$169 bucks at the comic store this week?!?

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Admittedly I haven't been to my local comic shop in three weeks, but...$169? That was what my stack came out to be, though I only got four actual individual comics yesterday.

I picked up Edge Of Oblivion #4, Omega Men #11, and both covers for Sinestro #22.

What got me was the hardcovers/trades. I got the softcover of GL volume 6, the hardcover for GL vol 7. And the big one was the Geoff Johns GL vol 3. That was over a hundred bucks alone after my discount.

The omnibus will stay in shrinkwrap with the other two Geoff Johns GL omnibuses..es on my GL bookcase for a few years. At some point I'll feel nostalgic enough to do a massive reread and I'll use the omnibus format where I can. Just glad that's over and his whole run has been collected in that format. My subscriptions end there in June when the 52 titles and and Rebirth begins. I'm not ordering any new collections so this was the last big purchase I had to make. I didn't want to stick my local shop with crap that I previously ordered before planning my exodus from the hobby.

Sadly, the one book I DID go to the store to buy, Locke & Key Master Edition volume II wasn't there, lol. I had to give him the Diamond ordering number for it again so they could get it for me!

[Space Cop]

If I had the money and space to spare, I might do that, but as it is I don't buy trades of comics I have in floppies. If I do re-read them (which is admittedly rare), I just have to put up with the hassle of undoing the little piece of tape (which snaps and needs to be replaced like 1/4 of the times).

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I always use foggy tape on my bags and boards. Works great.

[Hypo]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy Dave Targaryen I

What got me was the hardcovers/trades. I got the softcover of GL volume 6, the hardcover for GL vol 7.

Wait, do you get both the HC and SC versions of the same trade? Or do you just mix and match?

Anyways I can't judge, I spent like $500 on comics this month.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I always get both.

[Mister Ed]

See, that's just obsessive. I mean, I thought I was obsessive getting every Star Trek novel ever published (though I do have a few gaps in my collection, I have READ them all, and am trying to fill the gaps as the opportunity arises), but at least I don't get them all in every binding available.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I have been obsessive as a GL fan. And my GL fandom has always been my biggest and most expensive habit. Of all the things I am a fan of, GL was always the priority. Now...I'm just burned out. Too expensive to spend money on things I'm not enjoying. It was fine from 2005-2010 during the boom because I was really enjoying the product. After that it was downhill. I now have a ROOM full of GL crap. Cases of figures unopened that I have no room to hang on a wall to appreciate looking at. I stopped buying the merchandise about two years ago and never regretted it.

I'll still pick up trades and hardcovers here and there, but they won't be of the superhero genre, and I'm just going to buy what I'm enjoying at the moment.

[KilowogsDisciple]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy Dave Targaryen I

I have been obsessive as a GL fan. And my GL fandom has always been my biggest and most expensive habit. Of all the things I am a fan of, GL was always the priority. Now...I'm just burned out. Too expensive to spend money on things I'm not enjoying. It was fine from 2005-2010 during the boom because I was really enjoying the product. After that it was downhill. I now have a ROOM full of GL crap. Cases of figures unopened that I have no room to hang on a wall to appreciate looking at. I stopped buying the merchandise about two years ago and never regretted it.

I'll still pick up trades and hardcovers here and there, but they won't be of the superhero genre, and I'm just going to buy what I'm enjoying at the moment.

I'm retarded when it comes to that. I have a HUGE collection of Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Daredevil, Justice League, Avengers. From the 70s to present, trades, hardcovers, single issue lots. And I'm dead serious when I say retardedly huge. I have the entire Ostrander run of Martian Manhunter from the 80s in single issues, all kept near mint and always carefully bagged and boarded...because I still read all my comics. I won't keep a comic I won't read over and over.

I'm cuckoo, dude. Love my comics. Even weirder, I have a huge collection of classic literature (Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Dickinson, etc), and art music scores (mostly Beethoven and Wagner). I am nuts about books!

I average about $700 a month on them, but I sell the ones I don't like.

[W.West]

That shop must love you. I only get my individual issues at the shop now. There's ALWAYS a better deal online than at my shop.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Yeah they've made a mint off of me over the years. I'm looking at a shelf of absolute hardcovers as I type this. There are 14 of them along with other high end hardcovers. I bought all of them there trying to do my part to support brick and mortar.

[Mister.Weirdo]

Damn. I'm surprised you're not broke, after spending all that cash.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I don't spend nearly what I used to in my heyday as a comic fan. Now my money goes to other things I enjoy.

[Big Blue Lantern]

At the comic book shop (the happiest place on Earth!), $169 sounds pretty tame. I spent $115 the last time I was at a big comic shop and I could have spent ten times as much had I had the disposable income.

[Big Blue Lantern]

I'm glad that I married such an understanding woman when it comes to my comic hobby. I hadn't been to my LCS for roughly a month and I knew that would result in a) a very large bill since I ordered some TPBs or b) my pull folder would be empty since the shop only holds books for 30 days. It was the former and the tab came to $88. Luckily, our money situation has been a little better lately and I was able to cover the tab with cash.

So the lessons here are to get to the shop more often and be careful when ordering full runs of trades. At least now I don't feel quite as compelled to make everyone I know buy my Christmas gifts solely from the LCS.

[Trey Strain]

If DC would start printing their floppies on newsprint and cut their price to $1.99, that would help quite a bit.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

I read this thread when Spy bumped it and had to laugh. I can't believe I was ever spending that much, so often. I still have a few comics from last summer to November in my nightstand I haven't got to. I dropped the GL titles at the end of November and haven't gone back.

Instead I've been spending a ton of money on vintage Planet Of The Apes and finishing my vintage Star Wars collections. Even those are done but they were making me happy. I'm just not going to spend money on things that don't anymore.

I guess the hardest part was coming to terms with the fact that the Green Lantern franchise just doesn't make me happy like it did for so many decades.

[Big Blue Lantern]

I went to visit a friend who lives near two big comic shops. I did a little better this year as I only spent $65. However, that was after a long internal war over whether to drop $100 on a Flash Icons statue. That wasn't easy to pass up.

[BLACK HAND]

Man I spend 20 bucks on average in comic shop on a weekly basis, most of the time less than that. I try to keep it reasonable, only way I'm able to read everything week to week.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy Dave Skywalker

I got the softcover of GL volume 6, the hardcover for GL vol 7. And the big one was the Geoff Johns GL vol 3. That was over a hundred bucks alone after my discount. The omnibus will stay in shrinkwrap with the other two Geoff Johns GL omnibuses..es on my GL bookcase for a few years.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Ha! And they are STILL in shrinkwrap!

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

Over a year ago I sold off all of my lantern stuff that wasnt green. All of those rainbow brigade figures that were clogging my GL wall are now gone. And I have no regrets. I didn't want that crap dirtying my collection anymore.

[Space Cop]

Originally Posted by Big Daddy Dave Skywalker

Over a year ago I sold off all of my lantern stuff that wasnt green. All of those rainbow brigade figures that were clogging my GL wall are now gone. And I have no regrets. I didn't want that crap dirtying my collection anymore.

I still have all those figures on display and I like a lot of them, but there is a part of me thinking they're taking up a lot of real estate I could be using for other stuff.

[Big Daddy Dave Skywalker]

It was liberating getting rid of a lot of it. I can almost SEE my GL shrine now. Before it was like a ton of boxes and stacks of merch blocking my GL wall on the floor like debris aftet a landslide. Too much.

[Star-Lantern]

Collecting is an interesting thing. We've been trained that the object is to "catch'em all," but that can also lead to a pitfall in spending money on a bunch of stuff you don't like, but feel obliged to get. Once you're there, the powers that be will prey upon you. Green Lantern is a really good example. They kept (and keep) spamming more Lanterns to prey upon you with more merchandise. Its the same philosophy as all those variant covers.

See, the way they get you is this:

They start off doing cool stuff, and you like all of it. You wind up loving it, so you buy everything you can get your hands on with that brand.

They keep doing pretty good stuff, put out more merchandise and your collection grows as you continue buying it.

The company realizes they have a loyal fanbase that will follow them around, so they stop valuing them. They don't have to hunt for your dollar anymore, because you come hunting them. You are the pursuer now.

The company realizes this and abuses you and their IP. Now they milk it buy spamming product at you. And you buy it. Why should they put in any actual effort when you will buy what they make regardless? They can increase their profits just by spamming product because you will buy all of it, regardless of quality.

You don't like what you're seeing, but you've come this far in your collecting. You can't just stop. You've developed some minor form of OCD. And so you keep buying.

It's a vicious cycle that takes effort to break. The trick is to collect only stuff you like. That's the ONLY stuff you need to keep track of. Not the other garbage just because it has a name on it. That's how companies wind up devaluing their properties. They just spam stuff out there in an attempt to prey upon their audiences. I'm surprised at how shortsighted some of these executives are sometimes, because there are plenty of examples of this cycle. Maybe they intentionally do this, so they can drive a property in the ground and strip mine it. Then they can let it sit for some years and do a revival that acknowledges the mistakes of the past and promises to go back to how things were in the old days of when the property was good, and then hopefully make billions of dollars on the revival. I dunno'.

[Trey Strain]

This guy will be hard for anybody to top.

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