UPDATED: My Nominee for the "First Great Comic Collector" 12 12

[MrBedrock]

A word of warning kids. Apparently any speculation that Beer Dave might have gone on to lead a life in politics will get you a demerit from CGCMod1.

[sfcityduck]

On 3/11/2019 at 7:32 AM, MrBedrock said:

A word of warning kids. Apparently any speculation that Beer Dave might have gone on to lead a life in politics will get you a demerit from CGCMod1.

Yep!  Never thought I'd get marked down for laughing at a funny post in this thread.

Edited October 3, 2019 by sfcityduck

[SOTIcollector]

Loving this thread!  I was familiar with Dave and the impact of his Saturday Review of Literature letter, but there are plenty of other details here that I hadn't heard before.  Amazing detective work!  Thanks!

[pemart1966]

On 3/10/2019 at 10:42 AM, Yellow Kid said:

There really were two comic worlds in the beginning, the east coast and the west coast.  I grew up in Long Beach, CA, and have been a serious collector since the 1950's.  I met Leonard Brown, another serious collector, and we  started a mail-order business out of his parents home.  We built an amazing inventory, added to our collections, and met some other serious collectors on the west coast, mostly in Southern California.  Eventually he opened a store in 1964 with Malcolm Willits as I opted out to finish college and go to grad school.  The most serious collector we ever met was Rick Durrell, who I think was the earliest "super collector" on the west coast.

How did you go about building up your inventory back in those early times?

[pemart1966]

OK so:  

1.  What happened to him and when?

2.  What happened to all of his books?

[Robot Man]

46 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

How did you go about building up your inventory back in those early times?

I’m sure like most shops, the publicity had tons of stuff just walk through the door.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

Thanks for putting this thread together; awesomely entertaining to read. It just goes to show there were always lots of comic fans and more than we will ever know who had put together great collections.

[sfcityduck]

56 minutes ago, pemart1966 said:

OK so:  

1.  What happened to him and when?

2.  What happened to all of his books?

I'll be getting to that after my work day, this evening West Coast time.

[Robot Man]

 

[lou_fine]

4 hours ago, pemart1966 said:

OK so:  

1.  What happened to him and when?

2.  What happened to all of his books?

I believe the answer to the second question is this:

Sounds as though it was courtesy of his mother.

Edited March 11, 2019 by lou_fine

[path4play]

On 3/9/2019 at 12:43 AM, sfcityduck said:

Many folks are asleep by now, and I'm headed that way.  So there's a lot more more unspooling that will have to wait until tomorrow. 

Amazing research, sfcityduck!

[Randall Dowling]

I have to say, I’m pretty excited to hear the rest of this. 

[sfcityduck]

Sometimes to move forward you have to go back.  

So we've talked about the Beer Dave years in the later 1950s when Dave was hanging out with the Rescue Squad guys.  I think its worth noting that Knowles had a deep appreciation of Dave.  He mentions on several occasions that Dave was a dependable guy, extremely intelligent and that when Dave talked, people listened to his wisdom.  Knowles even says "What a fine administrator he would have made, perhaps a US president."  

But, Dave did not want to be a US President.  His ambition at age 14 was to be a comic book artist.  His mother's obituary refers to him as an artist.  He tried to be a singer. Over on the Jolson boards they note that Dave "billed himself as 'the last of the minstrels' due to the fact that he briefly became the youngest member of the one remaining authentic minstrel troupe touring the nation in the 1950's."  And, of course, he put out his novelty 45 "Me For President" in 1956 and 1960.  The flip side of the 1960 picture sleeve shows a different side of Dave from the "Brando" outfit I posted up thread:

Dave looks happy and fun, and you can get a sense of why people liked him, despite what was described by his friends as a somewhat difficult personality.  But, Dave's 45 is terrible.  Although Cash Box mentioned "Jerry Ferber's campaigning all over town with Dave Jay's Big Time deck 'Me for President'," reviews for the record were bad.  I give him credit for tenacity in releasing it in both 1956 and 1960.  The singer gig probably did not work out well for Dave.

In 1962, "Dave Jay" was advertising himself as a DJ.  A classified taken out in Billboard states:

Quote

DEEJAY SHOW - "BIG TIME ON WAX."  Jolson, Cantor, all others of vaude era.  Breezy knowledgeable chatter.  Sample tape sent on request.  

His boast to have records by all the "vaude era" singers was probably not an idle boast.  Folks on the Jolson boards state that back in the 1960s his "Jolson collection at the time was among the biggest on the planet."  

Dave seems to have gotten some traction with his DJ show for a while, but with the dawn of rock and roll, it clearly was not going to be a long term gig pushing the "vaude era." 

Edited March 12, 2019 by sfcityduck

[HouseofComics.Com]

Interesting...

[sfcityduck]

Sorry for the delays folks, but I had a work issue that needed to be dealt with.  One last post for tonight - I'm going to give you the short version.

Several folks in the Jolson record collecting community have talked of vising with Dave in the early 1960s while Dave was still living with his mother.  

But by 1966, Dave appears to have taken up residence at the Hotel Alexander in Berkeley.  Why?  Totally unknown.  Maybe he was looking for the counter-culture.  He probably was.  In fact, he took out a personal ad in the Berkeley Barb, but this one wasn't comic or record related:

Quote

WANTED: Beautiful girl partner (all girls are beautiful) with whom to join sexual freedom league and/or anyone willing to lend, share or (as last resort) rent a typewriter so that I can write the greatest satire on humanity since "Gulliver's Travels."

Dave's line must have worked.  Or failure did not daunt him. One of the themes of Dave's life if you can learn a lot about him through the classified ads he took out.  A year later, in 1967, he was taking similar ads out in the NY East Village Other, and he was back in D.C. at a new address.  He was visited by a Jolson collector in 1967, who says that Dave traveled to visit him in NY about a month later.  So Dave had friends, had money and time to do some traveling still, and there's almost no information from anyone about comic collecting in the later 1960s.  A Jolson collector who visited Dave in 1967, after he'd changed addresses, didn't mention his mother or his comics.  I'm tracking that guy down to get more info.

Dave stayed at the same D.C. address until he died in 1969.  

As for his comics? 

Well, it seems pretty clear that they were sold off.  What I don't know is if it occurred before or after Dave died.  I think I can find the answer from some folks who visited both him at his mothers and him in the late 60s.  

What I do know is that his mother moved out of D.C. in 1970. 

Tellingly, original art work inscribed to Dave was bequeathed to the Library of Congress as early as 1974.    That art was donated by Caroline and Erwin Swann.  They were behind the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon which donated a lot of art to the LOC.  

I really don't think Dave's mother would have sold art inscribed to her son, within a few years of his death, unless she was liquidating all of his collection.  I don't think Dave would have sold art that was inscribed to him, unless he really wanted money for another purpose - living life or buying records.  And I'd imagine he'd sell that art last.

So right now my operating assumption is that the Wigransky collection is a lost pedigree, dispersed in the later 60s or early 70s.  Either sold as a lot in 1970 to someone who was also dealing original art or pieced out by Dave himself.

But, that's only a working assumption.  There is a longer version of this story with more detail and more speculation.  But, that will  have to be for another time.

Curiosity keeps me digging.

If I find more, I'll let you all know.

Not the answer a lot of you wanted to hear, not what I wanted to find. 

But, the story of Dave Wigransky is fascinating nonetheless.

 

  

Edited March 12, 2019 by sfcityduck

[Yellow Kid]

15 hours ago, pemart1966 said:

OK so:  

1.  What happened to him and when?

2.  What happened to all of his books?

Building our inventory was mainly a function of taking the time to make note cards saying we bought old comics and then putting them on the bulletin boards of as many markets as possible within about 100 miles from Long Beach and then visiting the promising callers.  Usually $5 or $10 would seal the deal for hundreds of old comics,  However, even then, word was starting to circulate and each year buys cost just a little more.  One of the last big buys I remember was in September of 1962 and we got about 3500 old books for $65.  We sold one of those books, the Flash Gordon FC 84, to a dentist for $65 a few days later--those were the days!

Rick died; relatively young, it seems like it was around the early 1970's.  His wife hated the collection because of the way it had dominated their life, and wanted to sell it.  Leonard asked me to buy it for the store, and it looked like we almost had a deal where I offered to buy it all for cash at fair market value.  It was a lot of cash and no one else came close to matching my offer.  At the last minute, she said she was sorry but someone else had offered her triple what I offered, and she was going to take his offer.  I tried to explain to her that something was wrong, and no one would pay that much.  We parted ways and she sold the collection to Ernie Gerber.  The first problem occurred when he didn't have the cash he promised her.  Ultimately she agreed to let him start selling the books and pay her out of the sales.  Her biggest surprise was yet to come.  Ernie told her that to maximize sales, he had to do restoration work on most of the books and he gave her a bill for his efforts.  What she didn't know was that Ernie was using sales to help fund his books showing old comic book covers.   At this point, she got an attorney, and things really got exciting.

4 hours ago, sfcityduck said:

Sorry for the delays folks, but I had a work issue that needed to be dealt with.  One last post for tonight - I'm going to give you the short version.

Several folks in the Jolson record collecting community have talked of vising with Dave in the early 1960s while Dave was still living with his mother.  

But by 1966, Dave appears to have taken up residence at the Hotel Alexander in Berkeley.  Why?  Totally unknown.  Maybe he was looking for the counter-culture.  He probably was.  In fact, he took out a personal ad in the Berkeley Barb, but this one wasn't comic or record related:

Dave's line must have worked.  Or failure did not daunt him. One of the themes of Dave's life if you can learn a lot about him through the classified ads he took out.  A year later, in 1967, he was taking similar ads out in the NY East Village Other, and he was back in D.C. at a new address.  He was visited by a Jolson collector in 1967, who says that Dave traveled to visit him in NY about a month later.  So Dave had friends, had money and time to do some traveling still, and there's almost no information from anyone about comic collecting in the later 1960s.  A Jolson collector who visited Dave in 1967, after he'd changed addresses, didn't mention his mother or his comics.  I'm tracking that guy down to get more info.

Dave stayed at the same D.C. address until he died in 1969.  

As for his comics? 

Well, it seems pretty clear that they were sold off.  What I don't know is if it occurred before or after Dave died.  I think I can find the answer from some folks who visited both him at his mothers and him in the late 60s.  

What I do know is that his mother moved out of D.C. in 1970. 

Tellingly, original art work inscribed to Dave was bequeathed to the Library of Congress as early as 1974.    That art was donated by Caroline and Erwin Swann.  They were behind the Swann Foundation for Caricature and Cartoon which donated a lot of art to the LOC.  

I really don't think Dave's mother would have sold art inscribed to her son, within a few years of his death, unless she was liquidating all of his collection.  I don't think Dave would have sold art that was inscribed to him, unless he really wanted money for another purpose - living life or buying records.  And I'd imagine he'd sell that art last.

So right now my operating assumption is that the Wigransky collection is a lost pedigree, dispersed in the later 60s or early 70s.  Either sold as a lot in 1970 to someone who was also dealing original art or pieced out by Dave himself.

But, that's only a working assumption.  There is a longer version of this story with more detail and more speculation.  But, that will  have to be for another time.

Curiosity keeps me digging.

If I find more, I'll let you all know.

Not the answer a lot of you wanted to hear, not what I wanted to find. 

But, the story of Dave Wigransky is fascinating nonetheless.

 

  

B

[Sarg]

Fascinating story with a pretty depressing ending. He died at age 36 on October 5, 1969. i'm not clear on why he died in Washington DC but was buried in Mississippi. 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195958792/sidney-david-wigransky

[sfcityduck]

3 hours ago, Sarg said:

Fascinating story with a pretty depressing ending. He died at age 36 on October 5, 1969. i'm not clear on why he died in Washington DC but was buried in Mississippi. 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/195958792/sidney-david-wigransky

His mother was from Mississippi and that's where the family cemetery plot is.

It is sad Dave died so young, but he achieved remarkable prominence in two different areas of collecting.  He's still held in awe by Jolson record collectors who invoke his name, his opinions, and his book in their debates.  And he is still remembered by comic collectors for his actions in 1948, and now I hope folks will also appreciate him for more than just his Saturday Review response to Wertham.  

As for his collection, he's just another name on a long list of collectors whose impressive collections were sold off and dispersed.  There's famous names on that list, including folks mentioned on this site like Rick D., Biljo White, etc.   Yeah, that's sort of depressing, but the bright side is that even though you'll never know, you might already own a comic that once sat in Wigransky's collection.  And there are some lucky collectors out there who own original art inscribed to Dave.  

He's gone, but not forgotten.

 

Edited March 12, 2019 by sfcityduck

[Robot Man]

4 hours ago, Yellow Kid said:

Building our inventory was mainly a function of taking the time to make note cards saying we bought old comics and then putting them on the bulletin boards of as many markets as possible within about 100 miles from Long Beach and then visiting the promising callers.  Usually $5 or $10 would seal the deal for hundreds of old comics,  However, even then, word was starting to circulate and each year buys cost just a little more.  One of the last big buys I remember was in September of 1962 and we got about 3500 old books for $65.  We sold one of those books, the Flash Gordon FC 84, to a dentist for $65 a few days later--those were the days!

Rick died; relatively young, it seems like it was around the early 1970's.  His wife hated the collection because of the way it had dominated their life, and wanted to sell it.  Leonard asked me to buy it for the store, and it looked like we almost had a deal where I offered to buy it all for cash at fair market value.  It was a lot of cash and no one else came close to matching my offer.  At the last minute, she said she was sorry but someone else had offered her triple what I offered, and she was going to take his offer.  I tried to explain to her that something was wrong, and no one would pay that much.  We parted ways and she sold the collection to Ernie Gerber.  The first problem occurred when he didn't have the cash he promised her.  Ultimately she agreed to let him start selling the books and pay her out of the sales.  Her biggest surprise was yet to come.  Ernie told her that to maximize sales, he had to do restoration work on most of the books and he gave her a bill for his efforts.  What she didn't know was that Ernie was using sales to help fund his books showing old comic book covers.   At this point, she got an attorney, and things really got exciting.

B

I did the cards on the supermarket bulletin boards thing too. Got a lot of nice collections that way too. The most memorable was a lady that answered my ad and told me to come over. The comics were in her garage in cardboard boxes. We worked out a deal and as I was picking them up I noticed a low car under a tarp. I asked her what it was and could I see it? She said sure. She said the comics and the car were her son's who had been killed in Vietnam. I pulled off the cover and under it was an early 1960's Ferrari. My eyes popped out of my head! I asked her if she would sell the car. (not that I could afford a car like that but worth the question). She told me no that it was her son's pride and joy. Very sad. I left with the comics but to this day, I always what became of that beautiful red Ferrari...

[originalisbest]

Thanks to all contributing to this thread -- great reading about great collectors. :)