Has collecting comics distorted your sense of monetary value?

[Lofwyr]

Collecting comics is worse than a coke habit. No Joke. A serious junkie can blow $500-600 a day on a couple 8 balls. A serious comic collector can spend $5,000-6,000 in one day. I remember today I was in best buy looking at widescreen TV's saying to myself "hmm 2k is pretty cheap, I could buy a _fill in the blank_ NM EC comic for that much."

 

Or even worse, I was in the parking lot and saw some guy driving a shiny new BMW M3. The first sick thought to pop in my head was "the total value of that car could have went towards a NM Amazing fantasy #15" and I don't even like spider-man that much .

 

 

 

 

[BronzeBruce13]

I know what you mean...

It feels like I'm playing with Monopoly money most of the time. If I had to hand actual cash over, it might feel a lot different. With online/virtual payment its too easy to loose touch.

 

I've also looked at expenditures in terms of what comics I could have bought instead. In fact, whenever I consider going to a big convention out of town (San Diego for instance) that might cost me $500+ in travel, lodging and expenses... i think i could stay home and buy a key book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[murph0]

Or even worse, I was in the parking lot and saw some guy driving a shiny new BMW M3.

 

Good god, that's terrible..I'd far rather have the car..well, I guess I'd rather have a NM AF 15 then a BMW..but any other car..I'd want the car over the comic

 

Brian

[Foolkiller]

A couple of years ago I seemed to have lost touch with the reality of my expenditures and how much money I had sunk into comics... but ever since I got out of school, there have been other priorities (like loan repayment) which have curbed my spending... and recently I bought a new t.v., new furniture etc. so I'm trying to spend a little less on comics. An ex-girlfriend (notice the ex part) used to ride me about blowing thousands of dollars at a show while she was working as teaching assistant and just getting by... I was pretty sure I had lost perspective on what I was spending at that point.

 

Now worse than crack... I don't know. I don't think you'll start stealing for your comics habit And if you're doing an ounce of coke a day, well let's say the money is only ONE of your problems...

[comicartfan]

It's so funny...I will look on ebay, or heritage or whatever, think..."maybe it's time to do some overtime"....there's this XYZ book that I really want. Or I look around and think, ok, what can I sell ??- I even tried to get the girlfriend to do tricks ....no i'm kidding....no...i'm not....yes i am.....no...anyway, it' s not that we lose perspective about money and how hard it is, it's just that we know it's wrong, we know we shouldn't spend 2k on a ASM 129 9.6, but that we can't HELP it !! - and as far as Murph's argument that he would rather have the car, I just had a friend buy a book for $260.00, and slabbed it, and sold it BIN for $1100.00 - now, when was the last time that you did that with a car ?? -

[murph0]

Well..there was the time I sold a 69 Camaro after restoration (which cost 12,000 dollars) and I bought the car for 11,000. And then it sold for 26,000 (I kept it for 3 years to drive around some). So it happens

I'd still rather have something fun like a car then a plastic slam with a picture on it.

 

Brian

[Rob]

Every time I think about the amount of money I'm considering spending, it makes me doubt my comic interest. I think how I'd like a widescreen HDTV, computer upgrades, a better digital camera, pay off that credit card, take a trip to Hawaii, etc. But instead, I use that money to buy a paper comic book. Just typing it is making me want to sell my collection.

[murph0]

You're not missing out much on the HDTV. I have one that's HDTV capable, ran HDTV on it for a couple weeks..it wasn't worth the hassle, you have to have a converter too. Long story short, it's a nice option to have that you'll probably need a few years down the road but at this point it's very ho-hum.

 

Brian

[comicmankev]

A year ago I would think that I was spending a lot on comics when paying 200-300, now I pay 5000 with ease, sometimes more! I have CC debts and regularly think of selling the whole lot, but when I start to do it, the money that comes in goes back into new books. I must agree, it is a bit like drugs, you can't keep away for long.

 

How many people on this board could say that they will not buy another comic for one whole month?

[hammer-migration]

The money should be spent on grading. Nothing else. Even if you only have 1 book in your collection, keep sending it in time after time again for express grading. Hopefully, you should be able to proudly say, "I had the same book graded over 52 times this year so everyone would know that I did my part". Don't rest on your laurels thinking you've done enough, buy a garage sale collection of 300 garbage modern age books in water damaged fair/good and send THEM all in for grading. Remember, an unslabbed book is a restored book, plus, remember the free music sights? There is NO free lunch. If you want to listen to the music, you have to pay the piper their royalties. It's only fair. Anything less is fraud and then, theft, if you wantonly accept money, for a comic that grading royalties have NOT been paid on.

[joe_collector]

How many people on this board could say that they will not buy another comic for one whole month?

 

I had some money built up in the old "comic fund" and was looking to get some nice NM Bronze keys. Then I figuratively gave myself a slap in the face and mentally calculated how much my 19" LCD cost and how much utter enjoyment I got out of it.

 

At that point, relative value became really clear and I only buy the odd CGC Byrne X-Men and just bank the "fun money" now. Probably a plasma TV is the next expenditure on my list or maybe a smaller LCD TV for the main floor wall, but definitely not some hyper-expensive "funny books".

 

It really helps to go treat yourself to some nice electronic gadget (assuming you like computers, TV or movies) and then say "would I rather have this or a NM copy of XXX". I know what my answer was.

[chromium]

I think Kev has reached a very good point here...I'm guilty myself of self-imposing limits, barriers on what I can spend on comics and then I go break them and impose new (higher) limits..which of course get broken as well and so on and so on... This is borderline addiction-behaviour. I'm not saying I'm sick (and most of you are in the same boat here) But because we our surrounded on this board by peers who do exactly the same (and make it fun) somehow it becomes natural to spend more and more.

One of the factors for this behaviour is that there is always a guy on the board that spends more than you do (ok, not more than you BronzeBruce ) and somehow we interpret this is as "ok, I might be nuts, but nut as nuts as that guy" (again, Bruce... )

 

Less than a year ago my self imposed limit was $100.00 a month on new books, TPBs and backissues...With our new baby arriving in two weeks, I told Chrisco on May 1st that I wouldn't spend a single dime this month, I had to confess to him yesterday (he won my soul in a poker game and now keeps it in a little mahogany box) that I had already spent $900 and we're only 15 days later

 

As Bruce pointed out... it's those electronic payments which make out life so easy, that take away a lot of the inhibitions of spending...

 

Let's end with one of the many pearls of wisdom Oscar Wilde left us :

 

Why do I have so much month left at the end of my money ?

[Midnight8992-migration]

My wife make (more than) sure that the concept of the worth of money does not elude me....

 

She has this thing about buying things like...food, and electricity that just make no sence.

 

Then again, she does like to buy a lot of shoes....

 

 

[sfilosa]

Let's face it. A lot of the value in comic books is "old comic money". What I mean to say is this:

 

Assume:

 

There are two people and two comics in the world.

 

1) Person X sells Comic Book #1 to Person Y for $200

2) Person Ysells Comic Book #2 to Person X for $400

 

How much real money has been spent on comic books.

 

 

 

The Answer ------------------------------------------------- Make a guess.

 

 

 

 

 

$400.

 

By looking at the value of the two comics books you would think $600 (the total value of both books). But Person Y had to get $200 from his bank and Person X had $200 from his bank (because he used the $200 he got when he sold his first book).

 

OK, enough analysis.

 

Let's face it, if you really needed a new car or TV (say yours doesn't work), you could always sell your books. Most of us spend $100-$1,000's on comic books with at least some idea that in the future, if need be, we could sell them for something close to what we paid (and of course we hope to sell them for more).

 

We could buy real estate, stocks, or other collectibles, but we get enjoyment out of owning comic books. OK, so its a bunch of colorful pieces of paper, BUT WHAT IS THAT GREEN STUFF IN YOUR WALLET. The same thing. But because we can TRADE that green stuff for other items, we assume it has value. Because we assume we can TRADE a comic book for that green stuff, we assume the comic book has value too.

[sfilosa]

As I always tell my wife when we go out to dinner, all we are doing is spending money on something that we will "DUMP" out into a toilet bowl tomorrow.

 

Yes, we have to eat, but we could eat very cheap everyday and have more comics.

 

Which lead to this:

 

Next time you use the bathroom, look in the toilet bowl (after you are finished) and think about what comic book your that could've been.

[joe_collector]

My brain hurts from all this "Matrix-like Economics".

 

First Point: $600 changed hands for comic expenses. What X and Y do with their proceeds is irrelevant to outgoing expenses. -> You're using bronzebruce's "comic economics", where incoming revenue CANNOT EVER be used for anything but buying more comics.

 

Second Point: Comics are not money, and those that can't make the distinction are in for a world of pain in the current over-hyped, movie-driven speculator fest.

 

Rant Mode OFF!

[chromium]

As I always tell my wife when we go out to dinner, all we are doing is spending money on something that we will "DUMP" out into a toilet bowl tomorrow.

 

Ah...a true romantic

[Rob]

With our new baby arriving in two weeks, I told Chrisco on May 1st that I wouldn't spend a single dime this month, I had to confess to him yesterday (he won my soul in a poker game and now keeps it in a little mahogany box) that I had already spent $900 and we're only 15 days later

 

Man, I would be dead. You guys' budget is way more than mine. And I consider my wife and I do be better off than most. Well, we're saving for the down payment for another home, so for me to blow $1000 on comics is just $1000 less we've saved.

[chromium]

Well, it was a special week, I sold my Hulk trilogy (180-181-182) and made nearly 300% profit on my initial purchase price,so I had some extra cash, and believe it or not I took the words from one of the 'board titles' literally....'If I sell my car I can bid some more'

 

I sold my car last week, I've owned a race-track ready Miata for about 10 years now, a little 190 HP beast that was stuck in a stable for far too long, I haven't been on the track for nearly two years and drove the car less than 200 miles last year so it was time to sell.

The car was my 'fun-project', had it before I met my wife and we always had an understanding that I could do with it what I wanted. My wife basically hated the car because she was afraid to drive it and didn't like the rollbar or the fact all the 'power' stuff (windows, mirrors, ac, power steering) was removed to make the car lighter.

 

When I sold it, I could have gotten a new sportscar..but I know I won't drive it...

Can't go on holliday coz we have a 20-month year old toddler and a new baby coming any day...

I'm not going to spend it on comics, but it's a nice little nestegg that makes me feel less bad about spending some of my wages on comic books

 

And this $900 month is the most I have ever spent as well

[dam60]

I definitely got into some trouble last summer buying comics. I had been just come back to the hobby and now that I actually make money (as oppossed to the 14 year old that had a fw random jobs, but nothing steady) coupled with the fact that most of the books I collected when I was younger are routinely selling for less than even 50% of cover - I went a little crazy.

 

It came to the point that for food I wouldn't eat out and brought my lunch to work. That was extra money to be spent on comics!

 

Now every time I pay down my credit card bill I think of the GS 1 cgc 9.6 that I bought that put me in this situation. I traded the book, but I still got the debt!

 

It's good to hear that I am not such a freak and that other people do similar stuff . . .

 

One thing that really helped me this year was I put $1K in my paypal account and am taking $100 a month from the paycheck for comics to. Once that money was gone, I would be done spending on comics. Well, the money is gone but it did force me to recycle some comic book capital.

 

I think what it comes down to is that we all just need to make more money!

 

DAM