In case you didn’t know, I have been a collector of comic books since the first time I had my own disposable income. My obsession began with a copy of Wolverine Versus Spider-Man picked up from an airport bookstore in March of 1995. I probably read that comic 20 times over the course of that trip. When we got home, I slipped it into a gallon ziplock bag and sucked the air out with a straw.

My hometown had a comic shop or two, but they were operated as hobbies in the corners of other more profitable businesses. While my resources were meager at the time, my parents altered my allowance schedule to help me afford a subscription to The Amazing Spider-Man. The going rate at the time was $1.50 per issue with the subscription discount bringing it down to about $15 a year. Come to think of it, I’m a little grumpy that you can only get four comic books for that at today’s prices.

This was merely the start of my collecting. I maintained either a subscription or weekly visits to a local shop for the last 22 years with only brief interruptions when stories were going in unenjoyable directions. Even then, I was picking up other titles I’d discovered along the way.

Deadpool, Spawn, and Sonic the Hedgehog became staples of my pull list as well, adding hundreds of issues to the collection. Once I had big boy money, I also started checking out critical darlings like Fables, Y: The Last Man, Preacher, and Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing as trade paperbacks or hardcovers. These are only a handful of examples and don’t fully convey my rate of acquisition.

I detail my hobby here not to boast, but to show you the gravity of the situation. What we see as innocent collecting in a child begins to look more like larval hoarding by early adulthood. Make no mistake, I enjoyed every comic I bought, but nostalgia and the beautiful lie of rising value led me to keep comics that I would probably never open again. Frankly, it couldn’t have lasted forever.

Let it be known that my wife has been very accommodating regarding my comics. She’s been in my life for almost 15 years, and never once demanded I quit what I enjoy. The thing is, she’s really pregnant right now. We’ve got less than 10 weeks to go until we meet our first child, and there’s a closet in our house that cannot hold even one more box of comics.

Based on the number of short boxes and their typical capacity, I have around 3,000 comic books bagged, boxed, and shelved. And let’s be real, they’re not all masterpieces. I collected Spider-Man in the 90s and have 200 issues of Spawn. You’d better believe there’s some narrative trash in there. But literary triumph or outlandish schlock, do they make me happy?

I was surprised at myself when I came to the answer. They just don’t. Sure, there are a few gems in there that I could read 20 times over and still enjoy (not Wolverine Versus Spider-Man though; kids have bad taste). But most of them were being kept out of habit more than anything. It’s just what a collector is supposed to do.

I spent a day rummaging through each box and pulled out what I loved most. I’m still left with seven boxes of “keepers”, but I can cope with that since nothing new is being added. Everything else is being bagged up into bundles and priced for sale. I reserved a vendor table at a local comic convention, and I plan to oust as much of my collection as I can while there. I know we live in the age of eBay, but comics get heavy fast and the postal service won’t let you ship them as Media Mail. Face-to-face is definitely the best way to sell one’s comics.

If I’ve been silent lately, this is the primary reason. I spend my evenings sitting on the couch and half-listening to the TV while I sort, bag, and price comics. If I’m done by the day of the convention, it will be just under the wire. Maybe I’ll pop back on here afterward to let you know how it went (please don’t count on that). This will definitely be an experience, but I’m feeling an excitement about it.

Why should we burden ourselves with material stuff that doesn’t make us happy anymore? From an investment point of view, I’ll definitely take a loss on my comics since I’m pricing the bundles at $1 per issue. But I’ll get that closet back, gain a little pocket money, and free up a room for when my son outgrows the nursery. I’m all about loving the things you love, but I think it’s healthy to occasionally ask ourselves “if my house burned down today, would I replace this?” The answer my surprise you too.