40Yrs is now 50Yrs! 1 1

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

3 hours ago, Jayman said:

Collingswood! I remember buying tons of BA horror there to fill in my runs. No bags there early on and prices were written in pencil in a small corner on the back covers. Lots of Warren, Skywald and Curtis mags too. I was very friendly with the guy who ran the comic area (so long ago I sadly can't remember his name). It was inside the main building. I'd go and play the slot cars for a while then go dig through stacks of unbagged books! I bought my GS Xmen 1 at Collingswood for $80.  Years ago I heard it burned down but has been rebuilt since. Had a great record shop there too.

I was back there about five or ten years ago to visit my Dad and brothers and the comic guy still had stacks of seventies bronze horror mags. A treasure trove if you like that stuff. When I was a kid that guy always had cheap back issue Harvey's and my brother and I would buy Sad Sack Giants to read. His other back issues were ridiculously priced, Rogofsky prices we used to say. But he did have Warrens by the score and I picked up a Spirit #1 there that I later had Will Eisner sign. Yes, I still have that too!

Oh and those slot cars were sure fun too!

The boys from Comic Book Men filmed an episode out there; it was cheesy but I got a kick out of it.

[Yellow Kid]

11 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Yeah, mail order back issue comics was a real eye opener for me too. I remember the Rocket's Blast first, then The Buyer's Guide. My passion was very early MADs. When I finished them up EC and pre-code horror books were next. Nothing like coming home to find 2 or 3 EC books in the mail box. Still is fun even today.

My local flea markets were called swap meets in those days. When I could drive I used to hit the Azuza drive in and monthly Rose Bowl shows where I often found cool old comics and toys. And, every once in a while 1940's comics too. I remember getting some early Thrilling, Speed, Marvel Mystery, Zips and others from an old guy for 50 cents apiece. Had no idea who the characters were but man they were old!

Anybody ever post an ad on a bulletin board at a market or run an ad in the newspaper? Got a few nice collections that way too. 

Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Long Beach Press-Telegram would let students post free classified ads during spring break, and I always took advantage.  One of my first ads led to meeting Leonard Brown, and we became life-long friends.  We actually started a mail-order business out of his parents home and were surprised to discover how many other collectors were out there.  We wrote buying ads on 3x5 cards and then posted them on every market bulletin board  for miles around.  We finally got smart and had business cards made and just posted those with great success.  As fate would have it, Robot Man was one of our early customers, along with Rick Durrell and other dedicated collectors.  Great memories!

[hhwolfman]

I was a casual collector 60s and 70s mostly off the rack. By the 80s I had amassed a modest amount of a couple thousand. I lived in the poor part of San Antonio and believe it or not SA was a bass awkward City. About 10 years behind the times. I was lucky if store would have one small spinner rack. I remember one time we went to visit family in Dallas in the early 70s Went to a grocery Store and it had 3 full spinner Racks. Had 5 bucks for the whole trip. Under my Dads Protest I spent the whole fiver. I read everything back then, but it seems to me Harvey was my favorite. 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

TOP TEN FAVORITES - Part 6 – The Big Score!

On Sundays we used to go visit with my Dad’s large extended family, first at Grandmom’s house then at my Aunt’s house both of whom lived on the Jersey shore blocks from the beach. This was great for any number of reasons; it was always fun to walk to the beach, there were lots of cousins with whom I could hang out, my Grandmother was a great and fascinating person full of stories and my older brother and I could roam around the train tracks, bridges, harbors and jetties on our own. One Sunday while at my Aunt’s I was reading the newspaper and discovered a classified ad that advertising a large comic collection for $5 in a town about ten miles south. I showed the ad to my Dad who told me to call. I did and the collection was available so we headed over there on the way home.

It didn’t take me long to plunk down the $5 for five large brown shopping bags stacked to the top with comics. What was in those bags you ask?

Well, how about every DC superhero comic from 1960 to 1963. And also every Archie from the same time period along with every Mad Magazine. I was in heaven and I got down to some serious reading taking in the beginnings of the Silver Age hero explosion DC style. Fond memories include the great Flash stories, the early JLA tales and the Tales of the Bizarro World. There were also some seriously great Superman tales in this time period that still hold up today. Oh and all those early annuals too!

The Mad magazine collection was also fantastic and contained early work by Don Martin and Antonio Prohías’ Spy vs. Spy. Mad also told the story of Prohias’ escape from Cuba and explained the lack of written narrative due to his inability to speak or write English. A great period for this magazine.

As far as the Archies, I mainly remember how great the Little Archie series was and also how fun the Archie Madhouse book was to read. I wish I had kept those.

There was one Marvel; an unread bone white copy of Fantastic Four #4 which re-introduced the SubMariner. This was a fun book but didn’t get hooked on Marvel because of it. In one of the most foolish fiscal deals I ever made, I traded this book for a copy of Vacation Parade #1 because I wanted to read the classic Barks tale in that book. Oh, the follies of youth but I sure loved that story!!

I still have most of the hero books, the Mads and Archies were sold or traded at some point and somewhere along the line, someone absconded with the first 12 Green Lanterns. Below are a few of the books I pulled from the comic closet from this collection.

[comicjack]

I'm enjoying your thread and also felt the Flash 123 was one of the great stories of the Silverage. Always love to see how many of the old time collectors were on the same page as book buying back then.

[KirbyJack]

3 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

 

 

 

 

This caught my eye. That crease looks like it was intentionally folded to correspond with Green Lantern’s “phase out”!

[Robot Man]

10 hours ago, Yellow Kid said:

Back in the late 1950's and early 1960's, the Long Beach Press-Telegram would let students post free classified ads during spring break, and I always took advantage.  One of my first ads led to meeting Leonard Brown, and we became life-long friends.  We actually started a mail-order business out of his parents home and were surprised to discover how many other collectors were out there.  We wrote buying ads on 3x5 cards and then posted them on every market bulletin board  for miles around.  We finally got smart and had business cards made and just posted those with great success.  As fate would have it, Robot Man was one of our early customers, along with Rick Durrell and other dedicated collectors.  Great memories!

Come on Rich, come clean tell us a couple of those cool "find" stories...

[sagii]

6 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

TOP TEN FAVORITES - Part 6 – The Big Score!

On Sundays we used to go visit with my Dad’s large extended family, first at Grandmom’s house then at my Aunt’s house both of whom lived on the Jersey shore blocks from the beach. This was great for any number of reasons; it was always fun to walk to the beach, there were lots of cousins with whom I could hang out, my Grandmother was a great and fascinating person full of stories and my older brother and I could roam around the train tracks, bridges, harbors and jetties on our own. One Sunday while at my Aunt’s I was reading the newspaper and discovered a classified ad that advertising a large comic collection for $5 in a town about ten miles south. I showed the ad to my Dad who told me to call. I did and the collection was available so we headed over there on the way home.

 

It didn’t take me long to plunk down the $5 for five large brown shopping bags stacked to the top with comics. What was in those bags you ask?

 

Well, how about every DC superhero comic from 1960 to 1963. And also every Archie from the same time period along with every Mad Magazine. I was in heaven and I got down to some serious reading taking in the beginnings of the Silver Age hero explosion DC style. Fond memories include the great Flash stories, the early JLA tales and the Tales of the Bizarro World. There were also some seriously great Superman tales in this time period that still hold up today. Oh and all those early annuals too!

 

The Mad magazine collection was also fantastic and contained early work by Don Martin and Antonio Prohías’ Spy vs. Spy. Mad also told the story of Prohias’ escape from Cuba and explained the lack of written narrative due to his inability to speak or write English. A great period for this magazine.

 

As far as the Archies, I mainly remember how great the Little Archie series was and also how fun the Archie Madhouse book was to read. I wish I had kept those.

 

There was one Marvel; an unread bone white copy of Fantastic Four #4 which re-introduced the SubMariner. This was a fun book but didn’t get hooked on Marvel because of it. In one of the most foolish fiscal deals I ever made, I traded this book for a copy of Vacation Parade #1 because I wanted to read the classic Barks tale in that book. Oh, the follies of youth but I sure loved that story!!

 

I still have most of the hero books, the Mads and Archies were sold or traded at some point and somewhere along the line, someone absconded with the first 12 Green Lanterns. Below are a few of the books I pulled from the comic closet from this collection.

 

 

 

Big Score indeed!! 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

TOP TEN FAVORITES - Part 7 – So I liked some Marvel too!

I’ve talked about Englishtown Auction on here a few times. It was the source of most of my childhood wonders, comics first but also HO trains, a great 1940’s Erector Set, 8mm films, books and most importantly a job that lasted my high school career and funded my comics quest. I worked selling hot dogs and hamburgers eventually being promoted to a grillman in the center of the indoor area of the flea market buildings. Those buildings burned down in 1977 and I was out of a job for a few weeks there until my boss starting selling again out of a trailer, but he had the biggest and most lucrative concession in the place with two identical giant stands. If you were there then you couldn’t have missed the place.

But the most wonderful thing about the indoor stalls were two vendors selling comics. The first vendor sold remaindered (3/4 cover) comics for half price or three for a quarter as I recall. This, of course, was completely illegal but he never got busted to my knowledge. These books always bothered me as I always wanted the full cover but they would do as readers.

But the real magical place was this little bookstore that had a comics rack out front. I used to haunt that rack because they would sell old comics out of an old spinner rack and you would find weird stuff. Like Space Detective IW reprints or old Classic Comics. I still have the original editions of a Christmas Carol and the Iron Mask that I picked up there. I also remember buying Not Brand Echh and the Inferior Five but I don’t have those. But that wasn’t where the magic was.

At some point, the gentleman who ran the place, Herman Neuberger from New York had acquired a large collection of undistributed Marvels from say 1965 to 1970 (kind of guessing here) that he sold out of the back of the stand. You would have to wind your way to the back through the books to a counter and you could look at the prices and tell him what you wanted. I recall that he had Spiderman from the 30’s forward maybe a little earlier. My younger brother bought up lots of Tales to Astonish and Hulk books and Journey into Mystery. I used to sneak into his room and read them sometimes; especially the Thor books. I guess I was a closet Marvel fan!

But my interests started branching out as I became a Captain America fan and started buying Tales of Suspense and Captain America titles. I would buy 2-3 books a week for about 40 cents each until I tapped out what he had.

One of my high school comic buddies actually got a job there so he could pick up back issue Marvels. He was a die-hard Marvel nut and I was the DC guy and that made for some fun arguments. We were also convention buddies taking the bus from our hometown up to the Seuling Sunday monthly shows together. He on the hunt for early Spiderman and me on mycontinuing Duck hunt! He’ll feature heavily in the next post but the irony of all of this is today he is a long time DC employee! When I first found out he worked there I had to crow and tell him I was right all these years after all.

Below are some of the books from Mr. Neuberger’s Comic Emporium.

[Duffman_Comics]

This has turned into a favourite thread

I'm a long time collector about your vintage Frank, I have some stories (don't we all?) but I don't want to interrupt this delightful narrative.

Please, carry on!

[Yellow Kid]

12 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Come on Rich, come clean tell us a couple of those cool "find" stories...

In the fall of 1962, I started college at the University of Redlands.  As soon as I moved into my dorm, I ran an ad in the local paper saying I bought old comic books.  I got one response, an older guy who lived with his parents.  He had three large chests filled with books from about 1945-1952.  After hours of negotiating, I bought them all for $62, and took them back to my dorm room.  My new room mate thought I was crazy and did ask me to remove them ASAP.  I called Leonard and made arrangements for him to come the next day and pick them up.  That night I pulled a couple of hundred of the best books and put them In my closet to surprise him.  He showed up in his 1952 Chevy that we had removed the back seat from so we could haul comics.  After about 1,000 books were loaded, he turned to me and said, Where are they?  He could tell that most of the good books were missing.  We had  good laugh, loaded the other books, and he gave me a check for $62 from our account.  He said don't cash it until I call you, and he lifted a book from one of the piles, Flash Gordon FC 84, and said he would sell it to a dentist in Culver City for that amount.  He did, and we finished the week with 1,200 books at no cost after selling that one book.  Those were the days.

[hhwolfman]

My first  Superhero book was purchased by my mom at Piggly Wiggly, TOS 98. Most of my purchases were off the rack. The 70s were a great time for collecting. I bought many a slurpy Marvel cup.  Then walked across the street to Highland Pharmacy, the only place in the neighborhood that carried Marvel Mags. My favorite was Monsters Unleashed. A used book store called Books Unlimited opened up close to My Grandmas House. This is where I bought my first Back Issue X men 35 for a whopping $3.00 I will regal more about these good times and stories of my hard core obsession and making a living selling comics starting in 1984 till this day, at a later time.

Edited October 17, 2018 by hhwolfman

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

7 hours ago, Duffman_Comics said:

This has turned into a favourite thread

I'm a long time collector about your vintage Frank, I have some stories (don't we all?) but I don't want to interrupt this delightful narrative.

Please, carry on!

I'm glad you are enjoying the show! A number of posts to come all a bit different from what has come before! It's been fun to write it all down.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

13 hours ago, Yellow Kid said:

In the fall of 1962, I started college at the University of Redlands.  As soon as I moved into my dorm, I ran an ad in the local paper saying I bought old comic books.  I got one response, an older guy who lived with his parents.  He had three large chests filled with books from about 1945-1952.  After hours of negotiating, I bought them all for $62, and took them back to my dorm room.  My new room mate thought I was crazy and did ask me to remove them ASAP.  I called Leonard and made arrangements for him to come the next day and pick them up.  That night I pulled a couple of hundred of the best books and put them In my closet to surprise him.  He showed up in his 1952 Chevy that we had removed the back seat from so we could haul comics.  After about 1,000 books were loaded, he turned to me and said, Where are they?  He could tell that most of the good books were missing.  We had  good laugh, loaded the other books, and he gave me a check for $62 from our account.  He said don't cash it until I call you, and he lifted a book from one of the piles, Flash Gordon FC 84, and said he would sell it to a dentist in Culver City for that amount.  He did, and we finished the week with 1,200 books at no cost after selling that one book.  Those were the days.

Rich, what's up with dentists and expensive books!!

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

TOP TEN FAVORITES - Part 8 –Letters and Fanzines

Fans used to write letters, lots of them. To each other and to the comics they loved. I decided at some point I should try this. I remember having a type-writer set up on the dining room table at home and cranking out letters of comment. I wrote dozens of them and I think the first was published in Freedom Fighters #5 because I have six copies of that issue; I must have been excited to see it!

I don’t know all the issues where I had letters published and occasionally I will see a reference pop up on the internet from Grand Comics Database or somewhere. I remember having one in Captain America because I showed my English teacher who commented on the response from the editor to me. But I was most surprised one day when I discovered a letter that I had completely forgotten I had written or had been published.

For those of you not around in 1977; the Star Wars phenomenon actually started before the movie came out. In my high school, one student and one teacher were both already caught up in the fever and starting to spread the excitement. Rocket’s Blast issued a special issue and I bought ten copies and was selling them to fellow students. A sometimes forgotten fact is that the comic actually came out before the movie. Well, I bought my copy and figured I should send in a letter of comment which was published in issue #4. I was doing a Star Wars search on the internet one day and was surprised to be reminded of this. My letter would prove to be prescient!

 

 

Another aspect of fandom that was really important to me; particularly as I moved through high school was the world of fanzines as well as sending in letters of comment to the comics I enjoyed so much. Once I started to receive the Buyer’s Guide it really opened up a world of possibilities with regard to a variety of other publications that were available so I started ordering a few of these fanzines.

I subscribed to Rocket’s Blast Comic Collector for a bit and enjoyed that publication. It was during the period that Don Rosa was creating the Pertwillaby Papers which was a highlight along with the covers which were also memorable. There was also a publication called AFTA which was memorable for its breadth of material. This was issued by Bill-Dale Marcinko who I met at the Central Jersey comics club meeting. He came to a particularly bad end which can be read about online. The Duckburg Times was another great ‘zine for Duck Fans. There were others not so memorable and I even bought back issues at conventions. Sadly, I didn’t save most of this material; I wish I had.

One of the fanzines was called Tales of the Duplicator and featured fictional tales of fan adventures which I found fascinating. I enjoyed it so much that I contacted the editor and offered to write a story for an upcoming issue. I did that and it was illustrated by another fan whom I later contacted and am still in touch with on Facebook. Comic friends for life! He was a contributor to an APA (amateur press alliance) called Inter-Lac which focused on the Legion of Super Heroes. This intrigued me and he put me in touch with another APA, but I can’t remember its name. I was not a big contributor but did manage to issue a small zine called Bits and Pieces; once again I curse myself for not saving those.

I didn’t realize it at the time but this period of my life afforded a great amount of time to pursue these fan activities. That was all about to change when I went to college. But before that my good friend from high school who currently works at DC decided we needed to issue our own fanzine. While the results were a bit less overwhelming than we had hoped at least I think our enthusiasm shown through the pages. Here’s the cover and an interior page with a Barks swipe!

 

After this, my fan activities started to wind down as I entered college and study time replaced comic fun time. I still bought and read the current issues and even went to shows, but the best years for this type of full-fledged fan activity I had been engaged in were now going to be behind me.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

On 10/11/2018 at 8:26 AM, sagii said:

...maybe some pics or list of your top 10 favorite non omic book but comic/ pop culture related items from your years of collecting 

Well, I didn't quite take on your challenge the way you meant it but two more parts to go and it I will consider the challenge met!!

[sagii]

4 minutes ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

Well, I didn't quite take on your challenge the way you meant it but two more parts to go and it I will consider the challenge met!!

...It's all good. I imagined since you are a big Disney fan, you have some toys or premiums, posters and the like. You can always add a bonus round (and i'm certain no one would object) as we all have been enjoying the comics and the stories that go along with them. 

[BustedFlush]

Must mention "Drippy Duck And Lil' Iffy." 

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

18 hours ago, sagii said:

...It's all good. I imagined since you are a big Disney fan, you have some toys or premiums, posters and the like. You can always add a bonus round (and i'm certain no one would object) as we all have been enjoying the comics and the stories that go along with them. 

I've never been a fan of buying all that other stuff; I've moved too many times in my life. I've got a few things but not much and always really loved the comics more than anything else. Maybe when my saga ends I'll post a few pictures.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

2 hours ago, BustedFlush said:

Must mention "Drippy Duck And Lil' Iffy." 

I'll leave that to you Mike!