Confessions of a Fanboy
I’ve spent the past few days cataloging the collection of comic books I accumulated in the early to mid-90s and I’ve been remembering what the market was like back then. I started reading comic books when I was 9 or 10 and got serious about collecting them when I was 11 or 12. Back then the collector’s market was heating up and the “value” of rare or special issues was skyrocketing. It didn’t take long for speculators to enter the market which drove prices up even more. Pretty soon the publishers realized that creating variant or special editions of individual issues would drive up demand. At the same time the market in general was growing and so publication runs grew. But of course, as with any product that doesn’t have much intrinsic value, the more widely available it is the less people are willing to pay for it. Less savvy collectors like my 14 year old self didn’t really understand this and were buying 3 or 4 copies of certain issues thinking they would be worth THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!
For me a big part of this was driven by talking to older folks in comic book stores and hearing stories of how they sold their old comics and were able to buy a house or put themselves through college. The greedy devil in me ignored the fact that they were talking about comics that were 20 or 30 years old, when fewer comics were being printed and even fewer were being collected and preserved in mint condition. I also didn’t understand that publishers made their money in the short term and had no incentive to keep publication runs small and limited. So I kept buying up those foil-embossed covers and variant covers and special poly-bagged issues with collectors card along with every other fanboy. The frenzy reached it’s height (or rock bottom depending on how you look at it) for me with the death of Superman. This event was massively publicized outside of the industry and drew in thousands of new readers, most of whom just wanted to make a quick buck on this collector’s item. I bought 4 copies. Of course, DC Comics had no intention of killing off one of their biggest money makers for good and within a few months the Man of Steel was resurrected. Between the massive number of available copies and the fact that he wasn’t dead anymore, this issue soon became worthless.
It wasn’t long after this that my interest in comics began to wane. I continued to buy them for a couple of years but my heart just wasn’t in it. Valuations started to drop and it soon became apparent that I would not be making my fortune off of Spider-man #1 (Gold Edition). Once the market started to shrink local comic book stores started to close and so it became harder for me to pick up new issues. I had also started reading so many different books that the hobby became too expensive and time consuming. I had entered high school at this point and my interests shifted towards teen angst and cute boys.
In the corner of my bedroom sit 13 boxes containing almost 1600 comic books. I cataloged them thoroughly with the intention of selling them for whatever meager amount of money I could get. Now that it’s time to actually contact local comic book stores and other potential buyers I find myself reluctant to do so. Although the colorful scraps of paper in those boxes are probably not worth very much, they represent a simpler time in my life that yes, contained some false hope, but also was filled with wonder and excitement.
For more on the comic book boom and bust of the 1990s, check out this article.
