UPDATED: My Nominee for the "First Great Comic Collector" 12 12

[Jayman]

On 1/29/2023 at 11:59 AM, Marty Mann said:

 

What are the odds that DAVID WIGRANSKY and I would enter the same contest, be selected and have  our names

and addresses appear in the same issue of PEP COMICS #60?

Just for reference!

[Professor Echo]

New member of the site and this was the very first thread I read. 

A huge shout out to sfcityduck for this vibrantly fascinating topic and compelling read. In a way it's sad to reflect on how many stories in the world have been lost in the pre-Internet days of our culture, so investigative recounts like this one are not only appreciated, but essential. Even more than just an ostensible footnote or connection to a popular hobby, it's part of the history of our everyday, something those of us who never wore a crown or competed with Fort Knox for wealth and power actually spent our days and daydreams. Not to soapbox, but I always think everyday human stories like this should be taught in history classes rather just the same old dead numbers. We all have our stories to tell and that's HISTORY. If anyone bothers to tell it and listen to it. So thank you, sfcityduck!

 

[sfcityduck]

On 4/18/2023 at 4:24 AM, Professor Echo said:

New member of the site and this was the very first thread I read. 

A huge shout out to sfcityduck for this vibrantly fascinating topic and compelling read. In a way it's sad to reflect on how many stories in the world have been lost in the pre-Internet days of our culture, so investigative recounts like this one are not only appreciated, but essential. Even more than just an ostensible footnote or connection to a popular hobby, it's part of the history of our everyday, something those of us who never wore a crown or competed with Fort Knox for wealth and power actually spent our days and daydreams. Not to soapbox, but I always think everyday human stories like this should be taught in history classes rather just the same old dead numbers. We all have our stories to tell and that's HISTORY. If anyone bothers to tell it and listen to it. So thank you, sfcityduck!

 

Welcome to the Board!  There are some great threads on here. It can take awhile to find some of them.  I will send you a few links.

[sfcityduck]

Here's some threads I like:

 

[thehumantorch]

On 4/16/2023 at 8:32 AM, Jayman said:

Just for reference!

I'm thinking I should go to some of these addresses to see if there's any comics in the attic.

[thehumantorch]

On 4/18/2023 at 5:24 AM, Professor Echo said:

New member of the site and this was the very first thread I read. 

A huge shout out to sfcityduck for this vibrantly fascinating topic and compelling read. In a way it's sad to reflect on how many stories in the world have been lost in the pre-Internet days of our culture, so investigative recounts like this one are not only appreciated, but essential. Even more than just an ostensible footnote or connection to a popular hobby, it's part of the history of our everyday, something those of us who never wore a crown or competed with Fort Knox for wealth and power actually spent our days and daydreams. Not to soapbox, but I always think everyday human stories like this should be taught in history classes rather just the same old dead numbers. We all have our stories to tell and that's HISTORY. If anyone bothers to tell it and listen to it. So thank you, sfcityduck!

 

Welcome to the boards Professor.  There's a lot of knowledgeable people here and a treasure trove of information archived.  Finding it is the hardest part.

Here's a wonderful thread devoted to Canadian Whites.  

 

[thehumantorch]

On 4/18/2023 at 6:32 PM, thehumantorch said:

On 4/18/2023 at 5:24 AM, Professor Echo said:

New member of the site and this was the very first thread I read. 

A huge shout out to sfcityduck for this vibrantly fascinating topic and compelling read. In a way it's sad to reflect on how many stories in the world have been lost in the pre-Internet days of our culture, so investigative recounts like this one are not only appreciated, but essential. Even more than just an ostensible footnote or connection to a popular hobby, it's part of the history of our everyday, something those of us who never wore a crown or competed with Fort Knox for wealth and power actually spent our days and daydreams. Not to soapbox, but I always think everyday human stories like this should be taught in history classes rather just the same old dead numbers. We all have our stories to tell and that's HISTORY. If anyone bothers to tell it and listen to it. So thank you, sfcityduck!

 

Welcome to the boards Professor.  There's a lot of knowledgeable people here and a treasure trove of information archived.  Finding it is the hardest part.

Here's a wonderful thread devoted to Canadian Whites.  

 

And here's one on collecting Foreign editions.  And sorry, I'm tossing out links to stuff I love

 

[MattTheDuck]

On 4/18/2023 at 3:10 PM, sfcityduck said:

Here's some threads I like:

 

That BangZoom thread is unbelievable.

[Professor Echo]

Many thanks for the warm welcomes and great links. I'm looking forward to checking them all out and even more, learning more about the people who start and contribute to the threads. As far back as when I was a little kid one of my favorite aspects of buying, reading and collecting comics was sharing it with all sorts of friends, both old and new.  

I was thinking of starting a thread about the very first time you saw and/or held a Golden Age comics in person. Maybe some of the veterans here know if such a thread already exists? Sorry, not being lazy, but I haven't had as much time as I would like to play in these fields yet. 

[Robot Man]

On 4/19/2023 at 12:19 AM, Professor Echo said:

Many thanks for the warm welcomes and great links. I'm looking forward to checking them all out and even more, learning more about the people who start and contribute to the threads. As far back as when I was a little kid one of my favorite aspects of buying, reading and collecting comics was sharing it with all sorts of friends, both old and new.  

I was thinking of starting a thread about the very first time you saw and/or held a Golden Age comics in person. Maybe some of the veterans here know if such a thread already exists? Sorry, not being lazy, but I haven't had as much time as I would like to play in these fields yet. 

I don’t remember such a thread. Sounds like fun. Do it.

Welcome to the boards. You will find it a fun and informative place. Especially the GA folks. 

[Bud Plant]

I think I managed to get onto this thread, we’ll see. Marc at House of Comics introduced me, since I met sfcityduck at the Berkeley Comic Show last weekend, introduced by Steve Duin who had just visited me in Grass Valley last week.

Wow, I spent the last two evenings doing through this thread about Dave W. Just amazing stuff. And the capper, that Russ Cochran bought his EC collection. The wheel comes around. Nice work sfcity…I guess I don’t use your real name?

Hey, hello to Leonard Rifas, old friend. It’s been a long time.

Now, about Barry Bauman, since he came up…Michelle Nolan drove us teen-agers (John Barrett, Jim Buser, maybe MR. Swan) up to see Barry for the first time in early 1966, from San Jose to Oakland. Barry had all his comics in an attic at his folks house. He had a table with the best of the best laid out face up; the one and only book I remember was Action #1, which he wanted $400 for. Of course, as you guys noted, $400 to a kid (I was 14 in ‘66) was a fortune. In fact, fellow San Jose collector, teacher Rudi Franke (Voice of Comicdom, which published some of the earliest Richard Corben work) sold HIS complete EC collection to one of the San Jose boys, Tom Tallmon, for $600 not terribly long after that. Not mint like Dave’s, just good readable copies in say VG to Fine probably at best.

Again, an impossible amount, but Tom was a little older than I was and had a job. We all bought bits and pieces of it from Tom, since we all collected EC’s along with our particular specialtys: mine was Quality, John’s MLJ, Jim’s DC, Michelle’s Nedor. We always gave her a hard time about Nedors, back when they were considere the Charlton of the 1940s, the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, Barry had scored his huge lot of Golden Age from the Liberty Book Store in Sacramento, if I have the name right. There was another long-lived bookstore there, Beer’s Books, but I think it was Liberty. And sadly, yes, he died in a car crash driving his elderly Corvette north on Highway 101, just before or after his 50th birthday. Barry is a story himself; he may have never had a social security card, so he avoided the draft and lived off the grid. He made quite the living quietly bringing grass in from Mexico in those very early days; I think he’s been gone long enough for that to come out. Nuff said. He drove back from one of the Sueling Cons with us around 1971 or 1972, and yes, I don’t know of his collection per se, if he even had one, burning up. That probably was Lucas and/or Ted Dang, who also lived in Oakland. Lucas resurfaced a few years ago, he’d been a bank president. Comics still show up with their stamp on the first page….

The times we went to see Barry, he was selling comic book bags (which we had not seen before) for .03 cents each, so we’d buy several for our new acquisitions. I was collecting Quality Comics group…not sure what else I bought, but I was buying Blackhawk Quality-era issues for $1 or $2 each. Fortunately, I have journals I kept from 1964 to around 1971, so I have an amazing amount of details about the comics I was acquiring at the time, and events around our opening Seven Sons Comic Shop in 1968, and Comic World in 1969. The journals were gone by the time Comics & Comix started in 1972. John Barrett had been one of the first collectors I met in 1965, and we were partners in both the previous stores. We two came up with the idea for opening C&C on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. An, please don’t hold it against me, we took on Bob Beerbohm as a partner when his car blew up on the way back to Nebraska and he decided to join us instead of going back to college. Worst decision we ever made. Bob continues to claim to have started C&C. In a way, that’s true, he was there from nearly the beginning. But it was John and I who came up with the location, the starting money, and the manpower to get it rented and off the ground—no matter what Bob says. I’m persona non grata with Bob like most of the rest of mankind, which suits me fine. On to other topics.

Let me see if anyone read this…it’s certainly an fun thread, enough to finally get me into these boards…..I’ll check out some of the others you guys recommended when time allows.

Oh, and Mitch and Theo Holstein…I can’t give much credit to them for anything more than publicity for spending the most money, up until then, on a comic. What I remember is the whole thing may have been made up for the sake of getting the local paper, and the,the national wire services, to pick it up as a story…all so that some more comics might come their way. I’ve run into Mitch years later, now that he’s into original art, and he seems like a perfectly nice guy. But I would not give either gentleman a lot of credence as “early collectors,” as someone earlier in this thread had put out there. They were Johnny-come-latelys in my book, with little involvement in the early days of collecting, fan publishing, and going to comic shows like the rest of us were doing. 

[sfcityduck]

Bud,

Thanks for dropping by!  C&C was the first comic store I visited outside of my hometown of Eugene.  Convinced my parents to make detour during a trip to SF. Bought a piece of Byrne X-Men art with some money I’d been given for X-Mas. It was around 1979.  It was a great day.  Around 20 years later I sold that to fund purchasing art by a Berkeley artist I collect - Chiura Obata.  So C&C helped me achieve personal high points in two collecting passions. Great store of which I have fond memories.

I was pretty shocked to discover Wigransky’s ECs went to Russ. But it is a great illustration of the connections and continuity of collecting. Other parts of his collection might have gone to Thalling. I still need to look through old RBCCs to see if Dave was running other ads.

I have pretty much got Wigransky’s full story at this point. Need to get a few details and resources and then I’ll write it up in a more coherent form than the spool out on this thread. It’s good history story of the activity that deserves to be preserved. Makes me especially happy the thread has expanded to other stories and it is always a pleasure when a post like yours get made sharing more info and history.  Thanks!

 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by sfcityduck

[Marty Mann]

On 4/16/2023 at 10:32 AM, Jayman said:

Just for reference!

 

I had been collecting for over 5 years when I was a winner in this contest...I remember

what a thrill it was!

The prize was a copy of PEP #62 which along with #60 should be graded.

 

[Bud Plant]

Ok, I keep seeing your references to Obata, so I finally googled him. I didn’t know the name. I’ll read up more on him…looks like one of the “western” influenced Japanese woodblock artists, who I very much like. That is, the guys that came along in the early to mid 20th century and moved Japanese woodblock work, such as landscapes, mountains, buildings, into a slightly more modern look. I’ve actually handled a couple books on the subject, including a excellent one on the Yoshida family. Here’s a quick example:

Bill Thailing…on one of our trips east to Seuling shows, has to be pre-1980, we went through St. Louis during amassive thunder storm…like nothing we’d ever encountered in San Jose. Explosions like bombs going off, massive rain. We were tracking down Bill Thailing at his home. I don’t remember much more about the visit, sadly. But Bill is responsible for getting me back into hardcore collecting of Golden Age. I’d moved far more into vintage illustrated books, in the early 1970s.Out of the blue he sent me a big thick catalog, which I still have. I bought a bunch of things, now which seemed suddenly attractive and afffordable, as my income had gone up since my college poverty days. One was a More Fun #54 with TWO centerfolds out. I know that sounds like cheese to most of you guys, but for $45, I had a primo iconic early Spectre cover and lead story that I’d could only have dreamed of owning before that. That got me going again, going after alll the Quality line I hadn’t put together before, adding to my Fiction House books (many of which came from Henry Keller, who used to have a big table of them at the Seuling shows; I’d buy all his remains out at the end of at least two shows, for like $1.50 or $2 each, and bring them back to California to resell….

Early (before #90) More Fun and Adventure remain two of my very favorite titles.

I stumbled into a nice but coverless copy of More Fun #52 a few years ago, some guy brought it into an Emerald City I had set up at. I made him an offer of $500, he took it around the rest of the other dealers, and came back later and sold it to me as the high bidder….

[sfcityduck]

On 8/10/2023 at 8:33 AM, Bud Plant said:

Ok, I keep seeing your references to Obata, so I finally googled him. I didn’t know the name. I’ll read up more on him…looks like one of the “western” influenced Japanese woodblock artists, who I very much like. That is, the guys that came along in the early to mid 20th century and moved Japanese woodblock work, such as landscapes, mountains, buildings, into a slightly more modern look. I’ve actually handled a couple books on the subject, including a excellent one on the Yoshida family. Here’s a quick example:

Bill Thailing…on one of our trips east to Seuling shows, has to be pre-1980, we went through St. Louis during amassive thunder storm…like nothing we’d ever encountered in San Jose. Explosions like bombs going off, massive rain. We were tracking down Bill Thailing at his home. I don’t remember much more about the visit, sadly. But Bill is responsible for getting me back into hardcore collecting of Golden Age. I’d moved far more into vintage illustrated books, in the early 1970s.Out of the blue he sent me a big thick catalog, which I still have. I bought a bunch of things, now which seemed suddenly attractive and afffordable, as my income had gone up since my college poverty days. One was a More Fun #54 with TWO centerfolds out. I know that sounds like cheese to most of you guys, but for $45, I had a primo iconic early Spectre cover and lead story that I’d could only have dreamed of owning before that. That got me going again, going after alll the Quality line I hadn’t put together before, adding to my Fiction House books (many of which came from Henry Keller, who used to have a big table of them at the Seuling shows; I’d buy all his remains out at the end of at least two shows, for like $1.50 or $2 each, and bring them back to California to resell….

Early (before #90) More Fun and Adventure remain two of my very favorite titles.

I stumbled into a nice but coverless copy of More Fun #52 a few years ago, some guy brought it into an Emerald City I had set up at. I made him an offer of $500, he took it around the rest of the other dealers, and came back later and sold it to me as the high bidder….

Bud, 

Obata, an immigrant from Japan, was inspired to do his woodblocks of Yosemite and other California scenes by Yoshida’s woodblock of El Capitan:

I was lucky to pick one up recently.

I have heard your collecting goals are broad. I hope you are aware PBA auctioneers are selling off a collection which includes all GA DCs, mainly in lower conditions, in a series of auctions starting in November.

https://fox2now.com/business/press-releases/ein-presswire/644965290/pba-galleries-announces-historic-dc-universe-collection-auctions/
 

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by sfcityduck

[Mmehdy]

On 8/9/2023 at 8:03 PM, Bud Plant said:

I think I managed to get onto this thread, we’ll see. Marc at House of Comics introduced me, since I met sfcityduck at the Berkeley Comic Show last weekend, introduced by Steve Duin who had just visited me in Grass Valley last week.

Wow, I spent the last two evenings doing through this thread about Dave W. Just amazing stuff. And the capper, that Russ Cochran bought his EC collection. The wheel comes around. Nice work sfcity…I guess I don’t use your real name?

Hey, hello to Leonard Rifas, old friend. It’s been a long time.

Now, about Barry Bauman, since he came up…Michelle Nolan drove us teen-agers (John Barrett, Jim Buser, maybe MR. Swan) up to see Barry for the first time in early 1966, from San Jose to Oakland. Barry had all his comics in an attic at his folks house. He had a table with the best of the best laid out face up; the one and only book I remember was Action #1, which he wanted $400 for. Of course, as you guys noted, $400 to a kid (I was 14 in ‘66) was a fortune. In fact, fellow San Jose collector, teacher Rudi Franke (Voice of Comicdom, which published some of the earliest Richard Corben work) sold HIS complete EC collection to one of the San Jose boys, Tom Tallmon, for $600 not terribly long after that. Not mint like Dave’s, just good readable copies in say VG to Fine probably at best.

Again, an impossible amount, but Tom was a little older than I was and had a job. We all bought bits and pieces of it from Tom, since we all collected EC’s along with our particular specialtys: mine was Quality, John’s MLJ, Jim’s DC, Michelle’s Nedor. We always gave her a hard time about Nedors, back when they were considere the Charlton of the 1940s, the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, Barry had scored his huge lot of Golden Age from the Liberty Book Store in Sacramento, if I have the name right. There was another long-lived bookstore there, Beer’s Books, but I think it was Liberty. And sadly, yes, he died in a car crash driving his elderly Corvette north on Highway 101, just before or after his 50th birthday. Barry is a story himself; he may have never had a social security card, so he avoided the draft and lived off the grid. He made quite the living quietly bringing grass in from Mexico in those very early days; I think he’s been gone long enough for that to come out. Nuff said. He drove back from one of the Sueling Cons with us around 1971 or 1972, and yes, I don’t know of his collection per se, if he even had one, burning up. That probably was Lucas and/or Ted Dang, who also lived in Oakland. Lucas resurfaced a few years ago, he’d been a bank president. Comics still show up with their stamp on the first page….

The times we went to see Barry, he was selling comic book bags (which we had not seen before) for .03 cents each, so we’d buy several for our new acquisitions. I was collecting Quality Comics group…not sure what else I bought, but I was buying Blackhawk Quality-era issues for $1 or $2 each. Fortunately, I have journals I kept from 1964 to around 1971, so I have an amazing amount of details about the comics I was acquiring at the time, and events around our opening Seven Sons Comic Shop in 1968, and Comic World in 1969. The journals were gone by the time Comics & Comix started in 1972. John Barrett had been one of the first collectors I met in 1965, and we were partners in both the previous stores. We two came up with the idea for opening C&C on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. An, please don’t hold it against me, we took on Bob Beerbohm as a partner when his car blew up on the way back to Nebraska and he decided to join us instead of going back to college. Worst decision we ever made. Bob continues to claim to have started C&C. In a way, that’s true, he was there from nearly the beginning. But it was John and I who came up with the location, the starting money, and the manpower to get it rented and off the ground—no matter what Bob says. I’m persona non grata with Bob like most of the rest of mankind, which suits me fine. On to other topics.

Let me see if anyone read this…it’s certainly an fun thread, enough to finally get me into these boards…..I’ll check out some of the others you guys recommended when time allows.

Oh, and Mitch and Theo Holstein…I can’t give much credit to them for anything more than publicity for spending the most money, up until then, on a comic. What I remember is the whole thing may have been made up for the sake of getting the local paper, and the,the national wire services, to pick it up as a story…all so that some more comics might come their way. I’ve run into Mitch years later, now that he’s into original art, and he seems like a perfectly nice guy. But I would not give either gentleman a lot of credence as “early collectors,” as someone earlier in this thread had put out there. They were Johnny-come-latelys in my book, with little involvement in the early days of collecting, fan publishing, and going to comic shows like the rest of us were doing. 

Bud welcome to the comic boards:

When I first got hear in May 2011, everyone attacked, challenged and which  gave me a sink or swim mentality and the boards can be rough. Here is your first lesson:

Please read my "Journey of a comic book collector posting " before you jump to your " all mighty" conclusions about how I conduct business and what type of collector I am.  Bud you have no Idea who I am, or where I have been and what I have done as a true comic book collector. 

1- The comic book collecting  world does mean the entire collecting universe happened in the bay area or inside your head. Surprise!!  Your attack on my comic book collecting as a "Johnny come lately" shows your true ingorance. If simply had read my already posted thead which indicated the I and victor started the  first Sacramento comic book collectors club in 1966. I understand if it does not happen in the Bay Area it does not count, if you do not know about it ...it does not exist. I not only backed my claim by posing the original flyer which was distributed at Beers books store in Sacramento. 1966 is not "johnny come lately in my books, since I was collector since the age of 5 and buying FF1 off the news stands. The fact of the matter is, when I had my comic book store in Stockton I bought new comics and books from you and I was complimented on the fact that I always made my payments to you on time by your staff during a period of time  in which a number of shops did not. I know as we get older, we forget. You can take your "book" and make a revision in it which says, I know very little or next to nothing about Mitch Mehdy and the Sacramento comic book collecting circle and what he has done or is.

2-You sounding off like the late Don Thompson who hopped that I "traded for the $1800 purchase of action 1-(see comic buyers guide). Before you make totally 100% false statements ...READ the evidence....or read "journey of a comic book collector" posting which showed the original bank cashiers check to THEO. Let me give you thumb nails summary-Theo bought it from Bruce for $1500 and got cold feet and sold it to me for $1800 and when I bought a much higher grade copy I sold it back to bruce for $2500...and again I included the original sales contract of the third Action one purchase I made on my posting . I just do not make statements to make myself look good or great or historic, I back it up with evidence. FYI I went to Barrys house twice too and was there at the Berkley con when Nick showed me a stack of his timely's including Cap1 form the SF collection which your store missed out on. You have as a vendor to more comic book conventions than I have, but I have done my share including 50+ SDCC's.

3-I have for my entire life been a true comic book collector. It is a long and great ride . No way that I have put my entire life into the comic book business aspect  like you as I have diversified. So I do salute you.....but Bud two things I want to say, one ,is stick to what you really know when you make statements about other collectors and their commitment to the comic book world, and two, again welcome to the boards.

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by Mmehdy

[RareHighGrade]

  

[adamstrange]

On 8/9/2023 at 11:03 PM, Bud Plant said:

Oh, and Mitch and Theo Holstein…I can’t give much credit to them for anything more than publicity for spending the most money, up until then, on a comic. What I remember is the whole thing may have been made up for the sake of getting the local paper, and the,the national wire services, to pick it up as a story…all so that some more comics might come their way. I’ve run into Mitch years later, now that he’s into original art, and he seems like a perfectly nice guy. But I would not give either gentleman a lot of credence as “early collectors,” as someone earlier in this thread had put out there. They were Johnny-come-latelys in my book, with little involvement in the early days of collecting, fan publishing, and going to comic shows like the rest of us were doing. 

Thank you for joining and sharing your reminiscences  of the early days, even if they include an occasional "hot take". 

[sfcityduck]

On 8/10/2023 at 1:29 PM, Mmehdy said:

Bud welcome to the comic boards:

When I first got hear in May 2011, everyone attacked, challenged and which  gave me a sink or swim mentality and the boards can be rough. Here is your first lesson:  

 

Mitch: I get it. You got roasted when you first showed up.  So did your longtime friend Theo (who sold me an item I greatly value - a comic rack from the Tower Drug that my Mom would have bought comics from as she lived in Land Park). So I get your sensitivity to apparent criticism. But, you are coming in a little forceful here. Might have been more tactfully handled by a PM. Because, after all, Bud did say: "I’ve run into Mitch years later, now that he’s into original art, and he seems like a perfectly nice guy."

Bud's coming at collecting history from a position where he was (1) a bit older than you, (2) it was his profession from a much earlier time and for a much longer time and in more roles than you, and (3) he has a different view of what constitutes the "early days of collecting" than you. As you know, collecting changed so much over the course of the 60s, that even a few years difference gives folks completely different experiences. Guys like Willits, Brown, and Olson had a different experience than you and Bud. Bud had a different experience than you and his opinions are going to reflect that. You had a much different experience than someone like me who only started collecting five years after you bought your first Action 1. So this is more of a time for discussion not aggression. Ironic probably coming from me because, as a litigator, I often come in too hot myself and get put on time out without realizing. Just want to keep this thread a friendly space.

 

 

[MrBedrock]

I'm team Bud!