hello to all......i kneel before thee.

[justiceleaguer]

hello to everyone, im the newbie today so i guess i should introduce myself. im sal and im a comicaholic. anyways, ive been watching these boards for a while now and thought id join in the fun if i could. i actually have a question to pose to you all as my first official post. i know that many of you are trying to complete entire runs of your favorite series. my question is, once youve finished your respective collections, do you plan on selling them or keeping them for future generations to enjoy. thanx.

[LucyBop]

Hello Daddy-o! I plan on keeping all of mine!

[murph0]

I'll be keeping mine, hell what am I gonna do with the shelving units if I sell my books?

 

Brian

[Mushroom]

I'll be keeping all my GA and DC books foreeeeeever.

 

I will be flogging off my Marvels at some stage.

[justiceleaguer]

good man mushroom. dc is definetely the way to go......as for the marvels....i was thinking of taking up skeet shooting

[supapimp]

i have a price for everything, even you greggy!

[ninanina]

my question is, once youve finished your respective collections, do you plan on selling them?

 

I will never finish my collection. When I finish runs, I'll look for other ones to collect. Right now I'm working on finishing about 30 runs, so I will be busy for awhile. The runs I've finished, will just sit there until I want to read them again.

[greggy]

i have a price for everything, even you greggy!

 

[justiceleaguer]

wow. 30 runs. how can u possibely support this financially? have u given up eating? doesnt attemting to simultaneously collect that many runs take away from the pure joy of spending every free weekend looking for those particular few and elusive issues?

[Lantern]

If all of these DC fans keep showing up how am I ever going to finish my runs............

 

 

[ninanina]

wow. 30 runs. how can u possibely support this financially? have u given up eating? doesnt attemting to simultaneously collect that many runs take away from the pure joy of spending every free weekend looking for those particular few and elusive issues?

 

Unfortunately, most of the ones i need to complete these runs are of the expensive variety. So, although it's a lot of runs, it's not really a lot of comics. How do I afford it? Easy.

 

I don't buy NM slabbed CGC graded comics.

 

 

[justiceleaguer]

i like the way you think ninanina. why is it so important to everyone to have to own such high grade copies, especially if your trying to complete a series. as far as im concerned it really isnt a large concern to have many if not all of my run in medium or mediocre condition. a true collector wont refuse to buy a copy hes been looking for because its not a half-grade higher. perfection is not neccesarily something to be attained. comics are about the enjoyment of reading great stories, not reading the best copy you can get your paws on. cgc is a great company and ive already had a few books encapsulated, but im sad to say its changed the way many ppl view collecting. the hunt has changed from finding the book to finding the best.

[Ariamus]

my question is, once youve finished your respective collections, do you plan on selling them or keeping them for future generations to enjoy.

 

Welcome aboard, JLF (wait a minute...wasn't that a Justice League offshoot...Justice League France or something like that?)

 

To give you some idea about my collection and what it is that I want to collect. I have a binder with a bunch of excel spreadsheets printed out. These are my checklists for buying back issues. For each issue of each comic that I own, I check off with C, R, and/or G. C is for collected edition (ie trade paperbacks, hard cover books, etc). R is for reading copy or an original copy of the issue in question in as good a grade as I can find it but not necessarily high grade because it's for reading purposes. Finally, G is for graded copy.

 

In this binder I have checklists for every comic I collect as well as every single issue of every major title (and many of the minor ones) for the two big publishers. All in all, I have over 60 checklists in this binder. When you consider that each page has a checkbox for about 500 issues and it is my intention to put a C, R, or G in each box, and I currently own about 4000 comics, you can see that I'm at least 25,000 comics away from completing my collection. So, to make a short answer long, I don't think I'll ever complete my collection. (I do hope that one of my progeny picks up where I leave off and does complete my collection).

 

Seriously, though; I'm currently tackling 4 titles and working to complete runs of those. They are Thor, Daredevil, Batman, and Detective Comics. I won't pass up an opportunity to buy other titles, especially if I can find them in bargain bins at say 4 for a dollar. But those are my main focuses. Here's to hoping there'll be a lot of quarter boxes in Philly next weekend.

[Ariamus]

cgc is a great company and ive already had a few books encapsulated, but im sad to say its changed the way many ppl view collecting. the hunt has changed from finding the book to finding the best.

 

I don't know that I completely agree. Granted, there are many people out there that are about finding the best copy of a given book, but I don't think that this has to take away from the enjoyment of reading comics. If people are just in it for collecting purposes, then they probably wouldn't garner much enjoyment from reading. And those people who are in it to read the comics can still enjoy their first love and still put together CGC runs they like so long as they have an another copy of the book for reading purposes. I'd actually say that CGC's presence has added to the enjoyment of reading and collecting comics.

[hammer-migration]

"the hunt has changed from finding the book to finding the best"

 

The best according to CGC, or the best in existance? These are two very different realities. I love the books in the census that there has been one submission on (because the book is basically worthless and nobody except one insufficiently_thoughtful_person though to submit one). Now, others will look at that and say, when it appears on Ebay wth the seller stating, "BEST CGC EXAMPLE", and think to themselves, "Oh my God...the BEST...I HAVE to HAVE that!!!!!" Meanwhile, it's an Omega Man 8 in NM- and everybody's feigning over "the Best". Could you imagine how many Omega Man 8s are sitting unsold in boxes that won't be submitted to CGC because to do so is stupidity personified that BLOW AWAY the CGC BEST copy graded 9.2??? Who the hell makes submissions like this? Mongoloids? And others go ga-ga over it. Like I said, the best copy that CGC has graded is often different from REALITY.

[COI]

a true collector wont refuse to buy a copy hes been looking for because its not a half-grade higher. perfection is not neccesarily something to be attained. comics are about the enjoyment of reading great stories, not reading the best copy you can get your paws on.

 

I'm a high grade collector, and I look for some of the better examples to add to my collection. While I respect the fact that you love the hobby, I don't think ANYONE is in a position to make the call on who is a "real collector" and who isn't. We all get enjoyment out of the hobby in different ways. I don't know why collectors are always so quick to judge each other. I love the hobby, and want to put together the best collection I can. That dosen't mean I'm not capable of kicking back with reader copies once in a while. To each his own..........

 

 

 

 

[ninanina]

Although I've read a lot of comics in my life, I never read them regularly in the Silver Age years. Now, I'm reading a run of Daredevil. I'm up to about issue 90 and have never read 158 and up. I'm finally going to learn what the hub bub about Miller is. Read Justice League last year and after DD, I'll have a lot of catching up to do with FF, Avengers, Captain Marvel, Sub-Mariner, Shield, and a few other titles i can't think of right now. It's just so fascinating being able to read an entire, well almost entire, run of comic in a space of a few months. Although I've read Conan from 80 on up, I've never read the first 5 - 6 years worth. That's my problem with many of the runs I'm reading. I started in the middle and missed the beginning.

 

Lotsa fun.

 

 

 

[justiceleaguer]

thanx for the welcome ariamus, much appreciated. you have some good points. your right in saying that those who are only after collecting books wont enjoy reading them. you seem like a true fellow collector and i hope to have many a good discussion with you. i have another question, and i know it may be a bit unpractical and wasteful....would any of you ever consider cgc'ing an entire series youve spent ages collecting (after reading them all of course)... i know many of you will argue that valuewise it would be stupid to slab a book worth only a few dollars, but in the long-run, having an entire run youve spent probably a good chunk of your life tracking down permanently protected might seem wise. im about 20 or so issues off from finishing my 261 issue run of justice league of america thats taken me roughly ten years to complete and i plan on passing them on to my children. would an investment of about 5000-6000 dollars to have the whole set slabbed be a good move...given their worth more than that.

[FlyingDonut]

For Hammer:

 

 

 

[jonnydouble]

After i complete a run I keep the books and move on to another title....sometimes if I get bored I will switch mid-stream to another title...but always DC...and always one title at a time...

 

Jonny D.