Last week I stopped at a comic shop in LI (where I was just passing through from a Roosevelt Field Mall trip) on Jericho Turnpike. I wanted to see if I could snag a first print of Avenging Spidey #6 and Punisher #10, because they crossed over with a current story arc in Daredevil (the only Marvel book that I read).
While there, I noticed a good selection of back issues at VERY reasonable prices. I asked him if he was interested in buying my old collection, about 46 boxes worth (4000+ books) for a low bulk offer.
He looked at me and said most of us who are looking for the books that I had are the older sort, and were collecting at that time and probably have most of them. Books from the 60's were easier to sell, etc.
Then he adds "the people nowadays that buy comics are..." and he makes a gesture of himself holding a gameboy or PSP and adds "they dont really care about back issues". We then talked about me making more on ebay, shows, etc.
I was kind of saddened by this not because it would be hard to get rid of my old stash before I move, but because most of the newer comic generations really missed out on what good comics were all about. To them the New 52 Teen Titans are "THE TEEN TITANS", the new Peter Parker publically known to be Spider-Man is the original Spider-Man to them. It's all about splash page art, characters that have "Dead and Blood" in their names, etc.
So I feel even older now, yet happy that I got to experience the books like Frank Miller's historic Daredevil run (which this shop owner said he would unload for a dollar or two a book if he still had them which is sad indeed), Claremont's Uncanny, Byrne's FF, Norm Breyfogle and Kelley Jones Batman (among others), the old Superboy and the Legion of Superheroes (even Giffens awesome run), etc.
I am somewhat hopeful of DC at the moment despite the butchering of the Titans and mixing well loved characters into other books to sell (like Red Hood and the Outlaws and Ravagers). The other mainstream books have been good so far.
Every time I loook at Marvel's tables at my local comic shop and see 20 x-books, 19 A-books and even a title called The "Avenging" Spider-Man,etc. I get sad and yearn for the old days.
YMMV. Just a semi-rant and some opinions here. Hope no one takes it the wrong way and gets offended.
P.S. I wound up getting the variant cover versions of the 2 books I went in for because thats all they had. They were stickered at 20 and 15 bucks each, he gave me both for 20. I felt crappy about even spending that much on Daredevil tie-ins considering I will cancel DD this weekend.
I'm sorry to hear this. Hopefully as times move on, classics will appreciate in value. Comics are not the moneymaker we were all told they would be.
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It may be sad, but ask yourself:
If you found a few comic lines you like to read(nowadays), somebody sees you reading them and says: "Hey, they are cool, but they would be so much cooler if you knew a bit of the history of the line. Why don't you grab the old issues, they are quite cheap here." I bet you will like them.
You are interested, you like the line now and sure at least some of the old stuff will be cool, you agree to look at the older issues.
Then he tells you you better make room in your moms trunk, because the old issues are 40 years worth of comics for each of the line...I bet you would rethink your interest in checking the history...
You have to understand that in the last couple of decades, Marvel and DC went absolutely nutso with the "collector" side of comics. It got to the point where every issue of their mainline series was pumping out multiple covers of every issue. Amateur comic book stores were opening faster than you can sneeze, only for the bulk of them to fail with a year or two as the bubble burst.
I don't know what year time your collection spans, but I'd say it's very likely that it's from those years of glut, which is why while there may be good stories in that batch, the collector value, hence the resale potential is probably nil.
We (about 5 of us hanging out at a local comic shop) discussed the very same issue years way back then when they were flooding the comic book market. Die cut covers, Foil covers, multiple covers, etc. That was toward the back end of my collecting years as I stopped right around the time frame of Uncanny #365 or so. We all knew it was going to blow up soon.
I meant the quality of comics before that like during the years of Uncanny X-Men before that, like the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix years, the Hellfire Club, the original New Mutants and X-Factor, Inferno, Mutant Massacre, etc. The McFarlane and Bagley runs on Amazing Spider Man (not the all-splash page 2nd McFarlane spidey series), Dale Keown and Gary Frank's Incredible Hulk, Avengers at around the late 100s to early 200s, John Byrne's FF when the Fantastic Four felt "Fantastic", etc.Lots of good DC titles at the time like the Batman examples above,the Broderick run on Green Lantern, Giffen's darker LSH, the JLA, Bart Sears JL Europe (before the book went to hell), etc.
The more I think about it, it may be time to revisit the books as I have most of these full runs. The more I reflect on this, the more I want to hang on to my collection too. My other half is supportive of me keeping it all anyway, so who knows.