By the way, you can buy that Playboy for $6.50. The retail price was $5.00. Factor in inflation and it's cheaper now than it was in 1997. Actually, I bet there's a calculator for this. Yeah.

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=4.95&year1=1997&year2=2015

$4.95 in 1997 is $7.33 today.

It's like yesterday I was looking at the price of those Elvis stamps from 1993. I knew they'd be worthless but I just wanted to know how little. These were the most popular stamps the US Postal Service ever released. It was a big news story at the time. People bought them as a collector's item but they sold like six million of these things.

Stamp collectors are paying well under face value for these stamps now. Why would you even sell them for under face value when it's my understanding that you can go to the post office and effectively cash them in for face value?

Same with comics. I bought all these comics in the 1990s when comics were in a new golden age. They sold millions of each issue. Nobody wants this crap. So you can buy these comics now for less than the cover price.

Let's just look on comicspriceguide.com. Bone was all the rage when I was collecting. Issue one still goes for $300. That's good news. But I have issue 10. That's a more modest $8. Actually, $4 because it looks like I have the second printing. I also have 13 which is also $4.

It was all hype. They discontinued the comic in 2004.

What else? Penthouse Comix. This was supposed to revolutionise the pornographic comic industry. Big mainstream artists were working on this. I have three copies of the first issue. It sells for £14. Actually, that's not bad. It sold for $5. So it did better than this Playboy and better than Bone.

There's actually a variant cover for issue 3 that this site doesn't list. One version has a swastika branding iron and the other has just a cross branding iron. I think the cross version was destined for the German market. Anyway, I have both versions. I wonder if one is worth more than the other.

Also, the spin-off Penthouse Men's Adventure Comix had two versions for the first few issues: one in comic book size and one in magazine size. I have the comic book size version for number 1. No mention of these variations on this price guide.

Yeah, that Penthouse Comix turned out to be a big disappointment. It only lasted a couple years at best and turned into hardcore porn by the end (though I had long stopped buying it). The guy who wrote it ended up killing himself shortly before it was cancelled.

I read the stories and they were just weak. I remember a letter in there perfectly summing up my reaction to the comic. In it the guy complained that he'd like to see an adult comic where perhaps the character happen to have sex. But in Penthouse Comix, the stories are just a flimsy excuse for the characters to have sex like the plot in a porn film. This guy who wrote the comic replied with, "This guy doesn't seem to be in on the joke" totally dismissing this valid complaint.

So you'd have a superhero story where the characters have sex by the end of each episode. And a science fiction story where the characters have sex by the end of each episode. And a cavewoman story where the characters have sex by the end of each episode. And a police story where the characters have sex by the end of each episode. It was tedious.

Also, I remember one series that was all painted. It looked like shit. I still remember those huge oblong boobs coming out of a latex suit.

Well, Superman 75 where Superman dies must surely be worth something. It was up to $50 at one point. Only $18 now. Not too bad, I guess considering that they sold millions of these things.

The only comics that are worth anything are the ones pre-1982 or so. Unfortunately, I just bought a few of those. So Vamirella #8 from 1970 which I bought for about $30 is now worth maybe...$100 in very fine condition. I bought it at very fine so hopefully it's still very fine.

I also got some free old issues of Crazy and shit like this. The company I bought from would give this stuff out for free with every order because nobody wanted it. Now it's worth something. I have Crazy #4, for instance. $40 now. It even made it into an episode of the Simpsons where Skinner is giving a tour of the seized items room.

"Complete collections of Mad, Cracked, and even the occasional issue of Crazy!"