Debate: Does collecting graded comics take the fun out of reading them?

I was at a small show last Saturday in Portland and overheard two guys going at it. One collector had a CGC 9.8 copy of Amazing Spider-Man 300 in a slab and wouldn't even take it out. The other guy was flipping through a beat-up copy of the same issue and saying he actually reads his books. It got me thinking. I found a stat online that said nearly 40 percent of high grade Silver Age books never get cracked open. That surprised me. On one hand, slabbing protects the value and keeps a book mint. On the other hand, comics were meant to be read, not locked in plastic. Are we preserving history or just hoarding plastic bricks? Where do you guys fall on this?

2 comments

2 Comments

johnh8218d agoMost Upvoted

40% of Silver Age books never cracked open, that's just expensive paperweights.

vals3817d ago

Wait, where are you getting that 40% number from? I've seen some surveys from the CGC census but they only track graded books, not the whole market. A lot of those untouched Silver Age books are sitting in collections owned by people who don't grade them. Plus, aren't a lot of those "unopened" books just copies that got stored away decades ago and forgotten about? They're still worth something as collectibles, even if nobody's reading them.