Post your Lucky Scores, Finds and Comic Book Stories! 0

[Robot Man]

The GA section has gotten a little serious and even a little combatitive recently. There is way more to this hobby than just numbers on plastic cases and the large dollar figures they are bringing. The Promise Collection IS mind-blowing but an amazing score for the heirs.

I have yet to ever run into anything even close or remotely as cool as this. But, I have done this for 50 years. I have been lucky myself due to hard work and diligence and a little luck to bump into anything from a single book to several small collections over the years. I could probably write a book.

Found this old photo in my files and thought it was fun. I remember this day well. 

Was driving through a random old neighborhood and spotted a garage sale. Rarely do I score at one of these but it has happened. It was mid day and the rush was over. I was poking through stuff when I saw the guy that lived there with an armload of what looked like magazines. He was dropping them one by one on the grass.

My eyes bugged out when I saw what they were. I asked him to see the pile after scooping up the ones on the grass. He told me they were out of the closet and he was getting rid of them. I asked how much and he looked me in the eye and said "a buck apiece, I hear these old funny books are valuable". I had to maintain my cool and then he said "if you want them all I can do better". So we worked out a deal for three for a buck, I paid up and went on my way.

[Robot Man]

OK, your turn. Post your lucky finds for us. Photos if you got 'em. I know a lot of you older guys have been around long enough to have some good ones to make us drool!

[fifties]

I've never scored like you have, Bob!  I've always had to pay dealer or auction prices when I got back into collecting.  I guess the closest to that was when I subbed and bought all of the East Coast Comix reprints in the early '70's for a buck apiece.  Of course that was also when I could go into places like your old haunt, Cherokee Books in Hollywood, and pick up some pre-code horror comic books for the princely sum of two dollars each.

[Shrevvy]

Was at a local comic shop in Northeast OH and talking to the owner. A guy walked in and said he had some comics in his trunk. Would the shop be interested in looking? The shop owner passed. I got the OK from the owner to take a look. I walked out to the car and the guy had 11 books in the trunk. He wanted $12. In the middle of the pile was a Hulk 181. This was quite a while ago, but it was still a find. I didn't haggle. 

EDIT: We're in the golden age forum...I'll think of another one. 

Edited July 7, 2021 by Shrevvy

[Jayman]

Saw this book posted here or somewhere on the internet at least 10-15 years ago and decided I “Wanted” it (pun intended). A couple years later, I happened to email Harley Yee to ask if he had a copy. He tells me he has one in around Fine condition. I bought it sight unseen and when it arrived, it was the “exact” copy I had seen years ago! I could tell from the pencil marks, plus I had saved the original pic from the net.

Not a major score or anything like that but one of those odd one-in-a-million chance things.

Edited July 7, 2021 by Jayman

[catman76]

More than half my comics I found at garage sales, junks shops, flea markets, but nothing to make anyone here drool over at all.

I almost always find one or two at a time. Only a few times did I score a bunch of comics. One of the first times I bought old comics in the late 80s was at a flea market some person had a box of unused store stock of 50s Weather Bird Shoes giveaway comics. The remaindered ones they put a new cover on. Most were westerns, but I got a Hot Stuff #1 in there and a couple other cool Harveys too.

Another flea market I bought a stack of comics from a old guy mostly selling old 16mm films. For a buck a piece I got Batman 126 and 127,  Honeymooners 4 and 5, A couple Date with Judys, A few Fox and Crows and a few others I forget. I bought like 20 cartoon films from him too.

A great find I stupidly passed up was about 25 early issues of Archie, probably every issue from about #8 or so to early #30s. I stupidly passed them up because I only had like ten bucks to my name and had all day of searching junk shops ahead of me and didnt want to blow all my money right away in case I found something later. But of course I didnt and when I went back to buy some of those Archies they were gone. One of the many things i stupidly passed up and still think about 30 years later, like the huge box full of mint big little books for next to nothing I decided to not buy for some reason.

[Robot Man]

24 minutes ago, catman76 said:

More than half my comics I found at garage sales, junks shops, flea markets, but nothing to make anyone here drool over at all.

I almost always find one or two at a time. Only a few times did I score a bunch of comics. One of the first times I bought old comics in the late 80s was at a flea market some person had a box of unused store stock of 50s Weather Bird Shoes giveaway comics. The remaindered ones they put a new cover on. Most were westerns, but I got a Hot Stuff #1 in there and a couple other cool Harveys too.

Another flea market I bought a stack of comics from a old guy mostly selling old 16mm films. For a buck a piece I got Batman 126 and 127,  Honeymooners 4 and 5, A couple Date with Judys, A few Fox and Crows and a few others I forget. I bought like 20 cartoon films from him too.

A great find I stupidly passed up was about 25 early issues of Archie, probably every issue from about #8 or so to early #30s. I stupidly passed them up because I only had like ten bucks to my name and had all day of searching junk shops ahead of me and didnt want to blow all my money right away in case I found something later. But of course I didnt and when I went back to buy some of those Archies they were gone. One of the many things i stupidly passed up and still think about 30 years later, like the huge box full of mint big little books for next to nothing I decided to not buy for some reason.

I always tell people the time to buy something is when the opportunity presents it’s self.

I have rarely been sorry with anything I bought but those times I put it back still often haunt my dreams.

[Robot Man]

How 'bout another one?

I think I inherited by collecting gene from my grandmother. She collected real nice high end antiques. I was the only grandchild that would go to shows and flea markets with her. She taught me the ropes well at a very young age. I really didn't "collect" anything when I was real young. Maybe coins when you could still get old coins in your change. Although I didn't really seek out back issues or runs, I was a very voracious reader of comic books, Hardy Boys and just about everything I could get my hands on. 

One morning at a flea market I spotted this laying on an old rug. I had no idea what it was but it had "Comics" on the cover and it looked ancient. I picked it up and my nana bought it for me for probably some loose change.

I figured out it was actually a comic book and man was it old. For the longest time the oldest comic book I've ever owned. There were no price guides, internet or way to find out anything about it. I had no idea it's significance until many years later. 

The only comic book the seller had. Thanks Nana!

[batman_fan]

While living in Phoenix, I use to look through one of the free papers classified ad just in case someone was ever selling comics.  I actually picked up books from a few collections but never lucky enough to be the 1st person to go through them except once.  Some guy had an ad for GA Batman’s.  I contacted him to take a look at them and the guy was skeptical and hesitant to let me see them.  It turned out the guys name was Ed Kalb, Tom Kalb’s brother.  I told him I bought from his brother all the time so he checked with Tom and Tom gave him the thumbs up.  Ed had 4 GA Batman’s and I think a few World’s finest.  The four Batman’s were 2, 5, 6, and 8.  I brought cash and could either get the 2 and 8 or the 5 and 6.  I snagged the 2 and 8 for $2000.  Biggest mistake I made was not making arrangements to pick up their 5 and 6 later.  Books were all pretty clean.  I had the 2 graded, still need to send in the 8.  Pictured in this group shot.

[Hap Hazard]

Love these kind of stories, what comic collectors dreams are made of,

My only real comic find happened in 1992 while I was living in Hawaii. Every Sunday I would hit the

Aloha Bowl swap meet and usually find nothing but one time I was making my rounds and a spotted a young man

selling comics off a small table mostly newer super hero comics. I asked him if he had any older comics and he said yes

in a box under the table. I took a look and saw a Crypt of Terror 18 on the top stack of comics nothing bagged just a pile of EC's. I asked

how much for the box, I'm thinking at least several hundred, he looked down at them and said these were his Uncle's book. That no one

wanted them and said Forty bucks for the box. I said OK, and ran home with my treasures, 110 EC's mostly G/VG from the later days of EC 1954-1955.

Almost a full run of the New Directions. My best score ever, I used the best books to fill my EC collection and sold the dupes.

Edited July 11, 2021 by Hap Hazard

[KCOComics]

Here is an OA Golden Age collection I recently purchased. 

The story isn't as exciting as many of the ones I've read here. My local comic shop has a flea market feel to it. Just piles and piles of old comics in no particular order. No new issues, just thousands of random books. He's got dozens of boxes in the back and allot of this stuff hasn't been looked through in decades.... So I go in pretty much every week and look through the sea of comics. 

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I walked in and the owner said he had been waiting for me and he just got something special. He pulls out these books along with a few DC hero books. 

The OA had passed years ago and the daughter had been sitting on them for a long time. She finally sold them to my local shop and I couldn't let them go. 

In today's day and age of internet shopping, there is something so cool about finding rare GA books like these in person.

 

 

Edited July 8, 2021 by KCOComics

[Black Bat]

Great thread idea Roboman!  So, I was not really into Comics as a kid in the 70s, being drawn mostly to Monsters Mags, but my lucky score came when my soon to be uncle, who was a collector, decided he was going to focus only on DC's- so he gave me all his Marvels, about two boxes of early issues of Spiderman (like maybe a third of the issues between #40 - #120, so lots of gaps), with a similar smattering of daredevil fantastic four hulk tales of suspense, etc.  They weren't in great shape, so not real valuable. I enjoyed the stories and started visiting LCS's buying some back issues to fill in the story gaps, but couldn't really afford much and soon lost interest.  Fast forward about 20 years, I'm an art student living in San Diego, and I attend my first SDCC.  I had no idea what it was, pretty much just going to see cool old monster stuff.  Well what I saw blew my mind- golden age horror!  I was so lit that I ran home, grabbed my boxes of Marvels, sold them to a dealer (I picked up an overstreet so knew enough not to get burned). I took all the money and bought a small stack of LB coles and other PCH. This was before the Gerbers, and I didn't even know what PCH meant, so I just bought the coolest stuff I could afford.  I wanted the books as references for the art I was making, so I avoided the expensive high grade books and just got solid complete issues that I paged through regularly over the next decade, keeping them stacked on a shelf, unbagged.  I even pinned some to a wall!  Maybe I'll pull some out of the files for a group shot later... 

Edited July 8, 2021 by Black Bat

[Shrevvy]

Here is one more Golden age centric. Somehow I was given pictures of a comic lot for sale. I don't remember where or how those pictures came to me. It was a box of golden age stuff that the guy acquired through a house clean out or something similar. There were some good stuff in the pics - the cover to Detective #40 and some early Batmans. The stuff was pretty rough. He wanted a nominal amount - $500 or so. It was pretty sketchy. I thought it was a scam. I ended up talking to the guy on the phone several times. No paypal, no check. He wanted Western Union money wired to him. I spoke with a local comic store and asked if they would broker the deal for a fee. They were honest (but a bit slimey) and said if they guy brought the books in (he was known for selling random finds) and they were good, he would keep them for himself instead of brokering the deal for me. Against my better judgement, I wired him the money and was on the phone when he mailed the books. I received a box of pieces and parts and several complete books. In the pieces and parts were the rest of the Detective #40 minus a few non-Batman pages and Batman 2, 4 ,8 ,16 and some others I can't remember. This was 6-8 years ago. Last year, I sent a few of the books to CGC. I'll dig them out and post pics.

There is more to the story. They guy contacted me a few weeks later saying he had more books. He sent me pics of some early World's Finest. We struck another deal. This was similar to the first in which I didn't really know what was in the lot besides the few I could see. Money was about the same. I wired him the money and then...crickets. Didn't answer the phone. Didn't respond to emails. Maybe that was his long game? To set me up and scam me on deal #2. So, all in I am in for $1000 or so on the books. Still a deal.

[october]

A few years ago someone drove from upstate New York to sell a stack of golden age to a local store outside of Nashville. Long way to go to sell books that any dealer would have loved!

They posted the Target on Instagram, so I called over to reserve it. When I got there the manager gave me first shot at the rest, including these and maybe 20 others. Still have the Target and the Future, but the others have moved on to another home. 

 

[Robot Man]

1 hour ago, Hap Hazard said:

Love these kind of stories, what comic collectors dreams are made of,

My only read comic find happened in 1992 while I was living in Hawaii. Every Sunday I would hit the

Aloha Bowl swap meet and usually find nothing but one time I was making my rounds and a spotted a young man

selling comics off a small table mostly newer super hero comics. I asked him if he had any older comics and he said yes

in a box under the table. I took a look and saw a Crypt of Terror 18 on the top stack of comics nothing bagged just a pile of EC's. I asked

how much for the box, I'm thinking at least several hundred, he looked down at them and said these were his Uncle's book. That no one

wanted them and said Forty bucks for the box. I said OK, and ran home with my treasures, 110 EC's mostly G/VG from the later days of EC 1954-1955.

Almost a full run of the New Directions. My best score ever, I used the best books to fill my EC collection and sold the dupes.

I would have wet my pants. You know how much I love ECs. I have found a few stray issues in small groups of old comics but never that many all st once. 

I know you know Jamie Newbold. He and I and a guy named Ski Mark Ford used to hit the Rose Bowl every month in the mid 1970’s. We used to score a lot of old comics there. We often had to share our finds. 

There was a guy named Loren Mark who set up with his mom who always had the best books. I remember getting an All Star 4 from him. One day, I fished out a book called Reform School Girl out of one of his unbagged stacks. We all laughed at it and I bought it for a couple of bucks. They all thought I was crazy. 

There was also another weird older guy that usually had lots of comics, pulps and odd paper. Eventully, he let me come over to his house. But that is a story for another time...

 

[BitterOldMan]

Back when I was a wee little lad, I lived in San Francisco’s North Beach just a few blacks from the late Lawrence Ferlingetti’s City Lights bookstore.

I used to buy old comic books at a nickel a piece or three comics for a dime at Ben’s Bargains on Grant Ave.  The store bought old comic books for a penny each.  My late older brother and I had our first taste of early silver age Marvels, finding ASM Annual 2, FF Annual 3, and Marvel Tales Annual 2.  The oldest book we found was a beaten up copy of ASM 9.
 

I remember getting jumped by three kids on my way to school outside the store and fighting them off.  I didn’t back down from anybody.

Edited July 8, 2021 by BitterOldMan

[Jayman]

2 hours ago, Hap Hazard said:

My only read comic find happened in 1992 while I was living in Hawaii.

After reading your post again, I guess it’s true that Aloha means “Hello & Good Buy”! 

[Robot Man]

11 minutes ago, szav said:

So....modern day hunting story, got tired of not finding a particular book I was hunting on ebay or any comic site ever, so I just googled the book.  Somewhere on page 8 of the search results was a link to a defunct looking collectors website.  One guy had a list of a lot of nice books, I emailed him.  Took 4 weeks to get a response.  He told me he had listed those books 10 years ago but wasnt motivated to sell at the time, and had forgotten he'd ever listed them on that site.  Kinda seemed too good to be true, but I bought 4 books, after he took a few weeks to find time to take pictures and set up pay pal...got them in hand and was amazed.  His story was that he was a hoarder and estate hunter and that he'd gotten them 20 years ago and they'd been sitting in the basement.  There were sadly only 100 books or so, but they all graded out 6.5 - 8.5.  These must have been stored loosely because they all had plump sexy spines with a little thigh gap...Best find I've ever had...thanks google.  Here's a few, with the original group pictures sent to me, and a few I took after receiving.  

 

Wow, to me that would be right there with 100 ECs, probably better. 

Fight #35 might be my favorite FH book. 

[Robot Man]

By the way, if anyone wants to read stories like this, I highly recommend Jamie Newbold’s book “Confessions of a Comic Book Dealer”. I’m pretty sure this is the title. 

Full of stories from the early days of fandom. Hard to put it down. 

[Terry JSA]

I found this at a flea market for $5 and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity, bought this back in 2019 but I’ve sold it since then. You can say 17 year old me was happy with acquiring his first GA book.