Walking Dead on eBay

When I sold my comic collection (documented a couple of posts ago) I said I was keeping my Walking Dead issues so that I could sell them on eBay.

Season 3 of the AMC Walking Dead TV show starts tomorrow. Season three has them arriving at the prison and introduces fan favorite characters Michonne and the Governor. This is the point in the story where the comic series really took off and it is expected that the TV series' popularity will increase even more. I figured now was the time to sell them.

I've very little experience on eBay  I've bought a few things, and by that I mean three. I've never sold anything on the site.  I did some research and watched a similar eBay auction that ended a few days ago. He had 1-70, started the auction at $1000, and sold it for about $2500.

My run is 1-2, 4-5, and 7-58 and I started the bidding at $800. Not as many issues, but most of the later, more recent ones, aren't the ones that are worth lots of money. Here is the link to my auction on eBay.

Pricing out my issues on Comic's Price Guide Online at a 8.0 condition they come out to $2,006.20 and at a 9.4 condition they add up to $2,864.00. I listed the notable issues on my eBay auction, but be warned it contains major spoilers such as the deaths of some major characters.

I didn't realize what a pain the butt it would be to take these pictures. The iPhone camera warped them way too much and lucky I was able to borrow a real camera from Lauren, my friend Eric#1's daughter. Even then I still spent most of the day trying to get the pictures to come out decent. It didn't help that it was overcast and I couldn't get that nice ambient light from the window. I also had a problem with my reflection on the bag which you can see on issue #48 above. It makes it look like the comic is warped or something.

By the way, the walking dead are the main characters in the story, not the zombies. Think about it.

Aftermath - The comics are gone :-(

Here they are stacking my comic boxes up in the Maximum Van and empty dining room where they had been. There were a total of 17 long boxes and 13 short. All the Neil Gaimen titles (keeping) and The Walking Dead (which I'll be selling separably on Ebay) left me with 1 long box worth of comics.

I also kept the issues whose art work you can see left in the living room. Spash page from the Grendel / Batman crossover, Books of Magic showing the 3 page sequence where Tim sets free the thing to take away the wrecked car that his mother died in, and a page from The Children's Crusade where the two dead boy detectives take on the case.

Oh, I still have my Comic Trade collection

I've had it mentioned to me that I wasn't being completely honest about not collecting comics anymore. I actually stopped collecting single-issues, or "floppies" as they are sometimes called when I got back from Australia in 2009. I already had a large collection of trades editions, but that is when I officially became one of those 'wait for the trade' guys.

I mostly collect trade paperbacks as opposed to hard covers. My thoughts on the matter are that I like having the trades on the shelves. They look nice. They are easy to re-read - pick the whole story-line as one trade off the shelf as opposed to have to dig through a comic box for each issue, carefully take them out of their bag, gingerly read them and then put 'em back in the bag while trying not to have the tape touch the comic. I also don't mentally think of them as collectibles. I am not afraid to let other people read them or lend them out.  I do have a number of hard covers and the thing I have against them is that I do kind of think of them as collectables and they cost more.

P.S.
The statue collection is already boxed up.

P.S.S.
Anybody want a copy of Fury? Bwahaha! Seriously though, I have one copy with the other games I worked on, but I just can't get myself to throw those extra copies away. Four years! I worked on that damn game for four years and those idiots ruined it. All it needed was a few more months and some intelligence at running the beta.

So tell me about these here comic books...

I have been involved in a lot of conversations about the comic book industry in the days leading up to the Watchmen Movie and at one point I always shoot off about how the industry is due for another very large change.

Before I start let me say two things:

1. I no longer have the source for this, I think I may have gotten a lot of what I am basing this on from a pod-cast interview and not something I read which is why I can't find it.

2. If you think comic books are about nothing but people in spandex shooting 'beams' at each other (pew pew), I'll bet you money I can find you a comic that isn't about super heroes that you will read and then say to me, "Wow, that was good! What else can you recommend?"

The first big change in this chain was when comic book publishers decided to keep the price of comic books low. They were for kids and 25-35 cents was what kids could afford. Because of this the newsstands started to stock fewer titles. They have only so much shelf space and a regular magazine that sells for more, means more profit for them.

This caused the appearance of comic book specialty stores. In some ways this was good for the industry because it allowed the independents to come in, but it also meant that the sales numbers for comics dropped to a fraction of what they had been doing. In order to maintain profits they had to raise prices to the few bucks each issue costs today.

But now a lot of people think they are too expensive and look for ways to save money. Enter mail-order places where you can order your comic books online, pay much less, and have them mailed to you. Adding to this is the number of people who have stopped buying individual issues and have ‘gone to the trade’ as they call it. Meaning, they are buying the trade paperbacks (aka graphic novels) which reprint a run of the issues usually encapsulating one story arc from 6-8 issues. They can be bought in the comic store but also in major bookstores and even from those mail-order places for much cheaper.

This is where we are at now. The problem I foresee is that comic book stores operate on a very tight budget and they are always at risk of going out of business. Let me also throw in here that the collectable market is dead. If you are saving those old comics thinking they will make you rich one day you are sadly mistaken. If, like me, you are just bagging, boarding and collecting them because you can’t stop then you are just sad. Actually, I am going to start ‘going to the trade’ myself. Seriously, I’m tired of lugging those big white boxes across the world.

The point of the collectable market being dead is to point out that the comic book stores aren’t making a lot of money buying and selling back issues.

What I see happening in the future is comic book stores going away, more trade paperbacks and such in bookstores. Currently the Manga books from Japan are doing incredible in bookstores and the U.S. comic publishers are going to find the formula to match that. I think this will herald a giant change in how books are produced, written, serialized, advertised, etc. I think that independent publishers are going to be hit very hard by this and won’t come back into serious play for awhile. I do however, think that after all the turmoil, say 10 years from now, that things will be better than they are now.

Comic book publishers are also trying things with publishing online, but I don't think that is going over to well. People like to hold something in their hands and read it. Snuggle up in bed with a book. But, if we can get some advances in electronic paper anytime soon, that may change. We will also need some better way of handling electronic purchases - I bought the damn thing, it's mine, I should be able to control how I store it and be able to get at it later. I'M LOOKING AT YOU ITUNES!

The wild card in this mix is the movies. Lots of movies based on comics, doing well, is keeping the publisher's (more specifically the major corporations who own the publishers) profits up.

But that’s just my opinion and I reserve the right to change it as new evidence is presented and time goes by.