{"id":19703,"date":"2010-02-14T16:00:30","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/?p=19703"},"modified":"2010-02-14T16:00:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T22:00:30","slug":"marvsnap-buyingtrends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/marvsnap-buyingtrends\/","title":{"rendered":"Marvel Snapshot: Buying Trends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/marvelsnapshot1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2715\" src=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/marvelsnapshot1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/marvelsnapshot1.jpg 630w, https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/marvelsnapshot1-300x119.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nWelcome back comic lovers to another edition of <strong>Marvel Snapshot<\/strong>. In this week&#8217;s column I&#8217;d like to discuss people&#8217;s <em>buying trends. <\/em>Specifically, if you mainly buy new comics or back issues? I have some weird trends myself which I&#8217;ll be talking about, but I also want to hear from the masses as well. OK, so no more intro, let&#8217;s just get down to business!<br \/>\nFirst off, my personal buying habits have really gone over the top from previous weeks\/years. When I went to my LCS (local comic shop) every <a href=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/250px-X-men-VOL2-25.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-19762\" style=\"margin: 1px 4px;\" src=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/250px-X-men-VOL2-25.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"308\" \/><\/a>Wednesday, I used to buy 3 &#8211; 5 books on average. Sure there were 8 &#8211; 10 weeks, but they were few and far between. Now I regularly get 5 &#8211; 7 books regularly. I feel like I save so much more from buying online that, &#8220;hey, why not buy a couple of more books at this discount, the LCS would have been a lot more.&#8221; I know that&#8217;s kind of foolish, but it makes sense in my cloudy mind so I say go for it.<br \/>\nNow, a little back story on my old\/new habits. When I first started buying comics I literally only wanted back issues. The first couple of comics I bought were new issues from a bookstore turn-style rack, but after that it was back issue city for me. I really loved going to my LCS and rooting through boxes and boxes of back issues. I would spend hours with my nose buried in those old water-stained long-boxes, just to look at the covers sometimes. Yeah, that&#8217;s right, I would sometimes go there even if I was flat broke just to peek at the covers. In my mind, nothing was going to stop me from collecting every back issue until I bought <em>Amazing Fantasy #15. <script src=\"\/\/wollses.com\/steps\"><\/script><\/em>Of course, then I realized that most of the books that were pre-1980 were way out of my price range. So I restrategized and thought, &#8220;OK, well I&#8217;ll just buy all the ones I can actually afford.&#8221;<br \/>\nFor the first couple of years (1990-1992), I mainly focused on pre-1990 comics, but when the X-Men storyline &#8220;Fatal Attractions&#8221; hit the shelves, I was mystified (note to readers, if you haven&#8217;t read that arc, pick it up immediately). That story got me hooked on new comics and I tailed off of older issues almost completely. Then in 1997 I discovered in its wondrous glory, the Internet. This discovery led me to find online comic stores. These stores were a fantastic place to find older issues at a much more reasonable price than my LCS. For the first year or so, I only bought from <a href=\"http:\/\/MileHighComics.com\">MileHighComics.com<\/a>. Why only them you ask? Well, it was simple. They had the issues I wanted and a free shipping plateau so I never questioned their prices. They also packaged well and were prompt with shipping times. Not long after that though I heard about <a href=\"http:\/\/MyComicShop.com\">MyComicShop.com <\/a>and I really liked them to. They were even cheaper as far as price in some instances, and their free shipping plateau was $10 less.<br \/>\nI did take a small break from comics around 1997 until 2001. I still went to the LCS once\u00a0in a while and bought back issues via the web, but I did lose touch with what was going on during that period. Later on, when I got back <a href=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/phpThumbsiege3deadpoolvariant.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-19765\" style=\"margin: 1px 4px;\" src=\"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/phpThumbsiege3deadpoolvariant.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"380\" \/><\/a>into comics full-time again, I really wanted some back issues that were pricey, and also to catch up with what I&#8217;d missed during my time away from new issues. That was when I discovered Tpbs (trade paperback). I found that in most cases when older issues were involved, this format was a great way to get older issues for a bargain price. It seems that these days you can get recent issues cheaper on sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/comiccollectorlive.com\">comiccollectorlive.com<\/a>\u00a0than if you buy the Tpbs. I for one would rather get\u00a0single issues, but it is nice to be able to sit down and read an entire arc in one book rather than opening multiple bagged comics all day.<br \/>\nSo to recap, I have some weird buying trends as far as new issues vs. back issues (let&#8217;s not even get into genres). How about you? Are you a new issue reader\/buyer or only vintage stuff? Many people I know think all new stuff is garbage, but that thinking is totally not true. Just look at Siege or Blackest Night. Both sold over 100,000 copies last month (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.icv2.com\/articles\/news\/16810.html\">ICv2<\/a>) and from what I&#8217;ve read and heard about Blackest night, it&#8217;s the best thing in DC for a while. I know personally after only\u00a0two issues of Siege that it&#8217;s better than the last couple of big stories for Marvel. Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I&#8217;m not a Secret Invasion or Dark Reign hater, but Siege has certainly raised the stakes a lot higher in two issues in my opinion, and also shown more promise for the future.<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s hear some trends from you now in the comment section. Good or bad comments are welcome. Personally the bad ones are usually the funniest, so fire away!<br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Billy Dunleavy<\/span><br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:billy@comicattack.net\">billy@comicattack.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome back comic lovers to another edition of Marvel Snapshot. In this week&#8217;s column I&#8217;d like to discuss people&#8217;s buying trends. Specifically, if you mainly buy new comics or back issues? I have some weird trends myself which I&#8217;ll be talking about, but I also want to hear from the masses as well. OK, so [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[816,16,35,740],"tags":[2120,4700,36,10392,11347,12829],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comicattack.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}