Comic Book Collecting, Oh what an Enjoyable Past Time it is!Written by Dave Gieber
Have you ever read a comic book before? I imagine just about everyone, at some time in their life, has read at least one comic book. But do your interests and enjoyment level go beyond that? You may have said to yourself, at sometime or another, I would like to start a comic book collection some day. Heck, you may even have several comic books lying around that you have just never organized.What do I do to start a comic book collection and what all do I need? Well, as I am sure you realize, you need to start with a passion. You have a passion, you say, but you don’t want to be labeled a “comic book geek” and remain alone in your enjoyment. Well, my suggestion to you is “Don’t Sweat Small Stuff” and believe me, you are not alone. You would be amazed at multitudes of individuals who have a passion for comic books. And there are a plethora of related sites on Web. I couldn’t get enough of these colorful action-packed little devils when I was young. But like any supposedly responsible individual, I lay my passion aside when I got older and when to college and got a good job. Well in last several months, I have rekindled that childhood passion and have spent a good share of my time researching and creating my own comic book website. And what a rush it has been reintroducing myself to myself. I am finding quite an avid interest in all new comic book hero movies Hollywood is cranking out. I have even started my own comic book hero DVD collection. And this is big business, so I know there are throngs of people out there with my same interests and I hope to connect with many of them through my website. I ran into a major thrill other day glancing through want ads of my local newspaper. Lo and behold, someone was selling a comic book collection. A quick call and a meeting in shopping mall parking lot and I was proud owner of 189 comic books kept in beautiful condition. And get this; it cost me $50.00 for whole collection. I have as yet to determine actual worth of collection, but it has got to be substantially more than what I paid for it. As time goes on, I will be organizing all of them in a spreadsheet and using my trusty copy of Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide to determine my new collection’s total worth. As I do that, I will be reporting results on my website.
| | Comic Book Supplies, Necessities of the Serious CollectorWritten by Dave Gieber
If you want to keep your comic book collection in tiptop shape, comic book supplies will become part of your collecting life. As soon as a magazine is printed there are natural environmental forces going to work to try and destroy ink and paper. You have put in a lot of time, effort and enjoyment in acquiring all your comics. You don’t want them to turn back to dust and elements from which they came do you?Elements such as humidity, temperature, pollutants, human skin oils and even chemicals of printed materials themselves, will start to deteriorate and discolor your comic books from day one. Tools that have been developed over years to help us combat these natural forces are de-acidification paper, polymer type storage bags, stiff backing material, storage boxes and desiccants (dehumidification materials). Not only will these comic book supplies protect your comics for your own enjoyment, they will add to reinforce future value of each comic book. Most all of these supplies can typically be located down at your local comic book shop. But as I have discovered lately, there can be a world of difference in preservation abilities depending on what materials are used in manufacture of comic book supplies. Quite typically what you may find downtown will be of sufficient protective quality to protect your comics for quite a while. Although, polybags, to put your comics into, are quite common and fairly cheap, Mylar bags are definitely way to go. They will protect for 100 years (that may be a little overboard) as opposed to 2 or 3 years for poly. There has been a lot of elaborate science, particularly chemistry, which has gone into preservation material manufacturing last several years. MicroChamber material has been developed that will increase preservation from de-acidification and environmental breakdown for a vastly superior time period as opposed to typical materials available today. Beware though, comic book supplies manufactured with this new material can become quite costly. But if you have some serious collector’s items, which you feel are worth a significant amount of cash, isn’t investment worth it? It is also no secret that CGC uses these materials in every comic book they grade. I have created a page at my comic book site, which incorporates links to some rather technical scientific articles on preservation and using MicroChamber materials. You can read an in-depth discussion at www.comic-book-collection-made-easy.com/comic-book-supplies.html . Be forewarned though, You may need a moderate understanding of chemistry and physics to completely follow some of discussions. But articles will open your eyes to what is available in comic book industry for preservation supplies these days.
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