How to Organize Your Comic Book Collection

Comic book collecting has been a hobby that became popular in the late 60s and early 70s. The fans of comics, young boys who read the books while growing up in the 50s and 60s, kept their comic books and began to seek out issues they were missing. Those needed issues were found at book dealers, attics of friends and relatives or yard sales. The modern collector has less of a challenge. Books can be ordered online or won through eBay auctions. Many collectors attend comic book conventions to find the issues they seek.

Comic book collectors have varying attitudes toward their collections. Some just want to have issues to read whenever they wish, choosing to keep their books readily available for grabbing. Other collectors keep their books closely guarded, bagging their books once and never opening them again. These kind of collectors may only desire to keep their books in good shape, others may be looking at their collection as an investment.

To organize a comic book collection in the most traditional manner, there are certain materials to acquire. Mylar comic book bags can be purchased online or at any local comic book shop. These bags come in different sizes depending on the age of the comic book. The same sources can be used to find cardboard comic book boxes. There are different sizes of these also, depending on how many books you need to store. Also be sure to get plastic tabs and a label maker for easily separating your books.

The most common way of organizing books is by separating your books by publisher. Comic book collectors are very familiar with the current list of comic book publishers, the most popular being Marvel and DC. Once the books have been separated by publisher, they are arranged alphabetically. So, if you arranged your Marvel comic book collection alphabetically, it might go The Avengers first, Captain America second, Iron Man third and so on. Use the labeled plastic tabs to separate the titles.

These are basic steps for beginning collectors. Advanced steps may include taking comic book titles that have been completed or cancelled and putting them in separate boxes for storing while keeping ongoing titles in their own boxes with room for expansion.

Once your books are stored, they can be catalogued. There are various software programs that will assist the comic book collector in keeping tabs on their collection. This can be very helpful as you can print out a record of the issues you need for easy reference while hunting for those missing issues at conventions, comic shops and online auctions and retailers. Also, comic book collectors can reference a comic book database online such as comicbookdb.com for valuable reference information.