Buying Comic Books

Buying comic books has drastically changed during the course of time. During the 1930's when comic books were first released they could be bought at the drugstore for 10 cents a piece. Comic book stands transformed from spinning racks in drugstores to their own shelves in bookstores and newsstands.

Nowadays, you have to go to specialty stores, comic book stores or simply get a subscription from comic book publishers and have them arrive in your mail. With the establishment of online markets on the internet you could buy old and rare comic books. Therefore there is actually no difficulty in finding and buying a comic book title that you want.

Where do Serious Collectors buy their comic books?

Serious comic book collectors look at the trustworthiness of a dealer first before buying comic books from them. These collectors either buy them from trusted local dealers or on the internet, though there are certain pitfalls in buying online. Buying something from a person that cannot be seen is susceptible to fraud.

Therefore a few precautions should be made to ensure that you are not taken advantage of. The best way in order to avoid these kinds of problems is to establish a good relationship with your dealer, in this way you are ensured that your dealer wouldn't cheat you and sell their products at a reasonable price. It is important to remember that when you take comic books as a hobby, you have to educate yourself on the potential pitfalls before you end up losing money.

Different Types of Comic Book Buyers

When you engage yourself in comic book collection (which is the next step when you start to buy comic books) you can either choose to become an investor or plainly a collector. First what is the difference between an investor and a plain collector?

An investor, from the root word itself is a comic book buyer that buys these comic books to profit on them later on. Usually these investors keep their comic books intact. Meaning when they buy these comic books most of the time they don't open them.

This is to ensure that there is no chance for damage to come in contact with these comic books. And usually comic books are upraised better whenever they are not opened or used. These investors wait until the prices of the comic books they buy will skyrocket depending on the rarity of the said comic book. One important distinguishing factor of these comic book buyers is that they buy comic books to earn profit.

A collector is a collector, meaning they collect these comic books for their own pleasure. Most comic book collectors start at an early age when they go to local stores to buy an individual comic book. These people are usually fuelled to buy a certain comic book because they simply want to read them. Gaining profit from their own collection is just a second option for them, though I believe that they will never sell their own collection.

Buying comic book collections over individual comic books

Buying a comic book collection is a lot better compared to buying comic books individually. Why is this so? Whenever you buy comic books at whole sale, prices are usually discounted, which is good for both the investor and the collector. When investors buy on a wholesale basis, they could earn more revenues. Collectors however are freed from the hassle of chasing a lot of comic book issues.

Buying comic books individually costs more than buying it in wholesale, usually, investors and collectors buy them individually because they are either rare finds, or these kinds of comic books are still under development. Meaning, the story has not been completed yet. Honestly it boils down to one thing. There is nothing to lose whenever you buy them individually or by the whole collection, both terms have their own pros and cons, but usually budget is the most important thing to consider.

What comic books do I need to purchase?

Whether you're buying comic books for collection purposes only or strictly for investment, there are a variety of ways in which you could go about it. Usually if you are strictly a collector, then you could just buy any comic book title that you want, as long as you are interested to it.

If you're an investor however, you must be good in envisioning things. You must know that when you invest in something there is no possibility that its appraisal would be better for the next few years. Therefore you should be very careful on what comic book titles to invest in.