Books like this are why I wish we could get a good fund going. With several hundred dollars and consensus we could get some great books to scan and resale. We would be likely to take a loss but we may even profit on occasion. Please keep an eye and and posting for Choice 3
I think that, even if it may not be completely easy to manage, it’s a good idea.
Henry Peter's warning, however, is sound advice. On a personal level, my interest in comic books is threefold:
1) I am interested in scanned comics to discover the golden age, and to explore its variety, which has just opened for me, and for reference.
This is a basic level, for which I am not interested in buying the books.
2) since this interest's flame rekindled thanks to an interest I had started to develop for italian inter-war comics of the same period, some WWII-themed material interests me merely as a reference as above, while for particular material I’d love to have high resolution scans of single stories (this would have been the case of narfstar's Man of War story) but not primarily in collecting the comic itself.
3) if something actually come to interest me both on a research and collecting level, I wish to buy a copy of my own, also for having it at hand to perform some high-resolution scans, if I should come to need it. In fact, DCM has been precious for me to discover comics I went on to buy.
A few possibilities come to my mind:
A) who agrees may contribute with a small fixed amount. This would be lighter on everyone's wallet, but since small amount by small amount we could afford more costly comics, in the end the comic book could be placed on sale (eBay or elsewhere) and funds used for additional costly comics.
B) same as A, but with a poll of previous suggestions taking into account whose comics may be of collecting interest to someone. This way, who wishes to buy a comic could advance a good percentage of its cost, while the rest could be paid by the funds' participants lighter contributions. After the book is scanned (and of course, this would work mostly for a PR/FR-to-VG copies, we know a FN comic suffers from scanning) the collector could have it to keep with a slight delay (a sort of "time payment", huh?)
C) same as B, with the difference of the final buyer being also the scanner. This way, shipping costs would be optimized, and he would handle the scanning.
What do you think?