When one says, yeah, I collect comic books, what is the
general public response? Oh no, a slightly off the wall geek. Here is
someone who has lost touch with reality. Or someone that is in his or
her own little world. I think not. Yes, comic book collectors may
sometimes march to the beat of a different drummer, but who says we all
have to be cut from the same mold. Comic books are big business.

Back in the days of my youth (what, several millennia ago?), I
loved reading comic books. And so did a lot of my friends. Whenever we
had an extra dime or sometimes a quarter, we could run up to the local
small town grocery and spend some very happy times at the comic book
rack.

We would even go out and find small odds jobs for pocket
change, which was enough then to purchase 2 or 3 good flights of
adventure and fantasy. I can even remember crawling under our house to
retrieve a cat that had the misfortune of dying there. My Dad couldn't
stomach the smell and enticed my friend and I to accomplish the chore
for ample pocket change. We braved the spiders and other crawly
creatures to retrieve and bury the unfortunate cat. Not long after
that, we were the proud owners of yet, several more intriguing comic
books. Even the local bully (who was really a pretty good guy) would
purchase our worn out or unwanted magazines for far more than they were
worth, so we could purchase new ones.

I didn't know much about collecting then. I just liked saving
what I enjoyed. I had a large cardboard box that I kept under my bed,
filled with all my little treasures. I didn't realize that I had the
beginnings of what could have been something very lucrative. In later
years when I headed off to college, I dragged my large cardboard box
with me. At one point in time, I left most of my belongings in the
charge of what I thought were trusted friends. When I returned from my
forest firefighting adventures, my box full of magazines were no where
to be found. And needless to say, were my trusted friends either.
Others had seen the value in what I had and wanted it for themselves.
Oh well, live and learn. That limited collection of comic books and
other magazines would have been worth a small fortune today.

Are there big bucks in the comic book genre? Just look at what
Hollywood has been up to for the last few decades. As far as I can
tell, the really big blockbusters started back in 1978 with the release
of Superman, The Movie. And since then there has been comic book hero
after comic book hero to hit the silver screen. And they all make tons
of money. The Hollywood moguls may or may not be "into" the genre, but
the can smell large profits. And these kinds of profits aren't
harvested from a small out of touch with reality niche. It take large
numbers of individuals forking out 5 to 10 dollars a pop, to accumulate
the astronomical profits that Hollywood is seeing these days.
Individuals who may or may not want to admit their avid interest in
comic book characters. I will stand up and say, I enjoy watching these
movies and have even started my own collection of comic book character
DVDs. Who knows, maybe some day my DVDs will become as valuable as
comic books. Probably not.

Although, not every individual's collection has magazines
worth thousands of dollars, there are a sizable amount of collections
that can be worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
These are not people that have lost touch with reality. A while back,
the actor, Nicholas Cage, put his comic book collection of about 400
magazines up for auction. Word was that he might have realized a value
into seven figures. That ain't chicken feed.

It is not uncommon for single additions to be worth several
hundred to several thousand dollars. Some comic books can enter the
realm of several hundred thousand dollars for one magazine. Now the
owners have to be some pretty rich economically savvy geeks. Are these
the types of small niche individuals who have lost touch with reality
or don't want to confess they like comic books? So the next time you
hear someone profess, yeah I collect comic books, you may want to look
inside yourself and say, how do I release my hidden passion and start
collecting myself?