Regrets of a comic collector
 

I would guess that anyone who has collected comics for a fair amount of time has had a few regrets over the years. Do you have a secret shame hidden away on your shelves, or in boxes in the back of the closet or attic? Maybe you spent a lot of money on something that's worthless now? Did you miss an opportunity to pick up a valuble issue? Did something get destroyed?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the boxes and boxes of comic cards that I have. Remember when the big trading card boom hit in the early 90's? Well I must have spent hundreds on them, all in hopes of getting a precious hologram. Now I have these things collecting dust, and I can barely give them away. I think they will eventually find their way to the trash.
:(

I also regret spending money on any Rob Liefeld projects, and the majority of early Image.

So let's hear your tales of woe!

I bought 4 boxes of the 1st series of Marvel Universe cards for around $12 each. I don't have much of that left, but I was very happy with it.

I was big in comics, sports cards, etc. I learned early that if you want to be in it for money, you sell the moment it is hot, because it will tank again. Prices in this hobby are mainly based on fad.

As a result of that, and still loving the old stuff, I know only buy movie and comic cards, and only ones that are 10 years old because they are dirt cheap. I have boxes of Magnum PI, DC, Marvel, X-Men, Three's Company, etc. I absolutely love those. But they won't ever be worth a lot, they are just a cheap hobby.

But I will admit that I have a buttload of Valiant comics. :lol: I remember getting those and it was obvious that you bought Image for the art, and Valiant for the story. Being near worthless, I went back and read through a bunch of Eternal Warrior, Bloodshot, Rai, etc. and they are absolutely excellent reads. I regret ever paying cover price, though. :lol:

I regret spending so much money on comics over the years. I have multiple long boxes of comics and they are not even worth the paper they are printed on...I recently decided to sell off many lots of comics on Feebay and the prices I am getting for them are downright pitiful. Forget price guide value, I am truly lucky if I get 50% of COVER PRICE for some of the more desirable comics..These 2.99 books that are being released these days? I sold a lot of 23 of them for $35 before x-mas, I really don't care as I will never read them again...I am just patiently waiting until the next price increase, then I will flush about 75% of my reserves instantly...I can't wait!

I only have about 6-7 longboxes of comics, relatively small compared to some of you I am sure. I will try to get rid of them this year. Looking back, just like with cards, I wish all the money I spent on the latest and greatest was instead spent of more vintage stuff. I am far more happy with trades nowadays (and even then I don't buy all that many of them) and not having to worry as much about the collectibility aspect of comics.

I don't know how many long boxes I have, but they're starting to really overtake my house.

I don't regret the reading of comics over the last 2 decades, but the space they take up is getting unreal. I would like to sell off much (if not all) of my collection, but I'm not going to give them away at the prices they seem to be going for on ebay. :(

My only regret is that I treated them like crap. I started buying comics (mostly Spider-Man and Fantastic Four) in around 1970 I think. I knew another kid that kept his all in bags (honestly he was kind of weird, I'm not sure he even read them), but not me. Mine were well used. Ultimately my mom tossed them all, probably not a big loss given their crap condition, but I'd like to have them now.

If I recall correctly, Shooter-era Valiant is still worth some cash, as are the last few books that came out before the company folded completely.

The Jim Shooter era of Valiant was a roadmap of how to do a comic universe. A few titles introduced at a time, and all titles were carefully edited to form a universe that was cohesive. If you read all the titles, you were rewarded with a much larger understanding of what was going on, but you weren't penalized by feeling left in the dark if you didn't buy all the books.

Shooter era Valiant: an incredible ride while it lasted, I still have fond memories of those titles. :up:

Agreed. For pure reading enjoyment, they had stuff that rivaled the best of any time.

I still have all my early run Valiant books stashed somewhere... I kinda regret not selling the early issues, like Harbinger, when they were "valuable." I mostly regret all of the books I collected in the early 90's for "collecting purposes," not just because they're all relatively worthless, but because they're not even fun to read.

I loved early Valiant titles, with the whole Unity thing... though I dropped most of the books after Shooter left.

I regret buying two copies of the entire Executioner's Song crossover that ran throught the X-titles. I just had to have one copy remain sealed with the exclusive trading card. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb.

I always regretted owning a full run of Sleepwalker (early 90's Marvel title), but I ended up reading the whole series the past few weeks and It really wasn't too bad. The art was god awful, but it was mildly entertaining. I think I might read Darkhawk next.

I started buying comic books about 20 years ago. During the huge boom in the early 90s, I was on the forefront of morons picking up multiple copies of books with gimick covers. Of course the vast majority of these are worthless and are just taking up room in my collection.

More recently I don't know why, but I picked up two copies of Ultimate Spider-Man #1. I say I don't know why because I hadn't bought multiple copies of anything in years. I sold both copies for more than $100 on eBay a few years later. I wish I had picked up a few more copies.

Wow, Ultimate Spider Man #1 sold for that much? I had no idea there was still that much of a secondary market for the mass market titles, especially with the copious reprints out now.

I remember religiously keeping track of all of my comics in a (very large) excel spreadsheet, updated monthly with prices from Wizard and some other magazine. Not that I ever sold anything.

I do kinda regret losing track of some pieces of my collection from the 90's, that seemingly won't be reprinted:

The Jademan "Kung Fu" comics. Luckily, it seems like they're going to be reprinting Blood Sword, but man I loved Oriental Warriors, Iron Martial, all of those.

The Legion of Superheroes series with Giffen and Bierbams, as well as L.E.G.I.O.N. Most Legion fans hate that era, but I liked it a lot.

My TMNT trade paperbacks. Why are these not reprinted yet?

:lol: That's very true.

But "Deathmate," the big Image/Valiant crossover project was (to borrow a term from Brian Hibbs' Savage Critic) ASS.



I remember the Shooter-era Valiant books being really excellent.

Unfortunately, once the company finally hit it big with the Unity event, Shooter was fired from the company and they went on a slow, steady decline until Acclaim bought the the rotting carcass and finally buried it.

Oh man, I was guilty of that also. Multiple copies if bagged issues, or having to purchase every multiple cover released. At least I wasn't as bad as some of the customers at the shop I worked at... One customer's pull list read something like this (I may be a little off, this was over 10 years ago):

Any #1 issue: 10 copies
Any first appearance: 5 copies
Any Wolverine crossover: 5 copies
Any "milestone" issue (25, 50, 75, 100, etc): 5 copies
Any "big event" (shop discretion): 5 copies
Any multiple cover not accounted for above: 3 copies of each cover

That was in addition to his regular pull list, 3 copies of each title that he supposedly read.



I got the opportunity to talk to Shooter at a convention, and although he has a tendancy to exaggerate it corroborates what Kevin Van Hook told me at a convention just after Shooter left Valiant - basically once Valiant took off, the other 2 people that owned the company wanted to sell it off to a corporation that simply saw dollar signs because the comics were selling well. Shooter felt that a sale would lead to the downfall of Valiant as the new owners didn't know anything about comics. Shooter's partners were blinded by money, and ended up getting rid of him. Of course, as Shooter predicted, the quality of Valiant went downhill.

I had almost all of the Shooter era stuff at the time, and a lot of it I paid good money for. So as soon as he left, I sold my collection. I normally am not into selling for profit, but I damn sure wasn't going to lose all that money when the value plummeted like I knew it would. I ended up buying back a lot of those issues at 50 cents each.

I have two long boxes left from what used to be a four long box collection. Realized a couple years ago how ridiculous it was that I had issue number 30-something of Power Pack bagged as if it was ever going to be worth more than .25. So, I unloaded a lot of the worthless issues to a local thrift store, sold a handful at a swap meet (some McFarlane Spidey, mostly) and kept the rest. Figure I'll haul them around from move to move and hope my now-four-year old gets some enjoyment out of them when he's older.

Regrets? Not picking #1 and #2 of the B&W TMNT--for cover price--when I had the chance. Bought #3 at an out-of-the-way comic store in Milwaukee when I was about 12, begged Dad to take me back to no avail. Not to sell...just really enjoyed the underground-ness of it at the time. Got hooked on Willingham's early Elementals during the same visit though.

Can't believe I spent ANY $ on any of Liefeld's shit. Regret having spent $20+ on a random issue of Daredevil only because it was graded and in one of those hard plastic cases. Regret having never picked up the trades of Cerberus or Bone. Regret having played the hell out of all of my Mego and early-'80s Marvel toys. THOSE are fetching quite a bit on eBay. Regret not having unloaded many of my titles when they would actually sell: Zeck's Punisher, G.I. Joe #2, etc.

Great thread!

I just lost 4 or 5 boxes worth of comics that were in my Ex-wife's garage. The guy cleaning her garage said that they were full of all kids of creatures so I had him toss them. I kinda regret that becuase there were some cool books in those boxes but that's life.

Sadly, I can amen almost every regret in this thread.

Twice now, I've given away or sold for peanuts my entire collection. Now my collection is up to 30 or so long boxes.

What I gave up probably only amounts to 2 long boxes, but it would be worth more (both in $ and in sentimental value to me) more than half my current collection.

Crap. I was just looking through my books and thought of another one: I regret having sold my Flex Mentallo mini-series years ago, even though I got a good price for it. I'd really like to read it again and I don't think it's going to be coming out as a TPB anytime soon (if ever).
:(

My biggest regrets are all the still unread early Image books I was buying, pretty much just because they were image. And not the major ones like Dragon, Spawn, WildCats & Youngblood, but all those ancillary titles that the lower tier artists were working on. To this day I've not cracked open even an issue of Spawn (or those other "big" titles I mentioned), and I've got bunches. I'll track them down someday when I organize my collection and give 'em a read.

And, while I don't really regret it, I read miller's Daredevil books back in eighth grade like a hundred times each and most of them really show it.

Why must you bring it all back
I have several long boxes in storage
Superman death issue (I bought it after it had peeked in price)
And cards i had all series 1 &2 and most of series 3 marvel and that series after masterpiece where the cards came together to form bigger pics
then I got into magic and then the worst one of all
Star Wars CCG There is no telling how many dollars I spent on this set I had all the first series and I bought boxes of Hoth I even bought vader individually for 50 bucks (I sold most of the rare character ship cards for about a fifth of their peek price right before that bubble burst)
Thats not even mentioning x-files and avp ccg (before the avp movie back when it was cool)

I regret that I didn't sell Longshot #1 when it was worth something.

:lol: Man why did you have to remind me? I must have spent thousands of dollars on these. I have every card made of the original trilogy up to Reflections II. The only reasons I've decided to keep these is the fact my son is such a huge fan. Maybe one day we'll be able to play against each other.

I went into the LCS one day, and the owner told me about this cool new book that he heard about at a show, and he picked up several copies of the first issue signed by the creators. It looked pretty funny, so I bought the last copy.

Evil Ernie #1, signed by Pulido and Hughes.

I ended up selling it (and the rest of the original 5-issue series) for what I paid for them, and 2 months later the value went through the roof.

Only so long as all cards are protected in plastic sleeves

I think I only played 5 or so games I prob still have a huge box of them somewhere minus rare characters and ships

They kinda started to languish for me after hoth though (wish I could find my avp ccg it was badass)