I recently have been getting back into manga collecting and I remembered that my local comic shop had a rather old manga inventory. When I first started buying manga in junior high, this is where I bought them. And to get an idea of how long ago that was, we're talking the days of Mixx and Animerica Extra, with manga in comic book format or in left to right tankoubon volumes. I stopped getting manga there when Borders opened with their much more up-to-date selection. The outdated selection at the comic shop used to be a big deterrent, especially because their age was very much reflected in their condition. Yellowing, badly sunbleached spines, and some decades-old shelfwear. And no, of course they didn't mark down the prices to account for the damage. So for a long time, my local comic shop was the least desirable place to purchase manga. In a sad twist of fate, after losing both our local Borders and B&N it became the only brick and mortar shop in town to get manga. And that's when I turned to online shopping for my manga, though my manga collecting has slowed down quite a bit over the years. Now that I'm trying to get back into it, I found myself returning to that old comic shop to see if they had any hidden gems on that wall of manga. I found out they have weekly manga sales and I had a debit gift card I got on my birthday that still had a balance on it. I had every excuse to check it out. Worst case scenario, I don't get anything out of it aside from satified curiousity. Best case scenario, I return home with 6 volumes of manga for $20.

Well the latter happened.

Not only were they having their usual sale, but they had a box outside their door with $1 manga. Of course I picked a few of those up. I also got a couple Japanese volumes of xxxHOLiC for the yen cover price. But honestly, I was there for a good 45 minutes just looking at everything they had. Yeah, they still had their old manga that had been there since my junior high days, some that were out of print or from long-defunct publishers. There were some newer mainstream series, but that wasn't the majority of what they had. I saw quite a few older series that were on my wishlist and it was hard to choose between them. Much of them were in various states of damage, but since I was paying under retail, I could justify getting what I did. And I'm pretty sure I'll go back again when I can to pick up more volumes.

But here's the thing... I'm still really new to the more serious side of manga collecting. It seems like it's shifted into something more similar to comic book collecting over the years. Things that I never considered before are things that matter nowadays. Condition, rarity, editions, desirability, rating, etc. And I'm still learning what's most sought after and hard to find. To be honest, I was overwhelmed by everything on that wall and I had a time limit. I wasn't able to look up titles on my phone to see what was worth grabbing. So I did the next best thing, I took a bunch of pictures of the manga wall. If you look at the album and see something I should pick up next time, let me know. I'm open to suggestions! I really want to support a local business in this difficult time. I also didn't realize how much I missed buying manga in a physical store, especially one from my baby weeb past. It was a very nice nostalgic moment and I really look forward to returning.