Saturday, June 30, 2018

Comic Back Issue Pricing

Comics account for about 10% of our sales and back issues for a fraction of that, so, if you bring in back issues, we are not going to offer you much for them, even less if they were released in the last 25 years or so. When you hear about back issue comics going for big bucks, it is because they are RARE. That is the whole supply and demand concept kicking in there.

From their inception back in the late 1930s through about the 1970s, comic books were viewed as something kids read. You were a kid once. How did you treat your things? Right, roughly. That is the way we treating comics as well. We folded them up and stuck them in our back pockets or cut out the coupons to send off for sea monkeys or inflatable ghosts. Kids didn't treat them well.

As those kids grew up, they got nostalgic for the comics of their youth and started collecting them.  There weren't that many around anymore though so scarcity drove demand, meaning the prices on the comics those kids read increased in value. However, as adults realized there was money to be made in comics, they started saving current issues , hoping they would drastically increase in value. Some did. Most didn't. So if you come in with a long box full of Wild CATS #1, we will offer you about $5 for the whole thing, as the market is glutted with titles on which people speculated. What are recent books that you ought to keep an eye out for? First issues of long running series like The Walking Dead or Saga or issues in which a popular character debuts, like Marvel's  X-23. Bringing in a collection of Marvel's Darkhawk or DC's Stars and STRIPE, both of which are lower tier characters, will get you a very low offer, since collectors of those books are sparse.

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