My LCS staffer stopped me from buying a $140 key issue, best thing that happened

Last Saturday at my local shop in Portland, I was about to grab a graded copy of a 90s X-Men first appearance everyone's been hyping. The guy at the counter just looked at it, then at me, and said "you're only buying that because FOMO, right?" He pulled a $3 reader copy from the back bin instead. Turned out the story was way better than the collectible value, and honestly I enjoyed it more without worrying about bagging it perfectly. Anyone else have a store employee talk you out of a pricey book and it worked out better?

2 comments

2 Comments

casey_wood21mo ago

That store employee did you a solid. I was reading a piece about how the 90s speculator boom wrecked a bunch of comic shops, and a lot of those "key" issues from that era were printed in crazy numbers. The whole market for them is built on hype, not story quality. You probably got a better read and saved yourself $137. Plus, that $3 copy you can toss in a backpack without a care. Most of the time, the real joy is in the actual pages, not the plastic slab. Good on that staffer for being honest instead of just taking your money.

roberts951mo ago

I saw a breakdown recently that said some of those 90s books had print runs north of a million copies. Like, X-Force #1 sold over 5 million. That's not rare, that's just a warehouse full of cardboard. The whole graded comic thing always felt like a scam to me anyway, people paying hundreds for a piece of plastic that just sits on a shelf. You actually got to read the story, which is the whole point. The $3 copy probably has better art than half the junk they were pushing back then anyway.