So You Want to Sell Your Comic Book Collection - Part 1

Like antiques, stamps, coins, etc., the older the better. That isn't always true - nothing really is - but the older the comic books are, the more likely they will have more value than recent, modern comic books - i.e. ones published in the last 20 years. If you are trying to sell your comic book collection, one of the people you most likely will try to sell it to are comic book dealers. Some comic book dealers deal in old books, some in modern comics and some in both. Most comic book dealers that sell old books deal in comic books published from 1935 to 1979. Most comic books printed in that age range vary in original price from 10 cents to 60 cents. 10 cent books were published from 1935 to 1962. 12 cent books were published from 1962 to 1969, 15 cent books from 1969 to 1970 (that didn't last long), etc. - you get the picture. From 1970 to 1979, comic books off the rack rose in price steadily from 20 cents to 60 cents. Note the Detective Comics #49 from 1941 at right - only a 10 cent price tag but in Near Mint condition, this book is now worth $4200 according to the latest Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide! We'll talk more about condition and the Overstreet guide a little later. By the way, if you don't want to purchase a copy of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide you can also get a free account at ComicPriceGuide.com and look up the values of books online for free! The values at ComicPriceGuide.com are fairly close to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide.

In each of these "price" eras, there were comic books called "Giants" or "Annuals" that cost more than the common comic book of that era. For example Giants and Annuals cost 25 cents in the 1960's when regular single issue comic books were going for 12 cents. Giants and Annuals were mostly collected reprints of earlier single issues and it allowed comic book publishers to get out more product without having to come up with new material. It worked because comics that were first published in the mid-50's could be reprinted in the mid-60's and you would have a new audience of adolescents and teens that had most likely never read the originals. But we digress....

Modern comic books cost anywhere from $1.00 (1990) to $2.99 to $3.99 for comics printed in the last decade or so. So a rule of thumb - a rule with significant exceptions, examples of which will be provided later - is that the older a book, the more valuable the book.

Key comic books are milestones in a comic book title or milestones in the whole culture of comics. Usually, a key comic book contains the first appearance of a character, the death of a character, the first comic book work of a particular artist, the first comic book written by a particular writer or a just a major event in the comic book world. You may have read about the Action Comics #1 that sold for $1,050,000.00 and the Detective Comics #27 that sold a week later for $1,075,000.00. The reasons is that a) they were the very first appearances of Superman and Batman respectively and b) they were is high grade - or very fine condition (there's that "condition" thing again - be patient, we will explain everything).

Key books toss the "the older is better" rule of thumb out the window. Here's an example: Action Comics #69 is a nice old book from 1944 and in Near Mint condition, the value of that book is $1750.00 - Not bad at all. But Amazing Fantasy #15 (up at the right) published in 1961 has a value of $65,000 in Near Mint condition! But the Action Comics #67 is 17 years OLDER than the Amazing Fantasy #15 so why the huge price descrepancy? Because Amazing Fantasy #15 is the very first appearance of The Amazing Spider-Man. It is one of the most "key" books in all of comic lore and is intensely sought out by collectors. If you have one of these babies in your collection, you need to really take your time in selling the collection. Action Comics #67 is again, a nice old book but there is nothing "key" about it.

I know, I know - you want to get to the part where you get all the info about how to sell your comic book collection - well, you ARE starting to get that information now as it is SO important to know what you have - and knowing what you have means knowing how to value a comic book collection. If you don't have a clue as to what you have, then you are starting out behind when it comes to negotiatiing a price for your collection. So if you want top dollar for your collection, you need to keep trudging on and waller in the weeds - i.e. the details.

If you have two identical books - say you have TWO Amazing Fantasy #15 copies (lucky stiff!). Well, they should both be worth the same, right? Not necessarily. The condition of the book(s) is critical to determing the value. Assessing the condition of a comic book is called grading a comic book. You can go purchase a copy of The Official Overstreet Comic Book Grading Guide and get a thorough education on grading comic books or you can Google and come up with a ton of links about grading comic books - here's one at Nostalgia Zone that is brief and gets to the point.

Basically, here is the 10 point scale for grading comics:

10.0 -- MINT
9.4 -- Near Mint
9.0 -- Very Fine / Near Mint
8.0 -- Very Fine
7.0 -- Fine / Very Fine
6.0 -- Fine
5.0 -- Very Good / Fine
4.0 -- Very Good
3.0 -- Good / Very Good
2.0 -- Good
1.8 -- Good Minus
1.5 -- Fair / Good
1.0 -- Fair
0.5 -- Poor

Obviously, the higher the grade, the higher the condition of the book. So let's say that one of our Amazing Fantasy #15's is Very Fine (8.0) and one of them is Very Good (4.0). If we go to our trusty Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and look up the values of the books, the Very Fine (8.0) copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 goes for $21,000.00 and the Very Good (4.0) copy of the book goes for $4800.00 - that is a huge price difference and the ONLY reason is the difference in the condition of the two books. A Very Fine (8.0) book might have a few very small stress lines on the spine and maybe a micro-tiny crease at the corner of the book while a Very Good (4.0) book might have numerous spine stress lines and large diagonal creases at the corners - might have some ink wear at the edges of the cover and the staples might show some discoloration.

You do not have to be a grading expert but you do have to have some awareness. A comic book dealer will ALWAYS try to downgrade the condition of your collection - I've yet to run into a comic book dealer that doesn't do that. A lot of comic book dealers will not point out that you have "key" books in your collection. Remember, a comic book dealer wants to get your collection for the LOWEST amount possible and well they should. A comic book dealer that overpays for collections on a regular basis won't be in the business long.

Oh by the way - the image of the X-Men #95 that is encapsulated in a plastic holder above? Well that is a book that is 3rd party graded much like coins, stamps and baseball cards are third party graded. The absolute #1 3rd party grader is CGC. Dealers and collectors send their books to CGC and they are evaluated and - for a fee of course - graded, encapsulated and shipped back to the owner. We won't get into that at all but if you do have CGC comic books in your collection, there is a site where you can see the value of CGC and that is GPAnalysis.com - they have a history of every CGC book that has been sold from a variety of venues such as eBay, Heritage Auctions, etc. and you can get a very good idea of what some of your CGC books are worth.

Usually - but not always - CGC books in high grade - 8.0 and above - will sell for more than a book in the same grade that is NOT CGC graded.

So now you know that condition is king - two of the same books but in different grades (i.e. condition) will sell for different prices - it is that simple.

We gave the examples of the Action Comics #1 and the Detective Comics #27 that sold for BIG dollars. There were two reasons given earlier that sort of infers a third and that is a Key book in high grade = HIGH MARKET DEMAND!

Now lets give an example of where there is NO market demand but first a little background. Back in the mid to late 1980's, baseball cards got very, very hot. People that knew absolutely NOTHING about baseball cards starting buying wax boxes and complete sets by the thousands. The idea was that these cards would be a huge hedge against inflation and couples would be able to put their kids through college with the "sure thing" appreciation that these cards would bring. Well......it didn't work out that way. The baseball cards in the late 1980's were vastly overprinted - WAY more than what the normal market demand would allow. As a result - with very, very few exceptions - sports cards printed in the late 1980's to today have very little value.

So, the baseball card speculators saw that older comics were going up in value and so they started buying the new comics coming out thinking the same thing - the values would go up and NOW the kid's college education would be paid for - YAY! Well, again - not so fast. This was the era of "HOT" books - hot artists, hot writers and everything was just hot, hot, hot! But it wasn't. Marvel produced a brand new X-Men series in 1991 and the first issue had five different cover variations. There were over 8 million copies of this new X-Men #1 printed - one of which is shown here. Trouble is, there are not 8 million X-Men comic book fans - at least not that many modern X-Men fans. Almost ALL books between 1990 and 1995 were vastly overprinted to account for all the speculators.

The speculators saw the bottom drop out due to no demand and moved on and the result was that the comic book industry imploded and almost died. It used to be that 300,000 copies was a nice healthy print run for a book - now it is more around 40,000 today. Books that were mega-hot back then such as Gen 13 #1 from the mini-series used to go for $30 to $40 each - now you are lucky if you can get $3.00 for one. Another example was the "Death Of Robin" where fans could call DC on a 900 number and vote to whether The Joker would kill Robin (the second one - named Jason Todd who was a bit of a smart alek) or let him live. Well, the "Death" voters won out and lo and behold, The Joker did poor Robin in.....and the value for those four books that made up that story arc went through the roof. Mothers were gladly shelling out $200 for a complete set for Junior when those books printed. Now? A dealer would be lucky to get $40.00 for a complete set.

I would estimate that easily 95% of the collections that I am offered come from books published between 1990 and 1995 - yes that is right: 95%!!!!!. I am not saying that books from that period are low quality (although a WHOLE bunch of them are), all I am saying is that there is ZERO demand for those books. I have been offered collections in which the comics were very neatly bagged and boarded and I politely told the owner that I would not take them even if he gave them to me because there just is no demand for the books.

Comic Book retailers got a little smarter after 1995 and only ordered enough books for their subscribers plus a few to put on the rack. Therefore, collections that consist of books printed from 1996 to 2000 DO have some value because of their lower print runs.

However, here is a rule of thumb that has next to NO exceptions: Any book printed in 1990 to present with a grade less than Very Fine (8.0) is ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS and that is about as pure and simple as I can get it.

Here is another rule of thumb that has a few exceptions: Any book printed prior to 1979 and is complete with no pages missing and cover intact has SOME value - might not be much but it WILL have some value.

We are getting close to finishing your "prerequisites" - only one more to go....

Here is another one of the those rules of thumb that have exceptions. Generally speaking, the larger the collection, the lower the price per book that a comic book dealer will be willing to pay. Now, if it is a collection of 1000 high grade books from the 1960's or earlier, comic book dealers will probably pay anywhere from 20% to 40% of graded guide price depending on whether or not there are any key books and what the condition of those key books are. If it is a collection of 200,000 modern books (usually, these big collections are comic book store closeouts/liguidations), you the owner of this massive collection can expect around 5 cents to 10 cents per book if that much. Large collections mean that the comic book dealer is going to have to spend a LOT of time and sweat equity processing these books, storing them and yes, selling them. They will not want their money tied up for a long period of time. PS - the photo at the above right is a collection of around 2900 to 3000 comics.

Usually, a comic book dealer will offer a price where he or she can get their money back within a three to six month period - that is their thinking and most likely that will come up in the negotiations. Don't worry, that's the dealer's pain, not yours. Whatever you do, DO NOT let a comic book dealer "cherry pick" your collection. The dealer will pick all of the "good stuff" that has value and leave you with a bunch of worthless paper that no dealer would want. If you are going to sell to the dealer, sell the WHOLE collection, not just little bits and pieces.

Again, size matters but not always. Whew, this exhausting - but necessary - education is just about over.

Part 1 of this two part look at selling your comic book collection was intended for those who have a comic book collection but don't know anything about comics. What it did not do - or even come close to - was provide a complete education on comic book collection valuation. That would take a 50 part series and still might come up short.

What this lens hopefully did was give you some awareness of how the worth of a comic book collection is determined and like my dear friend and business/life coach, Harvey Smith always says, "Once you become aware, you cannot become unaware". Sounds trite but think about it for a long, long time.

Part 2 of "So You Want To Sell Your Comic Book Collection" will examine the different venues in which you can sell your collection and HOW to do it to get the most money you can possibly get for your collection.