So what’s next for me? Personally am getting into sig series more. Nothing crazy but that’s a hunt that suits me more.

[MattTheDuck]

Here's what makes this a smart plan - you're not foreclosing anything.  We've seen plenty of posts where a collector sold off part (or in rare cases all) of his/her collection and then later realized he/she shouldn't have and had to reacquire those books.  In your plan, if you hit the Lottery or something, you can go back to picking up high grade low-number slabs of the titles you want.

I've come to the conclusion - and have mentioned it a couple of times - that I'm just not going to be able to get all the books I want.  Most of them (early issues of raw Silver Age Marvels, Planet Comics, etc) that I need are crazy expensive and I blew my chance in the 70s and again in the late 80s/early 90s when these books were reasonable.  I think I can live with it and just pick up an occasional cool book that's "just" expensive.

[sfcityduck]

On 6/19/2024 at 7:56 AM, Robot Man said:

I completely agree. I have gotton to the point where I already have what I want, have had what I want or can’t justify finishing up what I still want.

I have taken up mostly upgrading and just to keep the thrill of the hunt, buying pulps. So many I have never seen before. Kind of like when I first started collecting comics.

And yeah, traveling. So many “bucket list” places I want to still see. Since I retired I’ve been all over Italy, Egypt and even Easter Island on a surfing trip. I’ve been all over the US, most of Europe Australia/New Zealand and a lot of South America. There are a few other odd places still on my list. Experiences trump “stuff” at this point.

Wise words. For me also it is the thrill of the hunt. Which is why I pick interesting targets that are rarely seen and gain incredible satisfaction when I find them (in any grade at all). And, for some, having found them I am not hesitant to free them up to a collector who needs them more than I do because they relate to that collector's core collection but not mine. Thus, I gain the pleasure of helping others, of making some money on my find to fund other comic and non-comic pursuits, and of bringing more appreciation and value to the target of my search by helping establish the market for rare items that have rarely sold.

For my own original collection, which includes both my comics acquired in the 70s-80s and my father's acquired in the 40s-50s and gifted to me when I started collecting, I keep it in storage largely undisturbed with the few I've submitted of my OO stock getting high grades when submitted. But for most of the comics I've bought since I took collecting back up after a ten year or so break skipping the 90s and focusing on GA material, I actually tend to "downgrade." I seek out high grade material (my readers are an extensive library of archive type publications) but when they grade too high, then I go ahead and sell them off, buy a lesser graded copy (usually 7.0 to 9.0 for the short run material I'm after), and pocket the difference which is often considerable. And if I just want some money for the fine art I collect or travel, I have no problem running a sales thread if necessary.

I have found that I find great satisfaction in trying to put together mini-runs of related books with some sort of unifying theme. The fun includes both identifying the runs I want to go after and in hunting for the runs. Sometimes, the runs are close to impossible to get together in any grade. And after a long time, I'm just about ready to give up on the below run. The 23 is easy, the 24 is doable, the 25 is practically impossible. To me, these three covers tell a story. I assume that the artist of the 24 and 25 was inspired by the 23. To me, this three issue run covers a lot of themes you'd want in a Romance collection. If anyone has got a 25 PM me:

         

 

Edited June 19 by sfcityduck

[The lips]

Mines changed in the last month. 
prior to that my aim was ASM 1-375 and I’m now around 85% there. 
as you’ll probably guess, the remaining issues I need are the high value single figure keys. 
now with the best will in the world, there out of my price range and whilst I still pick off the odd issue, the reality has dawned I’m not going to complete. 
So… I’ve now switched focus to completing FF 48-100 ( I already had 48 so I’ve got the big one already! ) and I’m finding it very very enjoyable. 
sometimes a change in plan gives you a fresh impetus on it all 

[bc]

Like many here, I've changed my collecting focus at least 3 times. 

I recently sold off the large majority of my slabs - I have a short box of the same books raw as reader copies. My plan was to sell the floppies here, but every time I sit down to do the scanning & grading, I wind up reading 4 or 5 and really haven't made much progress. But, I realized how much fun reading the books was again compared to storing boxes of plastic widgets I glanced at every couple of years.

Been picking up cheap reprints of my favorite Marvel story arcs as well as used Masterworks/Omnibuses and the like. Still prefer the printed page to a digital image - likely because I have 4 monitors to stare at all day for work.

-bc 

[BlowUpTheMoon]

Collecting focus?!? What the hell is that? 

[KPR Comics]

I’ve bought and sold two complete Iron Man runs from ToS 39 through IM 332.  I’m on my third and 4th. This time a high grade raw run and a reader run.  Thrill of the hunt is where it’s at for me. 

Edited June 19 by KPR Comics
Grammar

[Math Teacher]

On 6/19/2024 at 6:17 PM, KPR Comics said:

I’ve bought and sold two complete Iron Man runs from ToS 39 through IM 332.  I’m on my third and 4th. This time a high grade raw run and a reader run.  Thrill of the hunt is where it’s at for me. 

I have to be honest. I miss the days where we stopped at multiple comic book stores when we were on vacation in the hope of finding an issue that I didn't have. Now, you don't have to put forth much effort in trying to find an issue you need. You have Ebay, you have IG, you have Facebook, you have these boards, etc. Mind you, I am mainly a SA guy, so I know that you GA collectors might not have it as easy as I have had it.

[ADAMANTIUM]

It took me sometime, and idk if I still can pin down a collecting focus.

I believe it is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd appearances, covers I like, but I've done a few runs too, which some are near completion. It has become too general a description? Lol