With some cash in my pocket and a relatively slow day at the office, I decided to explore the Local Comic Stores in my area for the first time. I wanted to get a good idea of where I would go when I needed to pick something current up and start filling up my first long box.

The first store I visited was Heroes and Villians Comics in Pleasanton, CA. It was a nice store and completely quiet, since it was lunchtime and they had just opened on a slow weekday. I went in with a couple specific requests. One of which was instantly filled: the final two books to finish off my first-ever series, Chewbacca.

After getting these, I asked about Star Wars #42 (1980), because I’m a huge Boba Fett fan and want to get my Boba collection started right. He said that he didn’t have it in his system, but he had 50,000 books in storage that he would check later for me. Apparently the owner has been in the business for 20+ years, and he was able to give me a lot of pointers and direction in my newfound hobby.

I ended up dropping $70 in the store, picking up some variant covers that I thought were really cool, including this Iron Man cover, and pretty decent-looking copy of X-Force #2 (Deadpool’s 2nd Appearance).

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the experience, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the owner emailed me the next day about the Star Wars books I had asked about. He had #42 for $50 (said it was about a 7.0) and #68 for $45 (~8.0). I was really impressed that he went to the trouble to find these, but I also had given up on getting them local by that point. I really felt like the prices on ebay were so much lower that I couldn’t justify paying the prices he had, especially after dropping $70 on stuff that was mostly current.

I asked a friend about the etiquette of lowballing a brick and mortar store on older comics. After all, I totally get that the guy has to pay his bills and staff the store all day. But ultimately, I prefer to have comics that I know I can get at least even money on down the road, and to do so I’ll most likely be selling at ebay prices. I think that I’ve resolved to buy current stuff from the LCS and do my “investing” online or at cons/garage sales. Even so, I’ll still take my opportunities to dig through old stuff for gems when I stop in, once I know what is/isn’t a gem.

After I left Heroes and Villians, I headed to another shop where I had a much worse experience, but since I’m at 457 words and counting, I’ll save that for another post.

Until next time!