We all have them.  Those comic book series that seemed like a good idea at the time but are now merely taking up space on a shelf.  eBay will laugh at you if you try to recoup your cover price there.  Should you leave them in that bottom long box hoping that one of them just might hold that first appearance of a future big screen character?  Could you hand them out as a Halloween surprise to encourage young readers?  (I'd need a lot more trick or treaters to get rid of all mine).  Does the strange lady at the end of the street need something to line her parakeet cages with?

"Update Comic Values"

This was never a concern of mine until I cataloged my collection using the CLZ Comics app.  This app coordinates with the GoCollect site to give you the latest updated comic values.  Each month I click "Update Comic Values".  After a short pause, the app returns its new value.  I then proudly show this to my wife in an effort to justify why those big white boxes are taking up so much room in my office.  Because comic books are a surprisingly good investment right now, my collection invariably shows a nice bump in value from the last month.

However, my wife reminded me once again that she is smarter than I am.  While I gloated over my latest CLZ Statistics report, she pointed out the fine print on the bottom.  "The total is based on 2171 comics," she astutely stated.  "But don't you have over 7700 books?  What about those other books?"

What About Those Other Books?

I am a great comic book reader but a poor comic book collector.  While loyalty is an admirable trait to have, it can certainly hurt you when applied to comic collecting.  I loved the concept of villains turned heroes when The Thunderbolts debuted in the late '90s.  Writer Kurt Busiek and artist Mark Bagley put together some great stories, but the book never seemed to reach the next level in popularity.  As the creative team changed the quality of the series steadily declined.  Still, 174 issues later I was still reading them then sticking them in a box.  That's where they sit now with only issue #1 and #4 showing any value at all in the GoCollect database.

I started collecting Green Lantern Volume 3 just before long time hero Hal Jordan was replaced by Kyle Rayner.  135 issues later the series ended with only a handful of issues earning any value.  Undeterred, I scooped up Volume 4 when it came out.  This Volume not only featured the return of Hal Jordan, but it also led to a major feature film starring a big name actor.  Typical of my luck, I jumped on the Ryan Reynolds bandwagon one superhero film too early.  My 67 issues of Volume 4 have only six issues showing any GoCollect value.

Speaking of superhero movies... one would think a big hit like Aquaman would produce a bump in his comic series' values.  Unfortunately, this was not the case and 100+ recent Aquaman comics with very limited value are stuffed in the back of my Green Lantern box.

A Call for Help

I know it is not really fair to call these comics worthless.  I've read each one and enjoyed most of them.  So to me, the comic reader, they've already earned their cover price.   However, I am working on my transition from reader to collector, and these books seem to have very little value to a collector.  This week's call for help is what to do with these "worthless" issues.  A dollar per comic would make these 5500 comics far from worthless.   Even fifty cents would make it well worth my time to ship out some series.  Or am I wiser to sit on these books for a few years, hoping a new movie or comic storyline turns a few of these into "key issues"?  I'm hoping to hear from some of you in the comments below with suggestions and recommendations on what to do with these "worthless" comics.