Downsizing

Downsizing, thinning the herd, retrenchment... call it what you like it's never any fun when you have to cut back. But that's exactly what I've been doing for the past 6 months. Now I'm not talking about buying less funny books...oh no, I'm glad it hasn't come to that, I'm talking about getting rid of a large part of my collection as it was literally growing over my head.

When the collection went over 10.000 books I knew I had to do something. My main aim was to get it down to 7500 which I did. Most went without remorse, but some were harder to say goodbye to.

First of all I started selling most of my books that weren't Marvel or DC (or written by Alan Moore). This wasn't hard to do as I have absolutely no love for Image, Malibu, Top Cow,Dark Horse, Avatar, Bongo, IDW, Wildstorm and what have you.
I did keep about half my Vertigo books though.

The second time I went through the collection I got rid of all my post 1985 DCs and most of the Marvels from 1990 through to 2000. Of course I kept the books that were part of a complete series, but series that started or appeared only in this era were gone, gone, gone. This was even easier to do that getting rid of all the indies as most Marvel books from the 90's really sucked. Some might disagree, but then some people think Rob Liefeld,Whilce Portacio,Michael Turner and Tod McFarlane are great artists....which I don't.
No, the biggest problem getting rid of these books was not the emotional value, but to get people to actually buy them, even at the stupidly-low prices I was selling them for.


And then I got stuck at about 8000 books, still 500 over my target.
So I dug in and went through the collection a third time. This time I pulled series which I did enjoy but knew I would probably never re-read and weren't part of a larger series. These were in fact a little harder to part with, but I know that the people who bought them will enjoy them as well.

Series like : Silver Surfer (80s-90's), The New Mutants, Xmen Hidden years, Batman Brave and Bold (70's), The Flash (70's-80's) and West Coast Avengers. Selling these put me well under 7500 books and a much trimmer collection.

What can I say...I'm a Silver and Bronze-age fan who thinks comics stopped in 1985 with Secret Wars.

And to celebrate how spiffy my collection now looks I made this video. No more crowded shelves, no more stray books and boxes, all sorted, graded and taken care of.
Enjoy.



I know it's pretty small, but by clicking on the rectangle next to the HD button you can watch it in full screen mode and make out the details.