Showerthought: I used to think comic fans who only read trades were missing out, but my own collection disaster flipped that view

Last week, a pipe burst in my apartment and soaked a long box with about 200 of my single issues from the 90s. The damage was immediate and pretty much total (water and newsprint don't mix, as it turns out). I spent a whole afternoon trying to salvage them, but it was a lost cause. That experience made me finally get why someone would just stick to collected editions, you know? They're sturdy, they look nice on a shelf, and you don't have a heart attack over one leak. Has anyone else had a collecting nightmare that made you switch up your whole approach?

2 comments

2 Comments

drew9061d ago

But what about the hunt? For me, half the fun is digging through bins to find that one single issue. Don't you feel like trades just hand you the story too cleanly, without any of that history or the weird ads? My own near-disaster just made me double down on better storage, because I couldn't imagine my collection without those floppy, messy singles.

noah8801d ago

My basement flood last year taught me the same lesson. I lost a short box of 90s X-Men and it felt like losing pieces of a scrapbook. Now everything's in plastic bins, because you're right, that hunt and history is the whole point.