What is the Biggest "Non-Mistake" you made Buying ?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

This ones about the great buys and scores we have found. Where we were in the right place , right time and we scored baby. So go ahead and name those big key finds and ill list mine soon.

[Kirk G]

I was going through the ten cent box at a family grocery shop and found a copy of Marvel Collector Item Classics #2 for just ten cents. I snapped it up before my fellow comic collector standing next to me could register what it was.

Unfortunately, I didn't recognise the value in all the other coverless Tower comics that were also in the bin. In fact, there were all kinds of Dynamo, Nomad and THUNDER agent books with superb Wally Wood artwork! i never bought a single one.

[dupont2005]

A year or two back on eBay (I know some people think eBay doesn't count, but I live next door to a tumbleweed and a tortoise so it works for me.) I bought a grab bag of what was described as 80 indy comics. There were no other bidders so I got it for $8 shipped, ten cents per comic. I had no idea what to expect. I don't remember there being much of a description, I didn't see any pictures, it was cheap so I bought it. When it came it was filled with more than 80 (maybe 100?) black and white Copper age comics. In the lot I had multiple copies of Deadworld #1 (one of the very few comics in the lot there were copies of) along with the rest of the run, occasionally including both covers. Also included was Concrete #1, Caliber Presents #1, and a bunch of other awesome stuff I love. Entire runs of Megaton, Adventurers, and so on. A handful of issues of Cerebus, and when I opened them up I saw they were signed! To this day it was the best comic purchase I have ever made.

[Kevin Nichols]

I found this



in a cardboard box full of comics at an antique shop about four or five years ago. It was bagged and boarded and had a little red sticker on it that said 50 cents. Oh, yeah. I pretty much ruled that day!

[shaxper]

I've really only had two times when serendipity struck and offered up an amazing opportunity.


The first was when I was checking Mile High Comics a few years back (I NEVER check that site; I really don't like shopping there) and they had a Batman #9 in G for $300. I had to read the listing and check the scan four times before I decided it was for real. Not only was it incredible that they had that comic, but the price was absurdly competitive. I don't think they knew what they were doing.


The second I've mentioned on this board before, but it's been a long while. A few years back, there was a comic shop in town that was in serious dire straights. I had a good relationship with the owner and kept offering suggestions to improve business, even offering to help her set up at local comic shows. She had bought the business from her predecessor at the beginning of the early 90s boom and knew/cared nothing about comics, and she absolutely did not want to put the energy into selling inventory that refused to sell itself. Eventually, she told me about the thousands of comics that had been sitting, untouched, in the basement since the mid 1970s. And, later still, she allowed me to go down there and pick out whatever the heck I wanted. I probably spent six weekends in that musty old basement, filling my lungs with dust and stale air, but walking back up the steps with STACKS of unsold comics from the seventies that went right from the shelves into long boxes and hadn't been touched since.

Highlights from the inventory were long runs of Kirby's non-New Gods DC work (that's how I became a Kamandi fan), Wein's Swamp Thing, Marvel Premiere, a Tomb of Dracula #1, and, randomly and best yet, a VG X-Men #94, which she asked $4 for. I was always honest with her about what the comics were and what they were worth, but she wasn't planning on selling them to anyone else and just saw it as extra cash, so she was always exceedingly generous. I could have spent another year in that basement. There were so many amazing comics that I just didn't know about at the time, but she soon went out of business and liquidated those books to other dealers and over ebay. Still, those were some amazing weekends!

[MDG]

My regrets mostly have to do with not picking up more original art when it was still (relatively) dirt cheap. I could probably recount a dozen specific instances, but I'll just talk about a dealer at NYC cons who would always have a stack of pages for $5 each. A lot of them were bronze age Marvel, and I usually passed because I thought most were pretty shoddily done. Of course just about any Bronze Age Marvel page seems to go for $100 or more now.

[Phil Maurice]

Marvel Super-Heroes #12 for $2.00 at a tiny Georgia con in '92. The dealer was obnoxious and so intent on lording it over the buyers that he inadvertently quoted a price for Captain Marvel #12. It was wrong of me not to correct him, but I lost no sleep over it.

(I've told this one before) Back in'03 I bought Hangman Comics #3 and #5 for $800 a piece, taking the sellers word that they were in 6.0 and 7.0 respectively. When they arrived, I was not impressed and was sick at having been scammed. I put them out of sight. Last April, I sent them off to CGC hoping to at least break even. I was shocked when they returned as 7.0 and 9.2(!), the latter being the highest-graded known copy in the world. I fail at grading, but I win at collecting I suppose.

[Roquefort Raider]

Like anyone old enough, I got a few valuable issues from the newstand at cover price, of course, but that obviously shouldn't count. A good move I made as a collector was back when a back-issue trader from Montreal had a big going-out-of-business sale... and I got all the Savage Sword of Conan I didn't have (issues 1 to 31) for a bit more than fifty bucks. Those books would eventually represent many years of wonder! (and no, not because I'm a slow reader! )

Oh, I also got Iron Fist #14 for 50 cents, but that was an accident... Sabretooth was a nobody back then. I just liked Byrne's art.

[Phil Maurice]

Oh, I also got Iron Fist #14 for 50 cents, but that was an accident... .

I can actually top that! In 1995, a recently married friend handed over a small cache of comics which included IF #14 & #15 for FREE because his new bride considered comics to be "childish" and incompatible with their "new life together." Can you imagine?

[Roquefort Raider]

I can actually top that! In 1995, a recently married friend handed over a small cache of comics which included IF #14 & #15 for FREE because his new bride considered comics to be "childish" and incompatible with their "new life together." Can you imagine?

You could kiss the bride!!!

[zilch]

GL #40 in the mid-70s for a quarter.

Showcase Creeper and issue #1 and #2 for a quarter a piece (in BEAUTIFUL condition)

X-Men #1, 2 and 8 plus an early FF and Hulk #1 for a dime apiece (thanks Mom!)

Avengers #3 and #8 for $10 in a one-time stop in an old comic shop on my way to college... purely serendipitious... owner wanted to move em.

[Kirk G]

I remember walking into a used second hand store in my hometown, and discovering a stack of comics, bagged and boarded. Among them was an X-men #99 that had been priced at $6.00 I bought it.

Also, I was at a revco drug store while unemployeed, and noticed some three comics in a bag specials for about a buck. I glanced at a number of them, and discovered there was ONE of about twelve bagged excess books that had been returned and then packaged for resale. I bummed a buck off my dad, insisting this was a good value. Inside the bag was the Wolverine mini series by clarmont, issues 1, 2, 3 in Mint condition.

I was thrilled!

[Duy]

When I got Alan Moore's 1963, I saw that the issue with USA and the Hypernaut was signed by Veitch and Bissette!

Also, one time in 7th grade, my English teacher was looking to give away some comics, so I took it, and saw two Captain America issues signed by Mike Zeck.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I would have done this last night but got sick.


- Back a few years ago found a complete run of Uncanny X-Men from 175-299 in there. I had issues sure. But this comic shop was selling me all the good numbers i needed from there for $2.00-$2.50. I think I picked up the entire Outback era , return to the Mansion and more for those prices.

What shocks me is I bought this run before the owner really got smart about the books and a new guy came in. I walked in one day and he had the extra copies all marked up to $5.00-$7.00 bucks a pop.


- Years later , same shop the owner was gone and his staff was working. I found a New Mutants 98# (1st app of Deadpool) . The staff had no clue what to price it at as the latest Price Guide hadn't came out. They called the owner , he wasn't in....so they called someone who works at the shop. They priced it to me at $15 bucks ! Faster than ya can say CHA CHIIIING I bought it. (and this was a NM book as well)


- A year or 2 ago at my LCS the manager really didn't have anyone to help him sort his back issues. So I sorta a box and he told me he couldn't pay me. But would kick me all the back issues I wanted and found. I was like...hell yeah.

I had 1st crack at a lot of those issues. So I found a Warlord #1 (1970's series) and other key 1970's issues of Batman , Action Comics and others for free. I never told anyone what I was doing but for a few days I came in and organized and picked up a lot of runs of books I needed. (this is where he asked me to take the ASM BND issues....since he had a glut of em)


- This past year I got Miracle Man #12-#15 for $1 buck apiece. Those issues are in NM shape as well.

[Roquefort Raider]

You guys' and gals' great posts of fortuitous discoveries have shaken a few memories loose :

I didn't read the Valiant titles when they came out, but one day in the late 90s my LCS bought a huge comics inventory from God knows whom and had a big sale... at 10 cents apiece. I didn't get any of the rare ones like Solar 0-10, but ended up with a pretty big stash of Unity and post-Unity era Valiants (the Malev war in Magnus and Rai, Archer & Armstrong, Bob Hall-era Shadowman, lots of X-O manowar). I don't think they're worth much, but that was a LOT of good comics for a meager 20 bucks!

(The same sale got me 20 or so Warlords by Mike Grell. I remember that going back home -on foot- was pretty tiring that day).