I hate comics being treated as a religion

Someone posted an article on speculation of comics and the usual it's damaging the hobby type of thread and it only took like 3 responses before someone posted the following....



Those kind of comments make me roll my eyes.

Why does speculating need to be defended? Some people make it work for them, some people don't. It's up to the individual to wade through the waters however they can and see how it works for them. But usually the stipulation is, if you are a speculator, you are BAD for the market.

I've always seen myself as all 3 equally. At times I'm more of a reader. At times I'm more of a collector. At times I'm more of a speculator. But at ALL TIMES all 3 make me involved in COMICS? How is that bad???

That's the kind of holier than thou bullshit that gets on my nerves. I enjoy a good speculator. I may want to learn off of them. I may even want to buy off of them. Hell, they might have done something or learned something I didn't.

I enjoy collectors too. I enjoy looking at people who have spent years chasing down comics and collections that others didn't. That now have a masterpiece of a collection to be proud of.

So why is it, that both of those always rate behind being a reader???

Do I think that all collectors and all speculators don't READ comics??? There has to be an enjoyment level there somewhere. If not, why not collect and speculate on Gold or Stocks? Nothing to read there except prospectus reports and market trends and graphs. Heck, reading would come in Third there.

I'm sure some collectors and speculators do NOT read comics. Maybe a collector stopped reading years ago but as part of the joy, they collected the comic they most loved when they were young. Is this bad? Perhaps to a reader it is. Oh man, you don't read? Wow, you suck.

And I'm sure there is probably a few more speculators that do NOT read comics and instead are concerned ONLY for the potential money they could make. Is this bad??? Why??? They still found a way to be involved in the hobby. They still found a way to enjoy it. Is this evil??? I personally don't think it is but time and time and time and time and time again, I see speculators listed as nothing but evil. Do movie producers seem evil when they make movies about comics? No, they are speculating a lot of comic geeks will go to the movies and make them money. Hey, let's make Iron Man #3 because 1 and 2 made mad money. Why don't we cuss them out???

And why do we need to be thought of as some kind of angelic figure if we actually READ comics? Why??? Why does this need to be mentioned first? Does that make you Holy? Does that make you a better comic enthusiast than a Collector or a Speculator? I think the common thought is, it does. It makes you better. Why? Did the Collector or worse yet, the speculator commit a crime? Did they murder somebody? Why is the reader better?

To me it's all holier than thou mindless bullshit designed for people to throw out any chance they can to say hey.....I'm a reader.

Well hey, I've been reading comics since 1978. Actually before. I've been collecting comics since 1978. I've been speculating since the early 1980s. I was reading comics probably as far back as around 1975 or 1976. Half the people who make posts about....I'm a reader 1st probably wasn't alive when I started collecting. Are they better than me? More holy? Just because from time to time I want to make a buck???

What would be sad to me is if there was no collecting and speculating. Because I almost feel like without it, there would hardly be any reading. Sure reading existed before speculating. Even thrived. But in today's day and age, you take away speculation and collection, you take away a good portion of why someone should read it. If something that was once 10 cents can now be sold for over a million dollars in some cases, there has to be a reason why. Otherwise, it's just paper.

Comics don't make you holier than thou in any regard. No matter what facet you become involved in it. I for one would like to take all the readers key comics for cover value and not 1 cent more because if they want more than that, they're hypocritically speculating.

Excellent points! I think CGC grading did add legitimacy to comics and now when being verified at a certain condition adds confidence to the unknowable big money investor. They might not know Jack about how to grade comics. But tell them a certified 9.8 copy of Uncanny X-Men #1 from 1963 is on sale and they'll remember how popular those characters and that namesake have become. And they might be willing to throw big money at a comic like that because they don't need to know much about collecting or grading. All they need to know is that is the 1st X-Men and that is a Super High End copy. I think comics needed CGC exactly for that purpose.

I remember when I stopped collecting comics back around 1997 and came back around 2002. Suddenly 2 major things were happening that wasn't there when I left. 1st, CGC had come into play and graded books were exploding. And 2nd, eBay had now become the place to buy comics online making it easier to find any comic you ever wanted. It was like have a comic convention any day of the week instead of waiting weeks or months to go to one yourself. It was there for you everyday. Not only that, it became a place to sell and see how much you could get for your own comics! Now you didn't have to be a dealer at the convention. You could do it in the privacy of your own home.

I remember in 1990 when I came back from Boot Camp and A-School after I entered the military. I had been out of comics since about 1987 then. And in A-School, guys were going to the comic shops all the time. I went and I got back into comics quick. Well, when I got home, I dug out my old comics and made me a carry bag of comics I had and went to conventions. I traded comics to dealers getting books I always wanted. I remember buying a Amazing Spider-Man #40 at a flea market for $20 and going to a convention and a guy traded me 10 Silver Age Fantastic Fours for it and it was the beginning of me getting heavy into buying Fantastic Fours.

Then a few years later, I remember realizing that the Valiant boom was about to end. I remember selling all my Valiants at cut rate prices and trading about $100 worth of Valiants for an Avengers #4. A few months later, that guy couldn't give away the Valiants and I had a book I never thought I would ever have.

Are you going to tell me I didn't love comics? I felt like I always loved comics MORE than strictly mere readers or collectors. I felt like the longer I was doing it, the better my collections and reading materials became. The more I SOLD comics at conventions. The stronger my collection got! Not the weaker.

I always fail to see why as you put, how you can't upgrade when you sell or trade? Why don't they realize that speculation and collectors make that happen? That you can actually have more of what you want if you speculate and sell to collectors?

I'm not trying to defend speculating and down readers. I'm not trying to do that. But I'm also saying, I don't like it when READERS perceive themselves as being holier than thou. Because you sell for money and higher books than just reading and carrying the torch as a REAL FAN of comics. Hell, you ain't never had half the fun I've had dealing with comics. Your joy is weak compared to mine.

I always envisioned that if bad things didn't happen in my life, I would have just kept getting to the next level of comics. And if I kept at it long enough, I could one day own grails all paid for or traded from the comics I already have. No reader who doesn't invest or speculate is going to own an Action #1 unless they work otherwise and have tons of expendable money because they have some rich ass job. But I think lots of people have wheeled and dealed over the years and they now have books no mere reader will ever have.

Yes, trading and leveraging upwards is a lost art. Hell, I haven't completed a trade in a long time. I think the last one I did was with Azbatx, I traded him a Batman #200 for an X-Men #94. Which I felt was an excellent deal for me and him being a Batman fan, he felt like it was an excellent deal for him. And that was about 6 years ago when I did that. I miss trading comics. I have so many now, I could put together some nice package deals.

I remember when I used to bring my sack of comics to shows. I remember asking dealers if they wanted to trade. They'd say "Let's see what you have" with almost a dead look in there eyes. I know when I used to do conventions, so many would bring me books of crap and I'd have to say I'm not interested. But they would open up my duffel bag and I'd have like 100 books in it with nothing but key, awesome comics. They immediately wanted to trade with me. And naturally, there was something on their wall of comics I wanted. And half the books I had in the sack were books I had duplicates of or didn't really care about but I knew others would. It was leveraging things you didn't want for things you did. It was a blast! I miss that stuff. Trading is dead.

That's typically not the type of trading I used to do. I used to have my duffel bag filled with keys from the Silver and Bronze Age and yes some Copper. Okay, I can admit that when Valiant was hot and Joey cut me into the know long before it ever got hot, I had more Valiant than almost anyone nearby except Joey and certainly I loaded my duffel bag with those too. The great thing was to just have approximately 100 books in your duffel bag and every one of them being at the very least, desirable and sellable by any dealer who wanted to make a trade.

The Image #1's have been a play for a few years now and I'll admit when I was buying from DCBS, I was getting a few here and there just to play the law of averages. However, that seems to be just about everyone's game these days and that horse just can't keep producing big money when everyone is in on it. I would feel safer making speculation choices on new books by other companies NOT named Image, Marvel or DC in the coming months or next few years.

Although I'm fine with speculator's because I happen to be one myself, my main rant here is not to be up with speculators and down with readers. My main focus here is to not be down on any form of comic involvement. Comic involvement to me is a good thing for the hobby and I hate when one "class" of comic enthusiast downs the opposite of their class and lifts their own class up to a higher standard like they are above the rest of the classes. Those kind of comic enthusiasts piss me off. Each culture can learn and appreciate something about the other and instead, I think it creates division and hate.