Excellent Condition

What To Do With All These comics?

As we near the end of 2023, I thought I would try something a little different. I don’t really do Year-End reviews, mostly because I can barely remember last week, let alone the last year, but I thought I would give a little breakdown of one thing I did this year.

When I discovered eBay back in 1999, I was pretty desparate for cash - The girl I was dating at the time had some horrible spending habits - and someone I worked with suggetsed it as a side hustle (Not a term back then, by the way.) I sold a Ken Griffey, Jr. autographed baseball that I had been holding onto for about ten years. After it sold, I remember bringing the ball to the post office with no idea how shipping worked, but the postal worker recommended a box and suggested that I use the student newspaper (this was when I worked at a college, and there was an actual post office in the stduent union at the time) as packing material. Her name was Nancy and we soon got to be pretty friendly, as I immediately got the eBay Bug. After that, almost nothing in my home was safe.

Soon, the rest of my sports autographs and cards were sold, followed by old toys, and soon after, the one sell-able thing that I had a nearly endless supply of: comics. At the time, the first live-action X-Men movie was big, so selling old X-Men comics made sense. Not long after came Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, and I was off to the races (or post office, as it were). My older comics weren’t in great shape, because I used to read them a lot as a kid, and obviously I didn’t think there would one day be movies featuring characters like Rocket Raccoon, whose first appearance would someday be worth anything.

To try and mitigate the condition issue, I would sell them in lots. I figured if I threw 12 random Spider-Man comics in one auction, and then throw in a couple extra, then the winner couldn’t complain if the comics were not in as good as condition as they hoped. I also sort of came up with my own comics-grading system. Whereas most serious comic collectors use terms like “Near Mint” and “Very Good,” I decided that pretty much all my comics were in “Excellent Condition.” “Excellent” being very much in the eye of the beholder.

Let me say right here, however, that I was not trying to put one over on anybody. My comics were always accurately described and photographed well. If there were blemishes of any kind, I did not try to hide them. I did use phrases like “slight cover wear” often, but mostly left it up to the buyer to examine the photos and determine if they could live with the faults. Some comic collectors can be a little ornery at times, but since they were usually buying a bunch of comics for less then $20, they really didn’t have much to complain about, and my feedback will show that everything was on the up-and-up.

Now here we are, almost 25 years later, and my comic collection has dwidled a bit, despite the fact that I have been a regular comic buyer for that entire time. Most of my childhood comics are gone or too damaged to sell at all (Basically less-than-excellent condition) When Marvel changed their philosophy during the 2000’s and began restarting their all of series’ at #1 to attract new readers, it made selling an entire series a lot easier. Suddenly, the auctions went from twelve random issues of Spider-Man to “Deadpool #1-18 - 2012 FULL RUN.” I still say they are in excellent condition because I think it’s pretty funny by now, but I started to realize that I would continue buying a series even if I didn’t love it just because I knew I could sell it later when it was completed. Even comics that I liked would get sold after the series was done, because I was pretty sure there would be another #1 around the corner, and I would probably not read this particular series again. Was I a fan of comics or a fan of selling them?

The real crazy thing about this whole story was that I’m pretty much still as strapped for cash as I was in 1999. I mean, I make more money now and the free-spending girlfriend is gone, but I also own a home and pay more bills and the cost of living in general has gone up and I drink a lot more than I did then. But is that where all the money went? I guess, but the real point is that buying comics because you know you are going to flip them isn’t really a winning gamble.

So, in 2023, more to free up space than make money, I reverted back to my original doctrine: selling what is left of my childhood collection, plus some of the newer stuff, plus some random one-shots that I bought because I used to have a weird philosophy that I couldn’t walk out of a comic store with less than 4 books, in random lots. Sixteen Batman comics, fifteen Captain America, twelve Hulk books. In all, 172 comics sold in 2023, for a grand total of about $280, give or take a few bucks in fees. Of course, in 2023, eBay isn’t the only game in town anymore. Some were sold on Facebook Marketplace, some on Mercari. The selling process is so much more streamlined now that it only takes a couple minutes to list a lot of comics on all of them with my phone. I haven’t actually made this leap yet, but eBay even offers a shipping option where you can just scan a QR code and someone will come to you and pick up the item you are shipping (Of course, then I would never have met Nancy). Sure, 280 bucks isn’t a lot of money over a whole year, but can you really put a price on a less-cluttered basement?

The goal for 2024 is to eliminate some of the boxes, via selling, like the ones above and consolidate. There are obviously some sacred cows that you will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands (That’s not entirely true. If you offered enough dough…) I will always have some comics, but in the end, you can’t take anything with you, so I might as well make something on them while I can.

And ok, if I have learned one thing over the last 25 years or so, it’s that I actually do get a charge out of it.

Happy New Year, everyone. Don’t forget to Subscribe to the Substack if you haven’t already, and consider donating to the cause if you can’t become a paid subscriber.