Hepcat

The multipacks during my early superhero comic reading days were the four for 47 cents DC Comicpacs in 1962: Four comics for 47 cents?! Wow! What a deal! Sadly intact Comipacs are just about impossible to find these days. I'm still looking to add one to my collection of comics and sundry ephemera.

I'm known for that.

I once had a spoon selling Golden Book encyclopedias on Ebay tell me that they were "mint" because there were no missing pages. He must have been a used car salesman from way back. Sellers like that deserve a sound beating in a back alleyway.

They somehow think they're doing you a favour by "allowing" you to sell their comics for them while walking away with the cash up front. Back in 2000 I had an older fellow visit me at my office to show me the fifty or so 1956 Shredded Wheat CFL cards that he wanted to sell. He said that he'd just put them away in a drawer after getting them in Shredded Wheat boxes as a kid. He wanted full NM guide. But while almost all were quite nice, a few had corner dings and they were all toned to various degrees, some a lot more than offers which left me rather puzzled. He wasn't willing to just sell me the few I might want for my own collection. He called that "cherry picking". He wanted me to buy them all, at full guide! I asked him what I was supposed to do with the ones I didn't want/need for my collection. His reply "Well you can sell them to your collecting buddies/contacts". But meanwhile I was to pay full guide.... So basically do all the work selling them and hope to break even. Ridiculous! No deal of course.

What a buffoon. You should have told the old fellow to open a store and sell his comics in dribs and drabs as he gets the occasional buyer.

Well let's put five shillings in 1956 in perspective by present day standards. An Australian shilling contained 2.825 grams of silver in 1956. There were 14.125 grams or 0.4541 troy ounces of silver in five shillings therefore. The price of a troy ounce of silver at this moment is Aus.$21.09. The price in 1956 of a Fabulous King Size Annual was therefore Aus$9.58 in present day terms which was indeed an unfathomable price to a kid in 1956. Doing a similar calculation for a Canadian kid in 1956, four Dell 96 page Giants would have cost Cdn$1.00. Since the silver content of ten Canadian dimes or four Canadian quarters was 0.6 of a troy ounce and the price of a troy ounce of silver right now is Cdn$21.41, the four Dell Giants in 1956 would have cost a Canadian kid Cdn$12.85 in today's terms. A Canadian kid would of course have scored 384 pages versus just 340. The Canadian would therefore have paid 32.1% more in silver for only 12.9% more pages. You Aussie fellows therefore had it good (especially if you put away that Fabulous King Size Annual for which you'd paid 0.4541 of a troy ounce of silver and kept it in VF/NM condition)!

Whenever I see Betty pictured I'm always reminded of the Starchie spoof in EC's Mad comic: But Blondie is hotter than either Betty or Veronica in this story!

Wow, 340 pages! There were big ones on the stands in Australia to tempt you young fellows back then.

Hmmmmm. I see at least a couple of reasons to go that extra mile for the nickel.

I don't understand why you were prompted to hoard comics to which you didn't have an emotional attachment in the first place. Sure, get rid of them! I wouldn't have acquired them in the first place.

My passion for collecting keeps me young and vigorous. You must be Stu though to make such a comment with your second post. Why do you bother anyway? Is your TV on the blink or something?

I had that problem as well.

I'm trying to find the smiley displaying a different finger.

Sell the comics and you'll soon have neither the comics nor the money.

Nonsense. I'm still here. And I plan to be around longer than most of the dilettantes "investing" in uber high grade slabs on the basis of hype generated by the latest big budget Hollywood flick. And if prices of comics fall when these dilettantes engage in panic selling, great! I'll be able to fill in my runs more cheaply.

Wow! A DC 9.8 from 1967! I'm not posting all my DC comics for 1967. I have so many that it would be just too big of a chore. I'm therefore posting only the five or six covers from my collection that I like the best.

Further evidence that priceless collectibles aren't that well-suited to double as dog toys.

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my favourite covers from the DC comics cover dated March 1967 that I have in my collection:

Here's a scan of the only comic I have in my collection cover dated August 1957:

Posting that an asking price is silly in the context of this thread though is a fair comment. It could even be correct. Such a comment doesn't by itself constitute "complaining" about the price.

So what then would be his motive for putting it up for sale? Does he frequently act without caring about the consequences of his actions?

As well as being a comic and other baby boomer kids' stuff collector, I'm a big train buff.My first train trip(s) were from London, Ontario to Windsor and back on CN Rail to visit my uncle's family across the river in Detroit. My longest train journey was back in 1983 when I travelled from Vancouver to Toronto on VIA's Canadian.My most frequent train trips have been commuting to the office in downtown Toronto on one of these double decker GO commuter trains which I've been doing since 1979:It's not only quick but is ever so convenient. From where I live now it's a leisurely five minute walk to the GO train station, a stress free twelve minute ride downtown and then an unhurried twelve minute stroll to the office. And the trains run every twenty minutes or so during rush hours. At other times service is every thirty minutes five days a week until midnight and once an hour on Saturdays and Sundays.My favourite train trips have been entirely different though. The very best train I ever rode equipment wise was the VIA Rail Turbo. The Turbo operated between Montreal and Toronto in the 1968-82 period. I took it between Toronto and Montreal or vice-versa five or so times in 1981-82. The Turbo is still the fastest production train ever produced in North America. The Turbo achieved a top speed of 170.8 mph during trials in New Jersey and regularly hit 120 miles per hour in service between Montreal and Toronto. With stops at Dorval, Kingston, and Guildwood, the fastest scheduled Turbo only needed 3 hours and 59 minutes to travel the distance between downtown Montreal and downtown Toronto with an average speed including stops of 84 mph. It was also very durable with an availability rate of over 97% in the 1973-82 period.Best of all was the interior. In those halcyon days I would always book first-class, just because I could. Hey, I was young and wanted to play the big shot! The first-class cars were outfitted with huge leather seats into which one could sink back and just watch the world zoom past. Moreover, one could also sit on the top level in huge swivel leather chairs right behind the engineers driving the train enabling a person to watch the train hurtling down the track through the front window! It was an incredible delight.One of the loveliest train journeys I've ever taken was in the mid-eighties on the Agawa Canyon Tour Train of the Algoma Central Railway.Agawa Canyon Tour TrainI picked a late September date to capture the fall foliage at its most spectacular.Another noteworthy train trek I've taken is Ontario Northland Railway's Polar Bear Express which runs northward from Toronto up to Moosonee on the southern tip of James Bay: My favourite excursion, a.k.a. tourist, train is operated between Port Stanley and St.Thomas, Ontario along the route of the old London & Port Stanley Railway, which started up in 1856, by a group of rail fan volunteers calling themselves the Port Stanley Terminal Rail. The L&PS did a thriving passenger as well as freight business since Port Stanley was both a lakeside resort and an industrial port at the time. Passenger travel along the 23 mile route reached a height of 1.1 million in 1943! Traffic, however, declined precipitously after the war ended and passenger service was terminated in early 1957. Very sad.Canadian National Railways bought out the L&PS in 1966 and abandoned the portion south of St. Thomas in 1982 after a portion of the track was washed out during a heavy rainfall. The Port Stanley Terminal Rail was formed by a group of rail enthusiasts to purchase the abandoned line from CN. The perseverance and hard work of the volunteers resulted in passenger service being restored in stages over the next several years between Port Stanley and St. Thomas. A murder mystery dinner train is one of the excursions now offered along the line.Port Stanley Terminal Rail website I have a vague recollection of having taken the L&PS to Port Stanley for the day with my mother and sister in the mid-fifties and gazing longingly at the french fries being sold from the window of Mackies as we were boarding the train for the return trip. Being a sensible sort, my mother could see no reason to spend money on potatoes which we could have at home.

Here's a scan of the only comic I have in my collection cover dated July 1957:

Here are scans of the non-DC comics in my collection cover dated March 1967: 11

Dennis the Menace would probably be a second-string title anyway.... I'm thinking of posting an Amazing Spider-Man issue from the turn of the century that I don't even own to take this thread to a new level.