If you have read my book Confessions of a Baseball Card Addict, you know that I have also bought and sold perhaps 40,000 or so comic books. I never knew much about them, though. I just bought several collections at good prices and flipped them. I really did love them, though – I’ve flipped collections of paintings, rings, shirts, etc. Comics were on a different level for me. I love the art on the front, and superheroes. Who doesn’t love superheroes, right? Here is my garage once upon a time with about 20,000 comics. It took a guy hiring an 18 wheeler and three movers to get them!
I do have a confession to make, though. I don’t remember ever cracking a single comic to read cover to cover.
That’s not to say that I didn’t have some books when I was a kid. I remember Spiderman 2099, Venom, Carnage, X-Men and others. I even had some, but I’m just not sure if I ever read them or not.
When I did buy and sell comic collections, a few things stuck out to me. First, comic book collectors and baseball card collectors a *very* different. Second, I remember a few comic / characters that stuck out to me whenever people would ask if I had any. A question asked of me was: “Do you have any Deadpool?” My response was “Uhhh…who is Deadpool?” I had no idea who he was, but it was described to me as a sort of “anti-hero” (huh?) that looked kind of like Spiderman.
Recently, my family watched both of the Deadpool movies, using Clear Play (a filtering service that cuts out language, sex, nudity, etc.) and really enjoyed them! While our viewing experiences of them were PG, I’m not so sure we’d appreciate the rated R version of him all that much! Anyway, one of the books I decided to pick up was the New Mutants #98 – Deadpool’s first appearance! For fun, I also picked up a Deadpool baseball card that was a parody of Jose Canseco’s 1994 Collector’s Choice baseball card, for obvious reasons!
Perhaps the first superhero movies that really clicked with me was of the X-Men. My whole family loves them. Heck, my wife remembers loving watching the cartoons when she was a kid on Saturday mornings! Man, I sure hope they do some movies with more X-Men characters in with Avengers and such in the next few years!!! Anyway, this is a really good book to buy right now, so I picked it up: Giant-Size X-Men #1. 1st Appearances include the new X-Men, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus & Thunderbird.
This next comic was at the very top of my list to pick up. Through all the tens of thousands of comics I’ve sold, I heard a consistent theme from all potential buyers, asking about the comic of a certain hot television show. A hushed-toned question would emerge from the lips of all: “You don’t have any Walking Dead comics, do you?” As a viewer of it, I didn’t even know the Walking Dead came from a comic book. Sure enough, they did, and thanks to the popularity of the show, it was a super hot series to get into. Out of the thousands of books I have gone through, I never ran into a single issue. It would be the stuff dreams were made of if I did! Because of this and my enjoyment of the show, I had to pick up what is a holy grail comic for many: Walking Dead #1.
Last but not least, (heck, it is my favorite!) is one I have a bit of a story on. Back in 2012, I watched a show called Collection Obsession, I believe. The show chronicled a couple who were at odds due to the comic book collector’s immense collection, and his fiance’s inability to walk through their house without tripping over a long box. The mediator convinced the collector to bring a massive chunk of his collection to a shop and sell them. 4,000 comics made the trip, but he and the owner couldn’t settle on a price. As a happy medium, the collector traded *all* of them for a single comic book. The Incredible Hulk 181. This book is special because it is the first appearance of none other than Wolverine!
Ever since that episode, I just thought that book was the bee’s knees, however, at $1,000, there was no way I would grab it. Well, fast forward up to a couple months ago, my son and I went to the baseball card show, and we saw a comic vendor there. I asked him “Hey, there is a Hulk issue of signifi….” He interrupted me “Yes! Hulk 181 – 1st Wolverine appearance. Everyone wants this!” He hands me a slabbed copy of it, and I turn it around, notice the price and almost choked. $3,500. “Wow, this really went up in value!” He told me “Yes, it has been extremely hot over the past couple of years.”
I don’t know what the ceiling for this is, but all of my research shows that this is a solid book to buy. I ended up coming back home and researched for a while, then found the right copy for me. Here it is!
I’m quite happy with my pickups and have a few more incoming! They seem to display quite nicely with my unopened boxes of baseball cards 🙂 87 Fleer Box + NM98 = WINNING!
While I’m on a comic theme, I thought I’d share a custom booklet card I created of Comic Book Men. Man, I gotta say – I flippin’ love that show. I found this picture of them online:
Sent 4 scraps of paper to their shop for them to sign…
… and made this booklet:
I love how it turned out!
Later on (a couple years ago) my family went to a local comic-con where local sign language interpreter celebrity Leyel (she is one of our most favorite people ever!) invited us to. Here she is interpreting for Lou Ferrigno.
She is friends with Ming from Comic Book Men and introduced us to Ming in person!
That was a fun day, for sure.
Is this comic obsession of mine short lived, or will it be for life? Time will tell, I guess, but for now, I’m really enjoying them. I’m enjoying them so much, in fact, I might actually buy a few raw copies of some books to actually read for the first time in my life! There just might be some Guardians of the Galaxy or Infinity Wars books in my future – I’m open to suggestions, as well!
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