Yellowed pages = gold: The joy of buying a comic collection

Buying a comic collection is a bit like opening a very heavy, very nerdy box of chocolates. You might know roughly what you’re getting, but until you start going through the boxes properly, you’ve no idea what’s hiding in there.

And that’s half the fun.

At Monkeyrocks, I buy comic collections of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes I know there are some decent books in there before I start. Sometimes it’s several boxes of fairly ordinary comics with a few gems hiding among them. And sometimes something catches my eye that makes me stop what I’m doing and think, hang on a minute…

So when a new collection arrives, what do I actually look for?

First things first: open the box and look at the tops

Honestly, one of the first things I do when I get a new box of comics is open it and look along the tops of the books.

I’m looking for yellow.

Yellowed pages = gold!

There’s nothing quite as disappointing as opening a mystery box of comics and seeing row after row of pristine white pages staring back at you. You immediately know you’re probably dealing with fairly modern books.

Don’t get me wrong, I love modern indie comics – they’re actually some of my favourites – but when I’ve just bought an unknown collection?

Nothing beats seeing those yellowed pages and knowing you’re about to dig through a box of Silver or Bronze Age delights.

That’s when things get exciting.

What era are we dealing with?

Once I’ve had my initial yellow-page excitement, I’ll start getting a general feel for the collection.

Is it mostly 90s? 80s Marvel and DC? Bronze Age? Silver Age? Is it one person’s collection that they’ve built up over decades, or does it look like several collections have been thrown together?

This immediately starts giving you clues.

If somebody was regularly buying Marvel comics off the shelf in the early 1980s, for example, I’m suddenly interested in what else might be lurking in those boxes.

They weren’t walking into a comic shop in 1983 thinking, “I’d better buy this one because it’ll become a key issue in forty years.”

They were just buying comics.

And that’s exactly how interesting books end up sitting unnoticed in collections for decades.

Then I start looking at the runs

Long runs are always interesting.

If I find a decent chunk of Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny X-Men, Thor, Fantastic Four or another long-running title, I’ll start looking at the issue numbers. This is where a bit of comic knowledge becomes invaluable.

You start recognising certain numbers, covers and periods. Sometimes you know immediately what you’ve found. Other times there’s just something familiar about a cover and I’ll put it aside to check later.

I’m certainly not going to pretend I have every key issue of every comic ever published memorised. Nobody does. But after you’ve handled enough comics, you develop a sort of internal alarm system.

“I know that cover…”

And out it comes for a closer look.

The comics that are in EVERY collection

Before we get to the hidden treasures, though, we need to talk about the other end of the spectrum. Because I swear there are certain comics that reproduce inside long boxes when nobody is looking.

Marvel’s New Universe. Strange Tales Volume 2 – the Cloak and Dagger one. And, of course…

X-Force #1.

So. Many. Copies. Of. X-Force. #1!

  

Literally every collection I buy seems to have these in abundance.

I can only assume that at some point everybody collectively decided these comics were going to fund their retirement, bought multiple copies and carefully put them away.

Unfortunately, everybody else did exactly the same thing. And now nobody wants them. Still, it wouldn’t feel like buying a comic collection without finding them. I’d probably be worried if there wasn’t an X-Force #1 lurking somewhere in the box.

The obvious keys – and the not so obvious ones

First appearances are the obvious thing everyone thinks about.

A major character makes their first appearance and, decades later, that issue can become one of the most desirable books in the run. But there are loads of other things that can make an issue interesting.

First appearances of characters who weren’t particularly important at the time. Early appearances. Origin stories. Deaths. Costume changes. Important creators coming onto a title. Low print runs. Famous covers. Final issues. Even seemingly insignificant characters who suddenly become important years later.

And then Hollywood announces something. Suddenly everyone wants a comic that had been sitting happily in the £2 box for the previous fifteen years. Comic collecting is weird like that.

A perfect example: Beta Ray Bill

This happened recently with a collection I bought for monkeyrocks. I was going through it and spotted Thor #337. If you’re a Marvel collector, you’ll probably know exactly why that one jumped out.

Published in 1983, Thor #337 features the first appearance of Beta Ray Bill and has become one of the standout Marvel keys of the era.

That immediately made the rest of the collection more interesting.

The original owner had apparently bought a lot of his comics when they were new. So if he was buying Thor #337 off the shelf in 1983, what else was he buying around the same time?

That’s when rummaging through boxes becomes considerably more exciting.

Condition matters – but perhaps not as much as you think

Once something interesting turns up, obviously the next question is condition.

Are there spine ticks? Creases? Tears? Rusty staples? Is the cover attached? Has somebody written their name across it in biro because apparently nobody in 1978 considered the needs of comic collectors in 2026?

Condition can make an enormous difference to value. But here’s something I think gets forgotten sometimes:

A comic doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth owning.

I’d much rather find a well-loved copy of a great key comic than not find one at all. Not everybody wants a pristine graded 9.8 copy sealed in plastic. Plenty of collectors just want the book.

And personally, I think there’s something rather nice about a forty or fifty-year-old comic looking like somebody actually read and enjoyed it. Which brings me to something I’ve been thinking about recently.

We don’t really own comics

I saw a post on Instagram recently from retro.relics.comics that really stuck with me and, in a way, it’s what made me want to write this.

The idea was that when it comes to comics, we’re perhaps less like owners and more like temporary custodians. I love that way of looking at it.

You might search for a particular comic for years. Eventually you find it, buy it, take it home and put it into your collection.

It’s yours.

Except one day, it probably won’t be.

Maybe you sell your collection. Maybe you trade it. Maybe, many years from now, your collection ends up with somebody else.

And that comic starts its journey again.

Somebody else might have been searching for that exact issue for years. Suddenly it’s sitting in their collection, bringing them the same joy it once brought you.

These little bits of printed paper just keep travelling from one owner to the next.

Some of the Silver Age comics I buy have already been doing that for sixty years. Who bought them originally? How many collections have they been part of? How many comic shops, bedrooms, attics, conventions and long boxes have they passed through before they ended up here?

And where will they go next?

I like to think Monkeyrocks plays a tiny part in that journey.

A collection comes to me. I sort through it, clean it up, bag and board it, work out what I’ve got and eventually put those comics back out there.

Then one day somebody flicking through one of my boxes stops.

They pull something out.

“I’ve been looking for this!”

And off it goes again.

Into another collection, with another temporary custodian.

I absolutely love that.

I don’t just look for expensive comics

That’s probably one of the biggest misconceptions about buying collections. Finding a valuable key is brilliant, obviously. But that’s not the only thing I’m looking for.

Complete or nearly complete runs are useful. Interesting mini-series are useful. Great covers are useful. Popular characters are useful. Reader copies are useful.

Sometimes I’ll find something that’s worth very little but is just bloody cool. That’s going in the interesting pile too. Because the person browsing through the Monkeyrocks boxes at a comic show isn’t necessarily looking for an investment.

They might be trying to finish a run they’ve been working on for ten years. They might collect a particular character. They might remember owning that exact comic when they were twelve. Or they might just think the cover looks awesome. That’s comic collecting!

Then there’s the weird stuff

Every collection has it.

An obscure indie comic I’ve never seen before. A random issue from a series completely unrelated to everything around it. A promotional comic. An unusual variant. Something signed. Something with a price sticker from a comic shop that disappeared thirty years ago.

These are often the things that send me down a rabbit hole. Sometimes the rabbit hole ends with discovering I’ve found something surprisingly desirable. Sometimes it ends with discovering I’ve spent twenty minutes researching a comic worth £1.50.

You win some, you lose some. And speaking of obscure comics…

The most important pile: the “me pile”

Obviously, the best thing about buying any new collection is the me pile.

I try so hard not to have a me pile.

Honestly.

I’m running a comic business. The idea is that I buy comics and then sell the comics.

It’s quite a simple business model.

Unfortunately, there’s a fairly major flaw in the plan:

I really bloody love comics.

So inevitably, while I’m sorting through a new collection, a little pile starts appearing next to me.

“Nobody will want that one.”

Into the me pile.

“That’s a bit obscure.”

Me pile.

“I collect that character.”

Me pile.

“Oooh, that’s cool…”

Me pile.

I usually make sure it’s the more obscure stuff that you guys probably won’t want anyway. That’s what I tell myself, at least.

But sometimes…

Every now and again…

I keep one of the bangers too. 😉

There have to be some perks to the job.

The best bit is not knowing

That’s ultimately why I enjoy buying collections so much. You can look at photographs beforehand. You can spot some of the obvious comics. You can get a rough idea of what’s there.

But you don’t really know until you start going through the boxes. Comic collections aren’t normally carefully curated investment portfolios. They’re somebody’s collecting history.

One month they were obsessed with Spider-Man. Then apparently they discovered Batman. Six months later there’s a completely unexplained run of Groo the Wanderer. Then twelve copies of X-Force #1 turn up because, well, obviously.

And somewhere among all of that might be something special. Maybe it’s valuable. Maybe it’s rare. Maybe it’s just a comic I’ve personally wanted for years.

Or perhaps it’s something that isn’t particularly special to me at all, but six months from now somebody will pull it from a Monkeyrocks box and tell me they’ve been looking for it forever. Then it starts the next part of its journey.

But there will always be that tiny moment when I’m going through a new collection, pull a comic out of the box, recognise the cover and think:

“Oh… hello.”

That’s the bit I love.

And then I carry on to the next comic.

Because there are another six boxes to go.

And I haven’t finished building the me pile yet.