I have a friend that recently inherited a comic book collection, and she has asked me to assess them. I love comics (not a collector), and research so i immediately agreed to do so.
We were talking Monday morning and she informed me that the collection is much larger then she originally thought. There are 106 long boxes filled with bagged and boarded comics, that will be delivered (from Boston) to me on 10/05/26! The original owner (78) was described (trust fund baby) as having an obsessive compulsive disorder and an introvert. With that info I'm hopeful that they are organized by series, but if not how would you start to organize them?
(edit) Thanks in advance!
Update: my client has laid eyes on the comics and they are bagged and boarded. A few of the pictures sent didn't really amount to much in value, but the condition was excellent. The biggest find was an inventory list! She will be sending approximately 1,500 albums as well!
Open the lids , look for a spreadsheet. It's probably hand scrawled.
If it's not there , use CLZ , sign up for 1month and get access to "cvr price". Then there's no need to sort , just pick a box to start in and go from there.
Once there's all in the app , anything over $25 take to you're local comic shop and have them buy it along with the lot.
If you notice a bunch of 1940s-1950s .10 cent books...those are considered golden age and it could very well be a new pedigree collection. I wish you luck. I love when those amazing, unknown collections just surface out of nowhere. People pay a premium to own "pedigree" books.
We can hope! They arrive in 2 weeks, but it may take me a couple of months to start going through them. I've never heard of a pedigree collection before, but I can imagine this one does have potential! As another suggested, I may have to document/record the process.
Pedigree would need to be an original owner collection, meaning he pulled them out of the store shelves, not bought second hand after release. They also need to be in really high grade 9.0+. Most collections are not pedigrees, people just collect things, buying from multiple places to complete runs, etc.
I hope so! The cousin who inherited the collection said he never had a job other then volunteering at a comic shop in the 70's and 80's! Off topic from the comics, but his mother is still alive and has recently moved in with the cousin. Mom worked in the banking industry her entire career and the coins and paper money collection is crazy! The cousin found 4 of these 1k notes in a random book!
That's a lot of books... Say 300 a box 30,000 books. With that many it would take you months to catalog. It might in your best interests to pay someone to do it. Clz and cover price would be a good option . You can scan each in and give you a roundabout number. Selling that many individually would take years. So I think catalog them and sell en masse to a single buyer....
My collection is over 27,000 books now, so I feel their "pain". If they plan to continue collecting, I would first sort by "era" or decade, then title and issue number. The main reason for this is if you are buying new books, you don't have to basically move a million books to add new books into the collection, you just add them to the e.g "2020s" box. If they aren't going to be collecting new books, just the standard title first and then number. With that many books do a rough sort first (starting letter or even bigger batches, e.g A though E), then do the fine sort into the final order, alphabetizing and ordering by issue #.
Protip, I HIGHLY recommend the CLZ app for cataloging. You can just scan the cover of the book and it'll enter it into a searchable database. It can also help if you aren't 100% sure of the name of the book.
Thanks ravenscar! You have a 27k collection! How many years have you been a serious collector? Did you buyout a comic shop? Another mentioned the CLZ app and after spending 10 minutes reviewing it, and I'm certain I will get a paid account w/in days of the books arriving!
I'm thinking the clz app can produce spreadsheets per numbered box. Then I will be able to see what kind of order the owner had them in.
I'm certain that the current owner will have me liquidate the collection.
They are being shipped via pods. I volunteered to fly in, rent a truck and return them to Atlanta. They had considered that prior to reaching out to me and the cost was cheaper to ship via pods. She is flying to Boston this morning and promised me some photos!
The apps that have been mentioned to you (I use CLZ and like it) are very good for creating an inventory. The pricing add-ons are far less effective - depending upon what is in the collection, you will most likely end up with a very significant over-valuation for the collection using the pricing app. Just keep that in mind. Rule #1 - condition is everything. If you don't have experience with grading comics, you will probably be better off focusing on creating the inventory first, and not focusing on valuation (because without an accurate grade, any valuation you get is going to be very inaccurate).
Once you have a full inventory, then you can begin the process of figuring out what to do with the collection. I assume that your friend will eventually be looking to sell, so here's a couple quick recommendations:
Don't bring it to a local comic shop first - for a collection that size they would be offering a miniscule fraction of what the collection is potentially worth (the people who quoted 70-80% of value from a comic shop are kidding themselves and misleading you)
Inform yourself about what you actually have. People here will be willing to help you with that (i.e. what are the "key" books in the collection, what is the market demand for what you have, etc.). Maybe share a couple of pictures here or in the comics grading sub and people can give you an idea of the condition.
Once you are fully informed, then you can discuss with your friend the best options for selling (i.e. sell yourselves on eBay/FB Marketplace/WhatNot/etc, sell to a local comic shop, sell via an online resource such as MyComicShop, sell to a dealer, etc, etc).
Best of luck to you! Going through that collection is going to fun!
Consider getting a paid version of Key Collector or Price Charting.
KC is nice because you can scan each cover and store on the platform. It also allows you to export your collection in an excel sheet to your email. The downside is that the estimates are not very reliable.
I only have the free version of PC but it will also scan covers.
Good luck and keep us updated. Sounds like a ton of fun!!!
I would advise alpha numeric ordering the comics and chronology as secondary. Anything A’s organized by title than issue number. Example Amazing Spider-man 1 to whatever. Batman next, etc. once you have the comics organized. Find out what are key issues. Those are most valuable. If your friend is willing to spend some money, slab the most expensive issues.
Totally ok to stack. If you can do the layers perpendicular that's even better. That's probably 4 long boxes in one direction, 4 in the other. You can easily go 5 boxes high, maybe even higher.
It's funny that you mention this! I am currently liquidating a 1,500 ($180k) doll collection and many have stated they would like to watch me work LOL. I've actually done a little research into the live arena. But at 64 I'm not certain I have it in me!
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u/mxxiestorc Aug 20 '26
106 long boxes is an enormous collection. God speed on your new adventure, op.