Buying modern comic books as an investment?

I'm pretty sure you've all heard of people telling you that modern comic books are not worth anything. They all say that if you want to invest in comic books, buy high grade Silver Age comics. And I'm pretty sure you have seen tons and tons of modern comic books in bargain bins at your local comic shop. Well I'm here to tell you, stop listening to those people.

You see there is a reason why comic stores dump tons of modern comic books into their bargain bins. It's not that they're not good, although I have to say some are horrible, but thats not the point. They dump those books in there because...

1. Those are the damaged comics that they can't sell

2. The comics are overstocks, they ordered too many and need to free up space

3. The book is horribly written and/ or drawn and thus are sitting in their store for too long

4. The owner don't know what they are doing

However, these are not reasons why you should think modern comics are worthless. I can't tell you how many times a comic book was selling for only a few bucks only to have it turn out to be a huge moneymaker.

A few examples would be Walking Dead #1, Chew #1 and even though comics like Morning Glories #1 are not worth as much, keep this in mind. When Morning Glories #1 first came out it was selling for $20 on ebay. If you had bought five copies for cover price you could have made a nice tidy profit of around $70. And at one point it went up to $50, if you had five copies... well you can do the math.

Another example would be Severed which was recently published by Image. When the book first came out it was selling for $10 on the bay. It has settled down now, but if you had bought several copies for cover price, a quick flip could have made you a quick profit as well. I have rummaged through bargain bins and found stacks of books selling from $5 to $10 on the internet. But don't take my word for it, look into some of the books for yourself.

And yeah sure you can argue that its not that easy to find a comic that will be worth. But as it is with everything in life, you have to work to find out which ones. If you go around blindly buying comics, thinking you're going to retire on them you're in for a rough ride. As is the same as it goes with life.

Buying old expensive comics, are they worth it?

So I've been a big time back issue buyer ever since I got back into comic book collecting. When I first got back in I decided to only focus on back issues. I bought tons of Silver, Bronze and Copper age comics, many of them for quite a bit too.

Whenever I looked at the comics the first thing I looked at was the corners. Are they sharp, dirty or frayed? And then the spine of the book. I would count the creases one, two, three is fine, four is too many. And finally the last thing I looked at was the price. I would ask myself "can I justify spending ten dollars on a comic" and most of the time the answer is yes. I would take it home change the bag and board so it would look nice and clean. Then I would stick it inside a box never to be touched again.

Now before you think I'm crazy let me explain. I'm a collector... so I'm only partially crazy, I mean comics were meant to be read right? But I started thinking, each time I opened that comic that is worth fifty dollars I take the chance of damaging it and decreasing the value. Weeks passed into months into a year and I kept doing this same thing over and over again. The other day I looked at my comic book collection and noticed that when it came to my back issues I have only read about ten percent of them. These are comics I have spent a good amount of money on, and here they were just sitting inside a white box looking pretty. Ok technically I can't see them but you know...

So from time to time I look on eBay to see how much my comics are selling for and noticed a very nice trend. The finished price seemed to be pretty strong. Comics I paid fifty dollars for are either selling at the same price or about twenty dollars higher. I have yet to sell a single book but I do get a warm fuzzy feeling (no not that kind!)every time I see a comic book of mine sell at a decent price.

I have recently started buying modern comics to read and am enjoying them. I still take care of them just in case they are worth money but the feeling of cracking open a comic to read makes me happy. But what about those old comics I have? They're still in those white boxes hiding in the corner of my closet. Some are worth more now than the day I bought them and some are still the same price.

So are old expensive comics worth buying? Well heres the answer and you may not like it. If you're a collector, yes. But if you're the kind of guy that buys a comic just to read then the answer is, no.