Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Second Printing's Weekly Question #2


This week's question:

How do you keep your comics?
Follow up: do you keep records of your collection, and if so, how?


Devon:
Oh, God, no.

I gave up about years back. They're just sitting in longboxes in alphabetical order with no bags or boards. The older I get, the less I care. Now, they're more about the stories contained within than the condition or somesuch. Hell, I don't even feel the need to complete runs like I used to.

It's weird but it all coincided with the end of the letter columns in the backs of DC's comics. I started feeling less propriety in my collection.

As far as records go, I used to keep these insane handwritten-on-notebook paper records of every comic I bought. Now, I just sort of laugh at my former anal retentiveness.

I miss those days.

Jon:
Mine're half in a longbox - sorted as best as I can manage by title and number - and half all over the bloody place. I'm not terrifically good at, y'know, "collecting." Aces at reading, though.


Big Mike:
I try to keep things in order, but I inevitably fall of the wagon. I have a set of long boxes that are in perfect alphabetical and numerical order, but then I have several short boxes that are completely unsorted. My whole collection is in a storage unit in my building, but I do keep a few comics in a small box at the top of my closet... this is for the comics that I would not be okay with losing in the event of a flood, fire, etc. They're not worth much or anything... just sentimental value. Highlights include the whole Lonely Place of Dying arc, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, and Chroma Tick.

Graig:
I keep my (actually "our", given that I've merged my collection with my wife's) comics primarily in alphabetical order on bookshelves in the basement. I use comic boards, positioned sideways to separate the titles (each letter has a "miscellaneous" section for small runs and random issues). There are also about 18 other long boxes, 6 of which are major character/team runs (Batman, Superman, X-Men), the rest having been recently conscripted to "discard duty", meaning about half the collection is getting positioned for sale. I used to have everything individually bagged and boarded, now it's a mix of individual bag'n'board and multiple issues in the same bag. I've become rather lax about bagging of late, but only the worst of condition books are left permanently un-bagged.

I started about a year ago inventorying all my comics on an spreadsheet. It's kind of a pain to maintain but has been very useful for knowing what I have, what I want to get rid of, how many books are in the collection, that sort of thing.

4 comments:

ticknart said...

For Christmas I got a bunch of long drawer boxes and now almost all my comics are in them. They are separated by title, but they aren't alphabetized or anything. Only the comics that came with bags and boards, for free, have 'em.

The closest thing I have to a record for my comics is a list of issues I'm missing to complete the runs I want.

CalvinPitt said...

My comics are stored in whatever containers I had handy (an old chest o' drawers, several plastic bins). Because I'm kind of a freak about that stuff, they are alphabetized and each title is chronologically ordered. I think every issue is bagged and boarded, because a) I want them to last as long as possible so I can keep rereading them, and b) I'll put two comics in the same bag, on either side of the board, so I actually wound up with enough of them left over to store all my comics that way.

I do have a list of what I have on my computer, that I update as I buy more comics. When I viist a new store, I take a smaller, handwritten list, related to specific runs I'm currently trying to fill in.

Patrick C said...

All of my comics are in short and long boxes, alphabetic by title, although they are in 3 groups, DC titles, Marvel titles, and other. The other has been a pain because I can never make up my mind on where to put the Wildstorm stuff. Does it go with 'other' or with 'DC' or do I split it and have the older stuff with 'other' and the newer stuff with 'DC.' Man that's like one of the nerdiest problems you can have.

They're all bagged and boarded and I keep track of them all using the comic collector from collectorz.com. It's awesome, you can sort by writer, artist, character or whatever all at the click of a button!

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