As I spent my lunch hour marveling at the fact that the toys I played with as a child were now artifacts worth so much more than I paid for them, I was more shocked at the value of the one thing I did treasure more than anything else as a child – the one thing that to me, was priceless and is now, for some reason or another, worth next to nothing – comic books.

When I was a kid, I would spend hours at my local comic book store fishing out dozens of comics that I would buy at a quarter a piece – while this was a great price then – the problem is that they are going for that same amount today.

As Doug and I were looking at the amazing collection of memorabilia in the store, I saw that they had comic books, which immediately diverted my attention away from everything else. As I flipped through their collection, I recognized a few and grabbed one in particular. It was a Batman issue from the Knightfall series, number twelve to be exact. It was the one immediately after Bane broke Batman’s back. I remember when it first hit the stands at a cover price of $1.25 – it hit five bucks two hours after it began to sell and only shot up from there. I think it got as high as twenty dollars at one point – but at the store I was in only a few days ago – they were selling it for fifty cents.

I was amazed. All of the comics that I remember buying and selling at fairly high prices were as cheap as comics I bought as a kid almost twenty years ago. How was this possible? What has happened to the comic industry that made their comics lose their worth faster than Superman loses his strength when exposed to Kryptonite? Doug summed it up in two words – mass production.

When comics were in their infancy, only small quantities of each issue were printed, leaving the ones that lasted throughout the years true one-of-a-kind collectibles. Today’s comics were made for the masses. When an issue that is sure to be popular is ready to hit the newsstands, millions are printed to ensure that everybody gets one. While that may be great for the fans – it killed the industry. Now that everybody had a copy of the hottest comics and knew they should be kept in good condition to preserve their worth, their values decreased. After all, the reason that May, 1939’s Detective Comics #27 which features the first appearance of Batman and Action Comics #1 which introduced the world to Superman are worth close to $100,000 a piece is because there are less than 20 of each still in existence – but the issue I picked up at the store is only worth fifty cents because there are so many of them out there. In fact, they had about twenty of them for sale at that store alone.

I think it’s a real shame what happened to the comic book industry. I still buy comics because I enjoy reading, as I call them, “the great works of our time”. So while they may be real cheap now – they’re still as priceless as everything else in the store to me.

So what has my trip to the collectibles store taught me? It has taught me that while we are always moving forward in life, we still value the past and its memorabilia.

Just think – one day a DVD will be in that glass case…