niknikktm

A couple more just for laughs. I sure wish I had spent a couple bucks more for higher grade books when I was buying all of these early issues, but at 8 years old I still had a lot to learn about that sort of thing. It wasn't until about a year later that the owner of Comic City in Minneapolis took me under his wing and taught me some valuable lessons. I read the krap out of these first books.

I bought this off the shelf when it first came out. Read it once, then bagged it. Pretty sure I went back a couple of times over next few years and carefully read it again. That 25 cents sure went a long way. Technically these last few aren't "new in my collection", but no one has ever seen them before so maybe that counts???

Bought this sometime around 1973. The sticker price is for real. It was originally on the PVC bag the book came in, but I peeled it off and stuck it on the 4 mil mylar when I upgraded all my sleeves as a teenager. Avengers 3 thru 16 all have the original price stickers transferred to the mylar bags. They range from $2.75 all the way up to a whopping $6.50. 

After spending some time talking to Neal and his wife at the Chicago Comicon back around 2015 or so I arranged to purchase my first piece of original art. I've been collecting since the early 70's and deeply regret not getting into original art back then when key pieces of original art were plentiful and cheap, but if I had to start somewhere there's not much better than the legend himself. A 14 x 11 watercolor.

After my wife passed (about 8 years ago) I finally got back to my collection (after nearly 20 years of not buying back issues) and decided to try to fill in the holes in my FF collection as I never seriously collected that title as a kid. I only started collecting FF as a teenager in the 80's, so I missed out on the first 10 issues and other key issues when they were dirt cheap. My collection was complete from #100 on up with a few dozen lower issues sprinkled in. In the past few years I've picked up a number of high-grade issues that I needed, but two of them were significant. I also finally bought my first piece of original art after spending some time talking to Neal Adams at the Chicago Comicon in 2014. It's a watercolor Neal did for me based on the cover he did for Tarzan of the Apes in the 60's. I paid extra for a "smattering" of background and Neal gave me a bit more than that! He was such a nice guy. I miss seeing and talking to him and his wife at conventions.

I have never counted but I would guess somewhere between 20K to 25K??? I'm 58 and started collecting seriously when I was 8. Pretty much everything from 1972 on was purchased new and almost all of my key back issues were purchased during the 70's, except for Hulk #1.

There's a cool story there. I had complete collections of many silver age Marvel titles by the time I was 16 except for Incredible Hulk which I was only missing #1. When I was 16 (1980) a friend of my mother whose father (who collected comics and recently passed) left his entire collection to her and her brother. I met her a few times in the past and had told her about my collection. She knew I was an avid collector like her father and after he passed, she GAVE ME Hulk #1!!! I would conservatively estimate it to be somewhere between a 7.5 to 8.5 grade, but it (like all of my books) has never been professionally graded.

I've never sold even one book and I'm not about to start now. My daughter gets them when I check out.