Bonthan

@Spawnfreak Humbly, they’re all mine. I’ve passed on some I wished I hadn’t have and there’s still some that I haven’t seen come to market yet. I had almost given up on that Cap annual.

For me to purchase a comic when I was young I would have to skip school lunch and hit up the drug store at my bus stop. I didn’t even really know about comic shops. I definitely didn’t know there was one in my town. I didn’t like the direct editions that I saw. I thought of them as fake infomercial comics. I really didn’t like the 3 different covers for Spider-Man 1. In 2012 when I started putting a collection together of all the big boy books from my youth it was nothing but newsies. I consider myself lucky as all of these were purchased prior to the crazy prices some of these bring now.

First comic I ever owned was GI Joe 21. I remember the day well, an 8 yo kid in 1983 doesn’t easily forget anything with Snake Eyes on the cover.

I like clubs! @jjonahjameson11 gets to be the president though! The original art is sick. How does one even source where to buy that?

Bcw makes thick bags for annuals and square bound. A “bcw thick bags” search will show results.

My first purchases of comics came off the spinner rack at Ideal Drugstore on Haywood Rd in Asheville. I still have them, they’re in my Ideal Drugstore box. I bought comics for a couple of years from them. However, the first actual shop devoted to comics I ever walked in was Super Giant when it was on Merrimon, Pastimes was at the bottom of the hill. The days of when the con was at the mall in Hickory. My buddies mom drove him and I to DW’s, mine wouldn’t because she refused to make a left turn on the road. I sold a decent stack of golden age Sheena that came from a relative to Dennis for 20 bucks. I turned around and bought bags, boards, and a short box, as this was the first time I had ever seen these items before. He was a grumbly kind of guy and I remember him saying, “if somebody walks in here and says he’s been missing these books from his attic, then I’m gonna come find you”. As an 12 year old he scared the out of me. After that location he moved to Brevard Rd, the same road as the now defunct Biltmore Square Mall. You cannot talk about the good old days of comics in Asheville without DW’s name coming up by the second sentence. That’s right, I traded a stack of golden age comics for supplies.....get on my level please.

You get your return when they go out of business.

Yeah, as a young collector in the mid/late 80’s when I was still saving lunch money for books I would 100% pick an origin story when I was financially forced. It was like being in some secret society that no one else knew about.

I agree, it is sad to see my favorite stories and characters languish in back issue bins. However, the consumption of the story has always been the driving element behind collectibility, unless you were just buying off the top ten list. We had to collect single issues in the past because that was the only way to find out what happened if we missed one. People paid higher amounts for books because it was a key to the storyline they missed, like an origin story or if they missed the first few issues of a new character. Today I can put the entire life of a character on one shelf of a bookcase, buy a high grade slab of the first app or whatever cover I like, get a matching statue for it, and present my fandom in a very tasteful way in a glass cabinet. If I’m a high roller then I can get some original art to hang on the wall. I now have an exclusive, high value collection that’s easy to get out from under if want. I don’t need a U-haul to enjoy Green Lantern anymore, the entire corps can fit in the back seat of my car.

People are buying trades nowadays. My lcs is stocks $10k+ in tpb’s. Times are changing. All I have to do to read the entire Infinity Gauntlet story arc right now is to maximize my Marvel Unlimited tab and have at it. The story is alive, it’s just being digested in a different way.

I always think Kiss when I see that cover

Well, I guess I lose in this thread. I was putting a big pull into fresh bags and boards, on my last few books I ran out of boards and was going through the grimy stack of old ones to find a few to use. As I was pulling one out of the bag I found an envelope that had $500 written on it. Sure enough, some wise guy thought it’d be a good idea to stash a small stack of hundreds in a bagged comic. I would’ve tossed it in the recycle if I hadn’t ran out of boards.

You’re correct, not the hardest book to find in newsstand. 9.8’s that get listed on eBay are around 1 out of 3 for a newsstand. I like the 8.5 Canadian in auction right now.