Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

I found my answer to this question yesterday. Saw a comic store from the side of the road and decided to pull over and wow. The store was decently sized and had a lot of older back issues, collectibles and would take a long time to go through the long boxes.

The problem was that the store smelled like smoke, nothing was labeled with prices, none of the long boxes were labeled, issues were tossed all over the place to the point that it was hard to figure out what was new and what was old. Action figures were coming undone from the cards they were on. I was in and out pretty quick, which was sad since this could have been a nice store.

Re: Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

There’s a store just like that in Hagerstown MD.

Re: Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

Worst?

I think I've been to one that only sold new issues, mostly from Marvel and DC, and they were already polybagged, so couldn't flip through them. There was no back issue bins and no TPBs. A very boring store.

Other than that, no matter how dingy the store may have looked, all the shops I've been to were fun. Usually the more run down looking ones have the biggest selection of back issues and collectibles to buy.

Re: Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

Probably the worst comic book store I've visited is one that mostly catered to card collectors instead of actual comic books. My lone visit to the store felt awkward, as I remember being the sole customer and the owner staring at me as I browsed the shelves. It was like he was surprised he had a customer.

They had virtually no back issues, and you had to navigate around boxes and boxes of baseball cards and sports figures.

Re: Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

Worst one was a local one, in a strip mall. It was maybe about 10’ wide and 40 or 50’ long. The problem with it, aside from a generally bad selection of titles (always seemed like everything was picked over; lots of b- and c-list new issues, peg-warming toys) was that this place, which was small and cramped anyway, was always packed with guys playing Magic and D&D.

Dozens of loud, obnoxious, socially-retarded and hygenically-challenged louts, in the middle of the store, standing around playing games on top of the back issue bins. It was next to impossible to navigate through the place. I have no idea how they managed to stay in business forseveral years.

Re: Worst comic book store you have ever been in
 

Aren't you describing the clientele of MOST comic book stores?! LOL.

I've never been a fan of brick & mortar LCS's. I've been a collector off & on since the '80's, but the hassle of having them hold my books every week (and sometimes missing some of the books), the hassle of having to go to the store every couple of weeks, etc. was all getting old.

So, I haven't stepped into one of these stores since 2014 (the year I stopped collecting floppies completely). These days, if I collect anything it's only Collected Editions (CE's), i.e. Trades or HC's.