Comics UK

My wife wants to move to a bungalow so I will need to downsize my comic collection which fills many dozen boxes , so what to keep and what to sell or giveaway , I had a look in a number of boxes which had not seen the light of day for over 10 years this gave me an idea of what had to go, a lot of it is to with the paper it's printed on for British comics , I'm going to keep most of my pocket library's as I had a lot of rare issues, all my copy's of Alan cass reprint comics, most of my DC comics and all my collection of 50 s comics. I did find I had kept a lot of dross and very tatty comics these are going to recycle , all the 2000ad I shall give away to friends kids , the rest I will sell with a sad heart over the next 6 months or so , the one good thing coming out of all this I'm finding comics I never knew I had or even read

Bit difficult just sell the ones you won't regret getting rid of

Bethanys grandad wrote:My wife wants to move to a bungalow so I will need to downsize my comic collection which fills many dozen boxes

Are you assuming that all bungalows are small? They actually come in all shapes and sizes, even dormer bungalows, which have a couple of rooms upstairs. I'm writing this in my study, which is one of my two upstairs rooms in my dormer bungalow. Furthermore, if you are happy to agree to move to a bungalow of any type, couldn't your wife accept, as a quid pro quo, that room can be found there for your entire comic collection? The thought that it has to be one or the other I find really quite sad.

I left the country and sold virtually all my comics (bar a few, mainly great one-offs, Starlord and Ghost Rider). Since moving back to the UK, I've really enjoyed rebuilding a collection. Like you, mine was previously so much, I just couldn't read them. Stuck away in boxes under boxes in an impossible to get into room.

It's terrifying to do but I'd strongly recommend it.

Similarly, I'm really enjoying rebuilding my record collection. Only classics (in my view, so no Sgt Pepper or Brothers In Arms but definitely the Blue Aeroplanes and the Band of Holy Joy) for my wall. Spent ages converting them to mp3, have Spotify Premium for the tracks but vinyl 12" is just that more evocative, even though no record player.

I've been getting rid of my massive vinyl LP collection - still have a couple of hundred left. I've been taking them to the Music and Video exchange at Greenwich but for the past four weeks the lift in my block of flats is being refurbished and I have already pulled a muscle in my back dragging a bag of annuals up four floors so will wait until lift is running. Mostly 70s pop and rock in case you're wondering but a few original 60s albums and a nice collection of Spaghetti Western soundtracks and comedy albums. I'm only interested in hearing the music so quite happy with cds which are easier to transfer to mp3 players. (I have five).

In my experience the only comics one would genuinely miss are the ones with a nostalgic attachment to them, such as comics you bought as a child, or others that hold a special memory.

Every few years I have a good sort out and get rid of loads of comics from more recent decades. The sad fact is that as we get older we're less likely to have the time to re-read everything again (especially if we're still buying new comics and books) so they're just taking up space.

Lew Stringer wrote:In my experience the only comics one would genuinely miss are the ones with a nostalgic attachment to them, such as comics you bought as a child, or others that hold a special memory.

True that - anything I've had since before "collecting" was something I was aware of is worth keeping. If you've managed to hold onto something for so long, from childhood through teenage and adult years, what's the sense in getting rid of it after so long?

Meanwhile, anything I've acquired post-discovery of the Internet is fair game to go, if it should ever come to it.

If I ever move to Japan (less, but not un, likely now) I have no idea how the collection will be handled

A lot of the things I really want to keep are also super-rare, like AP's own file volumes of things such as Pluck and The Boys' Friend. Should they be left in the country they represent, or taken to another one to (probably) eventually end up in a museum in Kyoto?

Bethanys grandad wrote:My wife wants to move to a bungalow so I will need to downsize my comic collection which fills many dozen boxes , so what to keep and what to sell or giveaway

My advice? Sell or give away your wife. That's what I'd do if mine threatened to make me choose between her and my comics.
There are plenty more fish in the sea, but who wants waterlogged copies of Creepy Worlds?

The one thing I am cautious of is giving up everything to please a loved one only to find, a few years down the line, she has run off with someone else and you don't even have your comics in which to seek solace. Very few relationships are permanent nowadays, sadly.

Ah, come on Steve. Less of the realism, more of the hope. Only thing worth living for.

I could put trade in the wife but that would cost me about 250k, far far more than my comics are worth . I can always start again building up my collection as hunting for comics so often more fun than reading some of them. and I am only getting rid of the comics that have been stored for many years and many of the victors etc are showing age and I don't want to open the boxes again 10 years from now and find a pile of brittle brown paper.

To put the £250,000 in comic terms that a couple of pages in Action Comics #1

I was offered a copy of action comics no 1 for £1000 over 30 years ago but I got a mortgage on a house instead , it was only a good to fair copy of the comic so not a million pound investment

On a related (and even more depressing) topic I'm not too far off a time when I'll have to decide what to do with my own collection when I progress to that Great Comic Book in the Sky. I'd hate to think of them just being dumped, yet most of them are too low grade to be worth much.

Has anybody else given serious thought to this question?

- Phil R.