My $150 box of back issues I should have left at the shop

I walked into a convention last year thinking I'd find some hidden gems in a long box under a table. The guy running the booth said everything was from the early 90s and mostly untouched. I spent about 45 minutes digging and ended up buying a stack for $150 because it had some X-Men issues I vaguely remembered. Got home and checked the prices online, and almost every single issue was worth maybe a dollar or two. I think the most valuable thing in the pile was a copy of X-Force #1 that still had the trading card, which goes for like $5. I could have just bought the one or two books I actually wanted for under $10 total. Now that box is sitting in my closet because I don't have the heart to toss them but I also don't want to look at them. Has anyone else gotten burned by those mystery boxes where sellers just dump dollar bin books?

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quinns204mo ago

almost every single issue was worth maybe a dollar or two" - yeah, that's kind of the deal with those mystery boxes though, right? Like you're literally paying for the thrill of the dig and the maybe. $150 for a box of early 90s books? That's not even that terrible honestly. I've seen people drop way more on worse stuff. You still got some X-Men, you still got the card pack, and you got a whole afternoon of going through comics. People act like every long box has to be a gold mine or it's a total loss. Just take the L, sell the stack for $30 on Facebook Marketplace, and move on. It's not that deep.

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taylor_mitchell804mo ago

Ha, $30 is way too generous for a Facebook sell though.

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