What was your STUPIDEST comic collecting move?

[steelcity]

Putting a CGC 9.4 Action 267 up on ebay with a BIN of around 3000. It got bought immediately and 2 weeks later the buyer put it on ebay with no BIN and got nearly 6000 for it. I cried for a month!.

 

Live and learn.

 

I remember this book, too. I was browsing CGC comics and not spotting much. Then I remembered an Action that had finished I wanted to check. I looked in completed auctions and totally forgot the book I was looking for. There, just completed, was this Action #267 CGC 9.4 that had only been listed an hour or so.

Anyway, my stupid collecting move was multiple purchases. From 1987 to 1994 (finishing with all the #0 DCs) I bought pretty much every book that came out. Week after week buying 2 to 3 copies of every DC and Marvel. One to read, one to keep and a possible trade copy. I chose the best three copies I could and bagged and boarded every one. By 1994 I was running out of storage space and it dawned on me what a silly thing I was doing so I stopped. I took every third copy to a local childrens hospital and the rest will probably gather dust for a long time.

[Guest]

Selling off my previous collections. If only....

 

DITTO!!!

[EwanUK]

Again, selling off my original collection - this time for £100 to [embarrassing lack of self control] Silveracre. With hindsight, I could've sold the lot for probably 2K on ebay. It included one beautiful piece of Brett Ewins original art (Judge Anderson) that I bought back in 1987... almost sentimental...

 

I also regret not buying Watchmen OA from Comic Showcase in the late 80s!

[Guest]

Again, selling off my original collection - this time for £100 to [embarrassing lack of self control] Silveracre. With hindsight, I could've sold the lot for probably 2K on ebay. It included one beautiful piece of Brett Ewins original art (Judge Anderson) that I bought back in 1987... almost sentimental...

 

I also regret not buying Watchmen OA from Comic Showcase in the late 80s!

 

Somehow I don't feel so bad now. Being led down the garden path by Darryl has to really sting!

You have my fullest sympathies, and commiserations.

[CatskillMike]

I started a similar thread a while back...you can go here to read more collectors stories..... THE LINK Meanwhile, here is my sad story, copied from the other thread...................................<hr>

 

My worst horror story was at the 1986 Atlanta Fantasy Fair. I was 15 years old and took the bus up from Columbus (100 miles) to sell some of the 40 copies of GI JOE #2 (super hot book in the 80's....$75 bucks each at this time). The dealers room at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta was HUGE.<hr>

 

At the corner table of one isle was an elderly guy who looked just like Colonel Sanders. I had been flipping GI Joe 2's all day and had developed quite a presence at the convention because NOBODY had this issue but me. Colonel Sanders said something like " Hey young man, do you like original art, I'd sell these pages of art for $100 each but nobody is buying, I'd be willing to swap you any pages you like, 1 page for 1 GI JOE # 2, for as many as you'd like"<hr>

 

I took a look at the stack of pages this old gentleman had , must have been about 4 inches high, I'd figure about 50 or more pages. As GOD is my witness, every single page, every one, was a STEVE DITKO Amazing Spider-man page. Splash pages, tons of interior art, I don't recall any covers.<hr>

 

The old guy was practically begging me to trade. This goes to show how far original art has come in 18 years. HE was SO MOTIVATED to trade me these FRIGGIN' MUSEUM PIECES for FRIGGIN' GI JOE #2's. (sorry, I get a bit excited now that I'm relating this story)<hr>

 

SO what did I do? I figured that I'd like to have a few pages for my collection even though I had never thought of ever aquiring any original art. I then thought about the 100 mile Greyhound bus ride back to Columbus, and what a burden it would be to carefully return these on the cramped bus.....and respectfully passed on the whole thing.

I've had a reoccuring nightmare about this for the last 18 years. It is seriously something I don't think I'll ever come to terms with. That is my story. Sad but true.<hr>

 

 

You may be the winner.

[Carnage]

I started a similar thread a while back...you can go here to read more collectors stories..... THE LINK Meanwhile, here is my sad story, copied from the other thread...................................<hr>

 

My worst horror story was at the 1986 Atlanta Fantasy Fair. I was 15 years old and took the bus up from Columbus (100 miles) to sell some of the 40 copies of GI JOE #2 (super hot book in the 80's....$75 bucks each at this time). The dealers room at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta was HUGE.<hr>

 

At the corner table of one isle was an elderly guy who looked just like Colonel Sanders. I had been flipping GI Joe 2's all day and had developed quite a presence at the convention because NOBODY had this issue but me. Colonel Sanders said something like " Hey young man, do you like original art, I'd sell these pages of art for $100 each but nobody is buying, I'd be willing to swap you any pages you like, 1 page for 1 GI JOE # 2, for as many as you'd like"<hr>

 

I took a look at the stack of pages this old gentleman had , must have been about 4 inches high, I'd figure about 50 or more pages. As GOD is my witness, every single page, every one, was a STEVE DITKO Amazing Spider-man page. Splash pages, tons of interior art, I don't recall any covers.<hr>

 

The old guy was practically begging me to trade. This goes to show how far original art has come in 18 years. HE was SO MOTIVATED to trade me these FRIGGIN' MUSEUM PIECES for FRIGGIN' GI JOE #2's. (sorry, I get a bit excited now that I'm relating this story)<hr>

 

SO what did I do? I figured that I'd like to have a few pages for my collection even though I had never thought of ever aquiring any original art. I then thought about the 100 mile Greyhound bus ride back to Columbus, and what a burden it would be to carefully return these on the cramped bus.....and respectfully passed on the whole thing.

I've had a reoccuring nightmare about this for the last 18 years. It is seriously something I don't think I'll ever come to terms with. That is my story. Sad but true.<hr>

 

 

You may be the winner.

 

I'll second that

[joe_collector]

You may be the winner.

 

Come on, I can remember artists giving away OA at shows, and it was cheap all-around in the 70's and 80's. If you had the cash, and the smarts to forecast this current speculative rise, you could have made a small fortune.

[Norrin_Radd]

Q: What was your STUPIDEST comic collecting move?

A: Buying a few thousand modern comics off the shelf when I was new to comic collecting. Still have most of them sitting in longboxes. For every ASM 36 WTC or Sojourn 1, I have a hundred moderns that aren't worth even $0.50.

[Sal]

being a cheap SOB has its benefits, i guess. i've had bad luck and made some moves that turned out to be not that good, but stupidity is constrained by cheapness.

 

that being said, i paid $15 for a 25c Charlton Horror book because i thought it was an original (which was 15c). the kicker is someone put two extra staples in it, and did a poor job of it at that.

 

the other would have been buying duplicate copies of JLA (the 80s series by DeMattis, Giffen & McGuire) starting at issue 12. what the was i thinking?

[joeypost]

One other thing I can remember doing that at the time was a big deal was trading my skateboard for a Hulk back issue (#186). I just started collecting and had no knowledge of the back issue market. A classmate had a book I needed to fill a hole in my Hulk run (at the time it was a run of about 8 issues ). I remember walking home with the book in hand, getting to the front door and my father asking where my skateboard was. I never made a trade like that again.

[comicdonna]

I used to own a huge Western and FC collection. Some of the copies were NM or better. I invited a very reputable seller on ebay, who lived about 40 miles away, over to my house, because I really needed the cash. I had my entire western collection spread out in neat stacks, bagged and boarded. When he showed up, it didn't go quite as I expected. He handled my comics, like a madman. He was literally throwing them 10' I ended up selling him about $300 worth. I was shocked from comparing his reputation on ebay, as to his actual person.

[ashrael]

Starting collecting in the early '90s and buying everything new or shiny or "key". I wish I had saved all of that money and just bought any GA comic or any high grade SA comic.

[swordsandrockets]

Selling My Greatest Adventure 80, Flash 123 and Hawkman 1, all gorgeus NM and up copies with white pages. Probably the lesser of the three was the Flash which would have been at worst a 9.2, the Hawkman (did not even have the customary staple pull) and My Greatest were both easily in the 9.4 to 9.6 range. Got $500 for the three of them in 1986. The price was WAAAY over guide, if I remember right the MGA was $30, the Flash $75 and the Hawkman $50. I paid $400 for a group of about 10 books from the same time frame and in the same grade range that these 3 were in and I thought I was coming out like a champ making $100 and having the other 7 books left over, especially since I had paid about 1.5x guide for the group.

 

The guy I sold them to is a very active collector and owned a store in NJ for 15 years. He still has them to this day and has not found better copies in 20 years. I remember showing them to him and he asked what I wanted for them and I said I wanted to keep them. He kept bugging me and he finally said would you take $500 for the three of which was a huge premium above guide too which I said yep. The mid 80s were crazy times for SA DC in the NY/NJ area. Finding keys was impossible and I remember getting insane prices for anything that was GA/SA crossover no matter what the condition was because it was just not to be found. Now I wish I had kept all of the HG ones that I sold for 2x and 3x book!

[Comicdey]

Now I remember....I'd blocked it out....

 

 

I traded my 1975 mini topps baseball cards for some ratty non-key .25-.35 cent hulks to a classmate back in the early 80's late 70's. I had the Yount rookie, Nolan Ryan, and many other NM cards. I did manage to keep my #660 Hank Aaron and my 1973 Willie Mays. Of course I didn't really collect cards, but it was a pretty lopsided trade.

[alecholland]

So many to choose from...

 

Oh, I know. It's not comic books, but it is comic related. About 3 years ago, I was out shopping for Christmas presents for my son and stumbled upon some toys called Marvel Superhero Mighty Beans. They are kind of like Weebles (if anyone remembers those). They had an in-store demo and for some reason (I really need to put down the crack pipe more often) I thought they were kind of cool, so I bought over $100 worth of them. I don't even think I could get .99 for the lot of them on Ebay.

 

It's really quite embarrassing to admit. I feel so ashamed.

[joe_collector]

Marvel Superhero Mighty Beans. They are kind of like Weebles (if anyone remembers those). They had an in-store demo and for some reason (I really need to put down the crack pipe more often) I thought they were kind of cool, so I bought over $100 worth of them.

 

We have a winner... or is that weiner?

[alecholland]

Are we still giving out forum awards?

 

I know dumbest forumite is in the bag for me with this one.

[joe_collector]

"Beans! I bought a bag of magic comic-book beans!!"

[alecholland]

"Beans! I bought a bag of magic comic-book beans!!"

 

You know, I never thought about it that way. Maybe if I plant them they will grow into a giant comic-book beanstalk with all my grails sprouting from it as the leaves.

[Wally's Comics]

So many to choose from...

 

Oh, I know. It's not comic books, but it is comic related. About 3 years ago, I was out shopping for Christmas presents for my son and stumbled upon some toys called Marvel Superhero Mighty Beans. They are kind of like Weebles (if anyone remembers those). They had an in-store demo and for some reason (I really need to put down the crack pipe more often) I thought they were kind of cool, so I bought over $100 worth of them. I don't even think I could get .99 for the lot of them on Ebay.

 

It's really quite embarrassing to admit. I feel so ashamed.

 

don't feel so bad...

 

I bought about 2 cases ($50) worth of these off of e-bay.

 

I had fun opening them to see what I had...

 

Kind of reminded me of when I used to buy baseball card packs.

 

 

So I blew $50, it's not the end of the world...