Even as stores to the left and right of Big Planet Comics continue to shutter their doors and the market for back issues dwindles, owner Peter Casazza isn’t worried about his store’s future.
In order to keep his almost 4-year-old store afloat, Casazza said he has been diversifying — going from offering strictly comic books and collectibles to providing his clientele with table-top and trading-card games.
“We’re only losing about 3 percent of our total profit,” Casazza said of the sinking market for back issue comics. “Selling back issues is only a part of what we offer the College Park community.”
Although the collapse of this market has forced Casazza to restructure and other comic stores to close altogether, interest in back issues tends to ebb and flow with time.
“In the 2000s, comics were starting to come back out of obscurity,” Casazza said. “The writing of the stories got really good, creating an interest in back issues.”
Thanks to online marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, there are hundreds of comics available to be bought and sold with the click of a mouse.
The most valuable tend to be those from the late 1930s to the 1950s — known among industry insiders as the “Golden Age of Comics” — because not many people saved them and they contained the first appearances of superheroes that are now household names, such as Batman and Superman. Comics from the 1960s onward are less valuable as more people started collecting them when they were printed.
Prices continued to decrease through 2006, and leveled off in 2007. Although Big Planet Comics is not at risk of going under at present, Casazza is “nervous” about the market outlook for comic books and collectibles five years from now.
“It’s very similar to what happened with baseball cards — it became a career,” he said. “People would quit their jobs and decide to deal in baseball cards, then, when the bubble burst, they were out of luck.”
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