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Comic book collecting

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Comic book collecting is the result of an interest in antiquity, and nostalgia, as is all collecting by its very nature. The comic book was brought into the pop culture arena by, most notably, Superman and Batman. Since the introduction of Superman there has been a surge in comic characters, books and companies entering into the industry. The industry is dominated by top competitors Marvel Comics (producers of Spider-Man, X-Men, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, The Avengers, and the Hulk) and DC Comics (producers of Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, The Flash and The Sandman).

Comic book collecting is like all other collecting; while most collectors do so for personal interest in the enormous capabilities of the medium and the vast casts of characters, a few also collect exclusively for profit. Partly to cater for this market, but also in response to the collectors’ drive to protect and preserve their collections (such as for insurance purposes), price guides began to be published, notably Overstreet and The Comics Buyer's Guide, which further developed the sense of a comics value by assigning a grading to the comics condition and adjusting the price accordingly, as well as serving to track the credits of individual creators. Ancillary products have also developed, for example: storage bags, storage boxes, lamination services, (known as slabbing), and backing boards.

Numerous conventions and festivals are held around the world, the largest U.S. convention being the San Diego Comic Con, held annually in July or August and boasting an attendance of some 80,000 fans over a four day period.

In the late nineties, the boom in personal computers and the growth of the internet has also seen the development of databases, notably ComicBookDB.com, ComicBase and the web–based Grand Comic-Book Database, allowing further tracking of creators and their individual credits as well as special character appearances and storylines.

Classically, comic books tend to be like serialized television dramas or soap operas, in that they have a flowing and continual plotline with numerous dynamic characters. They sell mostly to a younger audience, from grade school students through adults; although the medium at one point catered primarily to children, in the last several decades the market has contracted to the point that the majority of readers are adults in their twenties. Indeed, many comics now contain complex plots involving intelligent and well-developed characters, a development that has spurred more academic scholarship in the field. A new issue of any given series is typically produced on a monthly basis, though popularity dictates that the most popular characters appear more frequently. Those who read comic books in their youth but who stopped at some point and did not keep these books often want them back in their adulthood, largely for nostalgia's sake, and are willing to pay a comic book specialty dealer.

The Speculator Bubble

The period of time from roughly 1985 through 1993 is seen as the point where the phenomenon known as comic book speculation reached its peak. This boom period began with the publication of revolutionary titles like The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen and the beginning of the "summer crossover epics" like Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars. Mainstream attention came to the industry in 1989-1991 with the success of the first two Batman movies and the much-hyped "Death of Superman". Once aware of this niche market, the mainstream press focused on what made it notable to the public: its potential for making money. Articles appeared in newspapers, magazines and television newsmagazines pointing out how rare, high-demand comics such as Action Comics #1 (1st Appearance Superman) or Incredible Hulk #181 (1st Appearance Wolverine) could be sold for hundreds or even thousands of times what they originally cost on the newsstands. (Example: At one point after this boom period ended, director Kevin Smith purchased a copy of Superman #1 for $1,000,000--a sum he later admitted was more than it was worth.)

Comic book publishers took advantage of this environment of speculation by using several techniques specifically designed to exploit the collectors' market. Such techniques included selling a comic with multiple different covers (knowing that many collectors would buy one of each version), selling certain issues in sealed polybags (knowing that collectors would buy two copies, one to keep preserved in the bag, and one to open and read), and publishing comics with "gimmicks" such as glow-in-the-dark, hologram-enhanced, or foil-embossed covers. These gimmicks were almost entirely cosmetic in nature, and almost never extended to the actual content of the comics. However, many speculators would buy multiple copies of these issues, anticipating that demand would allow them to sell them for a substantial profit at some nebulous point in the future.

This period also saw a corresponding expansion in price guide publications, most notably Wizard Magazine, which helped fuel the speculator boom with monthly columns such as the "Wizard Top 10" (highlighting the "hottest" back-issues of the month), "Market Watch" (which not only reported back-issue market trends, but also predicted future price trends), and "Comic Watch" (highlighting key "undervalued" back-issues).

Ironically, the speculators who made a profit or at least broke even on their comic book "investments" did so only by selling to other speculators. In truth, very few of the comics produced in the early 90's have retained their value in the current market; with hundreds of thousands (or, in several prominent cases, over ten million) copies produced of certain issues, the value of these comics has all but disappeared. "Hot" comics like X-Men #1 and Youngblood #1 can today be found selling for under a dollar apiece.

Veteran comic book fans pointed out an important fact about the high value of classic comic books that was largely overlooked by the speculators: original comic books of the Golden Age of Comic Books were genuinely rare. Most of the original comic books had not survived to the present era, having been thrown out in the trash or discarded as worthless children's waste by parents (stories of uncaring parents throwing out their kids' comic book collections are well known to the Baby Boom generation). As a result, a comic book of interest to fans or collectors from the 1940s through the 1960s, such as an original issue of Superman, Captain America, Challengers of the Unknown, or Vault of Horror, was often extremely difficult to find and thus highly prized by collectors, in a manner similar to coin collectors seeking copies of the 1955 double die penny. In many ways, with an enormous supply of high-grade copies, the "hot" comics of the speculator boom were the complete opposite.

Bust

The comic book speculator market reached a saturation point in the early 1990s and finally collapsed between 1993 and 1997. Two-thirds of all comic book specialty stores closed in this time period, and numerous publishers were driven out of business. Even industry giant Marvel Comics was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1997, although they were able to continue publishing. Valiant Comics--at one point the 3rd largest comic book publisher--did not survive, and ceased publication in 1997. The miniseries Deathmate—a crossover between Image Comics and Valiant Comics—is often considered to have been the final nail in the speculation market's coffin; although heavily hyped and highly anticipated when initially solicited, the series shipped so many months late that reader interest disappeared by the time the series finally materialized, leaving some retailers holding literally hundreds of unsellable copies of the various Deathmate crossovers.

Post-bubble speculation

Since 1997, comic book sales have fallen to a fraction of early-90's levels, with print runs of many popular titles down as much as 90% from their peaks. Currently, most of the hype generated around the major companies' comics involves changes to the characters, well-known creators writing or illustrating a title, and buzz surrounding an adaptation to another media such as film or television. The one remaining bastion for comic speculation remains in online auction sites such as eBay; but even there, comic books remain a buyer's market.

List of comics collections

Many private collections of comics exist, and they have also started to find their way onto the shelves of public libraries. Museums and universities with notable collections of comics include:

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