What's your spending limit on a comic book?

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Last year I shocked myself and bought 2 comics that stunned me at what I spent. I bought the 1st Silver Age Riddler and 1st Harley Quinn for $100 bucks at a show. I was stunned that I paid essentially $50 bucks apiece for both. But I had looked for a Harley Quinn 1st appearance awhile and was happy I scored it.

[Sans Simian]

Despite my monthly pull list (which is so big I can't fit it all in my signature on this site) I really try to work a deal. Anything more than cover price is hard for me to justify, so I don't buy a lot of variant covers (I lucked out on a Skottie Young Spider-Gwen #1 for cover price), and I try to limit back issues to essentially $2.00 or less an issue. The only exception for the rule is #1s. When I get extra money (which is really never) I'm looking to buy the #1s of New 52 Batman, Detective Comics and Batgirl, which hopefully will have come down slightly from where they are now. Other than that... I'll buy older series/storylines/collections in trade form unless I can get the individual comics for cheaper.

[PretenderNX01]

If a new book is over $3.99 it better have extra pages or I won't bother.

I buy online and I wait until I have enough that the shipping cost can be included in the total and I still make out a bit less per book than at a store. We don't have any good LCS here anyway so I'm not harming them, I'd go to one if it were still around but they left before I went to online orders.

For older books, the only big purchase I made was the first I Love Lucy comic and in poor/average condition that cost me like 30 bucks.
For old DC/Marvel books I can just read the reprints in hardcover or trade.

[Kieran_Frost]

I put aside £20 a month (used to be £40) and buy what I want with that. I severely cut down my pull list to Uncanny X-men, Angela: Assassin of Asgard and Wolverines. Nothing else really excites me, sadly (lost Superior Foes of Spiderman and She-Hulk; and Loki: Agent of Asgard took a giant nose-dive in quality).

[JackDaw]

I enjoy reading comics, not a collector: for me its one of competing interests, and I'm looking for good value per entertainment hour. Most modern comes at cover price don't do it for me... I look more for "value" comics written by authors I like... available at 1 to 2 dollars per issue.

Loads of stuff available in that range...e.g. Mike Grell Green Arrow run, a lot of John Ostrander's runs.

If I can get most of a run at a good price, will consider going to 8 dollars for an issue to get complete run...but if there are comics in run significantly above that level...no chance. (e.g. Have fancied reading Bryan Q Miller's Batgirl run for sometime...but regard prices as daft, so never bothered. (Now I've gone digital, and can get downloads at a halfway reasonable price, will read sometime.)

[ultimate jezebel]

I enjoy reading comics, not a collector:

I'm a walker between both worlds. I either read what I buy, or have a reading copy of the higher grade book which stays in the bag (or slab)

[Academyfan0545]

I normally do not get more then 5-6 books a month I think I am doing 8/9 this month simply because Black Vortex has 5 issues this month but 5/6 is what I typically do.

[quinnzel]

Because I'm not buying the really pricey comics like Golden or Silver age, I usually just pay the normal sales price for new stuff. My prices range from $2.99-$3.99 usually, and for a while $4.99 wasn't a big deal either but as my pull-list has grown exponentially, I've had to really, really want that $4.99 book to justify the extra cost.

Every now and then I'll pay more for a single issue. Dynamite's special issues like Red Sonja #100 was $7.99 and I grabbed that because I'm a huge Red Sonja fan and it's bound in much better quality than regular issues (with an actual paperboard cover rather than just regular paper).

I'll pay more for a special variant cover, too, but I really can't bring myself to pay $100 for just one issue, or even $50. I think $20 would be my absolute limit for one single issue.

[Trevor]

I'd guess that at least 99% of my 30,000 comics were a buck or less.

[doctormistermaster]

The most I have ever spent on a single issue was $125.00 each and for three different issues about 7-8 years ago.
I will probably be spending that much again in the future(???) since I am looking for low grade copies of Kid Colt Outlaw#1 and Rawhide Kid #1.

Judging by the cover prices you got ripped off
Cheesy jokes aside I am very jealous.

Due to cost I am now only reading trades. I am more invested in the ongoing narrative nature of the stories than the act of collecting. Although I will confess that I really do enjoy collecting comics and when I am done with my education I will try and get back into collecting single issues. To answer the question, it really depends on a variety of factors such as my current income and the quality of the story. Outside of a few exceptional stories I would not likely be willing to break the 5 dollar limit for a regular sized issue. This of course excludes exceptions such as those posted by marvelmaniac6169.

[ultimate jezebel]

I'll pay more for a special variant cover, too, but I really can't bring myself to pay $100 for just one issue, or even $50.

I'll only put that out if I feel my chances of recovering at least initial outlay is good, should I choose to sell a book.

When most of the 100:1 Quesada variants came out, I didn't buy them at initial prices if my dealer didn't have them with his orders...but picked them up later on when auctions went as low as $5 for a NM copy (right place, right time yay!!). So I bought those cuz I like those covers but just didn't want to pay initial prices like $39.95 up.

[Overhazard]

Well, I normally read trades, and thanks to my scribid account and my LCS having overstock sales a few times a year I have more books than I can read, which is really nice. When it comes to singles $3.99 is my limit. I will not spend more than that. There are some books I feel like I "have" to get in single form because by the time the trade comes out the book is cancelled, unless it's a Vertigo title. The biggest price hike I've noticed over the years is Archie's Sonic the hedgehog, it used to be cheaper than mainstream books for a long time, but now it costs the same. I'm not mad about it, I just noticed the change is all.

[Richard Bishop]

I'm down to only 5 books per month on my pull list, so $3.99 per book isn't terribly taxing. If it were to go above that level, I would probably drop a couple of the books and wait until they hit the $1 bins.

For classic books, I've spent $125 or more on 5 books but never more than $180. $200 would be about my limit unless it was something I really wanted to complete a run (I've pondered doing it for a nice copy of Werewolf by Night #32).

[Goggindowner]

Really, $2.99 was where I was really pushing the limits of my comfort, but I hung in until just about everything was $3.99 for new releases. That was the end of it for me, I haven't bought a single issue comic in a very very long time now. I think it was around the time that Hickman started writing the Fantastic Four. I was ordering online at a discount retailer but was having massive problems in getting things on my list. The retailer kept running out so it was basically a waiting list to get the book, which sometimes took weeks or months.

As for back issues, I just don't bother anymore. For me, the only reason I ever bought any back issues were to appease my collector side, and that side is gone. The most expensive book I ever bought was Uncanny X-Men #213. I paid $65 for it probably 15 years ago. Now I regret it, especially since the value of the book has done nothing but plummet in the years that I have had it.

I'm exclusively a trade reader now.

[Kusanagi]

Don't have one, I have a budget I have for comics period. If a comic I really like is $4.99 I'll just buy fewer comics to compensate. The death of deadpool book is going to cost around 10, but I'm not going to hesitate to buy it, I'll just pass on some of my more borderline books.