Comic Book Binding - The Economics of Comic Binding

In a previous article, I did an overview of comic book binding and why it appealed to me personally. As with any hobby, everyone has different approaches. I still collect comics but from the standpoint I prefer collected editions so I can either read monthlies and bind them, or await the collected hardcover or trade paperback if it ever comes out. Some comic readers are so hardcore, they will do both (san the comic binding). The inevitable question I'm always asked though is if binding comic books devalues them. With that in mind, I'd thought I'd compare the economics of why I bind comics to a friend of mine that does not, whom we shall call 'Matt' using the first 20 issues of the most recent Green Lantern series.

Matt and I are approximately the same age and have read and collected comic books about the same amount of time. However, he remains a purist and collects his favorite series in monthlies (which in the past couple of years have gone from $2.50 to $3.00 to $4.00 now for some series), and then upgrades to hardcover and trade paperbacks later, at a rate of about $15.00 to $25.00 per volume, depending on format. He offsets a little of this by selling the monthly issue versions back to fellow collectors on message boards or on Ebay, however this tends to be at reduced rate.

In the case of the most recent Green Lantern series, Matt bought the first twenty issues at about $2.50 each, so he's already invested $50.00 into the series. He liked it enough so he bought the hardcovers at about $20.00 each. For the first twenty issues, that was three hard covers, so he's into the series another $60.00. He was able to sell the individual twenty issues for fifty cents each, so he made back $10.00, but overall he spent $100.00 to determine he liked the series and bought it in the preferred format for his shelves.

I on the other hand just wait out for series in the format I like. Being cheap, I refuse to pay the $3.00 and $4.00 comic books cost nowadays, but I will buy them at a reduced rate. In the case of Green Lantern, I could have bought the hardcovers for a total of $60.00, but what ended up happening is that Matt sold me his issues for fifty cents each, so at this point I've only spent $10.00. The binding itself only cost me $20.00 at my preferred vendor (including shipping), so for the exact same storylines Matt put $100.00 into, I now have in one handy volume for a total of $30.00. Even that is a 50% savings if I had bought the standard edition hardcovers.

Regarding devaluing the comics through then comic binding process, in the case of more recent series such as Green Lantern, the high price point and still rather large publishing runs is somewhat the equivalent of a new car...it loses quite a bit of value once it leaves the shelf. I've researched this most recent run of Green Lantern and most of the issues can now be found for less than $2.00 each now with some as low as a $1.00. There's really nothing being printed nowadays that anyone should be hoping to retire on, so why not enjoy them in a preferable reading format that's more easily accessible?