The ComicBook.com Vending Machine is Live: Grow Your Collection

For nearly two decades, the ComicBook.com editorial team has been highlighting the coolest collectibles (and personal collections) in pop culture – now, with the introduction of the ComicBook.com Vending Machine, we’re making it even easier for readers to grow their personal collections, support local retailers, and have fun doing it.

We’re excited to bring this new feature to our readers as well as engage with collectors and retailers around the country (and internationally). Every comic book in the Vending Machine was sourced from independent retail stores. We’ve throughly enjoying meeting the owners and managers of these stores, learning about their collections, and living-out our childhood fantasy of walking into a comic store and buying iconic issues. In the coming weeks (well, next week) we’ll be visiting more stores, purchasing more comics and cards for the machine, and look forward to stopping by your favorite store (let us know where we should visit next)!

In the meantime, make sure to check out the Vending Machine for yourself, it’s already packed with awesome books!

– Visit the ComicBook.com Vending Machine –

Collector culture is experiencing a massive resurgence thanks to the meteoric popularity of Pokémon and other trading card games – paired with rapidly expanding adoption of collectible grading services. Objective condition grading and slabbing, applied to highly sought-after Pokémon cards, has resulted in massive evaluations for select items and, in general, raised the value floor for mid-tier cards – making graded Pokémon cards attractive to collectors and professional investors alike. Recent years have seen grading services expand to comics, action figures, and even retro video game cartridges – resulting in, like Pokémon cards before them, a massive increase in record-setting auction sales as well as interest in those collectibles as actual investments.

But above all else, collecting should be fun, exciting, and rewarding – in one way or another. There’s nothing better than a bargain find, or discovering something entirely new, or trading for that grail item you’ve been obsessing about. We built the ComicBook.com Vending Machine with all this in mind. After years of reporting on collectibles, we wanted to create a unique way to connect readers with actual cards and comic books they would enjoy owning and do it in a way that provides suspense, excitement, and truly memorable moments – all while supporting comic book and TCG retailers.

The ComicBook.com Vending Machine Explained

The ComicBook.com Vending Machine contains hundreds of comic books and trading cards – ranging in value from $12 to over $10,000. Users purchase virtual packs that each contain one randomly selected comic book or trading card. After a brief animation, their comic or card is revealed, and they have the option of adding the item to their collection (if they like it) or selling it back to the machine for 85-90% of its value (if they’d rather try to get something else).

While our goal is to provide our users with a fun way to grow their collection and have fun doing it, it’s equally important to us to support retailers and independent comic sellers. For that reason, every single item in the machine was sourced from local comic book and cards shops as well as collectible shows – and manually curated by members of the ComicBook.com editorial team.

The machine is packed with truly historical comics, and we’ll be spotlighting the importance of our biggest picks via articles on the site. Our first round of ComicBook Spotlights will include the following (all of which are available in the vending machine):

• The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (1963, The First Serialized Spider-Man Issue)
• Daredevil #1 (1964, The First Appearance of Daredevil)
• Batman #181 (1966, The First Appearance of Poison Ivy)
• Incredible Hulk #181 (1974, The First Appearance of Wolverine)
• Joker #1 (1975, Joker’s First Serialized Issue)

Check out a video of our own Chris Killian buying comics for the machine at Rick’s Comics in Clarksville, Tennessee:

Lastly, for every visit we make to a local Comic Book shop, we’ll be interviewing the owner and/or manager – and highlighting them and their store in our ongoing ComicBook Shop Talk series.

How to Use The ComicBook.com Vending Machine (& Its Features)

Pulling a pack from the Vending Machine is simple and lightning fast.

• Visit vending.comicbook.com to pull a pack.
• Sign up for an account (or log in with Google, Apple, and others).
• Load funds in your account (use a credit card, ApplePay, GooglePay, or even a crypto wallet)
• Select a $25 (Starter), $50 (Standard), or $250 (Legendary) pull – the more expensive the option, the higher the likelihood of pulling truly epic comics. But even a Starter pack has a chance at a highly valuable collectible – and a 100% chance of pulling cool artwork or a great story. A full breakdown of statistics can be found on the Vending Machine page.
• Once your pull is revealed, you have the option of keeping the item in your collection or selling it back to the machine. Starter and Standard pulls offer an 85% pay back on the card or comic’s value, and a Legendary pull offers 90% of the item’s value. You don’t have to decide immediately if you want to sell back or keep the item – you can always elect to sell the item back at a later date.
• Payback funds can be applied to additional pulls or withdrawn and sent back to the user’s bank account.
• If you decide to keep your item and add it to your collection, it’s yours forever. By default, every card and comic in the machine is stored in a secure warehouse – including any that have been pulled by users. Users who want their items removed from the vault and sent to them only have to pay a nominal shipping fee. However, it’s worth noting: once an item is removed from the vault and shipped out, it cannot be sold back to the machine.
• Soon after launch, we will enable a pier-to-pier marketplace where users can browse available comics and cards for purchase as well as post items in their collection for sale – rather than the machine – should they choose.

Every few weeks, we’ll restock the machine with new comics and cards by visiting a new round of local stores. We’ll also be coordinating special events where we stock the machine with comics related to a new movie or TV release. For example, you can expect a lot of awesome Supergirl and Lobo books in the machine next month!

If you own a comic book or card shop and would like us to come do a shopping spree at your store (or if you’re a customer who would like to nominate your favorite retailer), reach out to us at [email protected]. We’re assembling a nationwide list of interested stores to visit – as well as some international locations as well!

We sincerely hope you’ll give the Vending Machine a spin – and wish you luck in your pulls.

– Pull the ComicBook.com Vending Machine – Right Here –