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2020 Spending On Comics

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comicginger1789

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So in previous years, I had tried to keep track of how much I "spent" yearly on comics. I am farrrrrr from someone who buys and sells to the extent of some but I do enough selling and have for years to fund the hobby. This year, I wanted to see what that would look like and I want to continue this in future years. 

After all is said and done, this year I spent a total of $671 CAD (or about $524 USD) on comics. Below are some highlights added to the PC from within that spending...

-Terrors of the Jungle 17

- Suspense Comics 19

-A large Dave Stevens lot

-Jumbo Comics 83

- 15-20  or so ASM issues including #32, 61 (signed), 80, 86, 129 and a handful I upgraded including 194

- a dozen Moon Knight issues from the first series

- 3 30 cent variant Conan comics

- Full Warlock run from the 70s

- full Long Halloween run

-GI Joe #1

- She Hulk #1

- several X-Men books from the Claremont/Byrne run including #129

- full Inhumans run from 70's

- full Champions run from 70's

-all of the Starlin books from the his run on Captain Marvel

-Haunt of Fear #17

-Sex Criminals #1-17

-CGC 9.2 Next Men #21

-Descender and Wytches full run

- around 100-150 other filler books from the silver/bronze/copper eras and a handful of new books (finally started buying Ice Cream Man)

- Oh and a vintage comic standing display rack that I hope to have in my actual home sometime in 2021!

Overall, I would have to estimate that close to 300 or so books made their way into my PC this past year. Works out to around $2.25 per book Canadian, or $1.76 USD. I think overall for the quality/quantity combination, this was a very strong year. It was helped by a large collection purchase for sure but I also found many a great deal by switching how I was buying my comics from ebay to other avenues. It will be interesting to see how 2021 stacks up. On one hand, I might eventually be able to pick up stuff stateside but I might just wait out another year until this whole COVID thing is under more control, just to be safe. 

Value wise, I estimate the value of the books I bought to be worth in the $2000-2500 range total. To only spend $671 and essentially get triple the value on books I want is great and likely better than I will do in future years but hey...set the bar high and I will see what I can do. 

 

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Well done. If you get into pressing your books yourself, you will find another excellent value stream.

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3 minutes ago, axiom94 said:

Well done. If you get into pressing your books yourself, you will find another excellent value stream.

I am hesitant to dive into pressing...is it that easy to do? I have stacks of "junk" books for practicing cleaning, which I started doing. Pressing though would be the next level and I don't know if I am there yet. My fear would be that if I went to try and press some key issue, I would destroy it and never find a way to replace it. For example, my ASM #300 is probably a 9.4 as is and mayyybee a press makes it a 9.6 but since I would just be selling raw some day anyway, I don't think pressing is needed for me. 

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On 1/3/2021 at 9:04 PM, comicginger1789 said:

I am hesitant to dive into pressing...is it that easy to do? I have stacks of "junk" books for practicing cleaning, which I started doing. Pressing though would be the next level and I don't know if I am there yet. My fear would be that if I went to try and press some key issue, I would destroy it and never find a way to replace it. For example, my ASM #300 is probably a 9.4 as is and mayyybee a press makes it a 9.6 but since I would just be selling raw some day anyway, I don't think pressing is needed for me. 

Don't even think about pressing an expensive book on your own. No harm in practicing on junk books. Heck, I have turned $1 books into $2 books simply by putting them under 2 or 3 heavy magazine boxes for a couple of years!

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2 hours ago, the blob said:

Don't even think about pressing an expensive book on your own. No harm in practicing on junk books. Heck, I have turned $1 books into $2 books simply by putting them under 2 or 3 heavy magazine boxes for a couple of years!

Well I don’t see the point in pressing cheapo books and really for me, my copy in 9.0 is fine. I don’t need to press it just to make it a 9.4 raw. Maybe if I were selling but not my intent. I’ve happily sold raw all my life and it worked for me :)

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you're the one who asked about pressing. it is insane for a neophyte presser to work on expensive books. i think you understand that. you press junk ones to get practice.

 

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31 minutes ago, the blob said:

you're the one who asked about pressing. it is insane for a neophyte presser to work on expensive books. i think you understand that. you press junk ones to get practice.

 

Yes sorry I wasn’t clear. If I did take the time to learn how to press I was wondering how long it takes to become competent enough to start pressing any book? 100 books? 500? I was curious as to the learning curve. 

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With dry cleaning, I probably cleaned 30 books or so before I felt comfortable cleaning one from my PC that had value (my white She Hulk 1).

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