to be a great fan? (this is just a general honestly i dont know or understand how question)

i recently saw a lovely statue of death that cost onehundred dollars and then i went to the bookstore and saw the absolute sandman and that was one hundred dollars as well. it makes me wonder at how anyone can afford to be a great fan or collector (course not everyone is as broke as me


i wish i could collect the things i love, but alas i cannot! so i hope YOU can!

i guess you have to establish priorities in your life...if having the statue of Death or the Absolute Sandman is more important than other necessities or activities in your life...then you will save enough to be able to obtain them.
for me...books are a priority...so i would rather spend my money on them than designer clothes.

You can be a great fan without buying all the extras. I'm perfectly happy buying a nice hardcover edition of Fragile Things for about $12 at Costco, or a regular edition of The Sandman for about $20 at a bookstore. No way am I going to fork over $1000 total for the Absolute Sandman books just so I can get the bells and whistles (sorry Neil - priorities). And really, the figurine of Death is just a $100 dust collector. Again, priorities.

Bottom line - do you enjoy Neil's works? That should be your main consideration, not whether you spend gobs of money on stuff.

You might ask yourself: "Will my heirs want this after I'm dead?" Sounds morbid, but I'm serious. Be brutally honest with yourself. If the answer is no, then admire it in the store and leave it on the shelf. No pressure, no guilt.

Technically you wouldn't have to spend $1000 for the Absolute Sandman collection. There won't be 10 of them but 3 or 4. The first one is a collection of the first 4 tomes (I believe). And also I bought mine from Amazon and it was around $60. If I had ordered it earlier it would have been cheaper too.

Thanks for the correction/clarification, chimeer. I dunno, it's still pretty steep for what amounts to 4 coffee-table books. IMHO.

Well, actually, it all kinda works out. $20 per volume for the first for equals $80, about what Absolute #1 is going for. For the folks who havent' yet purchased the individual collected volumes, they might want to get this edition.

I firmly believe you don't have to buy anything at all to be a fan. It's not about money. Your level of fanship is NOT based on how much money you spend. That's just silly.

To be a collector, well, yeah. You have to spend money. But that's your thing. That's what you've decided to do. So that's how you spend your money. I've got a crapload of Tori stuff. That's what I decided to spend my money on. My Neil things are haphazard and spotty, because, well, I like Tori more. So that's where i put my money. It's choices that everyone individually decides on.

(and, pbbbbtt. I've TOTALLY got "how can you afford your rock and roll life style" stuck in my head now. Who sung that? I can't remember. I feel old.)

(It was Cake. And now I have it stuck, too).

quote:

Originally posted by aitapata:
I firmly believe you don't have to buy anything at all to be a fan. It's not about money. Your level of fanship is NOT based on how much money you spend. That's just silly.

Agreed. A few years back I updated the Gaiman purity test, not just because there was so much more that had come out, but to take out the section of questions 'Have you read X? Do you own X?'

and I totally *FISH* aita for not mentioning the wonders of libraries

(p.s. - Absolute Sandman V.1 has the first 3 collections, and yes, if you shop right you can get it for the same cost as the first three trades and less than the first three hardcovers at full price)

quote:

Bottom line - do you enjoy Neil's works? That should be your main consideration, not whether you spend gobs of money on stuff.

I agree. To use Flapper's example, I quite like the idea of having a figurine of Death on my desk, but I'd be less willing to start collecting the Absolute Sandman set, mainly because while I could buy the Death figurine, and be quite happy without the rest of the Endless, I'd be less likely to collect the whole AS set.

I think it's also partly do to with the fact that I've only been reading Neil's works for a few weeks (with the exception of Good Omens which I bought as a Terry Pratchett fan), so I'm less likely to shell out money than someone who still has all the original Sandman comics from the 80's and 90's.

thanks you guys for the answers! i just had this (rather naive) idea that youre not a "good" fan if you dont own every trinket and i was looking for some perpective about this coz I KNOW y'all ARE good fans and now i feel better coz i am feeling that a GOOD fan aint necessarily the one who has all the stuff! i think i am a good fan (even tho i have still NOT read American Gods--yet !) it just blows me away to see all the costly stuff and i remember when you could get original sandman comics for like a dollar or a little more (gawsh i AM old!)thanks for setting my mind a bit at ease!

"as long as their soda cans are red white and blue ones..."pbbrbrbrbr now it is stuck in MY head too!

I agree that being a neil gaiman fan is expensive. in the uk the paperback comics are around £14 each with hardbacks at £20. i also never get them for birthdays of christmas as mum thinks £14 is too much to spend on a comic :-(
not that i think they are overpriced, but i still only have 2 on my bookshelf :-( i would be happy to buy them second hand but i can't find them any cheaper!
but agreeing with everyone else, it doesn't make you less of a fan. for me, it just makes me less able to enjoy being a fan tho which does make me sad

Well, I've picked up somethings cheaper on amazon and Ebay, but you have to be clever about when/how you bid. Also, most libraries are now doing more graphic novels, as long as you're patient waiting for them to come back from loan. Welcome to the board, by the way!

Yes, libraries, libraries, libraries. I get 44% off most trade titles thanks to my job, and I still get a lot of stuff out of the library - and then often order it a few months later, after I've found out how to wedge it into the ever-decreasing spending cash in the family budget.

Well, I only buy the books, only paperback editions, and I don't go for shirts or statues. Then it's easy.

wht thankyou, and a very nice board it i too :-)
I admit i don't go to libraries as often as i should, i first read sandman at my school library. but i will read books over and over again, especially things like sandman when there is just too much to take in in one reading. ebay is also good but only rarely. someone was auctioning 5 sandman books that finished yesterday and 3 of them went for pretty much shop price once you added in the postage. i managed to get a game of you for £6 :-) bringing my collection up to 3.
I think it's really that I balk at the price becuase it seems a lot, but if i thought about how much i'd read them then it's not really. I should definitely buy more. but i do like the extras as well tho-like the collection of sandman covers, and i recently saw some dave mckean trading cards (altho not to buy, and i'm not sure where to get them from) and they made me drool...

Glad you like the board. Most of the regulars can be found in the World's End section, for chatting,giving out balloons, etc.
If you like them that much, then it prob is worth saving up... or perhaps you could persuade your mum to read them as well...
Another thing which I have done a few times is to hold a book swapping party. Its similar to a clothes swap, everyone brings their unwanted or double copies and swaps with everyone else. You prob won't get Sandman this way, but it does mean you cantry out new authors for free1