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I never seen this add saying $1800. Fun new topic for the night
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Started by woowoo,

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Mmehdy

Mmehdy

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36 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

The thing I've always wondered (and maybe you've answered it elsewhere), is where did you get $1800 as an 18 year old in 1973? 

As a collector and dealer, I had sold a lot of Lower GA and especially SA books, I had proablay 10,000 amassed at the high point, I went to flea markets, book stores etc and bought everything and sold it for more, but I always wanted to trade up...that was the rule back then. I had admassed about 3K at the point I had spendt the $1800.

Edited by Mmehdy
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Tri-Color Brian

Tri-Color Brian

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1 hour ago, Mmehdy said:

As a collector and dealer, I had sold a lot of Lower GA and especially SA books, I had proablay 10,000 amassed at the high point, I went to flea markets, book stores etc and bought everything and sold it for more, but I always wanted to trade up...that was the rule back then. I had admassed about 3K at the point I had spendt the $1800.

Amazing...you got a brand new mustang for $1600 in 1973?  I had to pay $3965 for my brand new '73 Challenger...of course, it was a Dodge...:baiting:

51086779571_606e0eac6a_c.jpg

Edited by Tri-ColorBrian
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Robot Man

Robot Man

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Posted
1 hour ago, Mmehdy said:

As a collector and dealer, I had sold a lot of Lower GA and especially SA books, I had proablay 10,000 amassed at the high point, I went to flea markets, book stores etc and bought everything and sold it for more, but I always wanted to trade up...that was the rule back then. I had admassed about 3K at the point I had spendt the $1800.

You were a lot wiser than me. Back then most of it other than my living expenses went to wine, women and song...:roflmao:

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Robot Man

Robot Man

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29 minutes ago, Tri-ColorBrian said:

Amazing...you got a brand new mustang for $1600 in 1973?  I had to pay $3965 for my brand new '73 Challenger...of course, it was a Dodge...:baiting:

51086779571_606e0eac6a_c.jpg

Very nice ride Brian! Where did you get 4 G’s for that beautiful ride? Were you selling dope? 

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Tri-Color Brian

Tri-Color Brian

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9 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

Very nice ride Brian! Where did you get 4 G’s for that beautiful ride? Were you selling dope? 

No, dope is for dopes...lol

I started my business in 1972, and working after school and on Saturday's I amassed enough to buy that car 6 months later...and then I started buying ECs...and Spiderman.

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fifties

fifties

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On 3/30/2021 at 9:30 PM, catman76 said:

That action 1 sold in 1973 and the famous first edition came out in 74

a1.thumb.jpg.1e314b32f6ba572d2f457d71e60684c4.jpg

action.jpg.aa1bfac51c9b3f213d5f87cdae341c59.jpg

To put what he paid back then in perspective; I was 28 at the time, and put $2700 (10%) down on a new house, here in SoCal.  His comic book purchase was exactly 2/3rds of that amount.  I still own that house, but I'm sure it ain't worth what the Action 1 is, today, LOL!

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pemart1966

pemart1966

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6 hours ago, fifties said:

To put what he paid back then in perspective; I was 28 at the time, and put $2700 (10%) down on a new house, here in SoCal.  His comic book purchase was exactly 2/3rds of that amount.  I still own that house, but I'm sure it ain't worth what the Action 1 is, today, LOL!

Median income was just over $8000...so yeah...that was BIG dough...

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Mmehdy

Mmehdy

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On 3/31/2021 at 12:39 PM, Robot Man said:

Funny but I don’t remember GA books being impossible to find in the mid to late ‘60’s in the LA area. No big keys or super early stuff but stuff from say 1943 on was somewhat available. Problem was you had to work your butt off to find it. 

Lots of old used book stores, thrift stores, flea markets, pawn shops, garage and estate sales. I would tell everyone I was looking. Placed ads on the grocery store bulletin boards, placed free ads in a lot of newspapers and even the dump! Me and my brother would walk the streets with our little red wagon and simply ring doorbells. A lot of times, people were happy for us to cart them off free. 

One of our best scores was literally a military foot locker full of WWII books just given a us by a friend of my dad’s. We had never seen books like this. Most of them we never heard of. 

It was nearly a full time job. We amassed quite a hoard. 

Then my dad took us to Hollywood to Cherokee Books, Collector’s Books and Bond Street Books. There is where we found the real good early stuff. Was the first time I’d ever paid more than cover price for anything. Quite the shock. I remember trading Steve from Bond Street a pile of stuff for an All Flash #1. My first GA #1.

Years later, I remember palling up with Terry Stroud, David T Alexander and Carl Macek at the American Comic Book company. Collections of old books were literally walking through the door nearly every day. Their back room was packed with stuff they hadn’t had time to process. 

Like anything in life, if you want it, you had to work for it. Seems like it’s all gone now, but every once in a while a pile or two still turn up. 

That is the difference between LA and Sacramento, back then while the state capital it had a small town feel to it, today is has grown substatially. To go the real bookstores before the comic shops hit Berkley you would have to go to SF.

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rjpb

rjpb

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On 4/1/2021 at 12:35 AM, Tri-ColorBrian said:

His $1800 in 1973 would be the same as $10,662 today...not too shabby an investment.

To put that in perspective that would be $10K for a 35 year old comic. Of course it was then and now recognized as the supreme key for collectors, even if you didn't care about Superman personally, and there were/are only a relatively small number of copies extant. Contrast that with values on TMNT #1, which is 37 years old, and for which probably about half the meager 3000 issue print run is still in existence, not a lot for a copper age book, but still multiples more than Action #1. For $10K you can get a copy that is in better shape than most Action #1s, but will still be considered a lesser grade compared to most other copies of the book.  When you look at it that way, $1800 was not just a steal for the long term, but should have been seen as one then. 

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rjpb

rjpb

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On 4/1/2021 at 12:14 AM, fifties said:

To put what he paid back then in perspective; I was 28 at the time, and put $2700 (10%) down on a new house, here in SoCal.  His comic book purchase was exactly 2/3rds of that amount.  I still own that house, but I'm sure it ain't worth what the Action 1 is, today, LOL!

2/3rds of 10% down on the median SoCal home will apparently buy you a CGC 9.9 Transformers #1 these days. 

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rjpb

rjpb

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On 3/31/2021 at 3:30 PM, Tri-ColorBrian said:

Amazing...you got a brand new mustang for $1600 in 1973?  I had to pay $3965 for my brand new '73 Challenger...of course, it was a Dodge...:baiting:

51086779571_606e0eac6a_c.jpg

 Base MSRP for a '73 Mustang was around $2900, so I suspect Mitch is either misremembering the price he paid, or it wasn't exactly brand new. Of course it didn't take long for vehicles to lose half their value back in the 70s, so it might have felt "brand new". I purchased a '72 Catalina wagon with 70K on it in 1979 for the princely sum of $250.  The run up in gas prices totally destroyed the resale value of gas guzzlers.

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