The world of comic book collecting is not what it once was. Long gone are the days when your neighbor discovered his old cache of X Men comic books hidden in the attic and made thousands of dollars selling these rare treasures. Not that such things used to happen very often anyway.
Nowadays, with the internet and ebay and a rabid speculators involved, it's not worth collecting comics as some sort of investment or money-making scheme. The X Men Comic Books listed in the price guides never sell for the prices listed, not when buyers can shop around online.
Truly, the only reason to buy comic books at all is for the love of the comic books. If you are interested in X Men comic books, then buy X Men comics. Don't buy them based on some future hope of resale and profit. Buy them because you want to read them and you love them.
I started buying X Men comic books in the early 1990's, right when the New X Men series debuted. I snatched up as many copies of X Men #1 as I could, knowing as all the speculators out there did, that first issues always go up in value. Well, don't they? Of course they don't. Today I could scarcely resell a copy of X Men #1 for its original face value, let alone for a profit. That's because comic book prices are a matter of supply and demand. First issues are valuable only when they are rare. When the supply is bigger than the demand, as the case is for some of my X Men comic books, then the value stays low.
But this isn't a problem for me. Why not? Because for the most part, I never bought my comic books as an investment. I bought them as a hobby. I've read every issue of X Men and Uncanny X Men I ever bought, and I've enjoyed them thoroughly. From the Dark Phoenix storyline, through the Secret Wars and all the other great crossover sagas, to today, I still love X Men comic books for the characters, the stories and the art. As long as Jean Grey and Wolverine and Gambit and Rogue are having adventures, I will want to read about it.
The future of comics will be something entirely new. Fairly soon, paper comic books probably will become a thing of the past, as electronic media take over. We will be downloading our X Men comics onto mobile reading devices. The physical artifact of the comic book won't exist anymore. Maybe then my old X Men combic books will be worth something. But I'm not worried about that right now. Right now, I'm going to re-read some of my favorite X Men issues and appreciate them for the great entertainment they really are.