Hopefully you have many long years ahead of you. Do you want the issues bagged up and boarded inside the coffin?
I think people were more accepting of the changes after Crisis since DC had sent out the old Universe in such grand fashion. We got incredible send-offs for the Silver Age Superman by Alan Moore and the huge adventure in Crisis On Infinite Earths. We lost Barry Allen but at least he died saving the entire universe. It was easier to process than DC suddenly tossing out Flashpoint and deciding to remake every single character.

CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS confused me greatly in terms of what the hell actually happened to DC continuity, but it was also clear to me that nearly everything was brand new and that the past didn't matter that much. The SUPERGIRL movie had bombed spectacularly one year before her being killed off, and I wasn't interested enough in the Kid Flash character to accept him as a replacement for Barry Allen. It just all felt very foreign.

That's not to say the pre-Crisis DC Universe was worth saving, but with all the new changes and confusion, I really didn't want to bother with it.

I agree with Phantom Stranger that the Moore's issues of Superman were fantastic, and really gave a bittersweet ending to the character. It allowed former fans to leave on a very sentimental note.

I must also point out that even though I don't "collect" anymore, I will follow the works of Simone, Waid, Straczinski and Miller if their titles get good reviews. Otherwise, the cover prices and the generally mediocre content (I tried to read the New 52 ACTION COMICS and JUSTICE LEAGUE and was bored to death) are a huge deterrent.

Even though it entertained me at the time I always felt it shouldn't have happened. All they really needed to do was stop writing about Earth-whatever and I'm sure people would have forgotten. When I started reading in the early 70's I didn't know much about what went on before. I'm glad a lot of it was reprinted in the 100 pagers. I think the only people that we're confused were the suits running DC because as an 8 year old kid I pretty much understood it all as probably most people who read the books up until the Crisis event.

Back from 1990 through 1993 I had a complete, mint set of the Shooter-era Valiant issues -- all the #0s, a few Gold issues, everything. I sold them at the height of the bubble for an INSANE markup, and spent it all going to Chicago and Michigan for two weeks in the late summer of 1993.

Midwestern girls are the BEST, man. Thanks Jim!

You should look to see that if it might be reprinted by DC. They've issued 2nd runs of a few Statues latelky, like Killer Croc/Batman and the Sandman/Death bookends. I have the latter, which was going for $1,000 or more until the new version dropped it down to $200 or so.

As to the main topic, I think another big factor is that there just aren't many new fans coming in, and when they do, they don't often seem interested in picking up stuff from decades past, especially with all the reboots/renumbering. For the very few who may, as has been said, they have their pick of scans, digital, trades, etc. There's just going to be increasingly little demand for single issues. A huge shame, but I don't see it going any other way.

I do believe it was a bit under eight thousand. So with it's current popularity I can see why it's going a bit crazy yet still far more then I would have thought.

I still have my Walking Dead #2-80 (when I switched to trades). The barrier to selling the earliest issues is finding and sorting through my storage and the tens of thousands of comics, plus DVD's, statues, books, etc therein. So much damn work, and a lot of it is sooo packed in.

My understanding is that only the first few are really worth something, plus the 1st Michonne and maybe the Governor (not counting certain variants/misprints). I don't know if I'd want to even sell the last two though. It's one thing to thin my collection to #7-80, but the idea of selling off random issues in the middle doesn't sit as well. Though I guess I could just read the oversized omnibus. I have the first of those, which I've not even opened.

Btw, it strikes me that maybe the first issue with Tyreese may increase in value, if he continues to have a large role in the show.

They probably did go overboard in the Crisis reboot. Even John Byrne has admitted eliminating Superboy was a mistake he wishes he could reverse. While I like Wally, I never imagined at the time of his Flash #1 that Barry Allen would stay dead for nearly two full decades. DC kept him on the sidelines far longer than was necessary.

After all that happened in Crisis here's Byrne creating another Earth months later. I thought he was an idiot for doing that knowing he screwed up to begin with. It would have been so easy to never have removed Superboy from his version of the origin. It would have left the decades of Superboy and LSH stories intact.

I was sort of ok with Barry being gone for so long even though I was a big fan. Characters have to eventually die and I became used to Wally taking over.

That's one of the better things that came out of Crisis; their insistence that Barry stay dead allowed Wally to take over the mantle (maybe the first time a kid character grew into his mentor's role semi-permanently) and become the Flash for many people. It also made his sacrifice much greater, and I think the general concept of his character much cooler. The guy was on the verge of cancellation when Crisis happened. I think bringing him back was a mistake, because they instantly put Wally on the sidelines, and there was absolutely no demand for it.

Plus it's all Barry's fault we have this new 52 anyway... :P

I believe they did a second version of the statue, but I haven't gotten it. I got divorced recently and my current place doesn't have enough space to display my collection so I haven't been in any rush.

Deal!

Please have your collection categorized and ready for an easy pick if that day should ever come. We can have a wake/sorting party at Phantom Stranger's place.

Oh, I doubt it will be well organized, but inheritors can't be choosy.

And I am 100% serious by the way. I doubt Jen will want to put in the time and effort it would take to make the maximum money from my collection, so nothing would give me greater postmortem comic joy than you all somehow taking the effort to come get it and divy it out accordingly.

He was the first Flash I knew. This was the first Flash comic I ever bought:

When I decided to try comics, my mom bought me a few when I got straight A's one quarter.

My second Flash comic I ever got. First I bought. Got it at a ski resort in Colorado.


I grew up a Wally guy, so I'm personally a little bummed that he seems to have disappeared (maybe swallowed by the Speed Force...)

Wow. Well, hopefully that day is a very long way off. If anything, a band of DVDTalkers could get together and help her sort out the "good stuff" for her to sell.

I've been sorting my books forever and have told my oldest son that I'm leaving a list of the "valuable" stuff that he should sell if anything ever happened to me. Signed stuff. Golden Age books. Titles with low print runs that seem to go for decent prices at shows (like Amazing Spider-Man #430 & 431 for some reason).

Everything else would be worthless outside of .50 cent bins.

Speaking of which, I hit a store last night (to avoid traffic) and they put out a bunch of $2.99 boxes filled with older Fantastic Four and Iron Man titles. Like Iron Man #49 to 53. Fantastic Four numbers in the early 100s. A bunch of later Silver Age stuff. Most in pretty decent shape for $2.99. If I had more of a disposable income, I would have bought everything just for the heck of it.

I've noticed over the past couple of years that I'm finding more and more decent runs of books in the $1 and .50 cent bins. The dealers pick out the key issues and toss the rest. A year and a half ago, it was older Conan and Daredevil books. At Comikaze and this book store, it was Fantastic Four books. I've also noticed a lot of early Marvel Star Wars books popping up too.

It's sad but good at the same time because I'm picking up books that use to be more expensive for under $5 now.

It's always a bit humorous when one of the clueless hoard walks through the door at the LCS with a box of old comics. After the manager looks through the box and picks the one or two that *might* bring a few $$ or so at an auction and proclaims the rest as $.10 bin material the people are almost always indignant. Many of these have the 90s stuff that was overprinted to the point of being ridiculous with *lots* of "Death of Superman" stuff or the books that would have 15 covers a month. He tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to make them understand that even *if* one of their books is worth a few $$ they'd be lucky to get half that and most shops would only pay them 25% of value at best. That's when he tells them they do not purchase back issues at all and refers them to a shop in Memphis where they *might* be able to sell a few but probably not for enough to pay for the gas/time to make the trip. So far I've never seen him make an offer on *anything* anyone brings into the shop. There are a few regulars he'll allow to sell stuff on consignment but most of that brings 50% of cover at best. Of course I don't have to tell you guys this... you already know.

While I've collected off and on since age 5 I've never sold or given away any of my collection. I also never operated under the delusion any of them were worth anything to anyone but me. I've been surprised on occasion to find a book I own *could* be worth a few hundred but it never prompts me to actually part with that title. I'm one of those that when I buy it I own it. Period. I am constantly having to tell some relative they're each only worth 10-20 cents at *best* with a very few possibly worth a couple of hundred. They see all those long boxes in the garage and think I'm sitting on thousands of $$ worth of stuff - a goldmine. When I tell them the collection is worth a few hundred at *best*, on a *good* day, with the *right* purchaser, and *lots* of luck, they're always shocked. It's all because of media misinformation and how those rare finds get blown out of proportion.

I've been tempted at times to sell some of those higher prices singles when opportunity arises and just get the TPB as a replacement but there's just something about those floppies that keeps me from playing that game.

like Trevor I'll have to leave instructions for when I'm gone as my wife would probably just dump them on the side of the street for the trash. It's possible my son would take a bit of time with them but he's a "clearer outer" and did not inherit that collector mentality (as in "I bought it so I'll keep it forever.") that runs in my side of the family so... Even then I sometimes wonder just why I hold on to them as I rarely (well... almost never) pull out a back issue to reread. But at the end of the day they are mine and you can have them when you pry them out of my cold dead hands (or drive by after the wife has dumped them).

I usually go to Hawaii once a year and there's this store called Jelly's. One is in Aiea and the other in Honolulu. It's a totally old school comic store. It takes me back to the 70's. Their prices on SA and BA books are dirt cheap. Most start @ $2 and their usually in very fine or better condition. I talked to the owner and he says he underprices them because he wants to move them out quickly. They have current books too but I don't even bother with those. I always get a good deal there.

I think it's a disgrace that DC has frozen Wally out of the new Universe. DC seems obsessed by the idea that the market could only support one Flash comic at a time.

I loved going to Jelly's as a kid. Haven't been in a long while, though. Hawaii is where all my old comics are, which is why it doesn't make much sense to move it anywhere because of shipping costs. I have no idea how you guys who still collect a lot of comics keep all this stuff around.

I don't think it's a matter of one Flash comic at a time, it's that to "reboot" the universe and make it so that the heroes have only been active for a few years, they had to get rid of a lot of the younger heroes. Look at all the contradictions around the Robins. So Donna Troy, Wally, Cassandra Cain, Stephanie Brown, etc. all gone, mainly because there are other iterations of Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, etc. Only reason Kyle is around is because of the popularity of GL (have they explained why there are so many Earth GLs if Jordan hasn't been around all that long?)

Originally, pre new 52 they had to phase out Wally so that Barry could be the focus, but at least he was still around.

I remember checking the price guide section in Wizard each month, but it was never to see if I owned anything "valuable". All I cared about was getting a sense for how the back issue pricing at my LCS stacked up against the reported national trending prices. Just wanted to feel reassured that I wasn't being gouged to fill in gaps, you know?

I'm surprised that so little attention was paid in the OP's collection of reports to the impact of trade paperback collected editions. Back in my day, only really hot-selling arcs were collected, and some mini-series. Now, every half-dozen issues in a book are collected within a few months of the last of the batch. It's reader-friendly and convenient, but that's by far the real reason why no one needs to pay much for back issues. Most of the readers I ever knew bought back issues to fill in gaps in our libraries so that we could read them. I was rarely excited to learn that something I owned was actually in demand, but I was often annoyed to find out that something I still didn't have, was.

The last time I thought comics were worth collecting for cash, Todd McFarlane was still drawing Spawn. I think I have the first 50 issues of Spawn, with #1 signed by McFarlane. They're still sitting in my parents' house. The only single issues I've been interested in collecting since then have been Sandman, and that's because of my own personal connection to that series. I don't want to sell them.

Do kids even read comics? When I was buying comics in the 1990s, I never saw any kids in the stores.

I've heard some number like mid-30s is the average comic book customer these days. Most kids raised on videogames view comics as a slow medium with no chance of interactivity.

Yeah. I'm 34. I first started reading comics in 1987. I rarely see anyone younger than myself at my comic shop. My generation is probably going to be the last generation of comic book readers. I feel that the industry is going to die when my generation gets old and dies simply because there aren't enough young readers to support the industry.

Regarding video games, Nintendo was of course popular in the 80s and early 90s, but it was the Playstation in the late 90s that really escalated video games into the mainstream. I played a lot of NES and SNES when I was a kid, but I loved reading too. It seems like the "Playstation generation" is different though. They just want the games but no reading.

Of course it isn't just video games going mainstream that has killed the comic industry. Its also Diamond's monopoly on distribution. Comics aren't available on spinner racks at grocery stores and such anymore where kids can easily find them. Comics need to be more readily available if the industry really wants to get kids to read.

Also the price tag is a huge deterrent. $4 for one comic is just ridiculous. The price tag has more than quadrupled in the last 25 years. When I was a kid, I had a $10 weekly allowance. I could buy about a dozen comics with that. The same $10 allowance today will get you two comics (maybe three if they are all $3 instead of $4).