Collecting Comic Books

In this post, I am going to only talk about the collecting habits of the engeedees (ngd's or nerd/geeks/dorks/dweebs). I will save the discussion of the reading habits for another time.

And although I will be talking mostly about the comic book collectors, a lot of what I say will also be true for other collectors, like those of movie and tv show magazines, horror magazines, science fiction books, fantasy books, etc.

The first and most essential thing is collecting comics is the condition of the book.

The condition of comic books is divided into many different grades such as mint (m), near mint (NM), very fine-near mint (VFNM), very fine (VF), fine-very fine (FVF), fine(F), very good-fine(VGF), very good(VG), good-very good(GVG), good(G), fair-good(FRG), fair(FR), poor-fair(PFR), poor(P).

And for some reason collectors feel the difference between these are of extreme importance! The truth is, though, almost 90% of the collectors will not buy any comic in a condition of less than near mints, so all the other conditions are pretty much pointless.

And these collectors will go to great lengths to keep their comics in mint condition.

The first thing, of course, is to make sure your comic is in a specially designed comic book mylar bag so to keep it from yellowing.

The second thing to do is put a piece of cardboard behind it to keep your precious comic from bending and having its spine cracked.

Then if you're really fanatical, uh I mean, careful, you make every other comic face the other direction so the spines of the comics are pushing on each other.

Then you put your comics in specially designed cardboard whose dimensions are designed to make sure your comic books are sitting up straight and aren't flopping or bending.

But this isn't all they do to protect their precious comics!

Some will buy two copies of their comics. One to read and one to put away. That way one copy can't be hurt in any way.

But don't think they'll be careless with the other copy. No, it must still be read in the proper manner, meaning no flattening of the spine, no bending the comic over, making sure your fingers are clean and not wet, among other things!

In fact, you can now hire a group of people who will grade your comic and put it in hard plastic. Then you can sell it as guaranteed at that grade.

And people buy these comics, don't open them, don't read them, and just own them with pride.

And the purpose of all this is so they can sell these comic books at high prices.

Do they end up doing this? Usually no.

What usually happens is that they sit in the collector's basement - or his parent's basement - gathering dust. Occasionally, the collector will have to sell them. And he'll end having to sell them in bulk at prices less than he paid for them to the local comic shop.