A Hobby of Mine

This is a tough one for me these days. I don’t really have much of a hobby in the traditional sense anymore. For the majority of my years, I could say that my hobby was collecting comic books. But I’m not doing that anymore. I don’t even have any of the old comic books that I once held on to for so long. And, looking back, there’s a part of me that wishes I’d never held on so dearly to the things.

It’s not that I suddenly decided I didn’t enjoy comic books. I loved read the stories each week and seeing the artwork and finding out what scrapes Superman was going to get into. I just (slightly) regret saving each and every copy that I ever bought. Because, in the end, they just weren’t worth anything. I did the math. Over a span of about 25 years, I probably spent more than $10,000 on comic books. Newsstand copies, collector’s editions, variant covers… I bought into what DC Comics was selling. I never had any delusions that the comics I collected would make me rich someday. But I thought for sure that the investment would eventually get me a little something back. Well, I guess it did. I just expected it to be a little more than the $100 I got for my entire collection.

So do I feel like I wasted a lot of time and money on a worthless hobby? No, I don’t. Like I said, my ultimate intention for collecting comic books was for the entertainment value. I just wish I’d have known that they wouldn’t have been worth anything in the long run. Then I wouldn’t have had to worry about storing them and moving them back and forth every time I found a new place to live.

I’m not collecting the comics anymore. Occasionally I’ll see something I want to read, but I’ll get a digital copy and read it on the iPad. These days, though, I guess my only real hobby is the ability to quote obscure movie lines. But, I’m sure that has value on some level.