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Whatever became of Bang Zoom?
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48 posts in this topic

On 12/22/2018 at 6:16 PM, Robot Man said:

Yep, he played us like a well oiled fiddle and we loved every minute of it!

Yes, I believe he totally blew us all away and pulled us right in with those first few scans of those very early pre-Green lantern All-American books.

Books that many of us here would normally not be interested in, but were 100% in when we saw the immaculate and almost newsstand fresh condition copies which he was posting for our virgin eyes to take in.  And needless to say, it only got better from there as pages and pages of more books appeared in front of our eyeballs which had probably fallen out of its sockets and onto our keyboard by then.  :whatthe:

I most definitely still remember that exhilarating and uplifting feeling.  :cloud9:

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While I am not a frequent poster on these boards, I was utterly captivated by the Bangzoom thread. Anybody knows if he is well/better these days? Sorry if the answer to that question has been posted somewhere. I searched and didn't find anything.

 

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1 hour ago, Robot Man said:

Last time I heard was a couple years ago and he was doing better.

Amazing that many of these came from the same original owner. Tied up in bundles next to the trash on the curb. A testament to him to keep the collection all together. The last photo always blew me away. What was in those neat stacks next to the display case?

Best thread ever on the boards...

bangzoom3.jpg

bangzoom2.jpg

bangzoom1.jpg

That thread was jaw dropping and mind blowing all at the same time.  I hope he is doing well.<3

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4 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Amazing that many of these came from the same original owner. Tied up in bundles next to the trash on the curb.

Absolutely no surprise that I am never ever this lucky or anywhere even close to it, especially since I used to fantasize about this exact same scenario happening to me back in the day, but clearly no such luck.  :(  :frustrated:

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8 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Absolutely no surprise that I am never ever this lucky or anywhere even close to it, especially since I used to fantasize about this exact same scenario happening to me back in the day, but clearly no such luck.  :(  :frustrated:

You might find tied up bundles of X Force these days.

If I recall, he paid $7500 for the "Campbell Bros" books.   Which at the time, was a bleeping fortune, and good on him for never selling a book from it.

In other words, someone found them curbside, but I want to say it wasn't him?

Anyone recall the details?

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1 hour ago, Bronty said:

You might find tied up bundles of X Force these days.

If I recall, he paid $7500 for the "Campbell Bros" books.   Which at the time, was a bleeping fortune, and good on him for never selling a book from it.

In other words, someone found them curbside, but I want to say it wasn't him?

Anyone recall the details?

It wasn’t him that found them curbside. He bought them from the person that did. He mentioned the price that I don’t recall. I do know it would sound like nothing now. But, it was a very substantial amount back then. 

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17 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

It wasn’t him that found them curbside. He bought them from the person that did. He mentioned the price that I don’t recall. I do know it would sound like nothing now. But, it was a very substantial amount back then. 

That's what I thought.   I'm sure it was 7500 dollars. 

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24 minutes ago, Bronty said:

That's what I thought.   I'm sure it was 7500 dollars. 

That was a LOT of money back then. To put it into perspective, I was probably making $2.50 an hour. 

Supposedly, Chuck borrowed $2,200. To buy the Church collection. We are close in age and I can confirm that was a ton of dough then. 

Bang Zoom said he borrowed the money from his parents. I can’t mention what my parents would have said if I asked...:roflmao:

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18 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

That was a LOT of money back then. To put it into perspective, I was probably making $2.50 an hour. 

Supposedly, Chuck borrowed $2,200. To buy the Church collection. We are close in age and I can confirm that was a ton of dough then. 

Bang Zoom said he borrowed the money from his parents. I can’t mention what my parents would have said if I asked...:roflmao:

Trust me, I get it.   Enough for two cars at the time I imagine.   A big check to write and even larger to just sink without recovering by selling some of it.    And fundamentally a tremendously riskier and less liquid purchase then.

And yeah I was going to bring up that example myself.   Chuckles bought 18x as many books for rougly 1/4 the cost.

Edited by Bronty
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1 hour ago, Bronty said:

 Chuckles bought 18x as many books for rougly 1/4 the cost.

And the old lady along with the rest of the Church family probably thought they had pulled a fast one on Chuckles by finding some know nothing stooge hippie kid to pay full cover price for some old smelly books which they thought they might otherwise have to pay some trash guy to pick up and haul away.  doh!  :takeit:

Edited by lou_fine
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1 hour ago, lou_fine said:

And the old lady along with the rest of the Church family probably thought they had pulled a fast one on Chuckles by finding some know nothing stooge hippie kid to pay full cover price for some old smelly books which they thought they might otherwise have to pay some trash guy to pick up and haul away.  doh!  :takeit:

That was most likely the case at the time but didn't they later try to sue him when they found out the true value?

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41 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

That was most likely the case at the time but didn't they later try to sue him when they found out the true value?

Yes they did, but they sadly lost the case as they apparently never asked Chuckles for his estimated "expert" value of the collection.  doh!

Supposedly, they just looked at all of the "garbage" taking up all of that space and assumed there were 20,000 books in ther multiplied by the 10 cents cover price per copy and came up with their $2,000 offer and Chuckles gladly accepted their offer.  :takeit:  :takeit:

Of course, it took him a couple of weeks to come up with the money by going to Burrell Rowe in the end, since Chuck probably didn't have a single dime to his name at the time.  lol

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6 minutes ago, lou_fine said:

Yes they did, but they sadly lost the case as they apparently never asked Chuckles for his estimated "expert" value of the collection.  doh!

Supposedly, they just looked at all of the "garbage" taking up all of that space and assumed there were 20,000 books in ther multiplied by the 10 cents cover price per copy and came up with their $2,000 offer and Chuckles gladly accepted their offer.  :takeit:  :takeit:

Of course, it took him a couple of weeks to come up with the money by going to Burrell Rowe in the end, since Chuck probably didn't have a single dime to his name at the time.  lol

I wouldn't use the word 'sadly' .  They set the price and he paid it.

I think we all dream of finding a collection like this in the dump or a garage sale.

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4 hours ago, Robot Man said:

 

Bang Zoom said he borrowed the money from his parents. I can’t mention what my parents would have said if I asked...:roflmao:

BZ had been dealing in comics (buying through ads in magazines and newspapers) since the early mid-60s.  So I'm pretty sure his parents probably thought by then that he knew what he was doing.  He's lucky they had the resources.  BZ has a D27, Superman 1, Batman 1, AA 16, Pep 22, AS 3, AS 8, and many other great GA books, and I seem to recall him saying he never paid more than $50 for any of those issues.  

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1 hour ago, sfcityduck said:

BZ had been dealing in comics (buying through ads in magazines and newspapers) since the early mid-60s.  So I'm pretty sure his parents probably thought by then that he knew what he was doing.  He's lucky they had the resources.  BZ has a D27, Superman 1, Batman 1, AA 16, Pep 22, AS 3, AS 8, and many other great GA books, and I seem to recall him saying he never paid more than $50 for any of those issues.  

I don't know that beating the bushes for acquisitions is 'dealing'.   I don't seem to recall any discussion of him selling books, although perhaps he did?   Regardless I think a lot of parents would have been close minded about it, so its great that he had more open minded parents.

The no-more-than-$50 per book part I recall as well!    Of course $50 for a book back then wasn't anyting to sneeze at, but still.

Edited by Bronty
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