Check out the Overstreet comic book price guide, or online sources like Mile High comics.
The Bad News – comics from the 1980s don’t go for very much. I recently went through my sister-in-law’s collection, finding prices for comics in the conditions hers were in, and checked out the ones I had as well. Unfortunately, even significant comics that you’d think would be extremely valuable …simply aren’t.
First run of The Dark Knight Returns? The TRial of the Joker? Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel? The odd comic with the very first Rocketeer strip? Not worth all that much. Most general comics from the 1980s that aren’t significant are worth cover price or less.
I suspect your best deal would be to try to sell them as a bunch. Some dealers buy them by the linear foot. By all means, abstract the comics in the best condition with the most significance, or the ones you think are most valuable, take them in to be evaluated, and take care of the rest based upon that experience.
I wish I were in a position to make a bid! It sounds like a delightful trove of really fun stuff!
My real advice would be to make a spreadsheet listing, and take that around to various comics stores. Do your best to assess the condition. The definitions of Near Mint, Very Fine, and Fine are pretty restrictive. Once a comic book has been read twice, it usually drops to “Good” If they’ve been stored all together in a long box without individual plastic sleeves and stiffener boards, that’s almost inevitably going to drop them to “Fair.”
You will get more if you sell them all as one lot. If you break them up, and sell them individually, say on Ebay, you’re going to be investing a hell of a lot of time and labor, and many of the titles just won’t sell. You’ll end up with a smaller stack of rejects and losers, and you’ll never unload them.
Find the biggest comic book dealership in your state and show them the list.
It’s sort of like selling a car or motorcycle that doesn’t run - you can sell it whole for a little, or part it out for more money but a lot more work. My last batch, I did the former, using the semi-valuable books to motivate someone to cart away the entire pile.
That estimate of $4,000 for two boxes of Marvel & DC titles from the eighties sounds insanely optimistic to me. If you assume each box holds about 300 comics (which is average for the standard size), you’d be averaging $6.66 per book. Does that sound realistic to anyone here?
I’d estimate that two boxes of unsleeved generals from the 80s is a lot more likely to be under $1000 for the lot of them
If it were me, I’d take an afternoon and go through by title and see if there are any individuals or short-runs that are worth more, package those up prettily in sleeves with boards and take them in to the comic book store and see what you can get.
After the ‘good ones’ are sold off, then just see what you can get for a mixed box and a half of fairs. Maybe you’ll be lucky and get $500 or $750 out of them, but I doubt it.
Sorry. The 80s are not a decade that’s collected much now. If you can preserve them, sleeve them, and keep them in good condition for another 40 years, you might have better luck then.
I think you can figure out on your own which comics do and don’t have “hot” creators or characters associated with them. The ones that don’t are un-resellable at any price and should just be discarded or given to a kid. The others (Those Avengers books sound promising), you can probably sell them in blocks for about a third of the Overstreet price (Overstreet is good for telling what a dealer will charge you, not what you can actually sell it for). I think you know the difference between a collector’s item and crap.
My friend’s husband had a **massive **collection of comic book in mint condition {most still in the plastic wrap} which he kept assuring her were extremely valuable {first editions, popular 60&70s characters}. When he finally tried to sell them he got around $200. for the lot.
Depends. Those old Secret Wars might be okay now. Miller Daredevil, Avengers, Stern Spider-Man, X-Men of course…the old ones. But yeah, $4,000 seems insanely optimistic.
Bear in mind that a comic becomes valuable only when demand for that particular issue exceeds supply. This can happen either because the original print run was very low (Cerebus, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) or because they date from a long time ago and have survived decades of people valuing old comics at close to zero, and hence throwing most other copies of that particular issue away (1930s/1940s issues of Superman & Batman’s titles for example).
Neither of those conditions apply to Marvel and DC comics of the 1980s, which were produced in huge print runs and have been kept ever since by many of the people who bought them.
Also, you have the relatively new phenomenon of trade paperback collections working against you. Once upon a time, if I wanted a particular back issue of a comic book, my only recourse was to track down the original comic. If enough other people wanted it too, the comic shop’s owner could charge a premium price for it and still find a buyer.
When Watchmen and Dark Knight came along, the big two publishers realised they were throwing away profit which was going to the comic shops rather than to themselves, so they began publishing collections of their old material, arranged neatly into story arcs and offering a far more satisfying reading experience that those tatty old original issues. This worked retrospectively too, producing (for example) not only TPB collections of Miller’s Dark Knight material, but of all the Daredevil stuff he’d done at Marvel a few years earlier too.
Why would anyone (outside the small number of fanatical collectors) pay top dollar for old Secret Wars comics when they can buy a cheap collection of the same story instead? Why would they pay a premium price for old Frank Miller Daredevils, when Marvel’s kept the same stories permanently in print as collections? And given that, what sane dealer would pay more than a buck or two apiece for said issues when he knows he’s got little or no chance of selling them at a profit?
Sorry to rain on your parade and all, but that $4,000 just isn’t going to happen. Read this if you don’t believe me.
I agree. Which is why I said, not at all flippantly, you would be better off documenting the collection well, then donating them to Goodwill and taking a tax deduction. You’ll probably get a larger percentage of book value by doing that than by trying to sell them. IMHO.
I just picked up a mixed assortment of 1950s - 1980s comics - maybe 6 long boxes worth - for $400 cash. The earlier stuff may have some value - there are Superman and other iconic DC issues in there - but I know the rest is just so I have them.
I’m not entirely convinced TPB’s are to blame…I CAN see guys my age flooding the market with their collections being a problem.
I just think if TPB’s are actually affecting the market, then torrents must also be doing so.
Personally I’m going to tell my kids not to sell my collection of 12 or so longboxes, give them to THEIR kids when they have them and wait until they’re 100 years old.
Ironically, the last comics I sold were first printings of TMNT (issues 2-5, the Raphael one-off, their unsuccessful Fugitoid title’s only issue. Issue one was given to a friend’s son for his 11th birthday back in 1992 - he still has it). Long after I got out of comics I discovered I still had them - because they’re a bit larger than standard comics, I had them with some car magazines. On the one hand were the people insisting they were worth hundreds of bucks based on price guides, on the other were all the buyers low-balling my $150 asking price. In the end, it took six months on Craigslist, with the buyer driving from Ohio to close the deal.
The 1980’s ruined “Collectibles”. It was around mid decade when people started “investing” in things like baseball cards, comics, etc… and bought them all up with the hope of reselling later. Well Topps, Donruss, Marvel, DC all did what any smart business would do, they started cranking out massive amounts of product to meet the artificial demand of the folks who didn’t read the comics or watch baseball. This doomed the market as there has never been a shortage of collectibles from that time period, thereby dropping the value of most to less than purchase price.
I would donate them or give them to a kid you know who is into the heroes. You won’t get anywhere NEAR $1k. Or $500.