My LCS owner pulled me aside at Free Comic Book Day and it changed how I collect
So I was at Third Eye Comics in Annapolis for Free Comic Book Day back in May, standing in a line that wrapped around the building twice, and this guy next to me starts complaining loud about how speculators ruined everything. The shop owner, Steve, hears it, comes out from behind the counter, and instead of arguing he just hands the guy a stack of random back issues from the dollar bin. Says pick one, any one, and tell me the story inside. The guy grabs a beat up X-Men and starts flipping and within two minutes he's quiet, just reading. Steve looks at me and goes, that's the whole gig right there, people forget these are stories first. I'd been collecting for 6 years at that point and honestly I was guilty of it too, bagging and boarding stuff I never even opened, chasing variants because some YouTube guy said they'd flip. I went home and pulled out 40 books I'd never read and just started reading them. Now every Wednesday I grab one cheap book I know nothing about and actually read it that night. Anyone else ever get humbled by a shop owner like that, or is it just me?
Man this hits home hard. My guy Dave at the shop in my town did almost the same thing to me, pulled a ratty old Daredevil out of a box and said read this before you buy anything else. I had like 3 long boxes at home and maybe read ten percent of them. I was bad about buying two copies of everything, one to keep sealed and one to "read" that I never actually opened. After that I started cracking open stuff I'd had bagged for years and found books I actually loved that I'd written off as junk. That X-Men moment your guy had is real, once you start reading you can't stop.