The wife and I have been on vacation this week. It's the area of Ohio that I went to college in. So while it's new to my wife, it's an exercise in nostalgia for me. I wanted to stop by an old comic shop that I frequented during my college days and a big sign was on the door saying 25 cent comics.
We entered the store and there were just boxes lined up around the store with all sorts of issues from the 80s and 90s. We resisted the pull for a few minutes. We wandered the very large store and checked out what they had. My wife found trading card boxes for very 75 cents so I grabbed one of those. Then it was time to get to work. My wife and I started taking to the various boxes and pulling out the books that I wanted.
Before I get into what we purchased, I have a hobby within a hobby. I collect specific series exclusively through the discount bins at stores. It's a really cheap side hobby and there's a certain level of challenge to it. The main series that I've been working on for the last 10 months or so has been Justice League Europe. If we go to any shop, I check out their discount books and then grab a few here and there. With this trip I have almost the entire 50 issue run of JLE now.
When all was said and done, we had pulled 60 issues out of the discount pins. I double pulled 3 issues but I figured that was bound to happen with the pile I had. $15 and I was quite happy. My wife mentioned that she didn't think it was possible to get to $100 and I said, I could have easily gotten there if I started pulling all the Avengers and Avengers West Coast books that I saw sitting in there.
I love digging through discount bins. You never know what little gem might be sitting in there waiting to be discovered. I finally found a copy of Justice League Europe #1 which was the one I was having the most issues with. It's not worth anything but people still seem to go for those first issues, even when it is a discount bin. I stuck to just DC books this time. Got a lot of various Justice League books, Legion of Super-Heroes and a couple issues of the Legends crossover from the late 80s.
The thing you need to understand is that the comics in discount bins aren't bad, they just aren't worth any money. You can find some really good stories in the bins if you know what you are looking for. So if you ever want some cheap comics head to your local used book store and see what you dig up!
Okay this entry makes me think of a question. The individual comic books might not be worth everything, yes. But what about if you get the entire Justice League Europe series together? If they are in relatively decent condition can the series be sold for some good money?
ReplyDelete*anything
DeleteIt might be worth a little more but not much. This would be the preferable way of getting rid of all of the books instead of people picking through what you have to fill in their gaps.
ReplyDeleteThese books came out at the height of the glut in the 80s and 90s so these issues literally grow on trees.
Fun side not. I'm missing issues 8, 18, 23, 25, 41, 42, 48, 49 and 50 of Justice League Europe. So I've got 40 of the 50 issues entirely through discount bins.