Comic Store called "Backdate Magazines" in New York City

[Peter G]

Does anybody here remember visiting a comic book store in the Chelsea hotel in NYC called "Backdate Magazines" ?

[the blob]

Not Jay Bee Magazines? It was around there in Chelsea too. Maybe it had different names at different times?

 

That place took up a football field sized basement in an office building down there. I helped him load up what he could salvage when he lost his lease and had to go to a space less than 1/10th the size. He refused to sell his inventory to his competitors and preferred to throw it out. In exchange for helping him clean out his space (he had a huge penalty in his lease if he did not leave it "broom clean") I was allowed to grab as much as I could of the stuff he was not keeping.

 

It was incredibly sad the amount of stuff he threw out. Garbage truck after garbage truck of magazines from the 40s - 80s. Yes, a lot of it was worthless, but a lot of it was not. I salvaged what I could, but thousands of vintage New Yorkers, Saturday Evening posts and tons of interesting stuff got tossed.

 

He kept the comics, pulps, most of the sports illustrateds and anything he thought was pretty liquid, he had a decent idea of the market and had started selling on ebay, but didn't want to mess around with anything worth $10-15 or less. he had bought the place from an older guy who had been running it for decades, so he had inventory that had been sitting there for 50+ years)

 

the owner's brother had a comic shop in the village that went under shortly after this (late 90s), i forget the name.

[Peter G]

Not Jay Bee Magazines? It was around there in Chelsea too. Maybe it had different names at different times?

 

That place took up a football field sized basement in an office building down there. I helped him load up what he could salvage when he lost his lease and had to go to a space less than 1/10th the size. He refused to sell his inventory to his competitors and preferred to throw it out. In exchange for helping him clean out his space (he had a huge penalty in his lease if he did not leave it "broom clean") I was allowed to grab as much as I could of the stuff he was not keeping.

 

It was incredibly sad the amount of stuff he threw out. Garbage truck after garbage truck of magazines from the 40s - 80s. Yes, a lot of it was worthless, but a lot of it was not. I salvaged what I could, but thousands of vintage New Yorkers, Saturday Evening posts and tons of interesting stuff got tossed.

 

He kept the comics, pulps, most of the sports illustrateds and anything he thought was pretty liquid, he had a decent idea of the market and had started selling on ebay, but didn't want to mess around with anything worth $10-15 or less. he had bought the place from an older guy who had been running it for decades, so he had inventory that had been sitting there for 50+ years)

 

the owner's brother had a comic shop in the village that went under shortly after this (late 90s), i forget the name.

 

So many great places have been lost in the sea of time. I wish I had video recorded some of the stores in the 80s that have since disappeared.

[spidrvacc]

Yeah there were so many Comic Book stores in Manhattan during the late 80's and early 90's. Use to spend my whole lunch most days visiting them. Then poof one day , most are gone. Still remember telling my boss I had something personal to do and had to leave at 1 so I could go into the village and buy comics. Was looking for old back issue Venoms. Particular cover issues ASM 316 was the one I got there I believe.

[Aweandlorder]

The only place to visit in NY is Koch Warehouse, you could spend a whole week there and you'd just cover the Fanzine isle...

[the blob]

The only place to visit in NY is Koch Warehouse, you could spend a whole week there and you'd just cover the Fanzine isle...

----

 

Roger's Time Machine had a nice selection of interesting stuff, but in his new, smaller, space it is not quite the same. I feel bad that I have not been there since he just opened up and it was chaos, I just don't happen to be over there as much as I used to be on 14th street.

[spidrvacc]

Always wanted to go to Koch's Warehouse.used to order from him bavk in the day from that weekly newspaper.used to get the overspray issues as they were always cheaper.think i got a Hulk 181 from him.

[Point Five]

Not Jay Bee Magazines? It was around there in Chelsea too. Maybe it had different names at different times?

 

That place took up a football field sized basement in an office building down there...

Sounds pretty cool! I thought I knew all the 80s/90s Manhattan shops, but that one's new to me.

 

 

[the blob]

It was not a comic shop. He accidentally had some comics and pulps, but that was less than .1% of his stock. It was not a storefront, you had to know it was there.

 

Aside from mail order he actually did a big business simply having period stuff available if someone needed to look at a magazine from 1941 or whatever. he got a lot of purchases for fashion and home decor magazines when designers or someone writing an article or book or doing a movie wanted to see the styles for ___ year. He could basically charge anything that was not insane as it was pocket change for those purchasers. the problem is the need to have all of this stuff around to be able to fulfill a request and manhattan RE (even a giant basement) being so expensive.