Late Sunday afternoon, we got a call from a family friend who was just up the street from our house at a garage sale. She told me that the guy had a lot of comics for sale and, of course, I was interested right away.  I didn't have very high expectations, though, as Sunday garage sales are pretty rare and given that it was almost 5:00 PM, I figured the guy's stuff must have been pretty well picked over through the course of Saturday and Sunday.  Also, people who try to sell comics at garage sales typically have very unreasonable expectations.  They often try to sell newer or relatively common issues at cover price or higher.  There's too much general awareness of the collectibles market these days to allow for many "Antiques Roadshow" finds at garage sales.  This has also led to a kind of odd situation in which people assume that they possess something of substantial value when it is, in fact, relatively common.  With comics, people go one step farther and try to present their collectible in a way that makes it look like it is well cared for and valuable.  With comics, they usually put single issues in big Ziploc freezer bags or plastic binder sleeves to make it look like their comics have been effectively preserved.  But I digress...

Justice Leage International #9
One from the new batch:
JLI #9, January 1988
Within a few minutes, I was at the garage sale checking out the guy's collection.  He had a couple of boxes of different comics with a sign indicating they were 25 cents each.  Most of the issues were from 1986 to 1992, which was pretty decent stint in my early comics-reading life. DC issues far outnumbered Marvel stuff, which was another plus for me. There was some crap in the boxes too, like as a handful of coverless issues and a couple of Stuff and FHM magazines (the latter of which I quickly took out of the boxes and handed to the guy saying, "I don't want these.") After a quick look through the boxes, I started to stack them up neatly into one box and, without knowing how many issues there were, I told the guy I would give him $30 for them.  There was a brief silence and then the guy said, "Yeah, I'll take $30."  I finished stacking everything up into a copy paper box (and also the lid of the box, as there was a bit more than the box would hold) and paid the guy, asking him if he could break one of the twenties that I handed to him.  I guess it was kind of crappy for me to ask him to make change after he gave me such a good deal.  I think he was a little annoyed with my relatively low offer, but it was cold and late in the day and I figured he just wanted to unload them.  The guy's wife wanted him to help me to the car with my stuff, but both times she told him to help me, he just shrugged and said, "He's got it."  At least I didn't end up having to pay him a tip for helping with the box.

I got home and sorted out the contents of the box, finding a few bonuses like an issue of Future magazine and a few paperbacks like Beyond Infinity and The Edgar Cayce Reader, Volume 2.  I got rid of the issues without covers and a few other mangled or stained issues, leaving me with a total of 289 "keepers" (minus a few that are doubles of issues in my collection. There were no real "big finds" in the box, but I have a lot of good reading material, including a lot of post-Crisis Superman issues, some early '80's Superboy issues, a bunch of newer Flash, Legion and Justice League stuff (love those Justice League International/Justice League Europe comics from the '80's) and some Marvel stuff here and there.

This is the third time I have bought a bulk lot of comics for my collection.  The first time was probably about 10 years ago when a coworker brought in a few boxes of comics that he was having trouble unloading at comic stores and used book shops.  I looked through his collection while he went on and on about all the good memories about buying and reading the comics when he was in the military.  After he was done talking, I offered him $30 for his entire collection.  Man, he was annoyed – but he took the money after all. I guess that makes me some kind of jerk.  Oh well.  That batch was similar to the one I bought this weekend, but a little smaller and there were quite a bit more Marvels in that bunch.  Good bathroom reading, for sure.

Another time, I bought the full run of Marvel's "New Universe" titles at a toy show.  I think I paid about $20 for the whole lot.  I'm still not sure how many were in that batch and I have never gotten around reading them all.  Probably not my best bulk purchase, but I hated to see them just sitting there all unappreciated.

I guess I am just a sucker for cheap comics.