An Uncanny Find

I collect X-Men comics. It started when I was young and I liked the tv show. My mom started buying me comics for my birthday and Christmas. I had a picture of Rogue on my bedroom wall. And an old school poster of the whole X-Team. I enjoyed reading them, but I was a kid and I didn't have a lot of money to be spending so while I treasure my collection, I didn't have many a huge amount.

I got back into collecting during high school, but it was never a huge thing.

Fast forward several years. Graduate from college, get a real job, have actual money to spend.



So I've been trying to complete my collections. My biggest goal had been completing the second series, the "adjective-less" X-Men that started in 1991. I had a lot of the early issues and was only missing an issue here and there. I quickly was able to complete that run until X-Men (and New X-Men) became X-Men Legacy.

I moved onto Uncanny where I had more holes and shorter runs. I've been trying to score on ebay for lots of Uncanny X-Men but there are lots of us trying to complete collections and it can be difficult getting what you want for what you want to pay.

My boyfriend collects boyscout patches and often puts ads on Craigslist. He's had a decent about of luck. So a few weeks ago I put an ad on Craigslist for X-Men Comics.

I had a few early bites of people trying to sell me comics at book value. I can buy them off ebay for cheaper than that so I passed. I had others trying to sell me other comics they collected and I wasn't interested in that either.

Time went by.

Then I had a guy e-mail me. He told me he had a ton of stuff and asked if I was interested. I e-mailed him back asking what he had and what he wanted for it. He didn't know what he had, other than it was 2 long boxes of X-Men titles. He wanted $1.50 each or $.50 if I took the whole lot.

I had things going on at work so I didn't respond right away so the guy e-mailed me again. Said he'd sell them to me for $.25 each but I needed to take them all.

I called him up and said I'd come take a look. Honestly, I was a little leary about it because I'm only looking for Uncanny and a few from the second series. On the phone however he sounded dissapointed because he'd contacted a comic shop in town and they'd told him they would only give him $.05 a title, and told me that he might be willing to sell the comics to me for $.10-$.15 each.

I bribed the boyfriend with the promise of dinner to come with me and we went to this guy's house.

As it turns out he cleans out foreclosed houses and stumbled on a HUGE amount of comics. He had 11 long boxes (2 of which were X-Men). He had found them in a home and thought he'd try to sell them instead of throwing them out. It turns out Goodwill didn't really want the comics and the comic book stores didn't want to pay him much for the comics.


I briefly looked through the boxes. It looked promising, but there were a lot of the "other" titles as well.

So I asked the guy- how much?

I snagged the pair for $50. There are about 175 Uncanny, 150 X-Men (2nd Series) aka New X-Men and X-Men Legacy, and tons of others.

I spent the better part of my night sorting through.

The original owner would read them and put them in a box. No bags, no boards, no order.

The guy I bought them from said that Marvel was mixed with DC, Dark Horse, Image... etc, etc...

Sooo many needs have been satisfied from this. I have 10 years of Uncanny X-Men. The run starts at about 320 and goes up to 500. A few issues missing here and there, but not many...

My own rule is not to pay more than $1 for the newer X-Men, and it came down to about $.08 a comic. I think I did pretty well. :)