Jbird

On 1/17/2022 at 5:58 PM, KCode98 said:

 

I bought my first comic in 1973 at a place called Leng's Fountain.  Leng's was a classic soda fountain in the front and in the back they sold books, magazines and comics. The first book I bought was Defenders #7. I still have it, it's in pretty rough shape. Unfortunately I didn't start seriously collecting until a couple years later, so all the books I bought in 73 and 74 weren't taken care of very well. That includes the hulk 180 and 181 I bought. Of course I had to cut out the marvel value stamps and to add insult to injury I never even sent them in. But I did hang on to them and I can't believe what they are worth now even in their tattered condition. I have over a thousand books and all but around 50 of them I paid newstand value or less. The 50 or so I didn't buy from the  newsstand include a box of about 40 Marvels from the mid to late sixties that the nice old lady up the street gave to me for getting her a Christmas tree. In that box was some early Spider-Man including the first molten man, first and second rhino, second kingpin and a few other sweet little issues. Also contained avengers 7, 11, 14, 19, some early daredevils and Thor's including #134 that I just got back from cgc graded 7.0. I got paid pretty well for that Christmas tree as it turns out.

There were two grocery stores in the little town that I lived in and both of them had these revolving racks of 3 comics in a bag for $0.39. I would regularly check these and look through the packs for either number ones or books with a $0.20 price point. I got a marvel premier #1 out of a pack and at this point I was collecting so I kept them in pretty good condition. Some other scores from the three packs were Invaders #1, five She-Hulk #1, three devil dinosaur #1, a bunch of 20 cent draculas  ( not the first blade but issues right before and after) and inadvertently because they were in a pack with a number one or a 20 center I got four copies of the first appearance of machine man, three copies of the eternals number 10, one 11 and three copies of 13. 

I sent away for about 10 books from Robert Bell. I remember being somewhat disappointed because mostly what I got was my second and third choices. I did however get the iron Man number one in nm/m condition that I wanted for the tidy sum of $l5. Apparently Mr Bell's grading was a little less strict than cgc's because although I kept it bagged and boarded and safely tucked away when I sent it in a number of years later it came back at 7.0. Just about everything I got from him was two full points below what he had them at. This included a Conan 2, defenders 1,  and an ASM 122. Kind of disappointing but I guess I still got a pretty good ROI and some great books to hang on the wall. Sorry for rambling on but it's fun to reminisce and relive the excitement of riding my bike to Leng's, walking back to the comic rack and spotting some new #1 there just waiting for me to buy every copy. That's how I got five copies of Black Panther #1 for $1.25.