Just some random back issue thoughts from yesterday.
- While looking something else up in the Overstreet Price Guide, I spotted that Hex #1 was up to $8.00 in near mint condition. Eight bucks. How the heck did that happen? Is this another case of everyone’s copies going straight to the quarter boxes, and therefore are now hard to find in nice condition (like I theorized about Shazam #1)?
- On a related note, how many comic shops out there still have quarter boxes? When we still had them, we just dumped the absolute unsellable junk, unbagged, in there and hoped for the best. We did move some stuff, but occasionally selling books at a quarter each didn’t really justify the retail space the boxes were taking up. For a while we had 50-cent boxes, and currently we have dollar boxes (or 13 for ten bucks…woo hoo!) which are working very well for us, and more easily support the space in our store that these boxes occupy. Plus, the material in the dollar boxes is actually pretty good (we even had some reader copies of ’60s Marvels in there), so we have no problem moving them.
The only problem with bargain boxes is thinking about all the things we sold for cheap in the past that we wish we had now. You know how many DC 100 pagers we sold for 50 cents a pop? Those things used to be common as dirt. I wonder what future high-priced collectibles are currently living in our dollar boxes?
- Discovered while restocking: we actually sold some West Coast Avengers, somehow. Well, I know we sold this issue, which introduced the Great Lakes Avengers (gee, wonder why that sold), but it turned out we actually had sold quite a few other issues of this series as well. Go figure.
- Someone’s also been buying the Evolutionary War crossover annuals…I didn’t read this when it came out, and I don’t think I’ve even looked inside a single installment of this adventure. I looked inside a couple of the annuals I was restocking yesterday…hoo boy, I didn’t really miss anything, did I? It looked like this series just plain summed up the generic-ness of late ’80s Marvel.
- We’ve also been selling Green Lantern: Emerald Dawn back issues lately, surely inspired by the current Green Lantern: Rebirth series. The first issue of this series has one of my favorite covers…that purple is really eye-catching.
- We also sold some copies of Arana #1 as back issues…none yet to the apparent young Hispanic female audience that Marvel supposedly was hoping for. (That particular demographic is more interested in manga and the “goth” comics, at least at our shop.)
- Other consistent back issue sellers: Avengers #196 (1st appearance of Taskmaster…I think we’re finally down to our last copy), New Mutants #98 (1st Dead Pool…Deadpool…Dead-pool…I don’t feel like looking up the proper spelling), and the current Adam Strange mini-series.
Also, before I forget…thanks to Commenter Bob for pointing out this page…Good Lord, that’s absolutely terrifying. (Actually, Bob, I’d completely forgotten about the Super Jrs. — I don’t think I’ve even ever seen a copy of that digest. And now I must have it.)
