How to deal with old comics

[barometry]

Say, hypothetically, that this morning you discovered your old comics collection in a trunk in your parents' basement, not donated to a church yard sale like you'd thought. What do you do with it?

To be clear, this is not the world's most exciting collection of comics. It's a fairly random selection from the late 90s, including a random selection of Catwoman, a nearly complete run of Generation X through issue 50, brief runs of X-Men and Uncanny X-Men, and some other random stuff (including miscellaneous X-Files comics, of all things).

After spending way too much time with comics price lists, it appears (somewhat to my surprise) that my most valuable comics are Spider-Girl #1, some early issues of Ultimate X-Men, and (by considerable margin, to my enormous surprise) the first two issues of Sailor Moon released in NA by Mixx.

In a perfect world, a world with unlimited storage and archival space, I'd probably keep all this somewhere. But this is not that world: I know my mother would prefer not to keep these, and I'm pretty sure that the annoyance of shipping them to my apartment and then finding a place to put them outweighs whatever joy I'd get from leafing through a couple twice a year. After all, they've been in storage for the last 8 years (at least) without my particularly noticing.

At the same time, though, I don't want any of these to just end up in a recycling bin. But it's possible that that's all some of these comics are good for. Thus, I seek advice.

So any ideas? How can I give these away to people who would want them, or figure out which ones are actually worth selling? Do local comic shops buy back-issues at all? Do any of you want them, perhaps?

This is all very confusing.

Comments

[likeadeuce]

I don't have any tips on selling, but I know there are several organizations that collect donated comics to send to US military personnel overseas, if that's of interest to you. Schools might be looking for donations, too, either for libraries or to use in classrooms.

[likeadeuce]

PS, if its the Brubaker run of Catwoman, I'll buy it off you :)

[barometry]

Thanks for the suggestions! I'm not sure about donation up here in Canada -- and I'm further limited by the fact that I only have 4 days here in the city where my parents live until I'm headed back across the continent. But I might consider that if I don't find other ways of distributing these.

And sadly no, it's not the Brubaker run of Catwoman. That I own in trades, and will be keeping forever and ever because I loves it. Also, while I don't particularly like how trades look on a bookshelf, I like them more than ordinary comics. What I have (somewhat to my chagrin) are selections from the purple catsuit era of Catwoman. *sigh*

[likeadeuce]

Ahh, oops, I thought you were in Boston for some reason /o/ But yeah, if you just have a few days, it's probably not worth more than finding out if an LCS wants any of the runs, and otherwise donating them to a thrift store/school/library, or just trashing.

Oh, purple catsuit Selina, we hardly knew thee.

[barometry]

Re: me being in Boston, that is a reasonable assumption! I did actually live there until last summer, and still travel there frequently. But now I have returned to more northern climes.

[fairestcat]

I know some comics stores still buy back-issues, they may be able to tell you over the phone if the particular stuff you have is of any interest to them.

I'd be potentially interested in taking the Gen X off your hands though, and possibly some of the other Marvel stuff...

[barometry]

Thank you! I always reasoned that comic stores had to get their distant backissues from somewhere, though I couldn't remember ever seeing a transaction for anything other than a super rare and ancient issue.

But I would be more than happy to ship you what I have of Gen X and other X titles! For full disclosure, I have:

Gen X: #1-#51 (except for #13, #35-7, #39, #42) + Annuals 1997 and 1998 + #-1 + 1999 Holiday Special + 4 issues of Generation Next (Age of Apocalypse).

Uncanny X-Men: #347-348, #351, #353, #357-366, #368

X-Men: #36-37 (Gen X origin: Phalanx Covenant), #46-47 (X-Babies!), #66, #68, #70, #74-81, #84-86

I also have a random issue of X-Men Unlimited (#20), and the final two issues of a four part Iceman miniseries from 2002. (I think I'm going to hang on to the above mentioned Spider-Girl #1 and Ultimate X-men for now, just because that's only about 8 issues and I'm sort of interested to see if any of them ever crack single digits in value.)

If you're interested, I'd be happy to ship any of this you want from Vancouver, if you could chip in on the cost of shipping (I fear it would be expensive). Alternatively, I could probably get them back to Toronto relatively easily with my luggage, and ship it or otherwise arrange for transport onwards from there. Let me know?