After eight years of having them in storage, I recently got nine long boxes and two egg crates worth of comic books back into my possession. Now, it’s time to dive in and see what’s in there!
With a full-time job and a three-month old baby in the house, finding time to go through boxes of comics to catalog them has been a bit of a challenge, but I finally made it through my second box.
Since it’s been so long, if you need a refresher on what I’m doing and the service I’m using to get it all done, be sure to check out the first part, by clicking here.
This second box was a hodgepodge, with books spanning a lot of years. A good number of interesting finds came up, too, which is exciting!
Deep Diving at Consignment
A little more than 10 years ago, I was at a used furniture and antiquities shop in Dryden, NY, looking for items to decorate my apartment. As I was looking around with my then-girlfriend, I noticed a series of longboxes and, being me, I sat down in front of them to see what was available. According to the sign on the front of the boxes, each comic was on sale for $2.
What I found amazes me to this day.
Somewhere around box 3 or 4, I found DC Comics’ Crisis on Infinite Earths 1. Wide-eyed, I pulled it out and the second issue was behind it. And the third. And the fourth. As it turns out, almost the full run of the series was there, with the exception being issue 7 – The Death of Supergirl. I managed to pay just $22 for 11 out of the 12 issues of one of the most important comics maxi series ever.
I eventually did find issue 7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths at a comics convention – paying $15 instead of the $2 I shelled out for each of the other books. But still, $37 for the complete run of Crisis is a pretty good deal, right? Especially considering I paid $100 for the first hardcover collection from 1999 – which had a production error, for crying out loud!
According to Comic Book Realm, the 12 issues of Crisis combine for an estimated $188, with issue 7 being worth $28 and issue 8 – the Death of Barry Allen – clocking in at $25. Pretty good haul.
Another comic I found at the same consignment shop – and paid $2 for – was GI Joe: A Real American Hero issue 21 – the Snake Eyes-focused silent issue of the 1980s Marvel Comics series based on the cartoon. It’s a second printing, but even the second printing seems to be worth something, as it clocks in around $34 on Comic Book Realm.
What a great value for having paid just $24 on. It’s a shame I didn’t end up buying any furniture at that store, but at least he got something out of me.
More Bat Value
You never know what’s going to become popular and what’s going to be worth something somewhere down the line. When I clicked on Batman No. 635 to add it to my collection, I was shocked to see what it was now worth, 12 years after I bought it new.
The issue, which features the official return of the Red Hood – who would eventually (not in this issue) be revealed as second Robin Jason Todd, brought back to life by the punches thrown by Superboy Prime in Infinite Crisis – was listed on the website as being worth $80. $80! I am shocked that anyone thinks that the second Robin coming back from the dead is worth that much, let alone in an issue written by former Real World cast member Judd Winnick! I do really love the cover, by Matt Wagner. I wonder if they ever turned that into a poster. And the interior art by some of my favorites – Doug Mahnke and Dustin Nguyen – is also first rate.
Another Bat-surprise in this second box was the first issue of the original Batman Beyond miniseries. The issue, from 1999, was tied to the animated series that focused on Terry McGuinness, as he learned to be Batman from an elderly Bruce Wayne. The issue comes in priced at $25, while the rest of the series barely breaks the $5 mark.
Not the JLA Jr.
One of my favorite books of the late 1990s and early 2000s was Peter David’s Young Justice series, which started as a book featuring Robin III (Tim Drake), Superboy and Impulse (Bart Allen) and slowly started to introduce other young heroes. DC Comics chose to move away from the Teen Titans moniker for a few years and seemingly gave David (or PAD, as he became known to his fans) a lot of freedom in setting the personalities of the young heroes, despite the boys each having their own books.
The late-1990s Young Justice has very little, if anything, to do with the TV series that will get its third season on DC’s new streaming service next year, outside of stealing the name of the book for its title.
PAD’s time with the characters did much more to define the characters of Superboy and Impulse, in my own opinion, than their regular monthly books did. I collected every issue of Young Justice, and I managed to find 28 issues of the book in this box – along with 16 issues in the last box, so there are still some floating around out there.
None of these issues have gained anything in monetary value, but they certainly have a good amount of sentimental value to me. DC Comics just recently released a collected edition of the first few issues of Young Justice, with hopefully more on the horizon.
Missing
There were a few comics in this box that I wasn’t able to match with a value on Comic Book Realm, though the majority of those were Spanish-language reprints of both DC and Marvel comics that I got from relatives in Mexico.
The one American comic that didn’t seem to have a listing on the service was from Momo Taro Comics, published by Big Umbrella – Attack of the Super Monsters featuring Monster Monolith and Fusion Man No. 1 from 2003. According to the book, it was written and drawn by Ted Seko. I legitimately have no idea where I picked this up.
The Collection
I’m now done with the second of 11 boxes that were brought up from my parents’ house, and the profit margin of this box was definitely better than the last, thanks to some of the big issues described above. Totals for both boxes are in parenthesis.
Total Issues: 428 (812)
Paid: $1,216.56 ($2,403.15)
Current Value: $1,763.38 ($3,070.60)
Profit: $546.82 ($667.45)
Value Per Issue: $4.12 ($3.78)