Or my manifesto for 2019. Or better yet, what I learned from half of 2018 when I picked up my old hobby, comic book collecting.
Comic books are a tad of an addiction for me. Going through my purchases made in 2018 made me grimace a bit this past weekend. There were multiple copies of Mattina’s Aquaman movie cover, which I guess I made multiple purchases of. There were also books like Venom First Host and Champions that I honestly didn’t even remember reading. And sadly, these things cost money. So I’ve been thinking this past weekend: what do I need to do to tidy up my spending AND continue to collect the work and art I love so very much. With that said, here is my 2019 Manifesto!
I. Remember the Primary Point of the Collection!
I got back into this hobby for our 14 month little girl. My initial goal was to get the Middleton Batgirl collection for her so that when gets older she could have something to remember her dear old dad by. My wife and I adopted when I was 41, so let’s be honest; I likely won’t be around when she gets to my current age. So my thought was to think of something unique that she could have for the rest of her life…a gift from me to her that she’d hopefully cherish.
With that said, remember my daughter before making a purchase. That means, “don’t pick up Domino 8, Mattina’s Suicide Squads, or even a J Scott Campbell Venom variant that features the X-Men on it (not Venom).” Simply because a few YouTube channels mention that these books are going to be “super hot,” don’t do it. Stop it already, please. Focus!
II : Don’t Chase Books!
You know the feeling, don’t you? That superhot Edgar Allen Poes Snifter of Terror #1 that sold out immediately online that you run to eBay for and spend x 2 it’s cover price. Or that Blood Realm 1 (which is a great series by the way) that is sold out because of television/film rumours, only to see me run to a secondary market to buy it for 10x it’s cover price, only to later see I could have gotten it on Midtown for $1.25 used. Don’t chase books, please. Keep it to cover prices for current books.
III : Don’t Purchase Incentive Variants
The art on some of these covers are beautiful. I love my Spider Gwen animation variant, and even the Adam Hughes’ Captain Marvel variant I managed to grab on eBay. Yet for everyone one of these purchases, I’m giving up dollars that could be saved to get more Batgirl keys and covers for my daughter. Plus, these variants seem to crash after some time, so if I really want to get that 1:50 Batman Who Laughs #1 Variant, put it on an eBay saved search and wait. Like the Hughes' Detective above. Patience, patience, patience…so please, no more incentive variants. And speaking of eBay…
IV: Using eBay and CovrPrice.com to Buy Books of Interest to Me
I broke down and picked up a subscription to CovrPrice.com out of curiosity. So far, I have to say I am enjoying the service. Not only can I add books that I own to my own database, but there is some type of algorithm picking up actual sales dollars and volumes for the books that I own, giving me a sense of what books that I own are actually selling for increased prices. Maybe it’s the accountant in me, but I love this site.
Aside from creating a personal database of books that tracks value, CovrPrice allows you to search on any book and look at actual sales histories. Say I want 1973’s Swamp Thing 7. This is the first encounter between two of my all time favorite characters of modern mythology: Batman and Swamp Thing. I can key that in and look at actual raw comic sales data to get a sense of what the current asking price is. I can see that raw copies are averaging $19.50/book, so I then figure “let’s try to get it for 50% of its mean selling price, and go to town on eBay.
This has worked well for Swamp Thing 7, Adam Hughes’ Batgirl run, and even my * Teen Titans 12 *. It hasn’t worked out yet for Middleton’s Batgirl 23, Batman 666, or even some Spider-Man titles I’m attempting to get. Patience, again, and don’t become impulsive.
Granted, the site is ambiguous on what sales data it’s using, but it seems to be a good guide for assessing price. I’ll use it for a bit and see how evolves over the coming months.
V : Focus on Books that Matter to Me (and Hopefully My Daughter)
That means, to me, buying various Batgirls, Batwomans, Batman and other Batman mythos books of interest. Oh, and Swamp Things too; and some Spider Mans. And now that I’ve been reading a Super Friends : Girl Power flip book with a small pop up window of Harley Quinn quoting “Ha ha ha. Harley Quinn thinks this is one big joke”, only to see my daughter mimic the “ha ha ha” when she sees Harley Quinn in her Batgirl picture book, I might have to focus more on her character and key issues. And don’t worry; our little girl is being exposed to more than just comic book ideas. She likes centaurs, unicorns, fairies, trucks, construction equipment, fire trucks, dogs, quantum physics, and of course llama llamas. Yet it’s still fun to pull out that Wonder Woman book that she loved to look at when she was only a few months old.
VI : Track the Midtown 24 Metric to Find Books at Cover Price Value
Here is an idea: love them or hate them, Midtown seems to be the premiere/largest book store online. Every Wednesday around 12 pm Central Standard, the upcoming week’s books are listed on their site for purchase. That means this week, on 2/6/2019, Midtown will allow you to preorder books released on 2/13/2019.
Yet what I’ve noticed lately is to pay attention to books that sell out within 24 hours. So my goal starting with my weekly post is to start tracking a Midtown 24 Metric. This will:
- List books that sold out within 24 hours on Midtown
- List these books’s cover price
- List these book’s current sales prices per eBay transactions
- Calculate the differential in selling price versus cover price
The idea here is to see if there is any predictive, short term/long term value to the books that sell out immediately on Midtown. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m accountant, so I find this spreadsheet exercise (sadly) sort of exciting. I have a small data list from January 1st on, but will start tracking this better going forward. As I said, this is some real serious spreadsheet ecstasy.
VII : Collect and Enjoy Books That I Love
Also along the lines of being an accountant full time, one finds work life miserable. There isn’t a whole lot of need for creativity for an accountant (unless one goes down that very dark path), and an accountant’s existence could possibly be considered a “life / soul sucking life style.” Add to that other people who have life/soul sucking existences to your daily routine, +40 hours a week, and well…I guess you get the picture.
One of the reasons I’ve previously mentioned is that reading these books is a means for me to try to get that left side of the brain back into motion. Books that I’ve been reading since hopping back into this hobby that have got my brain thinking again have included Morrison’s Lantern, Cates’ Venom, The Immortal Hulk, the current Justice League Dark run, and even Tom King’s Batman to some extent. And there are even more of course, but I need to be realistic here. Buy books that I enjoy actually reading.
For example, for all the criticism “Goddess Mode* gets online, the books are actually pretty heavy with Gnostic philosophy, and the story carries with it some very old, ancient ideas on the true nature of our reality. I know I should be reading my copy of Carl Jung’s Misterum Coniunctionis, but sometimes I don’t want to get into something so heavy at 9:30 pm at night after dealing with a) accounting work, b) accounting people (including a sociopath boss), c) dinner at home, and d) getting our daughter ready for bed. So Al Ewing’s Immortal Hulk traversing the plane of Hell to meet the One-Below-All? Yes please! Not all of us have the time to be as enlightened as someone like Bill Maher, I guess.
So there it is…a couple of thoughts from this past weekend. Thanks as always for reading…I’ll have my weekly post finished up tomorrow night, and then hope to do a Top 11 Cover Art Summary for January once my (spoiler alert) Shirahama Wonder Woman arrives. My goal is to do that once a month going forward in order to share some beautiful pieces of art reflecting archetypes of modern mythology with the blockchain world. Plus, I’m hoping that this stuff will still be on the blockchain once my daughter gets to my age, and she can read her old dad’s thoughts and images as she gets older. That should be fun and possibly ver scary.