Back Issue Purchases

[Bilge Snipe]

How in depth do you look into a comic book back issue when you purchase it from a shop?
If I'm buying a book to fill a hole in my collection and the covers look good and it's about $20 or less, I pretty much just go for it.
If I'm buying an older book with greater value, I'll dig into it a bit more. Take a good look at the interior, and decide if my opinion of the grade is commiserate with the shop's opinion.

[Gotham Thrasher]

Heh heh. Nice topic. I try not to spend too much on back issues. If its expensive I try to find it in the tpb. As for singles I try not to spend more then the $1-2 range as I only hunt back issues to bind anyway. So pretty much the condition of the issue itself has just got to be good enough to bind and anything that's kinda bent or something automatically gets repaired in the binding process and subsequently looks better.

[Taral-DLOS]

How in depth do you look into a comic book back issue when you purchase it from a shop?
If I'm buying a book to fill a hole in my collection and the covers look good and it's about $20 or less, I pretty much just go for it.
If I'm buying an older book with greater value, I'll dig into it a bit more. Take a good look at the interior, and decide if my opinion of the grade is commiserate with the shop's opinion.

When I hunt for back-issues at a con or trade show, I'll usually go with a pre-made Want list. Beforehand I'll look at what stories I want, will how they're collected or who the writer is to try and judge story arcs (e.g. if I'm buying issues of Cable, I'll look to see what issues of Cable are collected in the "Cable Classic" TPBs, and so will buy only 1-4, or 1-14, or whatever.) I did this when I bought X-Men Vol 3: the TPBs of "X-Men by Brian Wood" were 30-33 and 34-41, so I bought 30-41 and got complete stories.

And then I'll try not to pay over $5 per issue (but maybe $6-7 if I really want it, or $10 if it's an OGN or whatever).

If it is more expensive than that, I'll make a point to do some research. If I'm at a con, it's easy because I know I'll be queueing for a panel later and so while waiting I'll look the issue up on my phone and find what the issue tends to go for on Newkadia or mycomicshop or Midtown or wherever, and then make an educated decision. I did that this past May, when I picked up 3/4 issues of "Days of Future Present" for between $1 and $5 each, but then saw that the UXM issue was $50. I decided not to buy it, and went online, and saw that you could get VF issues for about $20, or a FN issue for maybe $12 (plus shipping). I ended up finding a copy on the wall of a store for $25 and bought that one.

Being able to research stuff on the fly helps too if you just spot something that looks cool and want to learn more before you buy. It's good to make sure that the issue with the cool cover you're buying isn't Part 3 of 5. You'll either want to avoid reading stuff you have no context on, or (even better) you'll want to hunt down the other issues of that story (which, in the case of Days of Future Present, were in New Mutants, Uncanny X-Men, X-Factor, and Fantastic Four, the latter of which I never would've looked for had I not looked it up).

But when it comes to normal, random issues, I'll do my best to not pay too much, because I know that most issues either are available or will be available on Comixology for $1.99 each. Having a physical copy is great, but there's a limit.

[MegaManChiefFan]

Ok, so I got some more recent back issues.
I got that Fiona Staples variant for The Wicked + The Divine #11, Rumble 1 and 2, Injection #1 (Cover B, I have both covers) and #3, Intersect #1 (One of the worst book I have read all year, but I love the Jeff Lemire variant I got though) and The Surface #1 (It was okay, but the art SUCKED)