Why do most comic books still have bar codes on them? I've NEVER gone to a store that had to scan the bar code to sell it to me. For newsstand issues I can see it but for the direct market?

I'm thinking that maybe Diamond requires it now from the publishers (or something to that effect). Diamond rules the world, ya know.

Well some stores are starting to shift to a point of sales system, and I believe that will utilize the barcode. That will makes taking inventory, re-ordering, and the like easier. Brian Hibbs talks about this in his Tilting at Windmills column over at news-a-rama.

My LCS uses a barcode scanner when checking out purchases.

I have 2 stores that I buy from. One put in a new system a while back and it seemed like they did use the bar code/scanning at the register for a while as the inventory was being added to the system. Now it seems they're back to just manually grouping my books by price, counting them, doing my discount, and then taking my money.

The other store definitely scans each book every time I make my purchases.

Many of the comic stores I've seen use the barcodes. It's better for inventory and errors typing in prices into the register will be less.

I went to a flea market recently and bought a bunch of 50 cent comics. They all had barcde stickers on the plastic bags and it printed out a receipt with titles and issue numbers. Seemed a little excessive for a flea market and cheap comics but I guess it worked for him.

My LCS chain uses barcode scanners.

My shop uses barcodes and has done so for at least a decade.

Any shop that doesn't use a barcode scanner at this point doesn't deserve to stay in business.

My shop has no scanner. He does have a notebook though.

The shops that i've purchased from in the past have never used scanners - I've in fact never been to a shop that even uses barcodes to scan from.


All the shops I've been shopping with have been widely successful. They infact own a number of locations.

No scanning at my LCS, all by hand.