This Saturday, the Friends of the Pima County Public Library will be selling about 30,000 comic books, most of which will priced at 50 cents each. Full details can be found here.There's something interesting there about the source of the donation coming from a comic book shop that had the comics in storage for the past few years. I can't quite succinctly verbalize it at the moment, but consider:
- Back issue sales in most retail comic shops has been trending downwards, thanks in part to online sales and auction sites.
- The value of back issue comics has been trending downwards, thanks to increased reprint output (in the form of TPB and hardcover collections) from publishers.
- The economy, as a whole, is worse off than it was a year ago.
- Public library usage has gone up, but library budgets have gone down.
- One possible implication of the large-scale donation is that the tax write-off is worth more to the retailer than trying and/or not being able to sell the individual issues.
Feel free to draw your own connections and write your own analysis.
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