Currently, I bag all my new comics every Wednesday on Comic Day, before I read them. I didn't always do this, though.
For a good 15 years, I didn't do any bagging of comics. Hence, I had piles of comics, comics in large boxes, some of which were organized, but many that were just unsorted. (During this time, I got every single Marvel comic that came out...except for the ones my comic shop failed to put into my file. Plus, I got many others besides Marvel; but, the largest was always Marvel.) Finally, in about 2005, I went about getting everything organized correctly.
I bought a book that lets me see most every comic ever released, and each is individually listed with a small box that can be checked. I put them all in order, and further separated out the boxes into three catagories: Marvel, DC, and Other. As time has gone by, I've bagged (not boarded) my comics, as I have the time to do it. (I buy 1,000 at a time, and found a store that only charged me $3.95 or $4.95 for 100 bags, depending on which type they get into their store. This is good, as my normal LCS charges $6.95, and another LCS charges $9.00.) I've completed bagging of most all my Marvel books; but, not the DC or Independant ones.
I started to bag, because I noticed that some started to get a little bit of wear on the top corner, making some NM copies turn VF. Also, whenever I get in back issues, I bag them right away. This way, many of my DC and Independant books are currently bagged. Many times, my back issues will come bagged and boarded. Also, I've bought collections from two people; and, those books were bagged most times.
The best thing I did was organize, as I marked in the comic price guide and collector book which comics I had. From there, I got to finally see which comics I was missing, whether back issues I hadn't purchased or the comics I discovered my LCS hadn't given me. (This peeved me off, as my original shop that had long since gone out of business missed quite a bit. For example, even though I had Next Men on my pull list, they never gave me Next Men #21, which was the first appearance of Hellboy.)
I have so many books and long boxes filled with comics, I tend to wait about every 4-5 months before I put my comics away. (I would guess I have about 60+ long boxes of Marvel, 30+ long boxes of DC, and 20+ long boxes of Independant. This doesn't include about 15+ long boxes of extras.) In the meantime, I just stack my books in open long boxes, until I decide to spend time reorganizing.
I really wish I could afford to buy those new long boxes, that the drawers actually pull out. It would save SO much time unstacking all those boxes. (I do a lot of back issue ordering. mycomicshop.com is my favorite site, as I can get many back issues in VF condition from the 70's for under $2.00. To me, VF is just fine with me, especially since you can hardly tell the difference from NM, and you can save a good seven bucks sometimes.)
