Eric mentioned in the "Your First Comics" thread that he'd sold a collection to buy a car.

I'm curious as to others' earliest forays into selling comics.

My earliest was at age 14 or 15 sometime around 1980. I had seen what X-Men #94 was going for ( it was something like $60, mint ) in the mini-catalog at the center of a Daredevil comic and the dollar-signs filled my eyes.

My brother had actually sent me X-Men #94 in a stack of comics that he used to send me as "care packages" ... comics he'd buy after he'd left home, but didn't want to keep.

I sold the weathered copy for $10 at my first visit to a specialty shop ... and proceeded to spend half of it on comics from my first exposure to a "quarter box." ( I picked up some DC Giants and some early issues of Kirby's "The Demon" from the quarter box ... those were the days... )

My next sale was at age 16 where I needed some pocket money and didn't want my old comics. I sold a bunch of my old comics at a garage sale for a quarter a shot and made about $50 or $60.

At age 17, I happened upon some extra copies of X-Men's Hellfire Club/Dark Phoniex saga. I sold eight issues for $40. I needed some extra money for my junior prom.

The last time I ever tried to sell to a specialty shop was when I was in college. I wanted a VCR and didn't want to pay for it out of my pocket. So, I took my comics and sold a bunch of them ... some of them at a dime apiece so that he could stock up his quarter boxes. I ended up making about $115 which defrayed the cost of a Sears Betamax VCR.

I've since sold comics at yard-sales and have sold some extra trades that I'd acquired and such, but have never really tried to buy and sell as a profitable venture.

How about yourselves? Have any of you ever made serious money selling comics?

I was 11, and thought I was too cool for comics. Sold off all my old comics, mostly Harvey but a good stack or two of DC/Marvel stuff too. I did quietly keep all my comics digests and "super specials" (the oversized books)...I wasn't THAT cool. Less than 10 years later I was back into comics in a big way, and regretting selling them all, even the Harvey stuff. I think I made less than 100 dollars on the whole lot.

back during the "A Death in the Family" days for Batman, i lucked into a large stack of the entire run...my grandmother worked at a magazine mailing factory and they would frequently get more magazines or comics than they needed to fill subscription orders...those extra periodicals were tossed into a bin to be incinerated after the employees got a chance to take what they wanted...grandma would always grab whatever comics she saw, never remembering if she had already gotten an issue since they all looked alike to her...

i think i sold 6 sets of "A Death in the Family" for store credit...it didn't help on the new comics, but i sure filled in holes in my collection!

I sold or traded all my good stuff for either some new comics to read, or just nothing. Like Eric, I was too cool for comics, certainly too cool to obssess over them or keep them.

Then at about age 14-15, I had a comic book renaissance, and ended up with one long box of comics, which I still have to this day.

That is why I often buy Marvel comics from 1983 and older -- I am essentially trying to recreate my old collection, but only at budget prices ("readable" copies).

The ones that are the most difficult to replace (price-wise) are the Amazing Spider-Mans (they are about $10 a piece from my "go to" era) and the Miller Daredevils I had.

When I was about 17 or so I was working at my local comic store and had accumulated about 15 long boxes of books...great run of classic marvel...FF232-325, Avengers 150-300,Iron Man 115-275, etc...and i had read and reread them dozens of times..i needed some cash and sold them to someone who had placed an ad in the local paper (pre ebay days:) for a lump sum..i forget how much..about 2 or 3 thousand bucks..i kept about 1 or 2 long boxes and used that money to go to Greece for about a month (pre-Euro currency).

Now Im back to about 6 long boxes...but a lot of the comics i read now I end up donating to a kids hospital or sun youth...the ones I really really dig I end up keeping..plus i buy lots of trades (Ive even bought some trades that reprint old stories that I had back in the day).

When I moved to Seattle in 2003, I got the buy list from my LCS and, with the exception of a few titles I wanted to keep intact (ASM, USM, Legion) pulled everything on the list that I had. I came up with a full longbox, for which I got about $600 in store credit - FAR more than I expected.

I immediately bought the Legion Companion book that had just come out, along with about $100 in kid-friendly trades (USM, lots of Crossgen) that I gave to my brother's brother-in-law (a middle-school teacher) to put in his classroom. After I moved, I got my comics by mail from that shop for about 3 or 4 months, before I'd used all that store credit.

First ones I ever sold was when I was trying to get my then fiancée to marry me. I was disappointed in the genre and found I had held onto a bunch of books I had zero interest in rereading. I don't even remember how much I got for them.

The bulk of my collection was at my parents' house. I recently brought those to my house and will at some point separate the wheat from the chaff and sell off the chaff.

I call dibs on James' chaff.

I knew you were a big Amethyst fan.

Ebarrassed to say I've got that one. It was a number one issue, after all.

Just quoting so when you fix it your blunder still shines for all to see.

Here's the short version of my comic book collection sale attempt.

I had roughly 30 years of stuff. Things I'd bought growing up, even some older back issues from before I was born. Probably 2500-3000 comics.
You name it, it was probably in there.
After all that time of lugging the boxes around when I moved, paying storage locker fees, etc, and a general sense of boredom with the hobby, I decided to get rid of most of it.
I catalogued everything, and sent out copies to various buyers out there. (this was in the pre-InterNet days). My local shop passed on everything.
The quality of the books ranged from good to mint, and I wasn't trying to make any real money off them. I just wanted to get rid of them. (ended up selling X-men 94-125ish for about 40 bucks. This was when 94 was going for about $500!).
I set a deadline of 6 months, and after that passed without a single bite on anything but a few issues here and there, I ended up chucking the whole shebang into a dumpster.

Then, once all the local shops found out about that they were all saying "aw man, I'd have given you a nickel a piece for them", or "I'd have given you SOMETHING for all of them, you didn't have to trash them!"

A few years later about 95-96, I picked up Marvels, and decided to get back into comics.

'course, now I'm in the same boat again. I want to thin things down a bit, but no one seems to be biting!
But don't worry, I'll find SOMETHING better than tossing them away this time!

Hummina-hummina-hummina-hummina......

Some garbage dude's kid had a happy, happy day when that was found.

I've got to say, I'm impressed with your fortitude. I'm a pack rat and have difficulty throwing things away. I keep EVERYTHING (and the wife throws it awat behind me). Even all those crappy '90s Image comics you can't GIVE away I still have, because I can't sell them, nobody will just take them, yet I can't bring myself to toss 'em.

A new form of embarrassment -- online, electronic embarrassment, or "E-barrassment" for short. Pass it on!

Remember folks when you cant sell them funnybooks..donate them! Youth groups, kids hospitals, libraries are more than happy to accept our old comics and trades.

Remember folks, a good way to pick up some free comics is to swing by the children's hospitals, youth centers, etc. They leave stacks of them unattended in the common areas a lot of times.

Jay..id reply but that creepy avatar just makes me pause..dont want to be turned into a jack in the box..know what i mean?

I Traded most of my John Byrne X-Men to a buddy for four Atari cartridges in 1981-2, during the period between 13-18, when I gave up comics to focus on girls. I started buying comics again when Man of Steel came out, and I've been a weekly comic shop visitor ever since. I picked up all the Byrne X-Men I'd traded, for $40, from a comic shop dealer who gave great deals. I started setting up at small comic cons as a dealer, one day shows mostly, in 1991. Selling my own collection at first, but buying up stuff, and re-selling it too. I did the show thing for about 10 years. Usually doing 6-10 shows a year. I sold everything except the Byrne comics in 2000, when I was getting married, and wanted to give up the show scene since it was dying anyway.

Early last year, I decided the Byrne quest was pretty much over, since I had nearly everything he'd done, including a lot of rare fanzines and stuff. I needed to raise several thousand dollars for my kid to get braces, and me with no dental insurance. So, I started doing the eBay thing, and going to shows again. Yeah, all I had to set up with was five long boxes of Byrne comics, and a few boxes of other stuff. I've been selling on the Buy/Sell board at JBF too. I got to the point after 5-6 shows last year, that I had almost nothing left to sell that made it worth renting a table at a show, so I quit for several months. I did a lot of business on eBay last year. I sold all my original art. All of the Byrne stuff is gone except for one quickly emptying long box. I acquired another collection of mostly 60's-70's Marvel, and started shows again this summer, and I am blowing through that pretty quick. I did 5 shows from August through December, and have emptied 5 long boxes. I emptied another long box from selling to guys on the JBF, thanks Jay, Robert, Jose Amo, Joe Hollon! And quite a few others over the last two years, who were also buying the Byrne stuff for $1 each.