TheDude

This thread is "inspired" by another thread on another comic book discussion board - I think there was another thread on here re: decreasing your comic collection, but I can't locate this now.

In any case, I recently went through some of my older floppies & Trades due to space issues, and donated them to the local library. I literally have so many of these that I run out of room occasionally, and need to get rid of some of them in order to create more space. I like doing this every 1-2 years, since I'm always increasing my collection to some extent - especially with all of the cool CE's coming out, i.e. Omnis, Epics, etc.

I also find that getting rid of these older comics/Trades make it easier to find comics/CE's in my collection that I do still want to read/collect.

My rule of thumb is: If I get a better version of a comic/series (typically in a collected edition), I'll donate the older version (whether they are floppies or Trades) - even if I have some nostalgia associated with this.

The only thing I typically don't get rid of are HC's - but, when I get something in HC it's usually the definitive version - so, I don't feel the need to upgrade from this, anyway.

There hasn't been a lot of discussion on this in a while, so I just thought mentioning this may help inspire others to do the same, since I'm sure others are running into this problem/issue as well.

Note this is kind of the "sister" thread to a similar one in the "Other" forum about decreasing your home video collection due to space issues.

davidh777

Maybe this one?

Comic Book Rant - Hard to get rid of anything

fujishig

What does the local library do with them? I can't imagine they actually want the floppies for anything. I remember having this dillemma a few years ago trying to get rid of a collection, and we eventually just put it up for free on Craig's List. Ah what a waste.

TheDude

Good question. I believe when the local library has book sales, they try to sell the floppies. I also know some folks that work at the local library that like/collect comics, so I'm guessing they may just take them for their personal collection if they're deemed too much hassle to deal with otherwise. This is fine with me - as long as they go to someone that wants them, I don't care who gets them.

In the case of Collected Editions (Trades, HC's) they may just put them into the system. They do have quite a few CE's.

Note that I don't know of where else to donate them that's convenient; I guess I could recycle them....

Note none of these floppies are worth any $, so I would be wasting my time/effort in trying to sell them. It would cost more in gas to take them to my LCS (which isn't that close) than I would probably get for them. So, screw that.

OK, great - that's the one I was thinking of.

The Valeyard

I gave a bunch out to trick-or-treaters this Halloween. We became the popular house by the end of the night.

mrhan

My old alma mater school library has tons of them. Mostly new stuff and most look near mint. Whole runs of several titles. I'm guessing a lot of college students read but don't collect. Sometimes I find old silver age and bronze age books for 50c ea. I found a few quite expensive books in there for next to nothing.

PhantomStranger

People missed out on a great opportunity on Halloween.

If you have old, cheap comic books available that you want to give away, Halloween is ideal. The kids view them as novelties and a few may even find out they enjoy reading them.

sven

Not problem for me since I'm digital.

Though I will be interested to see what my brother does with his near 200 long boxes now that he and his wife are talking about moving from Illinois to Florida.

Josh-da-man

What were you giving out? Faust back issues?

The Bus

I stopped collecting single issues 15+ years ago, although I think I broke my rule for issues of Evan Dorkin's Dork since there was no guarantee it would turn into a TPB.

At some point I will run out of room for trades. For now, the only ongoing series I am buying is Hellboy and that's thankfully a book a year or so. Oh, and Saga. Duh.

whotony

Oh man I have the Faust books. jeez they were graphic.

Anyway I still have my collection of over 13k books.

It includes 3000+ issues of various Spider-man books with only missng 11 issues between `17-570 and the best offer I got was $5k

I would like to move them because 45 long boxes takes up a ton of space and we are moving but I don't want to give them away.

PhantomStranger

I've seen people break up collections like that using an auction house.

Now is the time to strike with the upcoming Spider-Man movie. Now that he's in the Marvel filmverse, there should be some extra juice once that gets released.

Josh-da-man

The problem with all of those Spider-Man comics is that, if most of them are modern age, then they're practically worthless.

If you're trying to sell them bulk to a dealer, he's going to give you a low offer because most of those books will be low demand. Unless it's a key modern book (ie, first Venom) or a Silver Age issue, they're just going sit around in a box or go in a quarter bin. For every valuable comic in your collection, there are likely dozens that have a negative value.

That's the problem with collecting comics. The market has been so flooded with new material in the past three decades, with most of it sold to collectors through the direct market, that there are tens of thousands of high grade copies of tens of thousands of different comics out there right now. There's just no demand for 99.99% of it.

whotony

Yep I'm much too aware of the issue with selling back issues of recent books.
Essentially impossible.

I'm almost at a point where I would give away anything that isn't an essential book and keep all Spider-man and the good stuff from the other 10k books.

Here are the non spider-man books on google drive or docs or whatever they call it..

http:///jtkf2zw

going to be tough for me to not sell low because we need some cash towards
getting a new house and we just dont want all these baoxes when we move.

Hmm well the link got futzed by dvdtalk

stingermck

On the flip side, completing a run is super cheap these days. Working on original JLA and Teen Titans (Silver, new, baxter and Johns) and buying them in bulk for nothing on eBay.

whotony

Another try.

[ul]http:///h6l9h2v[/url]

I guess dvdtalk doesnt like tinyurl

http://tinyurl. com/ h6l9h2v

take out spaces

whotony

So anyone actually sell individual books?

I have a handful that have value but I don't trust selling that on ebay.