The back issue bin trick that saved me $40 last weekend

I was at Harrison's Comics in Portland digging through their dollar bins and found a run of Moon Knight from 1989 that looked clean. But I noticed the guy next to me was flipping through the same box but checking the top corners of every book first. I asked him why and he said he looks for spine stress at the top staple, not the cover. I tried his method and found 12 issues that were actually NM for a buck each instead of the $4 they'd normally go for. Has anyone else got a weird bin hunting trick that actually works?

2 comments

2 Comments

webb.jordan28d ago

I gotta push back on this "top corner spine stress" thing. I've been digging through bins for years and I think people overthink it. Checking corners is fine but it doesn't tell you much about the real condition. Most damage on old books comes from the bottom edge rubbing against the box or from somebody bending the cover back too far. I've seen books with clean top staples that looked perfect until you flip them over and the back cover is trashed or there's a big crease across the middle. The real trick is to pull the book out and look at it front and back in good light. You can spot a bad book from three feet away just by how flat it sits. Checking one tiny spot on the staple is missing the bigger picture.

the_vera28d ago

Wait do you really think the bottom edge is where most of the damage comes from? lol I've been digging through dollar bins for like 15 years now and I gotta say the bottom staple is way more important than people give it credit for. The bottom corner takes the most impact when a book is shoved into a short box and the spine gets torqued weird. I've passed on so many books that had perfect fronts but the bottom staple was starting to pull through the paper, that's a death sentence for a floppy. You can fix a crease or some edge wear but once that staple starts tearing the cover is done.