Used book, New book, Red book, Blue book

I've recently started a small manga collection. As of writing, it contains 26 individual volumes. Nichijou, CITY, Azumanga Daioh, Girls Last Tour, Yotsuba&!, and K-on! are sitting pretty on my bookshelves. I originally started my journey with manga years ago via pirated versions. The first one I read was Komi-san Can't Communicate which is, or was, a good series. It quickly got popularized by meme culture because of Komi-san's cute, quiet nature. I could go on a tangent about Komi-san itself but I'll save that for another blog post.

Starting this collection, I quickly found an interesting question. That question being, what's better to get, used copies or new copies?

At first, my answer was to always get used copies. They're far cheaper. When it comes to manga, that can be a big help. Azumanga is only 4 volumes & if it were printed today, each one could cost like $15-$20 easy. I personally also think that used copies have more personality to them. I find that aged, beige paper wonderful. It gives a sense of connection. It feels far more like a entertaining book in your personal library rather than some fancy-dancy textbook from school. Looking at these two big upsides, why wouldn't you go used? Well, there are a couple reasons.

Used books are, well, used. You can find weird stains or inventory stickers plastered all over them. I recently got 3 volumes of CITY in & 2 have library stickers on them. While it's not the end of the world, it hurts the display value of them. I could remove the stickers with alcohol but what am I supposed to do with the stamp of "Salt Lake City Public Library" on the bottom of the pages? If I do happen across a fresh or cleaner copy of that particular volume, I will gladly switch it out. The important thing though is whether or not I can actually read the copies. Another potential issue is price gouging. English copies of K-on! are no longer in production. That means that you are forced to buy used copies. K-on! in particular is very costly to collect. I ended up paying almost $200 for K-on! Highschool alone. That's about $1.33/per page. I'll admit that this is more a scarcity issue & if you really want, you can buy omnibus editions which have everything. For manga, I feel that collecting omnibus editions defeats the point. I see the value they have but you can't replace a full series in a collection with one.

All in all, I think collecting manga is a fine thing. I enjoy it & it gives me satisfaction to watch an anime & be able to look at where it originated from. I can flip through & see all the little differences like how the beginning of K-on! is completely restructured in the show or how Nano is starting highschool at the start of Nichijou's manga rather than being halfway through. Used & new all comes down to personal preference & budget constraints. I say that you should strive for clean & used copies when possible but if there's too good of a deal to pass up on new reprints, like the Nichijou 10th anniversary, don't be afraid to take it. They'll age with time.

Now, all I have to figure out is whether to hunt down english copies of the original Haruhi Suzumiya light novels or to get copies of the manga adaptation.