Let's hear about a lost and forgotten part of your childhood... 1 1

[jools&jim]

...which (thanks to the inter-webs that all the kids are crazy about these days) suddenly jogged your memory to the point where you had to have it.

Such is Batman #109 for me!

Sometime during the summer of 1976, at the ripe old age of ten, my best friend and I once again found ourselves at our favorite flea market in south central Pennsylvania, courtesy of my mom and my friend's mother, both of whom were unabashed and inveterate bargain hunters.

Ah...those were the days -- to be allowed to roam free and easy and unsupervised among the toys and junk and auto parts and baby clothes and snacks and hippies and bikers and carnies and weirdos!

Our favorite vendor back then was a nondescript fellow who looked quite a bit like every dentist I have ever known, and his stout wife who looked very much like a red-faced fire hydrant.

Their specialty was novelty items: joy buzzers, sneezing powder, squirting water-gun flowers, snapping mouse traps disguised as packs of gum, plastic mechanical figurines which took a p!ss when you dropped their pants, fake dog cr@p and vomit, etc. ... you get the idea.

We almost never bought anything, and laughed our @sses off at all of it.  

It's hard to believe now that so much innocent fun could be had, for free and free of any meaningful consequences, before the advent of sex and booze and dope and rock & roll and heartbreak and everything else which, in one way or another, would eventually conspire to ruin our lives in some measure.

Then there were the comic books.  

Old comic books, and plenty of them, in stacks on tables or in crummy old moving boxes or wooden crates.  

I mean REALLY old comic books, like from the 1950s!   

You can laugh now, but when you're a ten year-old kid in 1976, the 1950s might as well have been the Cretaceous period.  That s--t was OLD!

So, long story long, that's where and when I first saw Batman #109, in a crummy old brown fruit box.

"The 1001 Inventions of Batman!"

Batman flying over Gotham on the wings of Icarus! And a thousand other inventions I've never read of!

This was surely the Ur Text which would unlock the secrets of...something, and it was nearly as old as the pyramids, too -- magic!

It was, needless to say, "raw" and un-bagged, and I have no idea to this day what the vendor was asking for it, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 50-cents or maybe a dollar.

Unfortunately, the day itself was also getting old, and the mothers were winding down, so the answer to that particular riddle of the sphinx is lost to the golden age of time.

But so what anyway?  Well, my long-winded point is this:

I hadn't thought about ANY of this until a few weeks ago when a random and capricious search for '50s Batman comics on eBay returned an image of the cover for Bats #109, and then it all came flooding back.

The book...the flea market...my mom...the era...the fun...the discovery...the innocence...and everything else -- all long gone.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the comic itself means nothing; but what it represents means everything.

So, yeah: it ain't like the old days, but it'll do, and it's nice to finally recapture a small part of the world as it was, which I finally did when this arrived in the mail today...

 

Edited January 25, 2020 by jools&jim

[James J Johnson]

6 minutes ago, jools&jim said:

I hadn't thought about ANY of this until a few weeks ago when a random and capricious search for '50s Batman comics on eBay returned an image of the cover for Bats #109, and then it all came flooding back.

The book...the flea market...my mom...the era...the fun...the discovery...the innocence...and everything else -- all long gone.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the comic itself means nothing; but what it represents means everything.

 

 

[kav]

For me it would be these.  I had forgotten i had these until I stumbled on them one day:

[jools&jim]

7 minutes ago, kav said:

For me it would be these.  I had forgotten i had these until I stumbled on them one day:

[James J Johnson]

4 hours ago, jools&jim said:

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the comic itself means nothing; but what it represents means everything.

 

[Get Marwood & I]

4 hours ago, jools&jim said:

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the comic itself means nothing; but what it represents means everything.

What a great post to start the day 

[Mercury Man]

My Saturday mornings religiously revolved around: waking up at 7 am, lugging this down the stairs to the basement.  Flipping on Bugs Bunny, and setting this up.  Eating breakfast (after my mom begrudgingly got out of bed so early to make), and after breakfast a battle broke loose.  If I ever find one, unopened, I am paying dirty money. 

[bentbryan]

3 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

My Saturday mornings religiously revolved around: waking up at 7 am, lugging this down the stairs to the basement.  Flipping on Bugs Bunny, and setting this up.  Eating breakfast (after my mom begrudgingly got out of bed so early to make), and after breakfast a battle broke loose.  If I ever find one, unopened, I am paying dirty money. 

I had this too! It was so awesome! My mom sold it in a yard sale when I was older and didn’t care at the time 

[KPR Comics]

I had it as well.  Many hours of fun. 

[kav]

I built this sub, looked at it for a while, then proceeded to blow it to smithereens with firecrackers.  First ordinance went into the missile tubes.

[Ken Aldred]

1 hour ago, kav said:

I built this sub, looked at it for a while, then proceeded to blow it to smithereens with firecrackers.  First ordinance went into the missile tubes.

Is this an American Polaris submarine?

They were the ones comic readers (including myself) were eager to own, back in the 70s.

Edited January 25, 2020 by Ken Aldred

[kav]

3 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

Is this an American Polaris submarine?

They were the ones comic readers were eager to own, back in the 70s.

No its just a revell model-the polaris sub of fame is a cardboard box, basically.

[Ken Aldred]

Just now, kav said:

No its just a revell model-the polaris sub of fame is a cardboard box, basically.

Prefer the model.

[kav]

1 minute ago, Ken Aldred said:

Prefer the model.

there's only one known polaris sub still in existence-it's value is undetermined but it could net say 5K easily.

[fastballspecial]

Such a fun thread. We all had stuff that brings the memories back of being a kid.

 

[Jeffro.]

5 hours ago, bentbryan said:

8 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

My Saturday mornings religiously revolved around: waking up at 7 am, lugging this down the stairs to the basement.  Flipping on Bugs Bunny, and setting this up.  Eating breakfast (after my mom begrudgingly got out of bed so early to make), and after breakfast a battle broke loose.  If I ever find one, unopened, I am paying dirty money. 

I had this too! It was so awesome! My mom sold it in a yard sale when I was older and didn’t care at the time 

Oh yeah, Navarone playset. Awesome toy. I think I still have the two cannon somewhere but the set is looooong gone.

[Mercury Man]

5 hours ago, bentbryan said:

I had this too! It was so awesome! My mom sold it in a yard sale when I was older and didn’t care at the time 

49 minutes ago, Jeffro. said:

Oh yeah, Navarone playset. Awesome toy. I think I still have the two cannon somewhere but the set is looooong gone.

About 10+ years ago, I saw one on Ebay.   It was here in State (other coast, but I was even going to offer to pick it up if I won), and looked to be un-played with, all of the soldiers, gear, cannons were still in their un-opened bags.   It even had the little comic book story that came with it.  The play-mat appeared to never have been unfolded.  Anyway, I lurked on it at about $150, then I started to bid with about 5 minutes left, I got outbid, then things went fast and furious as I kept upping my bid to $600.    As the time expired, the final sale price was about $650.   So close. 

Edited January 25, 2020 by Mercury Man

[James J Johnson]

2 hours ago, Mercury Man said:

About 10+ years ago, I saw one on Ebay.   It was here in State (other coast, but I was even going to offer to pick it up if I won), and looked to be un-played with, all of the soldiers, gear, cannons were still in their un-opened bags.   It even had the little comic book story that came with it.  The play-mat appeared to never have been unfolded.  Anyway, I lurked on it at about $150, then I started to bid with about 5 minutes left, I got outbid, then things went fast and furious as I kept upping my bid to $600.    As the time expired, the final sale price was about $650.   So close. 

Now try and guess when the next time will be when one in this condition will be seen again on ebay (or anywhere else for that matter).  If the one you saw was complete, with this many pieces, box, and literature, some unopened, still in the pouches? That was lightning and about as unlikely as lightning to strike again in the same place, unless the same set is resold.

[Robot Man]

5 hours ago, kav said:

I built this sub, looked at it for a while, then proceeded to blow it to smithereens with firecrackers.  First ordinance went into the missile tubes.

I did the same thing with most of my Rat Fink and car models...

I remember my dad coming home and driving over plastic pieces in the driveway. He was none to happy...

[bentbryan]

13 minutes ago, James J Johnson said:

Now try and guess when the next time will be when one in this condition will be seen again on ebay (or anywhere else for that matter).  If the one you saw was complete, with this many pieces, box, and literature, some unopened, still in the pouches? That was lightning and about as unlikely as lightning to strike again in the same place, unless the same set is resold.

One on ebay right now. 4+ days to go and at $155. I’m interested to see what it ends up as. 
 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F184142472896