Trevor

For the past twenty years or so, in my very frequent stops at dozens of comic book shops in the DC area, I very rarely find anything less than dollar bins. I hear stories from you all and others of fifty cent and even quarter bins, but except for Black Friday-like promotions where dollar bins are sometimes half price, I haven't seen a cheaper than a dollar bin since the 1990s.

This changed a couple days ago on a visit to Cleveland. Eating lunch, we happened to spot a toy looking store across the street. Heading over, it turned out to be a comic book shop. They had about twenty long boxes of incredibly random and incredibly unsorted fifty cent books; but for the rest of December they were all Dime Boxes. Yes, twenty or more long boxes full of what appeared to be a great assortment of old and new all at a dime a book!



But what should have been one of my best comic related days of my life turned into more like the worst. I was already running late for the airport for my trip home, and only had a few minutes to dive through a couple boxes. From what I saw, if I had a few hours and my list, I probably could have filled a carry-on bag for the flight home.

mrhan

I wish I could find a place like that in the Bay Area or L.A. It seems everyone in CA. is a damn collector and/or speculator.

majorjoe23

Back before Half Price Books used to check the value of the collected editions they sold and just marked out of print collections at half of cover price, I found some great deals. I got several Absolute editions that were selling for hundreds of dollar for $25-$37.50.

The Valeyard

Dude, when are you in L.A.? Lemme know next time and I'll hook you up.

Have you ever been to the Frank & Son Collectible Show in the City of Industry? There are plenty of speculators there but also a bunch of booths with .50¢ to $1.00 bins. And some have really good stuff in there. During the X-Mas season, some booths drop them down to .10¢ to .25¢. For the past year, I've noticed a lot of Bronze Age collections showing up in the cheap bins.

There's Collector's Paradise in Pasadena that has some pretty decent $1 to $3 bins (from Bronze Age to Modern).

There's also P-Dots Collectibles in Pasadena which range from outrageous 90s pricing ($10 for X-Force #1) to decent prices for older books ($2 to $3) but you have to dig through the boxes for those. I found Marvel Two-In-One Annual #2 for $5.




L.A. stores are generally $$$ You have to head to the outer regions to find some deals.

mrhan

Cool. Next time I'm down I will PM you. I am semi-retired now and I don't work that much. I use to go down there for work all the time. I didn't know about that store in Pasadena. I use to go there all the time to visit my brother at Art Center. Since he graduated I haven't been there except to meet my stand-up friends at the Ice House.

kodave

I think it's because rent is so high, whether you're in the heart of the city or a dinky strip mall in the burbs. They'd rather sit on their old back issue stock at higher prices and make their money off new subscriptions and statues/toy/anything but comics.

mrhan

So true. I miss the time when I can just walk into a comic store and buy books with 12c covers for 25c. I miss the 70's when no one cared about this shit.

On the other hand...no mortage. Own several properties outright. Tons of other toys....all good.

Undeadcow

Maybe this is regional but half price books use to have $0.25 boxes that were crammed full on older Image titles; which were fun and nostalgic for me even if the issues aren't a great investment. Several times I'd find entire series runs - X-man, Gen 13, Weapon Zero, or even nicely continuous issues of X-factor. Within the past year I even found a slew of the mid-1990s X-men action figures at Half Price Books for about $5 each.

In Austin they had a library surplus store that I think also sold off donations and they had some similarly interesting finds - Spawn 1-100, Phophet, etc for around $0.25 each. I remember when Spawn 1 came out people were buying multiples hoping to turn a profit, muahaha...

PhantomStranger

I haven't seen a dime or quarter bin outside of a con in decades. I despised rifling through them at cons since usually the crowds are heavy and competition is fierce. It was fun to leisurely and methodically peck through a dime long box inside an actual store.

I'd definitely pick up dozens of issues today if I saw a dime bin somewhere.

TheDude

Great finds. I don't buy floppies anymore (i.e., individual comics) - just collected editions (CE's). I have found some great prices for new CE's at Half Price Books; I'm not opposed to buying used CE's, but only if they're in decent shape.

Tom Creo

Half price Books, earlier this year i found a Batman New 52 run, 1-12 at $1.50 a pop. At a garage sale this summer a guy had about 5 long boxes priced at 3 for $1, Found the Death of Superman runa nd a Batman Adventures #12. Came back a CGC 8.0.

Trevor

So not much of a bargain compared to quarter bins, but for my area, this weekend's sale at my local shop might be fun. They're calling it their biggest liquidation ever, and will probably have 50-100 dollar boxes, with a deal where you can fill a box for $100.

I've finally pretty much finished indexing all of my comics for the first time since ~2001. I love my checklist guide, but will likely convert it to a spreadsheet or CLZ someday. But for now, I'll probably be giving in to my physical collecting again and spending all weekend leafing thru this and buying all the 90s+ crap I missed.

PhantomStranger

If I remember correctly, you can fit around 300 unbagged comics in a long box. Less if they are bagged and boarded.

Trevor

They were about half unbagged, a quarter bagged only, and a quarter bagged&boarded. I resisted the temptation to take everything out of bags.

I got there about 30 minutes after they opened and there were about ten people already working on filling a long box. The store had about 60 long boxes of dollar books.

I didn't plan to go through all of them in one day, but once I got more than half way thru it was hard to stop. I ended up filling two longboxes.

At one point my wife called and asked me where I was. I answered, "I'm at church, honey." That got a good laugh out of everyone.

Ended up spending just over 5 hours there. Told Jen that I bought two long boxes to join my ~60 already at home and she didn't divorce me. I'm a lucky man. But just to be safe, I hope she's not at home when my huge boxes from Mile High and MyComicShop arrive.

Oh, the majority of what I bought were books to complete runs, probably more than half DC. The biggest new-to-me run was Warlord. Like the entire 100+ issue run. I apparently missed out on a complete run of Rom, but managed to find 8 of so issues of it as I slowly complete that series.

mrhan

I only found out recently that Jelly's in Oahu closed down. It was my favorite comic store on the island. Totally missed out on this bargain but I would rather they stayed open. Their back issue stock was awesome. They had tons of bronze age books and they were cheap.

Navinabob

On a related note, I was gifted a few long boxes of old unsorted comics by a relative who was a reader, but not a collector. So his books were all unbagged and no boards, some with food stains and earmarked corners.

I'm in the process of finally sorting and cataloging them and I pull out Marvel Premiere 15 (first appearance of Iron Fist) in remarkably good condition and a New Mutants #98 (1st Deadpool) with the inside signed by Rob Liefeld.

The other night I pulled out the 1st Psyloke issue but it had a small tear on the cover. I'm just tossing out a bunch of mostly worthless independent stuff, but there a few gems to make it all worth it.

davidh777

I love Grell's Warlord, though it lost steam later in its run. I'm disappointed it's only seen one black-and-white trade release, and it looks like Comixology only has two issues. I have a bunch of floppies at my parents' house, but have picked up a few here and there on sale.

mrhan

I have the entire run but actually never read the stories after Grell left the series. I couldn't resist picking up the issues after Grell because they were in a 25 cent bin. I had the first two issues and First Issue Special #8 signed by Grell way back in the early 80's.

I did pick up his newer Warlord work that came out a few years ago. It was really good until it was cancelled.

davidh777

I forget how long I lasted.

I agree the Grell revival was good and was disappointed that that only got one TPB--a second one was canceled, I think. I have a number of the floppies but again don't recall how long I bought them.

The non-Grell reboot in the middle of the other two was garbage.

mrhan

Yeah...I liked the idea of passing the torch. Too bad it was never expanded.

Trevor

This is kinda weird. I'm adding to my checklist the two long boxes I just bought. I ended up with three old Whitman comics. They were from different boxes in the store, three different series, and three different years (1978-1980). Yet each one is issue #19.

Either just one of those strange coincidences or Whitman bundled their three packs by issue number.