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Hello comic collectors.

I know, I know… It’s been awhile since I last posted but I am working on putting some good content together for you. Recently, I received this question from “Angela” a fellow collector:

“I have some old Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom Comic books that I have had since I was a teenager. They are still wrapped in plastic. They were limited editions. How would I find out what these would be worth today?“

First, thank you for the question and it is definitely a question that many collectors ask quite often before they determine to sell their comic books or maybe determine worth for their collection. Let’s get started shall we. (Thanks to my good friend Sean over at comicbooksecrets.com for the outline for this - go check out his site after you read this.)

Step 1: Gather Titles and Issue Numbers

If you have an “Amazing Spiderman” collection, what you would do is list all of your issue numbers on a piece of paper or in a text editor such as notepad. Here is an example:

Amazing Spiderman 300
Amazing Spiderman 316

Step 2: Determine Condition or “Grade”

A quick note here, grading your comics is subjective. As an example, I prep comic books for collectors to increase the grade of the book before they send them into CGC or PGX for grading. They may send me a “Wolverine 1 Limited Edition”. That collector may have graded that book a 9.2, but when I review the book to determine an estimated arrival grade, the grade may actually be a an 8.0.

That’s a huge difference when it comes to grading. So, what’s the best way to determine the condition or “grade” of my comic books? First, acquire for yourself the Bible of the industry, the “Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide” along with the “Official Overstreet Comic Book Grading Guide” (you can find these in the right navbar under the blog signup form. Look for “Recommended”).

The basic comic book gades are:

For more details and descriptions of these grades, visit my good friend, Seans site and watch his video.

Mint (MT) and Near Mint (NM)
Vefy Fine (VF)
Fine (F)
Very Good (VG) to Good (G)
Fair (FR) to Poor (PR)

Step 3: Find The Value of your Comic Book

We have a couple of ways to find the value of our comic books. First, we can use the Overstreet Price Guide but, as my good friend Sean has said, this is really only good for research of first appearances, villains, etc. as the pricing is a year or more behind and can be biased as they receive a lot of data from dealers.

The best way to find values for your comic books is on eBay! Yes, you’ve read that right - the famous eBay site has the most up-to-date pricing on what you could get for your comic books.

So, what I’m going to do is a video for you guys on how to research your comic books on eBay. Keep watching this site as I will have this coming up soon.

Happy collecting.

Patrick
The Comic Collector