Comic Books

As most people who read this blog know, I collect comic books. While I read G. I. Joe and a bit of Transformers in my childhood, I really got into the scene while I was in undergrad at Missouri State. I blame my Star Wars fandom, because I was knee deep in that scene when Dark Horse released their Dark Empire series, and I couldn't exactly ignore an entire new way of experience the Star Wars universe. That then led to innocent little experiments with other series that looked interesting, like Shadow Empires: Faith Conquers, and Tempus Fugitive, and... it just snowballed from there.

With the looming demise of Geocities, I wanted to find a new place to do comic book stuff online. I know I mentioned this already in a blog post, because an ex-coworker of mine found a link to my blog from my LinkedIn profile, and then wrote me an email to let me know about a website that a friend of his runs, Comic Book Realm. it is a pretty interesting place. You can discuss comic books, and rate comic books, and even better, you can log your entire collection and get pricing estimates. Being the obsessive-compulsive nerd that I am, I couldn't resist that temptation, and I recently did exactly that. And, sure enough, my collection breaks the $10,000 barrier in estimated value (when I include the books I am interested in selling). I gotta upgrade my insurance on those comics (yes, I specifically include my collection in my condo insurance. Why would I not?) There were some strange surprises in that process, though. I have a couple old Whitman comics like Scrooge McDuck and Looney Tunes. Just random issues mind, and they are worth about $15 a pop. Those old Radio Shack Tandy computer comics? $16 a pop. Even that old Robotix one-shot that I was sure nobody would care about was worth $7.

But the big surprise was a G. I. Joe comic, which ties back into my days at Missouri State. Sometime in the mid '90s Marvel cancelled the long-running G. I. Joe series they had published non-stop since 1981. Even though I hadn't picked up a copy in years, I figured I should get the last issue, dropping a good $1.50 to do so at that oddball comic and gaming store just a few blocks south of the east side of campus. Know what it is worth these days? $80. I was floored. Talk about a good investment.