Looking through different Comic book websites, I often find a section for “Grade Comics”. This continues to interest me, especially in regards to pricing.
Now, I’m not as concerned with the prices of the comic books, as I am with the importance of the comic book. As I look at price guides, I see that the higher the price goes up, the more important the comic book is to the stories that matter. I also enjoy looking at it, as a collector, to see what everybody who knows what they are doing are buying. With this said, it is nice to see my collection price go up–so I watch these prices regularly. However, when I look at the webpages with Graded Comics, I still struggle to understand their importance.
Why would anyone want to package their comics in a package and bar code it? Now, understand that I’m not that ignorant that I don’t understand the money end of it and the people that trading IS their hobby–I really do. But, what is the point of COLLECTING comic books, if you aren’t going to READ them?
Sometimes we miss so much in life because we want to keep things because they are “Valuable”. When comic books are stored because they are valuable, when toys are not played with because they are “worth money”, haven’t we missed the point? We miss the enjoyment of entertaining ourselves with the comics because we want to one day make money on the books. Let’s keep this hobby in perspective.
Do we need to protect the books with plastic and backing boards? Yes, that’s how we preserve it for the next generation. Do we necessarily have to package them in hard plastic cases, so they are never seen again? No, it is a waste of a good comic book.
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This post is a fresh rewrite of a post titled “Graded Comics, What’s the Point?” from July 2006
Image from ComicConnect.com
Keith Andrews says
There is a sermon in the for sure!!
Rodney Olsen says
What a strange world.
Comics are more valuable when they’re never read. Toys are more valuable locked away in their packaging rather than giving joy to a child. Vintage wine is of most value when it stays inside the bottle never to be tasted, with collectors paying tens of thousand of dollars for something that may well have spoiled, but that doesn’t matter because the cork will never be removed.
Each of these things created for a purpose they’ll never reach and then counted valuable. I hope that I never live a life that ignores the reason I was created. There’s no value in that at all.