When one says, yeah, I collect comic books, what is the general public response? Oh no, a slightly off the wall geek. Here is someone who has lost touch with reality. Or someone that is in his or her own little world. I think not.
When one says, yeah, I collect comic books, what is the general public response? Oh no,
a slightly off the wall geek. Here is someone who has lost touch with reality. Or someone
that is in his or her own little world. I think not. Yes, comic book collectors may
sometimes march to the beat of a different drummer, but who says we all have to be cut
from the same mold. Comic books are big business.
Back in the days of my youth (what, several millennia ago?), I loved reading comic
books. And so did a lot of my friends. Whenever we had an extra dime or sometimes a
quarter, we could run up to the local small town grocery and spend some very happy
times at the comic book rack.
We would even go out and find small odds jobs for pocket change, which was enough
then to purchase 2 or 3 good flights of adventure and fantasy. I can even remember
crawling under our house to retrieve a cat that had the misfortune of dying there. My Dad
couldn't stomach the smell and enticed my friend and I to accomplish the chore for ample
pocket change. We braved the spiders and other crawly creatures to retrieve and bury the
unfortunate cat. Not long after that, we were the proud owners of yet, several more
intriguing comic books. Even the local bully (who was really a pretty good guy) would
purchase our worn out or unwanted magazines for far more than they were worth, so we
could purchase new ones.
I didn't know much about collecting then. I just liked saving what I enjoyed. I had a large
cardboard box that I kept under my bed, filled with all my little treasures. I didn't realize
that I had the beginnings of what could have been something very lucrative. In later years
when I headed off to college, I dragged my large cardboard box with me. At one point in
time, I left most of my belongings in the charge of what I thought were trusted friends.
When I returned from my forest firefighting adventures, my box full of magazines were
no where to be found. And needless to say, were my trusted friends either. Others had
seen the value in what I had and wanted it for themselves. Oh well, live and learn. That
limited collection of comic books and other magazines would have been worth a small
fortune today.
Are there big bucks in the comic book genre? Just look at what Hollywood has been up to
for the last few decades. As far as I can tell, the really big blockbusters started back in
1978 with the release of Superman, The Movie. And since then there has been comic
book hero after comic book hero to hit the silver screen. And they all make tons of
money. The Hollywood moguls may or may not be "into" the genre, but the can smell
large profits. And these kinds of profits aren't harvested from a small out of touch with
reality niche. It take large numbers of individuals forking out 5 to 10 dollars a pop, to
accumulate the astronomical profits that Hollywood is seeing these days. Individuals who
may or may not want to admit their avid interest in comic book characters. I will stand up
and say, I enjoy watching these movies and have even started my own collection of
comic book character DVDs. Who knows, maybe some day my DVDs will become as
valuable as comic books. Probably not.
Although, not every individual's collection has magazines worth thousands of dollars,
there are a sizable amount of collections that can be worth hundreds of thousands or even
millions of dollars. These are not people that have lost touch with reality. A while back,
the actor, Nicholas Cage, put his comic book collection of about 400 magazines up for
auction. Word was that he might have realized a value into seven figures. That ain't
chicken feed.
It is not uncommon for single additions to be worth several hundred to several thousand
dollars. Some comic books can enter the realm of several hundred thousand dollars for
one magazine. Now the owners have to be some pretty rich economically savvy geeks.
Are these the types of small niche individuals who have lost touch with reality or don't
want to confess they like comic books? So the next time you hear someone profess, yeah
I collect comic books, you may want to look inside yourself and say, how do I release my
hidden passion and start collecting myself?
Dave Gieber, a former rocket engineer, has decided to take up residency on the Internet.
He is the owner and editor of several websites, one of which was built around one of his
childhood passions; http://www.comic-book-collection-made-easy.com . You can visit here to
keep up to date on the world of comic books and comic book collecting. Feel free to sign
up for my comic book ezine.
