So, how did you get your TPB/GN collection up and running?

[DialHForHagai]

I've been collecting comic books for about four years now.
During these years, I've spent a lot of money. For the first two years, my whole collection (Except one hardcover and one trade) was comprised of single issues.
I don't know what happened, maybe Genesis took over (Ha! It's a comic book joke in a comic book forum! That makes it funny!) but suddenly, I started buying more and more trades and hardcovers (And sell some, in order to buy more).
I still buy quite a few issues per month, but my graphic novel collection, which was comprised of two books only two years ago, now contains about sixty (A little less, I assume, as I sell a lot).

[quinnzel]

For all you TPB/GN collectors out there, how did you start your collection and what are your current buying habits? I've been thinking of selling off my collection of single issues and using the money I get to build upon my TPB collection, this will help to conserve space and I'd be more prone to read my stuff since I wouldn't have to find the books I want to read and take them out of bags and boards and then re-file them again.

So, when did you make the switch, and why? And how did you build your collection?

I buy single issues as well as trades/graphic novels/hardcovers, but when I first started out I was only buying trades and other collected editions. I didn't think I'd ever be interested in getting more than a couple single issues here and there, but then I started picking some up and it became a weekly ritual and I had a pull-list, and the rest is history.

I enjoy both trades and single issues. I don't think I'd ever drop single issues entirely because I absolutely adore the weekly trip to my local comic shop to pick up my comics and I love reading them after a long day at school and what-not. Sometimes I'll go through a large stack on the weekends and just make an evening of it. So I don't think I'd ever drop single issues entirely because I enjoy them too much, especially if I'm following an ongoing series and I can't wait to see what happens next. Space is definitely an issue but I'm not too concerned about it right now. Definitely not enough to stop getting single issues.

My trades and collected editions collection is quite large right now and it's taking over the second shelf of my bookcase. The first paperback I bought was the Marvel Masterworks X-Men Vol. 1 and I didn't look at comics again for many years. Then I picked up a couple paperbacks one day out of curiosity and it just went from there. I've now got about 80 trades/hardcovers on my shelves, which to me is a heck of a lot but I'm sure to a lot of people here is just a drop in the bucket

[Kandor Rising]

I prefer older comics and stories, so TPBs are much more affordable than single issues. I started with the first volumes of the Superman and Batman chronicles. I was buying single issues for a while, but I do prefer TPBs for their ease of storage and appearance.

[BlackagarBoltagon]

Just cancelled my pull list and will begin the transition soon. Selling off the old singles collection to fund it is not going to an easy task however, but I'm excited. For me it was mainly a storage and ease of reading issue that convinced me to switch over to TPBs.

I will miss my floppies though.

[John Aston]

Been reading comics for about thirty years (good lord). My first trades were Batman Year One and Dark Knight Returns. There weren't a whole lot of collections floating around back then as there are now. Somewhere around the mid-2000s I stopped buying Vertigo issues and moved to trades and I gradually shifted away from single issues. I still pick up a handful just not to split a Daredevil and Wonder Woman collection into different formats. Eventually I walked away from Marvel and DCU for the most part and decided to explore reprinted comics I've never read or new ventures.

I've sold a lot of single issues on eBay in 2014 and converted some of the single-issue mainstays into collected editions. I cleared out about six long boxes. I still have about 40 left. Getting comics from the bottom of a column of long boxes requires months of working out.

[Chojin]

One of the first true comics I bought and actually read was the graphic novel collection of Aliens Vs. Predator when I was 10 or 11 back in the mid nineties. I spotted the Graphic Novel shelf in a local bookstore and noticed the Alien/Predator books and loved the films so I was desperate to read more even at that age so after pestering my grandparents for a week or two they coughed up the cash and got me my first GN which I read twice the first day I bought it. That book got some readings in and I still own it now.

I then moved on to getting my hands on anything Aliens/Predator/AVP that I could, by starting to venture into my LCS and start buying singles as well as GNs. At that age I really wasn't bothered about the format I was reading things in, it was more a case of what I could get my hands on due to the internet not yet being as advanced as it is today. I was also limited by my weekly pocket money allowance of £5 so I could only buy (at the time) 2 single comics for £2 each with a £1 left over for some sweets or whatever I wasted it on - I'm sounding so old now. It wasn't long before more friends got into the same thing and we had a group of around 6 of us that all collected comics, especially Dark Horse material that related to franchises/films that we liked.

This didn't last long due to the limited amount of releases DH were outputting and what we could get at our LCS so we moved on to Marvel. A friend started collecting X-Men and Wolverine issues, and I read a few and really enjoyed them. But I had to find my own hero to follow when I bought a random Spider-Man Issue (Peter-Parker Spider-Man Annual '97) and from there I was hooked on Spider-Man and collected all 5-6 of his monthly titles as well as any UK re-prints that were coming out. This lasted about 4 years on and off where I was buying 70% Spider-Man and 30% Misc/X-Men/Whatever I could get. Then I went to college and beer was a more appealing choice to spend my cash on so I stopped collecting altogether.

During my early twenties I did read the odd comic here and there, dabbled in manga a lot but wasn't reading much at all. Then in my mid twenties I got the bug again and for the last five years I've been collecting manga/GNs/Hardcovers.

It's only in the last year though that I've started only buying Hardcovers exclusively as now that I'm a bit older I can afford to treat myself a bit more

[dingbat46]

I had a little under a thousand single issues (some key ones too, like amazing spidey #29, 31, 100). I moved out of my parents' house, felt like rebelling and got fired from my job and sold all my comics and music to pay rent. A few years later I had a bit of change so decided to buy Brand New Day vol. 1, 2 and 3. It reignited a flame in me that was definitely missing. Now I've got over 500 collected editions. I miss single issues, but I can't look back.