How did you get into collecting comic books?

[Gopher John]

I grew up in a smallish (25,000) city in Colorado. When I got sick, we'd go to the pharmacy to pick up medicine. Part of the deal was that I could get a comic book. That began around 1978 or so. Over the next couple of years, I bought just about every new comic that I could lay my hands on when I had an extra 60 cents (well, comics competed with the Star Wars trading cards and figures). There were only a few places in town that sold comics and they were usually all bent over from the racks.

 

Then, one day around 1981, my family went to the Pearl Street Mall in nearby Boulder. There I walked into my first comic book shop (Mile High), and it was all over. It had never dawned on me that there were "old" comic to be had. A comic with a 12-cent cover just seemed so archeological to me. Something to be treasured and preserved.

 

By the time I was 15, I had a very small, but nice Golden Age collection that had been acquired by continually paying dealers their selling price and then taking 50% of that price back later toward a trade. My nicest book was a Batman #8 in F-VF condition. I also had a couple of Church books that I purchased out of the fingertips of Chuck Rozanski and a few other pedigrees.

 

As my later teen years approached, I found girls and cars to be more interesting, so my collecting waned. Then I got married at a young age, found myself low on funds to purchase luxuries like food and I sold all my books to a dealer for a pittance.

 

I started collecting again around 1998. While my collection today has more books, I doubt I will ever have individual books as nice as I did when I was 15.

 

Its been a fun ride.

[vaillant]

I read Justice League 21 off the spinner rack as a kid, didn't get a chance to read the second half of the story for about fifteen years.

 

Got Fantastic Four 45 at a garage sale for a nickel, the first book I ever bought with my own money, and it was at least a dozen years before I managed to find a copy of issue 46 to see what was up with Black Bolt and the Inhumans.

You just reminded me of a similar thing:

When I started reading the Defenders in italian, around 1979 I believe, the issue I picked corresponded to the american #58. In this story, apparently, Dr. Strange dies (or at least that is what Dollar Bill tells us the last panel).

I totally loved the series, and Dr. Strange which I already knew, but that would have been the last issue in the italian series, as the publisher cancelled the title afterwards.

 

I did not know it, but the fact that at the end of the episode there was "The End" written in bold letters was not a good omen…

 

Was Dr. Strange dead or not? I could not know for sure, and that abrupt ending was something which really enraged me: why do they have to cancel a title at a pivotal point like this?

 

Probably one of the many reasons for which I ultimately decided to read them in original edition as an adult… and I learned what happened to Dr. Strange about fifteen years later…

[divad]

....and here's the thing.

 

If I could have gone to the library to check out all the great stories back then, I doubt if I'd have become a collector.

 

I just wanted to read, and reread, all the great stuff I'd seen as a kid. The only way available back then to get a complete story was to buy and own it.

 

Nowadays tremendous amounts of material is in print (or out of print but still available through online resources)

 

I don't expect that modern collectors and readers understand what a boon that is to the hobby.,

 

Much like the Flash story above, I had a couple similar things happen.

 

I read Justice League 21 off the spinner rack as a kid, didn't get a chance to read the second half of the story for about fifteen years.

 

Got Fantastic Four 45 at a garage sale for a nickel, the first book I ever bought with my own money, and it was at least a dozen years before I managed to find a copy of issue 46 to see what was up with Black Bolt and the Inhumans.

 

This is a GREAT time to be a comic book reader.

 

I hear ya, I always have a copy of Marvel Collector's Item Classics next to my bedside - I think Ive read the series about 8 times. (My Wife thinks I'm illiterate)

[jaeldubyoo]

Back in 1973, while I was attending SJSU, I happened to pass by a Mr. Natural sign on the sidewalk. Curious, I stepped inside the shop. It was Bob Sidebottom's Comic Collector Shop. Need I say more?

[BB-Gun]

My brother collected Disney comics when I was young. I enjoyed those old Four Color issues, WDCS and Uncle Scrooge but had a fondness for Superman and Batman. I traded some of his books for baseball cards and superhero comics which made him pretty angry. When I had a chance, I replaced his comics but he died before I could add much to the collection. I purchased all of the Marvel and DC heroes back in the sixties and sold many of them by the early seventies. I picked up golden age when I could and saved them until I finished college.

 

I started collecting again in the early eighties and have kept most of the books that I purchased. I had a son and a daughter to share the fun with in the nineties. Back in the sixties, my best friend and I enjoyed reading all of the new comics and comparing the stories. Fanzines were purchased from GB Love, Jerry Bails and others and I spent hours reading about the old comics and searching the ads for bargains. It has always been interesting but occasionally an obsession.