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...does anyone on this board buy new books and KEEP them?

33 posts in this topic

.........i was wondering if any of you that actually buy new books, do the usual, bag them, board them, store them thing anymore?

 

.......with it becoming increasingly obvious that new books don't hold any long-term value, is there any point in hanging on to them............?

 

.......the new books i buy, i pass them on to younger relatives when i've read them, i am not so precious with new books as i was in the eighties.............. grin.gif

 

......what about the rest of you.......am i being too pesimistic?......(CI.....??)

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I buy new comics of my favorite titles every week. laugh.gif I buy multiples of some issues raw, but mainly just buy one cherry copy. I then look for deals on ebay for 9.8's of the same issues & set up snipes for the cheapest one. wink.gif So I end up having a cherry copy raw & one guaranteed 9.8!

 

For reading pleasure, I purchase TPB's since I like my books perfect. So in the end I really end up buying 3 copies of my favorite titles:

 

1 raw copy

1 CGC'd

1 part of a TPB

 

Expensive, but fun grin.gif

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Damn right I do.

 

With print runs low and no Marvel re-orders, chunks of runs like DD 1-36 sell for $3-$5. Look in the store bins the next time you're in for mid-run books from 1995 onward. ASM you might find, X-Men as well, but wander down the list of popularity and the holes in the runs become more pronounced.

 

If, IF, IF the industry's slow growth over the past year continues, the dynamics may be in place for some low-print issues to be relatively tough to find a-la the 1972-1974 time frame.

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Most Vertigo, DC and indies I tend to buy in TPB or hardcover.

But I buy every new title Marvel publishes up to issue #3 and then decide if I want to continue buying (I drop 90% of the titles after issue #3)

 

There were some Marvel titles I had been buying for years, but since the beginning of this year I have dropped

 

-Avengers

-Thunderbolts

-Black Panther

-Iron Man

-Uncanny X-men

-Ultimate X-men

-Ultimate Spider-man

 

I'm still buying :

The Ultimates

New X-men

Amazing Spider-man (dropping it this month)

Tangled Web

 

Every single comic that enters this house gets bagged and boarded..it's a weird compulsion smile.gif

 

And I do agree that the very low print run of the last 4-5 years could make for some interesting prices coming up in the following years.

The first Thunderbolts are already climbing in price...

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Sure, I still buy new comics just to read and bag (no board, though). Not even thinking about resale value on them, just for my own enjoyment.

 

I currently read about 20 titles a month: Avengers, FF, Daredevil, X-Men, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Batman, JLA, JSA, Legion, Usagi Yojimbo...just to name a few. Yeah, the definitely take up a lot of space, though. I probably do it more out of a compulsion - gotta keep up my complete runs of Avengers, Daredevil, etc.

 

The only ones I keep in mylar are my silver and bronze age books.

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I buy new books and keep them. However, with the exception of whatever issues end up being keys, I doubt they'll be worth anything more than what I pay for them during my own lifetime. However, I still keep them for want of something better to do with them, and because they could be worth something to my kids someday (if I ever have any kids).

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"Every single comic that enters this house gets bagged and boarded..it's a weird compulsion....."

 

..this is exactly the type of compulsion that i am trying to break with my new books, too many years of handling books with obsesive care thinking some day they would be worth hundreds of dollars.............. grin.gif

 

 

.........now i just do that with my silver and bronze age books............. grin.giflaugh.gifgrin.gif

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Yea, Im so picky with my new comics that I rush the store right when it opens to pick out the best ones. If I make a mistake and get one thats damaged (no possibility of a 9.8 even after reading) it goes to the bathroom stack for private reading

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The fact that pretty much everyone bags and boards their comics now is part of the reason why I doubt new comics are of much value in the immediate future (10-20 years)..if everything is NM and above..it doesn't really make a book HTF. frown.gif

 

Brian

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I've been collecting for 30 years and still go every week to the comic book store. In the 80's people thought the same thing. "These books will never be worth anything". Look at the prices of Tansformers, GI Joe, The Nam etc. now. I buy what I like (which is a lot) and board and bag everything. Not so much for resale, but to keep the books in collectible condition.

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Me too (collecting for about 27 years now). Unlike many long time collectors I've mostly been a "new book" guy, and never had the urge to quit and concentrate only on back issues.

 

Everything I get is bagged and boarded and stored in alphabetical order with my other books. So my Amazing Fantasy 18 (1990's version) gets filed beside my Amazing Spider-Man 1.

 

I treat all books equally. I may be a little more nervous handling that ASM 1 than the AF 18, but I respect all of my books. Plus I've read nearly every one of the books that has entered my collection, and some of them have come back from CGC as 9.4, 9.6, 9.8 or (albeit rarely) higher.

 

What may be a quarter book now may be worth much higher down the line. Look at the Ghost Riders, Defenders, etc. that were in everyone's quarter bins 15 years ago.

 

Kev

 

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The fact that pretty much everyone bags and boards their comics now is part of the reason why I doubt new comics are of much value in the immediate future (10-20 years)..if everything is NM and above..it doesn't really make a book HTF.

This is true - most collector copies purchased now are well selected and put right into bag and board. There are a few more factors to consider, though. First is the overall collector base and number of copies sold. These have dwindled, as has the number of shelf copies ordered by retailers. Secondly, the newsstand presence is pretty much gone. This means 20 years from now, attic stashes and childhood collections purchased at newsstand sources aren't going to be showing up for dealers to buy. Thirdly is the mentality of the collectors currently buying and keeping books. Many of us are unlikely to part with our books unless prompted by external forces. Thus, the copies being preserved may be 'irrelevant' to the market, for the most part.

 

Another interesting factor is that, despite the collector/preservationist mentality of the last 20 years, books still slid thru the cracks. G.I.Joe 21, anybody? A book in good supply, tough in 9.6 or better, part of a then hot title that was well collected, and a run book that, had CGC existed then, still wouldn't have been a prescreen/new book flooding in to CGC. Books are sliding by right now - how about Fables 1-4, Y - The Last Man 1, Hulk - The End?

 

The biggest threat to books being 'worth' significant amounts in the coming 10-20 years, given the above factors, isn't the books themselves, it's whether the hobby will continue its slow bounceback of the past year, or slowly fade away, leaving minimal demand.

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