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Inherited large comic book/graphic novel collection
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49 posts in this topic

I started collecting a few years after namisgr in 1975. Like he said bags were not widely used by collectors at that time. Older back issues bought at the local show would be bagged but almost always without boards. Boards didn’t become more common even with dealers until probably the early '80s. Mylar was not around at all. I first found out about it in Overstreet in the '80s.

Like namisgr, anything I bought off the rack didn’t get fully bagged until sometime in the 80s. I did bag some of the older issues before then, but hated buying bags since doing so ate into my comic budget.

Edited by Dick Pontoon
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I am not necessarily disagreeing.  I always had bags and then came the boards and then there was a rush to change out the boards to acid free.  When the 4 mil mylars came out they were like 1 or 2 buck each and kind of rare.  Maybe I was an early adopter I don't know.  This is a dumb discussion.  What I really wanted to say to the OP was a lot of his brothers books wont fetch much but some will so dont get too excited ... yet.

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when I was buying comics back in the early 90's many of the comics I bought were from local flea markets or LCS and many were not bagged or boarded. The only ones that remember being bagged and boards were the top shelf/display comics which I couldn't afford lol being a kid on a very low allowance. 

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19 minutes ago, The Lions Den said:

I used to keep all my books in a state-of-the-art cardboard box...  lol 

LMAO!!!! Me too! Piled on top of each other, with the earliest Spider-Man book I owned at the time being on top (with paper route money, I bought back to #27).

Then I sold them all... Spidey 27-133, plus Hulk 181, GSXM1, and a few others... to buy a $150 Soundesign stereo.

Which broke two years later.

I can laugh about it now...

tenor.gif

 

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24 minutes ago, The Lions Den said:

I used to keep all my books in a state-of-the-art cardboard box...  lol 

 

14 minutes ago, Crops068 said:

I kept all of mine in a state of the art closet floor.  No wonder I don't have any of them now. :smile:

I kept mine in a resealable plastic book bag in my dresser drawer. lol 

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actually the bag I used way back in the 90's when I bought most of my comics without bags or boards in Canada we had company that sold books and other gadgets and I would use these bags to store my comics as they would come free with some book purchases. 

Image result for scholastic books plastic bags

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7 hours ago, fastballspecial said:

Sorry to hear of your loss especially a comic book collector.

Do you have the time to do this right or do you want them gone fast is really what you
need to ask yourself. 

Since they aren't just comics you will need someone who specializes in several areas if 
you want them all gone at once. Without doing a lot of work you will expect to received a fraction
of the true value.

If the collection is valuable then the more time you put in the more monetary reward you will 
reap. You can also advertise it on craigslist, here and other places and you will get dealers to
come look at it and make offers as well. Good luck.

 

Thank you for the condolences.

What I would like to do is to number each box and then make an entry into a spreadsheet with box #, title, issue #, price, an eyeball grade, and a sleeve/no-sleeve indicator on each and every comic/graphic novel. What I actually end up doing is another thing.

At the least I would just go back through each box and pull out the items that look like they might have greater value, using the internet for occasional reference.

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19 hours ago, Karl Liebl said:

Strange that he did not bag and board many of his books since this was pretty much standard fare since the mid 70's.  This suggests to me he was more of a reader than a collector.  10000 books is a LOT! You are going to get pennies on the dollar for most of these 80 -90's books if anything at all, but I am sure there are a few treasures.  Getting money out of a comic book collector is like taking a dwarfs gold, maybe harder.  Sorry for your loss and good luck!

 

Thank you for the condolences.

My brother was a reader and a collector. He always had comics and sci-fy paperbacks. He was six years older and he's the reason I got into reading so much when I was younger. He installed a lock on his bedroom door when he discovered I was sneaking in on Saturday mornings and reading the newest issues that were laying on the floor next to his bed. That didn't work, because I just climbed in the window when he was out with friends. He worked in Big Guys comic book shop somewhere in California for a while and it looked like he bought lots of comics from his store specifically for collecting. eg. I found about 50 issues of X-Force #1 sealed collectors issue which seems to be worth$3-$5 each on ebay. I found a factory sealed box of MTG The Dark booster packs, but when he introduced me to Magic he played his best cards unsleeved.

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8 hours ago, oldrover said:

Seriously?

Yes.  Every ultra high grade Silver and Bronze age comic that's not part of a warehouse find comes initially from an original owner who bought it when it was new and preserved it thereafter.

With haphazard storage conditions that were common back in the day, it's a bit miraculous when some books emerge unblemished and looking like new.  In my case, like others have described already, comics were kept piled up in cardboard boxes.  Twice these cardboard boxes were moved from coast to coast without the help of backing boards, the first time without bags either.

My advice for the original poster, from experience dealing with my own collection, would be the following.  Over seven thousand comic books will take an extraordinary amount of time and effort to sell one by one.  Bagging, boarding, grading, pricing, selling, and either packaging and mailing or dragging to a convention dealer table.  It's more practical to handpick the most valuable books for individual sale, and then part with the bulk of the collection by selling them wholesale by the longbox to a dealer.  

This was another comic I bought, read, and stored away in the summer of 1974, to be sold individually more than 35 years later.  

Hulk180.jpg.2679e50b50512fef234d530682d1ca56.jpg

Edited by namisgr
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30 minutes ago, namisgr said:

Every ultra high grade Silver and Bronze age comic that's not part of a warehouse find comes initially from an original owner who bought it when it was new and preserved it thereafter.

Of course it does. However, behavior like that from a prepubescent male is out of the ordinary. The more common behavior BACK IN THE DAY was to keep your comics in a box and read them from time to time.

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2 hours ago, oldrover said:

Of course it does. However, behavior like that from a prepubescent male is out of the ordinary. The more common behavior BACK IN THE DAY was to keep your comics in a box and read them from time to time.

Agreed.  It's typically when kids become teenagers that they read and store their comics more carefully.  This is noticeable in some pedigrees and big collections: the stuff bought at age 10 is often considerably less nice than the books from later years.  My friend who turned me on to how cool comic books had become in the early '70s when I was 17 had been reading them since he was 10, storing them in massive stacks in a bedroom closet.  His Avengers #1 was totally beat, but by the late '60s he'd become meticulous and his stuff was gorgeous.

Edited by namisgr
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