My Comic Pile mycomicpile.com

I'd like to strongly recommend mycompile.com. It was recently brought to my attention last weekend by a friend who's using it quite successfully.

My Comic Pile is an on-line comic collection tracking system. Not only does it help you track your collection it does the following:

1. tracks the current market value of your collection
2. can be used to document where you store your collection / how you organize it
3. has an on-line trading / selling feature to facilitate the sale of comics
4. want-lists - helps you track what issus you want or are interested in collecting
5. Color pictures of virtually all issues
6. Comprehensive database of publishers and comic series

I've tried putting in a few comic books and it's quite simple to operate. You enter comic books by searching for the series you own, then you select which issues you have. That's it. Very simple.

I was very pleased to learn that what I've entered of my collection has increased in value by $400! Not bad. I haven't tried the on-line exchange or sales section, but am hoping it works.

I've heard that eBay is particularly difficult for comic book sellers, unless your selling a very well known rare item. If that's the case, mycomicpile might find an attractive niche.

I should disclose I'm a wanna-be comic collector. I'm usually far too busy to buy issues when they come out and when I do, I don't always have time to read them. It may be a herressy, but I actually prefer buying the trade paperback compendiminiums. Furthermore, I generally don't enjoy super hero comic books per se, preferring more unusal works, such as horror or fantasy - usually comics with excellent artwork and offbeat story lines.

In general, I'm weary of any on-line collection manager for several reasons:

1. how do you back up the data if the provider fails (technically or financially)?
2. is your data really private?
3. i can't take it with me when i go shopping

mycomicpile does a good job addressing the above issues. They will usually export your data on a request basis. I don't particularly care about privacy of my comic book collection, but it doesn't seem to be an issue. They have several nice reports I can take with me when I'm ready to go shopping.

You should also know that mycomicpile.com is free. Quite honestly, it amazes me how good a job they do without receiving compensation.

You can buy professional comic book management products that will run as a standalone on your pc, but they will cost about $400. For my meager collection, this seems like a great deal!

Have a wonderful day,

makingourway