10,000 DC comics
and a full English
in Didsbury.

Some pickups you never forget. This was one of them.

Andrew got in touch about selling his collection. He wasn't after a hard sell or a bidding war — he just wanted it to go to someone who'd actually appreciate what it was, and who'd give him a fair, honest price for it. That's most of the people I deal with, to be fair. They've spent years, sometimes decades, building something, and when the time comes to let it go they want it handled properly.

So I made the trip over to Didsbury, in south Manchester. And this being home turf for me — I grew up in Burnage, just up the road — it was always going to be a good day.

A proper collection, top to bottom

When I say 10,000 comics, I mean it. This was a genuine lifetime DC collection — vintage right the way through to modern. Boxes and boxes of it. The kind of run where you're pulling books out and every few minutes you find something that makes you stop and go "oh, hello."

That's the thing people don't always realise about a big collection: it's never just quantity. Buried in 10,000 books there are keys, there are runs that are complete, there are issues that individually make a collector's day. Andrew had clearly bought with love over a long time, and it showed.

Breakfast first, business second

Before we loaded a single box, we had breakfast. Full English, the pair of us sat talking comics — what he'd collected, why, the stories behind some of the books, the ones he was a little sad to see go. That's honestly my favourite part of this job. It's not a transaction to me. Someone's handing over something they cared about, and the least you can do is sit down, have a brew, and treat it like it matters.

Then we got to work. Loaded the van — and with 10,000 books, that's a proper load, roof to floor — sorted the payment there and then, and that was that. Andrew got a great price, paid on the spot, no messing about. I drove back over the Pennines with a van full of DC and a very good day behind me.

Why I do it this way

I could've made Andrew post everything, or offered him some lowball figure and hoped he took it. That's not how Retro Relics works. I come to you, I pay fairly based on what the books are genuinely worth on the live market, and I pay the same day. Whether it's ten comics or ten thousand, in Manchester or anywhere else in the UK, the deal's the same: honest, respectful, collector to collector.

Andrew's collection is exactly the kind of thing I'm always looking for. If you've got something similar sitting in a loft or a spare room — a lifetime of buying you're finally ready to move on — I'd genuinely love to hear about it.

Based in the North East, buying nationwide — including right across Manchester. Selling comics in Manchester? Read more here.