Ian_Levine

I have boxes full of comics that were genuinely part of my collection which I then upgraded. And put the prior copy in a box. In some cases they're the copy I had since I was ten. I have my original Justice League 7 which I upgraded for a nice copy, but the original looks like a rag in comparison. Eight year old boys don't know how to look after their comics properly.

Yes I have loads of those UK repackaged comics.

Yes but if I part with that New Adventure 14, I won't have it to offer you any more.

In different ways. One you treasure for its content. One you treasure for its scarcity. But there is something rather splendid about holding Detective 1 to 50 and looking at each one in numerical order.

Hit a BIN on eBay about 2 years ago. I'd love to trade as I vowed a long time ago I'd not pay more than $1000 for it, simply because it's not worth it. But I let all my Golden Age spares go to Harley. I still have a spare New Adventure 14 and a spare More Fun 58 (Spectre cover, the one with the pendulum), which I left with someone else, but I think the NA 14 has the wrong back cover and the More Fun has a centrefold missing but only ad pages, not story. I'd trade you the pair for the Supergear. They still gotta be worth $2000 together, purely because of the enormous rarity of the New Adventure. Come in please, Flying Donut, You never responed to my suggestion. New Adventure 14 is worth more than Supergear. It's almost as rare as 13, and I'm offering it to you as well as More Fun 58. Please consider it ?

Please PM me and tell me how much and how I should pay for it.

Well it might be rare, but if the price is silly, then at least now I know it exists so I can keep on looking. There can't be a ton of collectors queueing up for it, not if those two copies of "It's Gametime", which are fifty years old and SERIOUSLY RARE, have remained unsold.

Tell Detective27kid that I said he should buy them right away. I found them monstrously tough to find. The fact you haven't sold them makes me sad. How much are they ??

I bought my copy of number 7, the Cosmic Fun House, when I was eight. I had those others from newsstands when they came out. When you're a kid you can remember EXACTLY which cones influenced you. I used to see the ads in other comics for issues I was missing and long for them. I had a couple of old comics which had ads in them for Starro The Conqueror, World Of No Return, Slave Ship In Space, and used to gaze at the ads longingly. Wondering if I would EVER get to read them. Imagine my excitement when Justice League 39 came out, reprinting three early classics. I bought two copies.

BLOODY HELL !!!!!! I swear to you, I was actually beginning to believe it didn't exist. No one else had ever seen one, although it's always been listed, with a three dollar value if I recall. I'm a bit staggered. Wanna part with it

It is NOT too late. If you like having DCs, what does it matter whether someone else did it or not ?? Do it for yourself and for the thrill of filling in the gaps. In the 1970s, when I did it in earnest, I had no-one to help me. You have me to help you. Plus you have the greatest obstacle already overcome - a copy of New Adventure 13, the only DC Gerber 10. Do it - slow and sure - and I'll help and even have some spares of rare promos that I've saved for years till the right person came along who deserved them. Be like Jerome. He's quietly gotten within 200 of having the whole lot.

Back then in the early 1970s, the only other comic dealer in the UK was a guy called Alan Austin, who had a rather small and dinghy shop in Hackney. I gave him my DC wants list and week by week he found mssing number off it, usually late 1950s or early 1960s. Each new find, each comic ticked off the list was a thrill. It was twenty years before the internet. There was no worldwide hookup of fans, no way of finding rare issues other than scour fan photocopied lists for them. Collecting was seriously hard work. Not like typing DC into the comics section of e-Bay, and wading through twenty thousand comics for sale. No. It was tough. Alan Austin never found me a comic earlier than 1957. The Golden Age I had were all off Mike Lake, and only then because he owned the first real comic shop in England, and American visitors occasionally brought Golden Age in to sell. And whenever they did, he automatically let me have them. They were usually around £25. The most expensive was Detective 37, which he charged me £45 for. But I was the only guy in England to have Golden Age DCs. I only realise now, looking back after thirty years, how lucky I was back then.

People don't realise, in our internet age, how utterly utterly impossible it was to find old DCs back in 1973, and there were hardly any Goldn Age in England at all, so back then, it was a big thing, but my dreams of collecting every DC seemed like a pipe dream way back then.

Well the Big Book Of Fun Comics came from Dave The Dentist. Action 1-4 and 6-10 came from Harley Yee. Detective 1 came from Metropolis Detectives 3 and 4 came from Harold Hill Double Action 2 caused a huge amount of grief and eventually came from Metropolis after a very public argument about it. Action 5 and 15 came from Robert Rogovin Buzzy 70 was a wonderful gift from Shield. etc etc In 1973 when I was a kid, I visited a comic shop in London called "Dark They Were And Golden Eyed" and met another teenager working there who helped me fill in gaps in my collection. His name was Mike Lake. He took me down to the basement full of second hand comics, and he sold me Brave and the Bold 28, 29, 30, and Justice League, 1 through 22 apart from the ones I already had, which were 4, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 20. I was HOOKED. I had a complete run from 23 onwards so this was the fulfillment of my dream, to complete my Justcie League run. He then started supplying me with every new DC every week. He then formed a new company called Titan, selling wholesale out of an old mini-warehouse in Askew Lane in Acton. Titan grew and grew in size until Mike became the first proper comics distributor in the UK. He then opened up a shop in Denmark Street called Forbidden Planet, and every time anyone brought in a Golden Age DC, I had first dibs on it. This was now around 1976, I think. I got New Adventure 13, Green Lantern 16 in near mint, Action 28 and 31, Detective 37, and several All Star Comics, Flash, and Wonder Womans. In the end he sold out his shares in Titan and Forbidden Planet to his partner and retired, But lets say I probably wouldn't have my collection now at all if it weren't for Mike Lake.

Considering I have to start again every couple of years to put all the runs into order, a certain amount of it sticks in my mind.

Yes I do, but these three were a licence outside to Fireside Books. Having said that, I'm pretty sure I have all three in hardback as well as paperback. The paperbacks are with my comics, but the hardbacks are all elsewhere and I need to go and check, but I do recall buying one.

Yes. That's the one prop I could never part with.

Throughout 2003 and 2004, I spent ten hours a day seven days a week on e-Bay. Plus bought extensively off Harley and Metropolis and Rich Muchin and Gary Dolgoff. Plus spent endless Sundays at UK comic cons till my feet ached, looking through every single dealer's boxes. Plus did endless research to track down everything I was missing once I decided to take my forty year quest and finally comp;lete it once and for all. I remortgaged my house to do it. I sold all my Doctor Who film prints, my extensive and unique collection of Doctor Who props, and every valuable Northern Soul and Motown record that I possessed, after collecting them avidly for also a forty year period. I sacrificed everything I had and everything I possessed to complete my comic collection, deciding it was better to have one definitive collection of something, rather than four collections that would always remain somewhat incomplete. You cannot put a value on that amount of man hours other than as a quest to achieve a person's lifetime goal.

Have you got a copy of Chris Pedrin's "Big Five" ?? Star Spangled War Stories 5, as I have already said, was virtually impossible.

It was the 650 times guide I paid for the Superman Bradman Comic. I paid £1000 ($2000 now). The guide then listed it at $3.

The sum of the whole is greater than its individual parts.

No. I may have a lot of restored books but I upgraded most everything that I was dissatisfied with. Some of these comics are too rare. It would cost more than that, especially factoring in shipping and packaging. You scoff about new books, but you try and find a complete set of all 30 issues of Beautiful Stories For Ugly Children, plus the two previews, the incredibly rare Trade Paperback and the even rarer Cotton Candy Autopsy one-shot. Go on - I challenge you. Even some moderns are rarer than some Golden Age. You could spend ten hours a day on e-Bay for three years and not come close for that price. Plus some comics are not available for any price..

For ten million dollars I would sell it without hesitation, as long as the promos were excluded, take the next five years off, and start from scratch and see how complete it was after five years. I bet I could get within thirty comics of where it is now. Maybe even twenty. So yes, I guess everything has its price. I would cry for weeks but like I said, everything has its price.

Please remember I had over half the collection by 1985. Well over fifteen thousand, and the Golden Age I had, particularly the All Stars which I collected in the 1970s, were bought at a mere fraction of today's prices.

With the standard of the recons that exist now, we can all but see them anyway. Doctor Who was incredibly fortunate that although 108 episodes are missing, all 108 soundtracks exist. Plus enough photo material to piece the episodes back together almost.