Keskustelujen arkisto

Meaning.....do you just buy comics to read and pass along or throw in a pile?.....Or are you obsessed with the condition of books and meticulously organize your comics with bags and boards as a collector,.... or are you a bit of both.....where you collect and like your stuff in nice shape, but just do it for the enjoyment of reading.....possibly, you collect vintage books for possible financial investments? Everyone is different in some aspects....what are you?

Definitely a reader, I only buy stuff that I want to read. Howewer I am a little bit obsessed with the condition of the books (not because of the financial value but because I love to have my favorite comics in good condition) and I prefer hardcovers.

A little of both. I do read every comic I buy, but I also try to keep them in the best condition possible. Not for resale value so much, but so that they'll be around longer.

I started reading my cousins 1940s and very early '50s comic books when I was little. They liked to read them just once, and throw them in a pile. They read them again once in a great while but didn't really act as collectors. I loved the funny animal comic books. So, when they finished those, they fell to me, and into my "collection". I started collecting at about 4. I had the comics read to me at 2 years old, and started reading them to my elders at 3. I started buying my own at 6 years old (in the early 1950s).
I'm not obsessive in my collecting, and bought them mainly to read. I didn't buy the "Live action", human, Disney comics. I only bought what I wanted to read and what art I wanted to look at. I never bought superheros, but, in addition to funny animal, I had a lot of "Classics Illustrated". But, at the age of 12 or 13, I gave away all my non-Disney comics (WB, MGM, Walter Lantz, Walt Kelly, Walt Scott, Classics Illustrated). I kept only the Disneys. As it is they take up much too much space. I keep the older ones 1940s-1950s in plastic bags. I almost never look at them, unless I research something, or need to see something for my work. I can read my Black and White Carl Barks Library, or Gladstone or Gemstone issues and my Dutch special books and Weeklies and Extras.
I am first a fan and reader. But, I guess I would be considered a collector, as well. I still have all my US and Dutch issues from the 1940s until the present. The older ones are to me like old friends. I love the smell of 1940s and early 1950s newsprint.

Great responses everybody! I think its an interesting eye into any comic reader/collector how they view their hobby. I too started out as mainly as a reader, buying up first run Gladstones and Disneys in the late eighties (admittedly after I saw the Ducktales pilot on TV,) My parents were very against superhero comics in the household, mainly due to scantily-clad super heroines and violent tones with the occational swear word. They allowed the ducks, henceforth, that is all I read at the time. (I still smuggled the occational hero title in.) I still have all of my original issues I bought, but then, after college and a real job, I decided I wanted to finish my Scrooge run with all of the older Dells, so over the last 10 years, I have slowly been upgrading issues in my run....mainly, I do it to get the best preserved copies so I can pass it down in the family. I re-read them all, but do keep them in boards and bags on a nice shelf. My wife tells me I should take out a collector's insurance on the lot, due to the scarcity of high grade older Dells and it being a full run of non-stop 397 issues all in Fine-VF and NM for 1980-up....and about 30 vintage hero titles with some trades mixed in. I do have some CGC books, mainly because I wanted to see what they were like. I've got a CGC Scrooge book from Carl Bark's personal collection, a 9.8 CGC of US #219, because my first issues had a lot of Rosa's stuff in them, and Scrooge FC 386,456 and 495 all CGC graded. I got them that way simply for preservation. I do keep those displayed with my Disney statues. All in all, I'm kind of a condition freak but methinks that is just me being OCD.

Small World, eh? I used to sit and talk to Jussi about comics when I scoured his shop for comics back in the '70s. That was before I even met Freddy. I still have some Danish Anders And with Barks stories I bought there in the '60s. They helped me learn to read Danish, a bit (closer to Dutch than one might guess). But they didn't help me to speak Danish (nothing but a mouth transplant could do THAT!). I still have them (despite having almost no room left to store anything). Maybe it's good that Boom isn't printing anything I want to buy (he said, with tongue in cheek).

I'm a bit of both. I started out as just a reader but then I became a collector later on.

Any book I buy is for reading first, but I am also a collector. I keep my books in the best shape possible, but don't mind pulling any of them out for rereading. All issues from Gladstone's first run until present are bagged and boarded and kept in a couple of foot lockers (since all of these are in almost NM shape). I love trying to find the Dell, Goldkey, and Whitman's, but can't afford to purchase these in very good shape, so most of these are only readable copies (which is just fine with me). Still hoping I will find a big box at a flea market that someone wants to just get rid of; so far just a couple in dollar boxes.
I have just about everything that Gladstone, Disney, Gemstone, and now Boom! has released. Including all 141 Carl Barks Library albums (anyone have a good way of storing these, at the moment they are just stacked on a shelf because they don't stand up very well).
Anyway, I am absolutely a reader and definitely a collector.