I think spinner racks look really cool, but I don't ever remember seeing comics on them in the UK back in the day. Toys and paperback books, yes, but never comics. Comics, whether imported American issues or the larger, magazine-sized domestic format, were always on the magazine shelves. So, I don't have the same nostalgic affection for comic spinner racks that many of my American comrades in the forum do.

Perhaps for you. I came up in the peak speculation boom era of comics, so for good or ill, condition was a huge factor and a heavily important part of the experience at the time.

I own like 10 physical comics at this point, and they're more for decoration than anything. Otherwise, my comic reading is done on the iPad, so condition is largely irrelevant for story consumption for me any more.

Oh, to clarify, I didn't mean to suggest that spinner wasn't cool. It looks awesome! And I was always drawn to them even back in the day, and honestly still today a spinner rack of comics would get my attention. I was just disappointed a lot in the past due to the condition I often found the books in. That would be a non-issue with the private collection of a CCF member, I'm sure.

Spinner racks are the spawn of Satan. I would never allow one in my house, let alone anywhere near my comics. Always hated 'em, always will.

Cei-U!
But that's just me!

I don't consider that any more of a flaw than the subscription crease in comics mailed for subscriptions before they started mailing them flat. It's a feature of their path to market and then to end customer. A relic of the journey that put a bundle of joy in someone's hands.

-M

As a collector, I've never really been arsed about condition. As a kid, I read the covers off just about every comic I ever owned. I kept them all in an old suitcase and edges would often get caught, corners bent or torn, and often they had a bit of spine roll after a while because covers & pages got folded back when I (or my dad ) was reading them. As a young collector just starting out, my lcs didn't differentiate between grades unless it was a book that went for over $10 (and nothing except expensive keys were in bags or boards, those displayed in a locked case, everything else was just piled raw on metal shelves and you had to ask for a title to get a pile of them to root through to find what you were looking through). Overstreet only gave 3 prices for grades, and the owner usually used the mid grade price for anything under $10. Mail order ads usually only guaranteed a book you ordered would be VG or better and had the same price for everything. Other shops were different for sure, but they were usually exceptions not the norm through most of the shops I went to in the 80s. There were some collectors who were obsessed about condition (there was one guy who shopped at that lcs who would not do a pull list because he had to examine every copy on the shelf of the books he wanted to buy to fond the one in best condition) but again, exceptions not the rule. It wasn't until the very late 80s and 90s that that condition obsession really began to get a stranglehold on collectors, part of the groundswell coming out of the b&w speculation boom/bubble in the mid 80s that lead to the bigger speculation boom of the 90s and was also fueled by the new wave or mail order retailers (the likes of East Coast Comics and others) who touted high grade in their ads. It was a trajectory for the hobby that I never really bought into and one that I think did a lot more harm than good to the hobby overall (it's what created the fertile ground for the slabbing phenomenon for example). There's no right or wrong way to collects, and if high grade and slabbing is what makes collecting fun for you, good on you, but I don't think the commodification of high grade copies of comics overall did much good for the health of the hobby or industry overall. But that's a whole can of worms best avoided, as its one of those discussion that no matter how much people throw out verbiage, no one is going to change their mind, alter their position, or even reconsider their own position on it, and there's no new information to bring to light to make the conversation worthwhile, so it's an utterly useless conversation to have that can only produce frustration or hurt feelings by those participating.

-M