Dude has over 90,000 unique comics

I didn't hear him say they were 90,000 "unique" comics. I couldn't help but laugh when Black Rider and Fantastic Four were in the same box together and then Strange Tales and Atom were in another box together. I saw no logical pattern for what he was pulling out and showing the camera. They didn't show a Hulk #1 or an AF #15. They showed Amazing Spider-Man #129, Tales of Suspense #59, and Strange Tales #135. It makes me wonder if he was more concerned about volume rather than getting the bigger keys. I guess I wasn't really impressed. It looks like he kept buying when I quit in 1984. I'm glad I quit for 8 years! I don't want 90,000 comics. I want about 1,000 REALLY significant ones. You'd think that if they were going to spotlight a collection of 90,000 comics, they show the best of the best. Hopefully that wasn't it.

df1

You had a similar reaction to the video than I did. The Video seems more an advertisement to the joy of collecting comics than it appears interested in showing off the Gems of his collection, which when I started watching the video, that is what I wanted to see. He does say around the 30 second mark of the video that he has about 90,000 unique items. He was being touted from where I got it from, I think it was CBR which probably is the reason this wasn't a lot more in depth as it SHOULD have been, as having the biggest private collection of comics. I guess the key word is Biggest Private. Not sure I buy it because you know there are comic dealers that have well in the millions of comics I would guess. How many uniques they have, I doubt they even know. So not sure why those collections would qualify. I guess, in terms of end users like us and someone not interested in selling (which he seems to be one of those stupid purists).

I think the numbered boxes further back in his garage probably had more significant filing away of comics. He has the nice stackable comic boxes and I would imagine, somewhere he has a master list saying what is in what number box. I know I would.

I think the room he is sitting in, is probably his more prized books and those boxes were more scattered. Terribly so actually. Kind of like my books are now. I used to have all my books in Alphanumeric order. Now, the boxes are all over the places as I have filtered boxes from great stuff all the way down to junk. The order is more than 50% gone. When all this is over, I will refile and see what remains. I have the good stuff in my computer office room. It's about 12 boxes. The other 20-30 boxes I have are in other bedrooms. Those are the less desirable comics. I would imagine that is similar to his garage. Runs of common, not too valuable books.

Even though he wasn't pulling out the most major gems in the industry, he was pulling out a lot of moderate to lowly major books. I would reckon, the majority of his collection falls in the VG to VF range. Probably most of his grails are FN or less. I didn't get the impression he was rich....only nerdenly loyal. I actually wondered if he was married. Being that he didn't appear rich, he probably collected a lot like I would, I think I would be after higher grades but on the old moderate to major keys, those books get expensive. He probably bought the best he could afford. Or he's just filling holes. I doubt you're going to find a bunch of Number 1's from the Marvel Flagship launch of the early 60's. But he probably has a lot of books from the 4-100 issue range.

I still give the man props for the glut of his material. I know I sure wish I had his stuff to go through now. It would certainly help. He reminds me of me by trying to be well rounded, trying to have pieces from all areas and genres, kinda cheap, and a hole filler more than a speculator. I've always speculated and wanted to resale my comics, so condition means more to me than filling holes. But I'm open to lower grades on NICE books if the price is right. I get the feeling, he's one that thinks it's a sin to sell his books. Almost sees it as a religion. He's WAY more of a nerd than I ever thought of myself as.

If I go back to collecting, I would stop hole filling all-together and just focus on completely good, speculative and resalable stuff. The hole filling crap days pretty much ended for me about 6 or 7 years ago except a few forays into buying new books now and then when things were good. But going to a comic store and buying say....Avengers #381 because I'm missing that one (pure crap stuff)....those days are long gone. He's still all-in on filling holes.

Oh I agree with all of that wholeheartedly. This nerd said he started with Amazing Spider-Man #88 and he's been buying new comics ever since. What is that, like 1968??? He's been collecting about as long as I've been alive and when he said he didn't miss, he didn't miss.

So his crap probably outweighs his good stuff by at least a 50:1 ratio. I think as adults, we outgrow that but as a youngster, I remember wanting to build collections and have every issue. But it seemed unobtainable to me many times and I just stopped doing it.

When I started doing conventions in the early 90s, my attention focused more on significance and speculation plays. Other than occasionally buying new comics, something I did less and less as I got older. I quit from 1986 to 1990 and 1997 to 2002 and after that I was spotty at best. I spent far more time looking for minor to major significance and what I could speculate on and flip and build something more major.

This last year has devastated a lot of my most significant books but I've still managed to hang on to a few of my bests, but the time is coming for them to go soon. I have a crap load of minor to moderate keys and significant issues. Sometimes I go through my boxes and I'm surprised how much of that kind of stuff I still have left. I'm talking $5 - $30 books.

Now if I ever get beyond all of this, back on my feet, stable and back to buying comics again, I'd totally scrap buying new comics. I pretty much gave up the ghost for the last time around 2010. Before things went bad for me completely. I'd also wouldn't care to buy anything that is just a common fill-in regular issue run comic.

Like you said, you want the best 1,000 comics you could get. I agree with all of that and would certainly go for the same but unlike you, I would probably continue with my minor to major keys or significant issues or first issues or last issues, certainly first appearances of most characters of any note and gamble on a few good speculation plays. So I'd say my window is probably more like 5,000 of the best comics I could get.

Stuff I have no interest in is stuff like Avengers #201 - #400 and beyond. X-Men above #200 except certain keys. Same for a lot of other flagship titles like Hulk, Iron Man, etc. If it is just a lame NEXT ISSUE with nothing of note about it, I don't want it. This guy probably has about 75,000 common crap books (I'm probably being modest on this one) and if he is lucky, about 15,000 decent books. Probably a lot less than that. Probably under 7,500 that when all is said and done, out of what he has, I would probably really want.

I think as I (we) get older, the focus narrows and what used to qualify as things you used to buy would no longer happen.

I really think I could spend the rest of my days in search of about 5,000 books. The key thing for me, is Significance in SOME form or another.

I'm not into hoarding anything either. I'm over trying to complete runs of comics because no one is concerned with taking that off my hand unless I have a complete run or they want to cherry pick all the key issues off you and leave you with all the worthless common stuff.

I love rare and unique and odd too and I'll keep collecting that kind of stuff because those kind of things have a certain significance all its own.

I would pile that onto books that are already key, already valuable, already significant and put it alongside books that have potential and have REASONS to stand out and become something down the road. The books I am interested in are the books that have a lot of unforeseen or unrealized potential paired together with books that already have achieved those statuses.

If it is common, run of the mill, next issue stuff......Which make up about 90+% of all comics, I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in the top 10% of books combined with unique, odd, unrealized significance and rare.