Phantalien

I was in my teens from the mid to late 90's, so I am going by mostly comic shops, used book stores, and swap meets. When I was that young I thought the magazines were about the movies ha ha! and I had no interest in reading the movies.

Whenever I go to cons I never see those books sell. I never see people carry those books around proud that they bought it. Some people lurk toward the Vampirella cosplayers to see what's being sold while others make their way to Incredible Hulk #1. Either way, neither will be going home with a convention attendee.

I remember when I was finally able to get a copy of Collectibly Mad and they had that section of articles about Mad or work by MAd artists; I am surprised Grant Geissman (sp?) never tried to do something even if it would have been another book back in the day.

Yes! It was really well done. I heard about them but never got into NAtional Lampoon cause I could never find the magazines laying around like the Mads. Then I saw all the nudity from the documentary and realized that it would be hard for a 13 year old to get them. There was also a movie made about the guy who started lampoon.

I agree that a documentary should be made, but it should have been done about 10-20 years ago. There are a lot fewer around than you think especially of the artists from the hey day of the 60's or 70's.

Being a kid with no job really sucked when it came to swapmeets. There used to be one at the mall in Columbia, MD every week or every other week in the parking garage aat least 20 years ago at this point. One person showed up randomly having Adventure Comics 425 - 440. I didn't know who Spectre was or Black Orchid but those covers looked amazing. Each comic was $2 or $3 and I had enough for 1 comic but my dad was not very generous with money at the time. I left with issue #431 as it was my favorite cover out of of all of them, but I wish I could have gotten all of them. During those shows people were also selling that Team USA Mark McGwire (my favorite ball player when I was a kid) rookie card for $10-$20, which eventually shot up to hundreds or thousands of dollars. Ha ha I never let my dad forget about those.

I wish I knew what it was like to go to the local drugstore to pick up a Mad comic. After the first 10 issues the covers started to change so dramatically, you never knew what you were going to get.

Must have survived the nuclear testing with Indiana Jones. Great find!

I think you are missing issue #2, the one with the baseball cover and JAck Davis art

Color me surprised. I thought you were just a person who was just going to spam the forum for a few posts advertising something and then go on your merry way. Welcome to the boards and sorry to troll you so hard. Everything is "super" these days. Super foods like kale have just been discovered to be super healthy for you. You know instead of saying that kale is healthier for us. When the moon is really close to earth it is a super moon, as if people in scientific community couldn't come up with something better. Are they super rare? Can you quantify what make something rare and super rare? Is super rare another way of saying one of kind? Then use that. Maybe highly sought after could possibly work or maybe even unique. Hard to find gives people an inkling that it could be done. The main thing (despite my utter contempt for the word super) is there are better words to share thoughts and ideas.

Did you make a before and after pic?> I would be interested in seeing both.

I refuse to even think about looking at your youtube channel because you use the term "super rare"

Weird thing about mad is that there are no Key issues other than the original comics and the MAgazines up to #30 in my opinion. Yeah there are the first appearances of the fold-in, spy-vs-spy, or the mad marginal, but they don't bring in any sort of premium. What is hard to find are the magazines where the fold-ins are not folded and The super special issues with the inserts intact.. Other than that, there are many other items (promos and premiums) that were offered through the magazine that are more collectible than the magazines themselves.

Yeah I saw your pics. I am impressed by your early issues.

Funny enough I started reading after issue 300. IT was also quite hard to find any magazines after 300 when I was collecting. In fact, those few years leading up to #300 were hard to track down at that point for some reason. Just a lament about collecting... I collected Mad heavily in my early teens until Mad got licensed to Spencers and there started to be a glut of Mad merchandise that just didn't appeal to me. Back to the topic... I used to find magazine issues and paperbacks for $1 maybe $3 at the most and no one really collected them at that time. I can't really find that type of a deal anymore but my collection has pretty much anything I can find in the wild these days. I choose not to use ebay anymore because it is too easy. At the moment the only thing I am really missing from my collection are a number of the comics, random magazines and some paperbacks from the late 80's early 90's. Over the last 10 years used book stores have dried up in my area too I enjoy getting things in the wild, I enjoy it even more if they are good deals.

When I was collecting I wanted to get from 1 - 300. I thought that was a good stopping point and a nice round number. If I were to choose a time to really stop collecting it would be when they started to have those yellow borders around the covers kind of like the original 7 magazines. At that point the content was just not as funny as it used to be.

I would like to work where you do, where you can afford OA but the managers can't.

Sep-06-97 I got nothing. But I have plenty of messages from ebay that say "An eBay Gift Card of up to $50 could be yours when you play!" I think that is what your friend is referring to.

HA ha ha, no. I was just poking fun at the images you posted that were upside down.

The comics that are upside down are worth the most especially compared to the mirrored ones. Some sort of printing error I am sure but it is best to see the notes on them once they are graded. (congratulations of finding SA in the wild that's not Dell or Classic Illustrated)

I like the idea of having a raffle. I think that $20 for a ticket is too much. If the tickets were $5 - $10 they would sell, or spend $XXX (not of raffle tickets) at your booth. Having a possibility of one choice of 4 prizes will draw people in even more.

Those borders really made the magazines stick out. The art was great and there were so many little things hidden in it. Plus I am pretty sure that the art in the border changed somewhere around issue 26 or 27. I do wonder who did the artwork for the border, I always just guessed it was Will Elder.

How weird. I think those details would be just as interesting as the comics themselves.

I can think of 2 of these stores that are within 45 minutes of me. For a toy store their prices were always expensive despite their specialty in those services. The only time I even bought from there within the last 10 years was Christmas time when they would have the sale on GameBoy games. I know that there are not as many Toys R Us compared to walmart or Target but this was a long time coming because they could never compete. I think that the one thing that I would miss the most from a store like this closing down is seeing a child's face that first time they go inside and see nothing but toys the second they walk through the door. You can't get that experience much anymore since specialty stores have been declining since e-commerce. They still have the best theme song for any type of store ever.

Please tell me that the suitcase also came with the comics!