|
|
Post by G on Nov 16, 2009 13:11:56 GMT -5
What 1 book do you have that you feel is your highest accomplishment in collecting comics? It may not necessarily be in terms of value or rarity, although that could certainly apply, nor does it have to be considered highly collectible/desirable by the multitudes of others who collect. It is strictly up to you and how you feel. But when it comes down to it, what 1 book (not group), do you feel is the peak of your collection?
|
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Nov 16, 2009 18:10:48 GMT -5
What 1 book do you have that you feel is your highest accomplishment in collecting comics? It may not necessarily be in terms of value or rarity, although that could certainly apply, nor does it have to be considered highly collectible/desirable by the multitudes of others who collect. It is strictly up to you and how you feel. But when it comes down to it, what 1 book (not group), do you feel is the peak of your collection? Hard to nail that down. From a global perspective, with my tastes as a subset of that... I'd easily have to say Amazing Fantasy #15. Despite that being a book I really wanted, my own personal tastes lean towards Hulk #1 because Hulk was always my favorite character. Those are high profile books that everyone knows about. On a lesser scale, I really take pride in a lot of the rarities I've discovered or publicized. The Cartoon Spice #5 really means a lot to me and I consider it's discovery quite important because it was essentially going to become lost in time. Nobody was looking for it and nobody cared. Miracle on Broadway means a lot to me because Broadway was the last company that really had the potential to be what I wanted from a publisher. On the other hand, a book like Tales to Astonish #1 was a book that I thought was beyond ownership for me. It's the second most expensive book that I've ever bought with straight check/cash. Believe it or not, I'm not a DC fan, so Action #1 & Detective #27 would not excite me nearly as much. If you break down and look at lower valued stuff and specific genres, there are some comics that clearly have meaning to me that others may not care about at all. Cruel & Unusual Punishment #2 is perhaps the funniest comic I've ever read. It took a year before I even knew what I was looking for and the catch was more rewarding than the chase. Finding my first Harbinger #1 for $5 when everyone else was sold out at $30... pure joy. The easy answer though is AF #15. Defiant1 |
|
|
|
Post by G on Nov 17, 2009 12:50:35 GMT -5
Thats a nice answer! I would be happy to own any of those. My problem is I never spent much on any comic. In fact, the most I have ever spent on a comic is $81. Therefore, I don't have a lot of major keys. I have almost every minor and moderate key of the 70s and 80s. But the major comics, I don't have very many. Probably by biggest claim on comics is my Avengers #4. I got this when Valiant was peaking but I knew the end was near. In my haste to get off of them as quick as possible, I shopped around my Valiant comics and got a dealer to byte on $100 worth of Valiants (at the time) for his VG- copy of Avengers #4. The front looks more like a VG+ to a FN-, its the back that brings the overall grade down. It has a lot of wrinkles on the back. But the front looks very solid. After that, a VG+/FN- copy of FF #48 is up there. And other comics like my Platinum Spiderman #1 come to mind. I could throw in others like X-Men #94, Journey into Mystery #86, Thor #126, Captain America #100, Wonder Woman #200, etc. and quite a few others. But I feel these are too mild. Before I quit my job, I was making a concerted effort to buy more key and higher dollar books. My focus was in trying to make my overall collection filled with better pieces which rounded out my stuff. I always felt I had a well rounded, multi-layered collection with tons of desirable books. The problem is, 97% of them are in the $5 - $30 range. Once you pass $30, my valuable comics are few and far between. One day down the road, I will pick up the torch again and continue my quest. But as for now, I guess Avengers #4 is my biggest claim to fame.  |
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Nov 17, 2009 17:55:24 GMT -5
Thats a nice answer! I would be happy to own any of those. My problem is I never spent much on any comic. In fact, the most I have ever spent on a comic is $81. Therefore, I don't have a lot of major keys. I have almost every minor and moderate key of the 70s and 80s. But the major comics, I don't have very many. Probably by biggest claim on comics is my Avengers #4. I got this when Valiant was peaking but I knew the end was near. In my haste to get off of them as quick as possible, I shopped around my Valiant comics and got a dealer to byte on $100 worth of Valiants (at the time) for his VG- copy of Avengers #4. The front looks more like a VG+ to a FN-, its the back that brings the overall grade down. It has a lot of wrinkles on the back. But the front looks very solid. After that, a VG+/FN- copy of FF #48 is up there. And other comics like my Platinum Spiderman #1 come to mind. I could throw in others like X-Men #94, Journey into Mystery #86, Thor #126, Captain America #100, Wonder Woman #200, etc. and quite a few others. But I feel these are too mild. Before I quit my job, I was making a concerted effort to buy more key and higher dollar books. My focus was in trying to make my overall collection filled with better pieces which rounded out my stuff. I always felt I had a well rounded, multi-layered collection with tons of desirable books. The problem is, 97% of them are in the $5 - $30 range. Once you pass $30, my valuable comics are few and far between. One day down the road, I will pick up the torch again and continue my quest. But as for now, I guess Avengers #4 is my biggest claim to fame. Making a goal to collect an iconic series often requires that you spend more than $81 on something. I bought my X-Men #1's in 1982 or so for about $100 each. I bought the second one because I was displeased with the condition of the one I bought by mail order. My thinking at the time was that maybe I could trade two lower grade ones for a higher grade one in better condition. Now I'm just happy I own two. I guess $150 would normally be my maximum. I paid $600 for a Hulk #1, but I'd just sold $600 worth of Valiant an hour earlier, so I consider that a trade. Tales To Astonish #1 cost me $400, so out of pocket, that's the most I've ever spent on a book. My AF #15 was a trade. The books I traded cost me no more than $300 and I'd bought them at $3 - $5 a piece over a year span. I can't think of any other books that I've spent more that $150. df1 |
|
|
|
Post by G on Nov 18, 2009 21:42:45 GMT -5
Making a goal to collect an iconic series often requires that you spend more than $81 on something. That's just it, I never really made a decision to buy iconic comics until the latest couple of years. I originally started out and spent my first 10-15 years just collecting new comics as they came out and building my collection that way. I didn't get a lot of back issues early on. Then, in the early to mid 90s when I did conventions, I became a lot more interested in back issues and picked up a ton of the minor to moderate keys during this era. The thing is the expensive books would generally be hard sells. So I didn't concentrate on them as much. I only got one or two here and there. Then I quit in '97 and when I came back in '01-'02, I realized I was totally out of touch with new comics. No longer being interested in new comics very much, I sought out higher end comics. But I still found it hard to part with substantial money for a comic book. I was getting better about that towards the end, but overall, I couldn't justify it to myself to spend hundred's of dollars at a time on a comic book. I think if I was still at it today and nothing in my life had changed, I think that wouldn't be the case today. |
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Nov 19, 2009 0:04:39 GMT -5
Making a goal to collect an iconic series often requires that you spend more than $81 on something. That's just it, I never really made a decision to buy iconic comics until the latest couple of years. I originally started out and spent my first 10-15 years just collecting new comics as they came out and building my collection that way. I didn't get a lot of back issues early on. Then, in the early to mid 90s when I did conventions, I became a lot more interested in back issues and picked up a ton of the minor to moderate keys during this era. The thing is the expensive books would generally be hard sells. So I didn't concentrate on them as much. I only got one or two here and there. Then I quit in '97 and when I came back in '01-'02, I realized I was totally out of touch with new comics. No longer being interested in new comics very much, I sought out higher end comics. But I still found it hard to part with substantial money for a comic book. I was getting better about that towards the end, but overall, I couldn't justify it to myself to spend hundred's of dollars at a time on a comic book. I think if I was still at it today and nothing in my life had changed, I think that wouldn't be the case today. I guess that the back issue concept dawned upon me when when I was still young and buying Marvel Tales. I discovered at some point that Marvel Tales were just reprints of stories that had been published years earlier. I realized then it would be cooler to have the originals. Also, my dad always talked about comics he'd bought when he was a kid. His enthusiasm (even though his comics were long gone) led me to have an interest in older comics. Eventually in the very early 70's, I mailed off for a catalog of back issue comics for sale. In there it listed things like Fantastic Four #1 for $40. That might as well have been $4,000 to kid living off an allowance. I dreamt of owning that one day. Spiderman was never my favorite character even though I liked him. To me, the Fantastic Four or the Hulk were it. At some point in the late 70's, I found out a guy at school also collected comics. He'd brought in a Kiss Comic (the magazine). We ended up being best friends and visiting the two comic shops together. I guess we went to our first convention in 1981. I had far more comics than him. The idea of really "collecting" comics started when I saw how much my X-Men #94 had gone up in value. Taking better care of them became a bigger issue for me. Another thing that spurred me buying back issues was the fact that newsstand delivery was so spotty. The first 6 months of buying comics, I might only get every other issue. Marvel Comics were my favorite and if you missed an issue, you might be completely lost as to what was going on. This particularly bugged me with my early issues of the Avengers and Thor. I always liked the Avengers and I only liked the early issues I'd bought of Thor. Every month I was discouraged by a Thor issue, I'd think back to the early ones I liked and I'd wish that I'd had the issues I'd missed during that period. The comic shops opened up a whole different world to me. I made it my goal to collect all of the X-Men. Mainly because I'd started with the X-Men with #78 (a reprint) and I liked the original team better. By 1982, I was down to needing about 3 issues. It was either shit or get off the can if I wanted a complete run. The comic shop had never offered an X-Men #1 while I was shopping there, so I bit the bullet and ordered from a mail order company. I'd priced out a Fine copy and paid something like $125. I also needed X-Men #64 (1st Sunfire), so I bought that at the same time. When I got the package, it completed my collection from #1 up at the time, but I was very disappointed because there was a round price sticker on the cover of the #1. In fairness to the seller, it was probably sold that way on the newsstand at some roadside diner or something, but I didn't want a comic with a sticker on the cover. About 6 months later, the comic shop got one in similar, but slightly lower grade. It didn't have the sticker, so I bought a second copy. Completing a run of the hottest series going gives one a sense of accomplishment. It also made me more persistent about getting every issue of the series I liked. Having gone through that full experience, I realized that key issues don't get cheaper. Rather than focus on cheap issues I could always afford, instead I started focusing on key issues so that I could get them before the price got too high. That's why I bought things like Iron Man #1 for $10. I knew it wouldn't go down in value, so I had to get it while I could. Defiant1 |
|
|
|
Post by G on Nov 19, 2009 10:58:34 GMT -5
I don't want to give off the impression that I didn't buy back issues until the 90s. That would be very untrue. I just didn't buy iconic "expensive" keys until the last 5 years or so. I was working my way up to more expensive books lately until I quit working.
My first comic was Uncanny X-Men #110 (April 1978) and I instantly became an X-Men fan. Whenever I did go to comic stores (something that was only periodic way back then), I would search out back issues. But I was only 11-12-13 years old or so back then. I had a paper route. So I was buying $3 - $10 back issues in earnest. Around the time X-Men was up to issue #150 and nearing the time I quit buying X-Men (as a serious collection for good) I had about 100-120 out of the first 150 issues. This stretched back to about issue #8 which had Unis the Untouchable. What I was mainly missing at this point was the more expensive issues. (1-7 and the high dollar keys and scattered others that I had just never seen for sale yet). A few years later when I was a very young adult and desperate, I sold this collection for a lot less than what I really should have. But I was young and needed money badly.
Years later I bought a ASM #40 in real nice shape for $20 at a flea market. It was probably a VF. I took it to a convention and a dealer liked it so much, he traded me 10 Silver Age Fantastic Fours (issues around the 50's and 60's in number is what I took). Generally these were in FN - VF condition. I ended up liking Fantastic Four so much, it became my cornerstone collection. At one point I had 78 out of the 1st 100 issues going back as low as #11. But it was the lower issues #1-10 which were generally too expensive for me to buy and scattered other issues I hadn't found yet. I pretty much had every key from #11 up. But, I once again hit rough times later on and sold a lot of these nice comics. Ive done some rebuilding since then and I have roughly around 55 out of the 1st 100 now and probably about 300 individual Fantastic Fours in total from their initial series. Although it's not complete by any means, it's still a nice collection.
The concept of back issues didn't escape me 1 bit when I was young. I bought them, but for a time, I was mainly a buy current issue and get back issues whenever I could. What I didn't seem to have is the high dollar key issues. It wasn't really until this past decade where it would have been even reasonable for me to obtain. You go back further than 10 years for me and it would have been crazy for me to spend $100 or more on a comic book. Even if I would have gotten much more later on down the road. I fully understood and respected their value and potential future returns. I just couldn't handle spending that much when I could barely survive on my own in the 1st place. I couldnt wait out the investment period enough for it to pay off. Yes, it would cost me a lot more today, but if you never had it in the 1st place, it really was never an option for me back in the day to get expensive comics.
|
|
|
|
Post by defiant1 on Nov 19, 2009 20:59:08 GMT -5
I think Buying X-Men #1, Iron Man #1... things like that made me realize I appreciated owning those more than common issues. I knew I had to get them while they were cheap or I'd never own them. From a speculatory position, being away from comics for 7 years was also a good thing. 1) The whole industry collapsed so I didn't miss much. 2) I had a fresh insight into what I wanted. My first trade was Miller Daredevils, a duplicate Defenders #1 and a few other scattered issues for a Strange Tales #110 in VG. I bought a Tales To Astonish #60 my first year back collecting. The older key books were what I really wanted. Reading copies are fine, but I wanted the books that I always dreamt of buying. I realized that money I'd spent on price guides and trade magazines could have been put on key books. Money I spent on movie adaptions could have been put on key books. My whole perspective changed because I knew that I had plenty to reread if all I wanted was to read comics. Sean Linkenback placed an ad when he opened his store in Atlanta. He ha silver age keys displyed in his store ad. I went looking for his store the minute I saw the ad because that's what I wanted. I found his store a week before he'd even opened the doors. I was looking through the glass to see his display books before he was ever open for business. Later we became friends and I hung out there all the time. He dealt in Golden age stuff I'd never seen before. Detective Comics #1. Amazing Man #5. A pedigree Wonder Woman #1. The stuff I liked meant nothing to him because he was more interested in higher value books. I don't cnsider a Hulk #1 to be expensive when he's holding a Detective #1. A lot of it is perspective. I was also hoarding Valiant at the time. Partially so I could share it with my friends, but also because I knew I could trade them for the Silver Age keys I really wanted.
Defiant1
|
|
|
|
Post by bigw1966 on Jan 20, 2010 19:35:49 GMT -5
This is a tough one. I have a few nice books. As far as rarety goes, My Incredible Hulk #3 which came out back in 1963 I think for silver Age books.
I have Hulk 180-182 I paid $900 for them up in Baltimore. the 180 and 182 are in fine condition around 6.5-7.5 the 181 is NM and a 9.3 at least.
I need to get it graded so I can skyrocket the value.
I have a Nice FF #48 also lots and lots of Silver age books.
BTW gowaltrip, I don't collect anymore or buy weekly books except a couple of titles. The economy and all that. But I have almost38 longboxs of books. then a few shelves of Trades. Some of value.
|
|
