Bickford Peter - 2010 Comic Book Checklist & Price Guide

Or rotting away, stuffed in corners in wet basements. Because most people don't know what they have, whether their comics are rare and valuable or whether they're plentiful and worth less (though not worthless). And because most people don't know how best to take care of the comics they have. But you won't have that problem The Comic Book Price Guide is here to help. We're the people behind Comics Buyer's Guide, the world's longest-running magazine about comics. Started in 1971, it's been published continuously and passed the 1,650-issue mark near the end of 2008.

We've maintained a price guide database since the early 1980s and, in the early 1990s, we published the first edition of an annual Checklist as both a price guide and a collectors' utility for comics published after 1961. Since then, we've added to the line with the mammoth CBG Standard Catalog of Comic Books, which includes everything that's in this volume plus story titles, circulation figures, and comics from the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Of course, that's a monster of a book the latest print edition was 1,624 pages and a DVD-ROM edition is now available with more than 3,500 virtual pages in full color so the Comic Book Price Guide was developed as a more portable reference for comics buyers and sellers. It's an evolution of our Checklist and Price Guide and Comics Values Annual but it's still intended to function in a number of fashions. There's more than one way to use it. You can use it as a have list, in which you maintain an inventory of the comics you're collecting. You can use it as a guide to show prices you can expect to pay for items, if you look for them in comics shops throughout the country, online, or at conventions.

The prices listed are arrived at by surveying comics shops, online sales, convention sales, auctions, and mail-order houses. With that information, our price guide reflects what a smart person with those choices would be willing to pay for a given issue. You can use it as a guide for value, when you're buying or trading items. And you can carry it with you in your comics storage box, because it's sized to fit in a comics box. Condition is vital. Whether you're buying or selling comic books, one of the most important factors in setting the price is the condition of the material. A scuffed, torn reading copy (that is, one that is suitable for reading but not for getting high prices at resale) will bring only a fraction of the price of a copy of the same issue which looks as though it has just come off the newsstand.

Picky collectors will even go through all the copies on a news-stand so as to buy the one in best condition. [Even a so-called news-stand mint copy of Fantastic Four #1 may have what is called Marvel chipping (a frayed right edge), since many of those early-'60s issues were badly cut by the printer.] On the other hand, beat-up copies can provide bargains for collectors whose primary focus is reading the comic-book story. The same goes for reprints of comics which would otherwise be hard to find. In fact, you may find prices on poor-condition copies even lower than the prices in this guide, depending on the attitude of the seller. It's a good time to get into collecting comics for the fun of it. A major change in the comics-collecting world, CGC grading, has meant a huge jump in prices for certain hotly collected issues in almost-perfect condition.

The third-party graders of Certified Guaranty Company evaluate the condition of submitted copies and then encapsulate the graded issue in a labeled container. Because of the independent nature of the process and the reliability of the evaluating team, confidence in buying such items has meant a premium over the standard price in that condition. More information on the company can be found in the pages ahead. Visit our website at www.cbgxtra.com!