Dad told me he read comics as a kid too, but Granny threw out. Aye Caramba! 1 1

[TheBigJ]

We've all heard this  type of story, When I was a young boy 12-13, and dad realized I read comic books and said "I read comics as a kid too, but Granny threw out dad's comics", I thought, ah man, that sucks. Not that a young boy was interested in GA, EC, etc. books from the late 40' and early 50's, it would have been awesome to be gifted these to read and sell/trade for books I did (Marvel SA, BA) but alas, wasn't meant to be. So I thought to myself, I'm keeping all my comics, so my child would be pleased to have his old mans comics, to read and sell/trade for what he liked. Sounded reasonable. Fast forward 40 years and  I buy my son comics to read to spark interest and to help with reading skills Sponge Bob, Scooby Doo, kiddie Spidey and Supe books. He get's a little older, is reading school books, etc. and I comment, you know I have like 50+ long boxes of comics you can have to read if you'd like. He's not interested in them at all. Comics just can't compete with the movies, X-box, and YouTube I guess. Disappointed for sure, that my plan didn't come to fruition but also that I felt as though my boy was missing out on the magic of comics. 

I don't read/collect moderns too much, but do continue to collect HG slabs of keys of and books I love. Extra cash would be nice to continue this pursuit. That being said, It's been hard coming to grips will selling bulk of collection. I love em. Not to mention the time and effort it's going to take, years I'm sure. Sell single books, lots, slab and flip, who knows how it will play out. Perhaps I should have been doing this all along. Won't sell all to 1 buyer because I don't feel a buyer can/will pay a fraction of what books are worth, that's cool and I understand. Should do OK as I collected primarily Marvel super hero books and have large runs of them. Also, it seems as though it is indeed a sellers market. Regardless, if I sell a book for $5 that I paid a $.25 for that's a win right. If someone buys book and it goes up XX in the following years, good for them, I got mine not they can get theirs. Not greedy, just don't want to give them away. 

I guess I should be happy, and I am, that while getting rid of bulk of collection, I can pursue other books and interests and still participate and enjoy hobby I love dearly. It's still hard though.

Wish me luck

Regards

[aszumilo]

My dad had the same story.  He was born in 1925 and said that him and his friends all read Superman and Batman (and some others).  He would have been 14 or so when they came out, so, I can only imaging which issues Grandma threw out.  If only he had kept them, they would have been mine since no one else in my family, aside from one nephew, is really into comics.

I could have been a Contender, I tell ya!

[Savoyard23]

1 hour ago, TheBigJ said:

Fast forward 40 years and  I buy my son comics to read to spark interest and to help with reading skills Sponge Bob, Scooby Doo, kiddie Spidey and Supe books. He get's a little older, is reading school books, etc. and I comment, you know I have like 50+ long boxes of comics you can have to read if you'd like. He's not interested in them at all. Comics just can't compete with the movies, X-box, and YouTube I guess. Disappointed for sure, that my plan didn't come to fruition but also that I felt as though my boy was missing out on the magic of comics. 

 

I had the exact same plan with the exact same results!  My son is 11 and lives in a home with 25+ long boxes of glorious adventure and for all the interest he has, they might as well be blocks of cement.

He's even in love with the Flash TV show and the MCU movies and I have tried to use those as gateway drugs, but nope, nope, nope.  He'd rather eat Brussels sprouts than open a comic book.

Gah, when I was 11 if you'd given me thousands of comic books to read, I would have been walking on air.

[Ken Aldred]

I was the first person in my family to become an avid comic book reader.  

No lost inheritance story for me.

[kav]

2 minutes ago, Ken Aldred said:

I was the first person in my family to become an avid comic book reader.  

No lost inheritance story for me.

[ADAMANTIUM]

My Dad was born in 1940, had me at a late age, he's still kicking around. He says they used to roll their 40's and 50's books up and hit each other with them, or see how high they could stack them. He definitely wasn't of the mind at the time to keep them, nor let alone keep them nice. But they had plenty that were eventually just done away with, as him and his 2 brothers and 1 sister went to college and got out of the "house"  

[shadroch]

My father was born in 1925 and he said by the time Superman and Batman came along he was too old for them. His idea of comics was the Sunday Funnies and he thought you should outgrow them by Junior High School. He claimed only the most ignorant Marines in his unit read them and he actually claimed the Japanese love of comics showed their inferiority. Like many Marines of his generation, they didn't think much of Japan or its culture. 

My mom was born in 1931 and remembers her brothers having and reading stacks of comics but said she never really read them. Her brother told me they rarely had new comics or even ones with covers but they'd get them second and third hand. He said they had a porch full of them but they only would read them on rainy days. The neighbor across the street cleaned subway cars and would bring home comics and magazines left behind.  My Uncle was in college in the 1950s and remembers them burning comics. 

Edited May 9, 2021 by shadroch

[gregwynn]

My dad read stuff like Lone Ranger , Silver and books like that. His mom kept them but they weren't taken care of and all have large mouse chews so are now worthless 

[amatta]

6 hours ago, TheBigJ said:

We've all heard this  type of story, When I was a young boy 12-13, and dad realized I read comic books and said "I read comics as a kid too, but Granny threw out dad's comics", I thought, ah man, that sucks. Not that a young boy was interested in GA, EC, etc. books from the late 40' and early 50's, it would have been awesome to be gifted these to read and sell/trade for books I did (Marvel SA, BA) but alas, wasn't meant to be. So I thought to myself, I'm keeping all my comics, so my child would be pleased to have his old mans comics, to read and sell/trade for what he liked. Sounded reasonable. Fast forward 40 years and  I buy my son comics to read to spark interest and to help with reading skills Sponge Bob, Scooby Doo, kiddie Spidey and Supe books. He get's a little older, is reading school books, etc. and I comment, you know I have like 50+ long boxes of comics you can have to read if you'd like. He's not interested in them at all. Comics just can't compete with the movies, X-box, and YouTube I guess. Disappointed for sure, that my plan didn't come to fruition but also that I felt as though my boy was missing out on the magic of comics. 

I don't read/collect moderns too much, but do continue to collect HG slabs of keys of and books I love. Extra cash would be nice to continue this pursuit. That being said, It's been hard coming to grips will selling bulk of collection. I love em. Not to mention the time and effort it's going to take, years I'm sure. Sell single books, lots, slab and flip, who knows how it will play out. Perhaps I should have been doing this all along. Won't sell all to 1 buyer because I don't feel a buyer can/will pay a fraction of what books are worth, that's cool and I understand. Should do OK as I collected primarily Marvel super hero books and have large runs of them. Also, it seems as though it is indeed a sellers market. Regardless, if I sell a book for $5 that I paid a $.25 for that's a win right. If someone buys book and it goes up XX in the following years, good for them, I got mine not they can get theirs. Not greedy, just don't want to give them away. 

I guess I should be happy, and I am, that while getting rid of bulk of collection, I can pursue other books and interests and still participate and enjoy hobby I love dearly. It's still hard though.

Wish me luck

Regards

Similar issue here - big bunches of books that aren't really worth much. Suggestion: group them in lot of 10-30 in a logical manner (e.g., "Thor lot, low grade") put them up on eBay for a new reserve auction at $0.01 start big with $15 shipping and then mail them out media mail. 

This is how it worked for me with the Thors: Thor Comic Lot!! ⚡️ 32 books including Annual 7 (Eternals! -Key! | eBay

That said, sometimes it doesn't work so well - I sold an X-Men lot cheaper than expected.

Schedule your auction to start around 7 or 8 pm PT on Sunday-Thurs 

Of course, any keys you should reach out to me right away...

Best of luck,

A

[Robot Man]

My dad was too old for comics other some of the earliest ones. I do have his Buck Rogers Atomic pistol and a couple Big Little Books. 

As a kid, my uncle game me a small stack of well worn ECs. I treasure them. 

Neither of my kids cared or read comics. They were more of the early video game generation. My grandkids don’t care either. Comics are a generational thing I guess. 

My kids did devour my vinyl record collection though. My daughter wore my Zeppelin ‘74 tour shirt to ribbons...

I figure they will sell off my collection and spend the money on something that gives them as much pleasure as my comics did me. And, that is OK.

[followtheleader]

You guys can read to me. 

Then gift me those books.  

Plan is no longer void.

Patrick

[lizards2]

My mom was born in 1926, and talked about reading Captain Americas when she was in H.S.

Later, when I bought Gerber's GA photojournal  books, I showed her the covers for Captain America, and it was like, "yeah - I had that one, and that one, and that one."

Apparently, they were long ago disposed  

[piper]

16 hours ago, Savoyard23 said:

I had the exact same plan with the exact same results!  My son is 11 and lives in a home with 25+ long boxes of glorious adventure and for all the interest he has, they might as well be blocks of cement.

He's even in love with the Flash TV show and the MCU movies and I have tried to use those as gateway drugs, but nope, nope, nope.  He'd rather eat Brussels sprouts than open a comic book.

Gah, when I was 11 if you'd given me thousands of comic books to read, I would have been walking on air.

That’s too bad... my kids love Brussel Sprouts.

[kaculler]

My dad was born in 1937 and read comics through the 1940s.  He lived on a farm and had lots of cousins so the comics got passed around to relatives and may have eventually ended up in bonfires.  No comics were kept to be passed down.

My mom was born in 1938 and her family used to stop at the drug store on the way home from church every Sunday and they would buy a comic book for her.  This was probably from around 1944-1952 or so.  She read tons of Disney comics, Little Lulu, Four Colors, etc.  Unfortunately, she was an only child and the comics eventually were passed on to her cousins, never to return.  The only comics that were kept and passed down to me were some of the Disney cereal premiums from the late 1940s and some giveaway comics such as four of the Adventures in Science Series comics.  I probably own most of the comics that she read as a kid, but I had to pay a lot more than 10 cents each for them.

[serling1978]

I never heard of my dad reading comics as a youth,  but he did have some of the original large barbie doll Ike GI Joe's that he saved and my brother and I got to play with. He had the weapons, cloth suits, accessories, and a jeep. Pretty cool stuff. 

Back to comics,  my kids are young and show no interest in comics at all. A year or so before the Spiderverse movie I gave my oldest a first appearance of Spider-Ham as a goof since it was a dollar comic at the time and I have a picture of him holding it making a pouty face because he was annoyed with having to pose with such a thing. I think as others have said, part of the reason kids don't care like we did is there are so many other forms of entertainment available and beyond that I think the child of a hardcore comic collector will care less because the comics we dreamed of as kids will seem common to them. My oldest is 6 and when he was a baby I would always buy cheap duplicates when I found them at my LCS or half price books and I still have them in a box that he's never seen. I imagine he won't care and I'll end up selling them some day, but he's got a decent lot of random issues of ASM between 135 to the mid 300s ans then some xmen and avengers. 

[Ken Aldred]

21 hours ago, serling1978 said:

think the child of a hardcore comic collector will care less because the comics we dreamed of as kids will seem common to them.

Throughout most of the 70s there were no comic shops, or events I could attend, and for a kid in the north of England getting back issues from the 60s and before felt incredibly difficult, verging on being a pipe dream, so that’s definitely applicable to me.  If I missed a new comic due to it not being distributed here then there’d be a frantic desire to acquire it, often at a multiple of cover a year or two later. It was the only way to acquire this material, especially if you were an avid reader as well as collector.

Now, it’s easy to avoid that kind of on-the-hunt frenzy, as those stories have almost all been reprinted or are available digitally.  When I read those stories again I find a lot of them don’t hold up well enough to even consider buying an original copy, certainly not at today’s ridiculous prices. The nostalgia begins to feel a little bit empty. 
 

They’re living in a very different world with so many more options and freedoms, without the commercial strangleholds that we were confined by back then.  I’m also glad to leave it behind as well.

Edited May 13, 2021 by Ken Aldred