There is at least one issue that often polarizes collectors and threatens this burgeoning unity--why make a price guide? For many, price guides are detrimental to the health of the hobby, unnecessarily naming values and setting standards for collectibles with no chance for wholehearted agreement on everyone’s part. To some, they are mildly interesting, and to others they are blatantly manipulative. Still others regard price guides as useful, even essential tools, providing the hobby with a concrete system for evaluating condition and determining values for items they regularly buy and sell. Even young children who eagerly collect comic books like to look up a favorite in a price guide and see how much their issues are worth.

So although some like price guides and some hate them, why do we bother, particularly with one as huge and complicated as Hake’s Price Guide? There’s a simple answer to that too. If this volume you hold in your hands were merely a price guide--a checklist of existing collectibles and how much they are currently worth--it would be useful and informative, but only to the few people actively involved in buying and selling collectibles. Frankly, anyone who collects can find a practical use for a price guide, as it represents the ultimate "want list" for whatever category they collect (and with Hake’s Price Guide, we hope one day to have an exhaustive list of all existing collectibles in these categories).

This book and others like it, however, is much more than that. It is a reference for the future--a permanent record documenting a century of imagination and ingenuity. The series of events and achievements that created the fantasy world and entertainment culture we cherish are part of a history that up until now has been given far less significance than it deserves. Thousands of creative individuals dreamed of realities beyond our own and brought them home to us in exciting forms, enthralling us with wonders and adventures we would never otherwise experience. As an ongoing project to provide leisure activities and entertainment for the human mind, all of these accomplishments should be properly recognized, and books like these are at the vanguard of that effort.

Seen in this light, the pricing data reflected in this book is almost incidental. After all, whether you agree with a price or not, that number has only been attributed to an item because of our desire for that collectible in the first place; we determine value. And let’s face it, for those of us driven to reassemble our childhood, having reference material on what we should be hunting for is essential. There is also an undeniable potency in picking up a book, thumbing through its pages, and finding things you once owned--"Hey, I had that!"--a sort of instant nostalgic gratification. Ultimately, however, compiling a reference work on the scale of this guide is not really about the money; it’s about the collectibles and what they mean to us. We already hold them in our hearts and minds, and to see them recorded in this book demonstrates that we haven’t let them fade into obscurity. To hold a reference guide that catalogs all the collectibles we know and love from our youth is a powerful feeling--an affirmation of our worth and importance as much as that of the items listed. That’s where the value is.

part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4