Lamentations of a Comic Nerd

Yes, I used the "n" word.  It kinda applies here.  You'll have to ask me what differentiates a geek from a nerd some time.  I don't really feel like getting into it here.

Let me show you something.  This is a picture I took over the weekend.

I actually own a lot of these: Comic Books.  I started collecting...er, maybe a better word is amassing them since I was in high school.  Unfortunately, most of my accumulation looks like this.

Take a look at the upper left hand corner.  See that tag?  Because I live in the US Virgin Islands, magazines, comic books, and newspapers from the US mainland are marked up for sale in the territory.  Those price tags don't come off easy if at all.  If you know anything about collecting comic books, putting a sticker on the cover is a major no-no.  Roughly 70% of all the comics I own carry that tag.

It gets worse.  Notice the comic book is not shielded in any way.  I have a few books in neoprene covers but most of them are just sitting in the original brown paper bags I bought them in.  In short they've aged.

Here's where the lamentation comes in.  You ever hear those stories about kids who left their comic books where their evil, memory crushing parents can find them and they come back and find all their treasured memories scattered to the garbage heap.  And then you hear the stories about how some of those comic books were rare first appearances of now famous characters or by a budding artist who's now dominating the comic book scene.  Yeah, we've ALL heard those stories and that's why most of us have held on to our accumulations for so long.

Sadly though, I think those days are gone.  We took these stories to heart and ignored the laws of supply and demand.  The comic book industry has been booming for the last 10 years.  Books constantly leaping off the shelves.  Third printings, fifth printings.  That's the problem.  There's way too much supply.

I feel like that these days, unless you're rocking Action Comics #1 or Amazing Fantasy #15 you've got nothing.

Perhaps someday I'll run through the accumulation and put some of what I've got on eBay and see if they fetch me anything.  I was hoping to give it all to my kids someday, but I get the feeling all it'll be good for is a few laughs and barbeque fuel.