Enter the dollar boxes

I've been collecting (there's that word again) for a long time. Before there was a such thing as a "pull list" and before it was standard practice for stores to set aside the issues you wanted on a weekly basis.

I had taken advantage of this service with two stores (Galaxy Books and El Dorado), and both times, I could not have been happier. They both took into account my writer-driven mania and rarely, if ever, failed to pull books by writers I wanted. This was especially good when my preferred writers would show up in titles I didn't normally get.

After a while, I stopped getting the weekly comic fix for a number of reasons. The main reason was cost - I determined that I didn't want to pay what was becoming higher and higher prices for comic books. I think it was $2.25 or $1.99 per issue at the time.

Anyway, this changed things for me. It was easy to let the shop do all the work. I'd walk in, get my stack, sort it, put back what I didn't want and pay for the rest. Easy.

Then after my epiphany (?), I had to figure out how I would still get comics without the weekly service.

Enter the dollar boxes.

At first, it was just a convention thing. All it took was for me to resist buying new comics when they first came out. I reasoned that after the books were a month or two old, they served no purpose to the shop owners, so they might turn up in dollar boxes at shows.

To a degree, this philosophy worked. I did manage to get some good comics this way. But it sure was/is a spotty way to do it.

But it did bring me back to one of the interesting aspects of collecting comics. The hunt.

Before the shops, there was Clover. Or K-Mart. Or the corner drug store. If the spinner rack didn't have the issue I wanted, there wasn't another option. Had I been able to see the future, I wouldn't have given it a second thought...but as a kid, I would get upset that I couldn't find that issue that I needed. I just wanted to find out how the story ended!

Recently, I have found a few shops that have adopted the dollar box idea, and that's great. South Jersey seems to have a real thriving comic book community. I wonder if other regions have so many good options. There are lot of good places to buy comics here.

My two personal favorites offer great prices, and often, a good selection. One boasts comics for a quarter - many times, it's pretty slim pickings, but sometimes you can find some gems. The other offers comics at 3 for $1.75. They have a very good selection, and if you are a DC fan, it's hard to beat them.

Even though this way of collecting (that word again - I guess I was wrong about "accumulating") leaves holes to fill...it's kind of refreshing to get comics now. I don't feel like I'm getting ripped off - and that's a great thing.

If I paid full price, I'd get 3 comics for $10. On a good day, I can get 40 comics for $10. I think the odds are with you if you can get 13 times the comics with your money.