So I have been going through a bit of a change in my collection. Originally, when I was getting back into comics, I started picking up issues of just about anything that sounded remotely interesting. I was using DCBS and with their discount it made it very very easy. I was accumulating more and more books to where I needed three filing cabinets to store them all. After a while I've ended up having a change of heart. Partly to save money I cut back on the DCBS ordering and only ordered Spidey books (my main collecting focus). It has now kicked to a no new issues (675 is the last one I have listed). I ended up over the last year purging many of my books. I ended up selling all of my filing cabinets and have whittled down to about 1k plus some stragglers.

Now I feel myself pulling further away and wanting to go towards commissions and original art. Of course my wallet says since a niece piece of OA can be a bunch more than a regular book. I have two commissions that I have lined up to pick up at the Baltimore Con this year and was thinking of looking at OA while I'm there. With what I have saved up for the art I could probably grab a 9.8 ASM 300 to go with my McSpidey run I've been trying to put together since 2010.

I don't know if this is just me being the ADD collector and seeing something new that is shiny or if it is going to be a real shift in focus. If anything I do want to keep my focus, even if in OA, to Spider-Man so I'm not jumping ship to Superman or Batman or Flaming Carrot.

So what about everyone else... have you gone through a focus shift? Have you come back to your original focus after a break?

I think that your experience is fairly common. I started collecting lots of different things, realized I'd never finish all the runs, and focused down on a few things just like you. It is also normal to expand into other areas related to comics like OA and toys. Even with more focus there is still almost unlimited stuff to buy, but at least it takes less room.

I agree--very common. I started with collecting many of my childhood books--very cheap since that constitutes the 80s and early 90s. Then, I moved onto completing an entire ASM run along with a few shorter runs of Batman and X-Men. This took longer, but seeing as how as I wasn't grade-specific, it was very doable. I began moving into OA, which included some inexpensive published pieces as well as second-hand commissions and sketch covers. At this time, I also began working more towards key hunting, particularly the SA Marvel Mega-keys. For obvious reasons, this one took me longer to pin down. I also started collecting GA, particularly Action Comics, Batman, Detective Comics, and Superman issues from the WWII era and earlier.

Over the past year though, my collecting has slowed to a near halt. I've spent more and more of my time focusing on my academic scholarship on comics... which probably makes sense as I was wrapping up the last of my doctoral coursework and am now beginning my dissertation on comic book superheroes and American Literature.

My original focus in comic collecting was Four color comics and westerns. This was mainly brought on by me stumbling across a relatives OO western collection, while I was working on his farm. I was about 12. The books were mid fifties. What a slave driver he was. The books were in a shed that had one open side. They were moldy and many were coverless. The ones that had covers just blew me away. (this is why I collect mostly for the cover art) I looked at them many times after that.

When I discovered how to turn on a computer and Ebay in 2002, I went to buying westerns and four colors. My wife joined in too. This was until she saw it was getting expensive. Anyhow, a managed to get over 1800 really nice copies of various titles. Unfortunately, I had to sell do to financial problems.

In 2004 I decided I was going to try again. I spent months studying various titles and runs. I wanted to fins something that I really loved. I also wanted this new focus to be centered around a title that was also more popular with others.

The Early, GA covers of the Action run really caught my eye. They seemed to generate lots of bids in the auctions. I came to the conclusion, that I was going to collect #1 through #30. I managed to get #27, #28, and #29. Unfortunately, I had to sell again in 2005. I joined the CGC boards in January 2005

It was just a few months after that when I was ready to try again. This time, I was going to start out with books that I could more easily afford. My goal was to complete #1 through #100. I started out at the upper end of the run. I purchased many raw books that I figured were at least VG. Many of these were purchased from James Payette. After I got 3 books, I would send them to CGC.

It's been a little over 7 years since I started the run. It's currently at 80% in the CGC registry. It's been hard to maintain this tight focus. Although, I have no regrets.

BTW, you will rarely see a post this long from me.

I was thinking the same thing. Great 'origin story', Mike!

Any truth to the rumor that Mike was bit by a radioactive CGC copy of Action Comics #1 ?

It would explain a lot.

I have also changed focus over the years. I'm in the middle of a change now. I haven't purchased a comic in two months. I'm looking to sell off quite a bit of my collection soon and focus on a few main areas. I'd like to finish my Avengers, Defenders, and Tales to Astonish runs. I'm also keeping an eye out for any interesting early Hulk merchandise as well. After that, who knows.

As I get older, I am liking the accumulation less and less. I could really see whittling it down significantly. the hard part is choosing what books to whittle. I still love the books Individually, but am starting to dislike them as a whole.

Does that make sense?

Ya, you do not want to be the star of the next "Buried Alive" Hoarders. The guy with the long finger nails, Howard Hughes hair, sitting on a tower of comic books

I'm going through a focus change right now. Besides my complete runs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics and Marvel Zombies comics, my collection (if you can even call it that... I refer to more as an accumulation) never seemed to have much focus. I would buy lower grade books from almost any era and very few new release comics. Over the past 5 years I had accumulated over 5,500 comics.
Over the past two months I've been selling and giving away as much of my "collection" as I can. I actually started with my Buffy and MZ books because those were the ones that I had the most pride in, believing that once these were gone, getting rid of the rest would be easy. It actually has worked well.
I hope, with the start of the new year, to focus more on key books, books with covers and stories that I actually enjoy to the point that I could read/look at them over and over, collecting older stories where the books themselves don't carry with them much value in TPBs if available, and also focus more on picking up current titles that sound interesting to me. I also will no longer be buying my new releases from DCBS, but instead will shop at the LCSs that surround me. Hopefully this will help me to be more "current" with my new titles. I hate when I read about an interesting new release, one that I might have seen myself if I visited an LCS more often than 3 times a year, and I can't find it or it has been priced out of my reach within just a month or two's time.

I will not be able to accumulate as much as quickly as I had before, but I think I will be able to look at my collection with a lot more pride.
Maybe it's an age thing, or a been there done that thing, but right now I'm looking for Quality over Quantity.

Makes sense to me.

Yep, it does. How many books do you have in total, Steve?

I've got about 1300-1400 in my collection, but I'm always looking for ways to wrestle it down even a bit more, especially since we live in an apartment and not a house.

I know many collectors have collections in the tens of thousands... I'd go completely out of my mind with a load like that. At some point it stops being fun, and becomes a burden.

I have about 9000 comics give or take 500. 90% of them are cataloged, bagged and filed and on industrial shelving in my basement. However, it's the 10% I just never seem to get the time to organize or read. They sit around in piles here and there in the computer room and closet. And as I get older and busier, its starting to become apparent I may never get to the 10%. how long do I go on pretending I'll get to it someday? Oh, and don't forget two full bookcases of TPBS, masterworks, archives, etc. Its overwhelming.

Thanks.
It was really hard for me to part with my Buffy collection. It was my pride and joy, built over the past 4+ years. I was probably 3 variants away from a complete collection, but they were variants I have never even seen for sale in those past 4+ years. I was beginning to wonder if they even existed. Collecting the stories in trades makes more sense not just fiscally and spatially, but mentally much less taxing.
I'm very excited to see where the new year leads me, and I haven't felt this way for quite some time.

I know what you mean. I ended up getting too overwhelmed by the number of books that I needed to scan and catalog that I kept putting it off and I think that might be some of my reason for the focus shift. I spent most of this week rearranging my books that I want to keep and I was able to catch up on my non-scanned books. I still have about 30 or 40 to do but it feels reasonable for me to knock out next weekend.

It does feel good to be free of a bunch of books that I don't care about.