Lookin' for back issues in all the right places

As a teen I spent a lot of time combing the local comic shops, conventions and mail order catalogs for the best deals on back issues, particularly for the higher-priced issues of Uncanny X-Men I lacked for my collection. Birthday and Christmas money, as well as most of what I earned at my part-time job, went to this endeavor. Despite the high price and low availability, I somehow completed my collection of issues 94 and up. (Wimbledon Green, eat your heart out).

Nowadays I would probably be more inclined to just buy the trade, but for people who are interested in owning the original, there's a new search engine called ComicSeeker that will search multiple internet sites, such as eBay and MyComicShop, for back issues.

The site's blog offers some insight into its secret origin: This story may not be exciting to you, whoever you are, but it is interesting to me. I've been back into collecting old comics for since 2004. I helped my mom move for the first time in years and found a couple of long boxes of comics. Mostly silver age Flash up until the end at 350.

I got the boxes home and my son, then almost four, went right into them. Unfortunately, I couldn't buy new comics for him because the stories weren't age appropriate, so I started with trade paperbacks of old DCs. As he got hooked, so did I...again.