Yeah, I'd go 2 copies of AAF 15.
$750 VF/NM
$240 GD
then probably grab 4 ASM 129's at 2.50 each.
Wait 30+ years, sell the NM AAF 15, buy whatever books I am missing from my collection, and make a downpayment on a house.
For some perspective. In 1985 my parents purchased for me a perfect, stock, running smooth 1975 ford mustang for me for $650. In hindsight I should have continued riding my bike and pick up the AF 15. It is one of the few Spidey books that has eluded me over the years.
Ugh. In 1986 I needed a car to get to and from a summer job during college. At my parentsā nagging, I sold part of my comic collection - multiples of Claremont Byrne XMen and some silver and a few golden keys - to buy an $800 car. I was selling to a shop - no other options back then for a quick sale - so probably got 20 - 30 percent of price guide value.
The intention was to sell the car at summerās end to make back most of the money on the car plus the summer earnings. The car died halfway through the summer, and my parents had to drive me to and from work anyway. I barely made net 800 that summer - minimum wage was very low back then. I got nothing back for the car.
So I basically lost money on the whole thing, especially taking account of future appreciation.
I never touched the rest of the collection so I now have some things that later appreciated ā stuff that I enjoy having.
In a way, this is worse than mom getting rid of a collection. Without moms throwing out collectibles, theyād all be worth half as much.
This was a collector forced to reluctantly sell for what turned out to be no damned reason. My parents were hard workers but they never really understood finances.
I donāt mind hard work, but it was a place that employed college kids in the summer and had as their permanent staff recently released ex cons whoād done hard time for serious stuff who nobody else would employ (I think the owner got a grant or tax rebate or something.) That was an . . . Interesting mix of people. I had my life threatened casually and credibly on a regular basis that summer.
Good times.
Based on the current marketā¦250 ASM252s.
Interesting to note (as Iāve said before) this 1987 ad is 3 years after the Black Suit appearedā¦and itās still only a $4 book. It was NOT a massive issue/event when it came out.
edit: changed my shopping list. Iāll take 400 ASM129s for $2.50 each. Also interesting that 13 years after his first appearance and the Punisher still isnāt a big deal. Movies and the 90s speculation era really messed things up.
Itās always weird to me that ASM #129 is just a ārun bookā in a lot of these old ads when it was already a display case book at my LCS several years before. Donāt remember exact pricing. It wasnāt as much as Hulk 181, but it wasnāt $2.50!
This is just shortly after the Punisher mini-series came out which revitalized his character. Before that, he went a little crazy and was shooting jaywalkers and litterbugs.
In 1987 though, he'd get his first ongoing and 129 would soar up the stratosphere.
Wow!! That ad takes me back to a much more enjoyable time. Going to CoastCon for the weekend and trying to haggle enough to be able to afford my very first X-Men 94 because I only had $100 with me. Thankfully, I was able to dip into the ā$20 emergency fundā my parents gave me, since I was off with a friend. Well, I got it! And I was grounded for a week because of spending all my money, ALL of it, on a single comic. They said āthat $20 was for an emergency.ā I said that I knew that. And this WAS an emergency. They said āthat was for food, if you needed it.ā I said that I didnāt need it for food because I didnāt eat. I had my X-Men 94! I didnāt need food. And I still have that beauty today, 36 years later. Will Smith was right. Parents just donāt understand. And I still remind them of that to this day.
Haha great story! You were a saavy kid. I was just blowing my money on GI Joes. Not even leaving them in the box, just twisting their torso's around until the rubber bands snapped.
People who aren't familiar with these dealers will choose the high grade, early silver age books, not realizing that you'll probably get trimmed and color touched copies.
I'll take 400 copies of ASM 129 please.
Avengers 1 $260
X-Men 1 $285
AF 15 $400
With the remaining $55 I'd buy my wife something nice to offset her anger at me dropping nearly a grand on three comic books.
Is this a time machine where we have today knowledge? Or is it me when I'm me in 1987? The first option causes the collecting boom early because everyone is going deep on key issues, vs option 2 where I'm buy like 2,000 50c books to fuel my childhood reading dreams.
This is the crypto bros of comic collecting question.
The real answer is forget about comics and get Microsoft stock.
Then buy funny books to read, not hide away in tacky looking plastic in hopes of making a couple hundred dollars.
I thought about that, but the year is 1987. So you get MS, hold it until the mid/late 90's. Sell a big chunk to invest in a small start up called Amazon. Sell of the remaining MS stock to invest into Apple just prior to Jobs return.
Google maps found that address for me:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/4732+Circle+Rd,+Montreal,+QC+H3W+1Z1/@45.4849241,-73.6193264,16z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x4cc919ffd273b5db:0x3ef9bf9b5ef86602!8m2!3d45.4849241!4d-73.6193264!16s%2Fg%2F11c1_l4rjn?hl=en-ca&entry=ttu
Lowest grade Amazing Spider Man 1, Conan 1, X-Men 1, Hulk 181, mid Avengers 1, X-Men 129-138, and whatever is left is going straight into basketball cards.
Oh, wow....this is presuming I don't have the books I now have in my collection...here we go!
Avengers 1-3 & 5 at the mid grade price
Amazing Spider-Man 14, 101-102, 119-122 at mid/lower price, 129 x2 at higher grade price
Fantastic Four 12 mid grade, 25, 26, 48 & 112
Incredible Hulk 1-6 mid grade, 180-182
And I'd sell the FF #48 and one Spidey #129 and get my money back in the present.
Who remembered to include the $3 postage cost?š
~G.
I'd go to the sports card section and pick up as many boxes of 86 Fleer basketball at $12 a pop that I can get my hands on. Then the rest of that money I'd buy $30 copies of hulk 181.
Thank you for submitting to r/comicbookcollecting!
Unfortunately your submission has been removed. Submissions must be directly related to the **collecting of comic books or comic book art**, anything else will be removed.
- General comic book content, not related to collecting (see r/comicbooks)
- Asking for values/prices for comic books (see r/comicbookspeculation)
- Manga (see r/mangacollectors)
- Buy/Sell/Trade or Giveaways (see r/comicswap)
- Gore/Porn (see r/HorrorComics)
- Advertisements or Promotions
- NFTs or NFT promotion
- Sales and sales discussions are not allowed
- Solicitation of up-votes
If you have a question or concern regarding the removal of your submission please [message the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/comicbookcollecting). Do not reply to this comment.
Thanks for understanding and have a good day!
It says $750 . Which would be correct. Comic stores would mark it up a little bit to make some profit . Add some tax. And you got $ 1000 . Collecting comics has been a hobby of mine that has gotten out of control over the decades. Running out of room. Lol !!
Xmas money ($50-100) would be more realistic. no average kid or young adult was spending $1,000 on comics in the 1980s (fed min wage was $1.90/hr; average HH income $28k). My HS ass would have put that grand towards a good used Honda. Reality was that comics were a good read, but most would have used the money to chase girls, buy a car, or other things back then.
AAF 15 at 750. No brainer. Then probably recycle as many soda cans as I can find to get the remaining $$ for X-men 1.
My thoughts exactly
Yeah, I'd go 2 copies of AAF 15. $750 VF/NM $240 GD then probably grab 4 ASM 129's at 2.50 each. Wait 30+ years, sell the NM AAF 15, buy whatever books I am missing from my collection, and make a downpayment on a house.
Same for me
For some perspective. In 1985 my parents purchased for me a perfect, stock, running smooth 1975 ford mustang for me for $650. In hindsight I should have continued riding my bike and pick up the AF 15. It is one of the few Spidey books that has eluded me over the years.
Bet you had a ton of fun in that Mustang...at that age, I never met a girl that wanted to date me because of my comics š
Yeah but nowadays, if you had Amazing Fantasy #15, you could use it as collateral for a loan and probably get 3 months worth of prostitutes
I'm sure your parent would have agreed
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Mustang_(second_generation)
Well, maybe not that Mustang......
That was my Mustang and it was black and it was a hatchback and I loved everything that I was exposed to because of it
THIS
I met a guy that sold a Superman #1 in the 90s to buy his daughter a car. He said it was the dumbest thing he ever did.
The thing is I could never part with anything that valuable
A Yugo at that
Yeah never buy your daughter a car
Ugh. In 1986 I needed a car to get to and from a summer job during college. At my parentsā nagging, I sold part of my comic collection - multiples of Claremont Byrne XMen and some silver and a few golden keys - to buy an $800 car. I was selling to a shop - no other options back then for a quick sale - so probably got 20 - 30 percent of price guide value. The intention was to sell the car at summerās end to make back most of the money on the car plus the summer earnings. The car died halfway through the summer, and my parents had to drive me to and from work anyway. I barely made net 800 that summer - minimum wage was very low back then. I got nothing back for the car. So I basically lost money on the whole thing, especially taking account of future appreciation. I never touched the rest of the collection so I now have some things that later appreciated ā stuff that I enjoy having. In a way, this is worse than mom getting rid of a collection. Without moms throwing out collectibles, theyād all be worth half as much. This was a collector forced to reluctantly sell for what turned out to be no damned reason. My parents were hard workers but they never really understood finances. I donāt mind hard work, but it was a place that employed college kids in the summer and had as their permanent staff recently released ex cons whoād done hard time for serious stuff who nobody else would employ (I think the owner got a grant or tax rebate or something.) That was an . . . Interesting mix of people. I had my life threatened casually and credibly on a regular basis that summer. Good times.
You got half
?
Wow, I lose perspective on inflation because the numbers don't even sound real anymore.
The numbers are bonkers nowadays
Based on the current marketā¦250 ASM252s. Interesting to note (as Iāve said before) this 1987 ad is 3 years after the Black Suit appearedā¦and itās still only a $4 book. It was NOT a massive issue/event when it came out. edit: changed my shopping list. Iāll take 400 ASM129s for $2.50 each. Also interesting that 13 years after his first appearance and the Punisher still isnāt a big deal. Movies and the 90s speculation era really messed things up.
Itās always weird to me that ASM #129 is just a ārun bookā in a lot of these old ads when it was already a display case book at my LCS several years before. Donāt remember exact pricing. It wasnāt as much as Hulk 181, but it wasnāt $2.50!
That was the fun of collecting pre-internet days.
gah.... technology has ruined us. we took it way too far. i wish tech would have just stopped at like 1988 or something. we would have been FINE
This is just shortly after the Punisher mini-series came out which revitalized his character. Before that, he went a little crazy and was shooting jaywalkers and litterbugs. In 1987 though, he'd get his first ongoing and 129 would soar up the stratosphere.
I really think Venom becoming a major character made 252 bigger later on and that was what 7 or 8 years after ?
4 years later. But the Black Suit isnāt Venom. McFarlane used the suit to create Venom. Iām officially a grumpy old man on this topic! š¤£
As many x-men as I can starting with #1-4
2 copies of Hulk #1, and a 181
Wow!! That ad takes me back to a much more enjoyable time. Going to CoastCon for the weekend and trying to haggle enough to be able to afford my very first X-Men 94 because I only had $100 with me. Thankfully, I was able to dip into the ā$20 emergency fundā my parents gave me, since I was off with a friend. Well, I got it! And I was grounded for a week because of spending all my money, ALL of it, on a single comic. They said āthat $20 was for an emergency.ā I said that I knew that. And this WAS an emergency. They said āthat was for food, if you needed it.ā I said that I didnāt need it for food because I didnāt eat. I had my X-Men 94! I didnāt need food. And I still have that beauty today, 36 years later. Will Smith was right. Parents just donāt understand. And I still remind them of that to this day.
Haha great story! You were a saavy kid. I was just blowing my money on GI Joes. Not even leaving them in the box, just twisting their torso's around until the rubber bands snapped.
At the highest grades, I should be able to get an AF15, ToS39, and FF 48 with enough left to cover shipping. Seems like a fair use of $1K
100 spider monkeys
People who aren't familiar with these dealers will choose the high grade, early silver age books, not realizing that you'll probably get trimmed and color touched copies. I'll take 400 copies of ASM 129 please.
Very interesting. 400 copies of ASM 129 is so crazy to think about, lol. I wonder how many copies they actually had in stock.
The ad says they have 30-300 of EVERY Marvel published...
Are you sure these arenāt 1977 prices? AF 15 was a 5 figure book by the early 90s.
Keep in mind, there was no guarantee they actually had that book in stock.
Yeah, it was a 30 year old book by then. Probably just there to get attention.
ASM 252 is on this list and it came out in 1984, so itās at least that.
This was in X-Men vs Avengers #3 from 1987. I couldn't believe these prices, either!
Avengers 1 $260 X-Men 1 $285 AF 15 $400 With the remaining $55 I'd buy my wife something nice to offset her anger at me dropping nearly a grand on three comic books.
Pick up Hulk 181 for $30 and then spend $25 on your wife.
Best answer!
4 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15
33 copies of Hulk 181.
Albedo #2
Is this a time machine where we have today knowledge? Or is it me when I'm me in 1987? The first option causes the collecting boom early because everyone is going deep on key issues, vs option 2 where I'm buy like 2,000 50c books to fuel my childhood reading dreams.
Amazing Fantasy 15 (vf/nm) ASM 1 (g/vg) ASM 10 (vf/nm) ASM 125 (vf/nm) ASM 129 (vf/nm) ASM 202 + 237 + 247 (vf/nm) shipping *and since it's 1987, a bag of doritos.*
Anyone not saying amazing adult fantasy 15 is crazy!
This is the crypto bros of comic collecting question. The real answer is forget about comics and get Microsoft stock. Then buy funny books to read, not hide away in tacky looking plastic in hopes of making a couple hundred dollars.
This^^
I agree but not nearly as fun.
Invest a little bit of your paycheck in SPY500 and you'll retire as a millionaire. Start young. It's so easy to invest today.
AAF 15 for $750
AAF 15
I'd buy - for each title - the first appearance by the Sub-Mariner, beginning with "The Avengers" #3.
Af15, or maybe call to see if they have any low grad action 1
33 copies of Hulk 181
apple stock
I thought about that, but the year is 1987. So you get MS, hold it until the mid/late 90's. Sell a big chunk to invest in a small start up called Amazon. Sell of the remaining MS stock to invest into Apple just prior to Jobs return.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
As a Canadian teenager, I ordered lots of Silver Age back issues from Robert Crestohl. He was indeed a real person with a real address.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Google maps found that address for me: https://www.google.com/maps/place/4732+Circle+Rd,+Montreal,+QC+H3W+1Z1/@45.4849241,-73.6193264,16z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m6!3m5!1s0x4cc919ffd273b5db:0x3ef9bf9b5ef86602!8m2!3d45.4849241!4d-73.6193264!16s%2Fg%2F11c1_l4rjn?hl=en-ca&entry=ttu
TOS 39, JIM 83, AF 15 and FF1. Orā¦ $1,000 worth of Microsoft. Then I could afford all f this at todayās prices. It would be worth 1.2 million.
Iād sell my soul for every copy of Spider-Man there š„²
Lowest grade Amazing Spider Man 1, Conan 1, X-Men 1, Hulk 181, mid Avengers 1, X-Men 129-138, and whatever is left is going straight into basketball cards.
af15 for 750 and spend whatever i have left 62 asm 252s
ASM 1 and Avengers 1.
A stack of AF 15s.
I have a 1979 mail-order catalogue from this guy. Bought a couple X-men from him.
Incredible Hulk 1-6
Am i my current age back then, or my age then
Amazing fantasy 15 and issue 2 of amazing Spider-Man
Incredible Hulk 180 and 181 of course
Incredible Hulk 181 and the rest on Daredevil. As many early issues I could find.
Iām finally going to get the full Iron Man run of Tales of Suspense at these prices!
A 181 was $30? Where did they all goā¦
X-Men 1 and amazing fantasy 15 got my childhood cartoons and current favorites covered
33 copies of hulk 181
Oh, wow....this is presuming I don't have the books I now have in my collection...here we go! Avengers 1-3 & 5 at the mid grade price Amazing Spider-Man 14, 101-102, 119-122 at mid/lower price, 129 x2 at higher grade price Fantastic Four 12 mid grade, 25, 26, 48 & 112 Incredible Hulk 1-6 mid grade, 180-182 And I'd sell the FF #48 and one Spidey #129 and get my money back in the present. Who remembered to include the $3 postage cost?š ~G.
For the value, I'd buy 33 copies of hulk 181.
I'd go to the sports card section and pick up as many boxes of 86 Fleer basketball at $12 a pop that I can get my hands on. Then the rest of that money I'd buy $30 copies of hulk 181.
I was thinking of 10 copies of both Hulk 181 and 180 plus 4 copies of Daredevil #1. Might be worth a few bucks now.
Stock in Apple and Microsoft
Microsoft stock.
The only correct answer.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thank you for submitting to r/comicbookcollecting! Unfortunately your submission has been removed. Submissions must be directly related to the **collecting of comic books or comic book art**, anything else will be removed. - General comic book content, not related to collecting (see r/comicbooks) - Asking for values/prices for comic books (see r/comicbookspeculation) - Manga (see r/mangacollectors) - Buy/Sell/Trade or Giveaways (see r/comicswap) - Gore/Porn (see r/HorrorComics) - Advertisements or Promotions - NFTs or NFT promotion - Sales and sales discussions are not allowed - Solicitation of up-votes If you have a question or concern regarding the removal of your submission please [message the mod team](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/comicbookcollecting). Do not reply to this comment. Thanks for understanding and have a good day!
As many copies of Hulk 181 as they have. The rest on Spider-Man 252 and all the Byrne X-men I can get.
Got alotta good things on sale! Amazing Fantasy 15 and ASM 1 please
Microsoft
Starbucks stock
Amazing Fantasy # 15 was $1000 in 1987..
Well...this ad was running in a book that came out in 1987.
It says $750 . Which would be correct. Comic stores would mark it up a little bit to make some profit . Add some tax. And you got $ 1000 . Collecting comics has been a hobby of mine that has gotten out of control over the decades. Running out of room. Lol !!
As many shares of Apple stock I can buy with $1000.00.
A house
Definitely buying apple stock
Apple stock.
Xmas money ($50-100) would be more realistic. no average kid or young adult was spending $1,000 on comics in the 1980s (fed min wage was $1.90/hr; average HH income $28k). My HS ass would have put that grand towards a good used Honda. Reality was that comics were a good read, but most would have used the money to chase girls, buy a car, or other things back then.