I love the Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer. Is it worth my time to invest in the early Comic books. I like to collect things (I'm not a hoarder)

Early FF stuff is pretty darn expensive. There are tons of 1st appearances in FF.

Is it worth it? Hard to say. Comics from that era rarely go down in value, but they don't go up that often anymore, either.

only of you can buy the very first issues,and then keep them for 50 years,just enjoy comics any cash made on selling them will be a bonus.

I love the old comics, the volume 1's. I want to buy the FF #49 first up. Then collect the Silver Surfer comics. I'm ok with paying the money, just am interested to know if in the next 20/30 years, will they increase in value.

Yep. I have a run of Batman that currently goes back to #181. If my daughter can make some money off my comics someday, great. Collecting should be fun, but it's not a great investment.

(Especially 95% of books from the last 20 years.)

They MAY go up. It depends on whether the character gains popularity or not. Batman 232 (1st Ra's) went way up after Batman Begins. Vengeance of Bane went up when he was announced for The Dark Knight Rises.

Some of the 70's era Batman books that have 1st appearances of lesser villains have gone up simply because it's too expensive to get 1st appearances of Joker, Two-Face, etc.

Here's the rule: If it's worth it to you, buy it. If you are buying it in the hope that it increases in value, don't buy it.

This. The Golden Rule of collecting anything.

Buy it because you like it and want it. Don't buy it in the hope of making money later, because even if something goes up in value, it'll seldom be as much as you hope for.

I wish some clix players took that advice

IF you have enough money to invest in high grade silver age comics and can keep them for 30-50 years more then that seems like an investment. I know I couldn't do it because I would want to read the comics and look through the pages.

There are ways that things can go up in value. For instance for sports cards the person has to die or gain entrance into the hall of fame. For comics it usually has to do with tie ins to the movies and TV shows and occasionally the death of the artist/writer or creator.

The one bad thing is ebay and the grading system. With ebay it is a lot easier to find a certain comic compared to having to travel from city to city or state to go to comic shops, swap meets, or comic conventions. The grading system made it so that if people invest money to get it graded and it is in good enough condition they will hopefully get their money back. It did take the guess work out of grading comics by eye, but it also kind of sucked the fun out of it too. But that is just my opinion.

Ebay has kinda killed the fun of collecting. No longer is there that thrill of opening several packs of cards and hoping to get rare cards. Because now, all you have to do is go on ebay and buy the rare cards.

Also get your vintage comics CGC rated. I keep hearing that's a big deal for resale purposes, as I heard from a store owner who sold their collection right before the rating system came out told me he would have gotten about 3 times what he originally got. He even had two copies of Incredible Hulk 181 (first Wolverine).

That's not even a big guarantee anymore, ever since the sports card "bust" in the mid-1990's. Some of my 1971 Topps baseball cards I've had since I was a kid turned up in an old desk drawer -- some fairly big-name Hall of Fame players, too -- and the net combined value isn't worth the price of gas to drive to a sports card show to sell them off.

It's like I said, buy it and/or keep it if you like it. I've been hanging on to my old 1960's Green Hornet Pez dispenser (bought from a Howard Johnson vending machine on the PA Turnpike when I was a little kid), currently worth $100+. But I'm not selling it -- I'm keeping it because I love it and it's just that damn cool.

I like many of the guys here, but I don't know if the Realms is the go-to place for investment advice.

What he said.

First off that pez dispenser does sound cool I am going to google the image after I write this.

Secondly, when I say gain entrance to the hall of fame, you need to ride the wave from the point when the person was voted to be in the hall of fame to when the person was inducted. That is your window of opportunity. After they are in the hall of fame they are stuck there and then you have to wait until the person dies. However you need to ride the wave of selling it the week the person died. It is an odd mentality indeed.

There were a number of different ones:

http://www.hcrealms.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=753&pictureid=16792

Mine's the one in the middle.

I'm facing the reality that most of the comics I saved and collected are not going to pay for my retirement or my daughter's college. Partly it's condition, I read almost every book I bought, usually a couple times over, except a few that I thought would be worth something someday, so I bought a read copy and a save copy. And then most of my older stuff I didn't bag until much later, too late really, if at all. Partly it's just that 95% of comics never get to be worth more than $2-3.

In your case, you're looking at specific issues that are already worth something. Will they increase further in value in 20-30 years? Possibly. Enough to make them a profitable investment? That's imposible to predict. If you're going to get them, get them because you want them. If their value jumps, so much the better. If it doesn't, you'll still have something you enjoy having.