A kid at my local shop changed how I look at back issues

I used to think buying old comics was just about grabbing keys or rare variants, you know? Then this kid maybe 12 years old walks into my shop in Austin last Saturday and starts digging through the dollar bin. He pulled out a beat-up copy of New Mutants 98 and said 'this one's got a good story even without Deadpool being famous.' That really stuck with me because I'd only ever seen that issue as a price tag before. Has anyone else had a moment where a fan younger than you made you rethink your whole collecting style?

3 comments

3 Comments

ivan2305d ago

YO, that kid GETS it. I had a similar wakeup call when my little cousin asked me why I had so many comics still in their bags. She grabbed a copy of Amazing Spider-Man 361 from my short box and said "aren't you going to read this? It looks cool." Right then I realized I was hoarding books like they were lottery tickets. @nancyd85 makes a solid point about the market but honestly since I started actually reading dollar bin finds instead of just flipping them, I enjoy my hobby way more. Now I grab weird one-off issues from the 90s that nobody wants and my cousin and I trade them back and forth like theyre treasures.

mitchell.wade5d ago

Ngl that kid sounds way more mature than most grown collectors I've met. I used to skip over dollar bin stuff entirely because I was hunting for keys or whatever was hot on the speculator lists. Then I had a 12 year old student show me his pull list and he was into books like The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Ms. Marvel because he actually enjoyed the characters. It made me realize I'd been treating comics like baseball cards instead of stories. Now I grab beat up runs of weird stuff just to read through them after grading papers. That New Mutants 98 comment hits hard because it's a classic example of forgetting why we liked comics in the first place.

nancyd855d ago

Hold up though, if nobody hunted keys we wouldn't have a market to fund the indie books we love.