Was anyone here collecting Marvel in the 70's or 80's? 7 7

[piper]

On 1/21/2022 at 3:26 PM, kav said:

Summary: "collect Marvel"  

And for the most part I have. I do have a few DC Books (mostly GA)

[Jbird]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:58 PM, KCode98 said:

 

I bought my first comic in 1973 at a place called Leng's Fountain.  Leng's was a classic soda fountain in the front and in the back they sold books, magazines and comics. The first book I bought was Defenders #7. I still have it, it's in pretty rough shape. Unfortunately I didn't start seriously collecting until a couple years later, so all the books I bought in 73 and 74 weren't taken care of very well. That includes the hulk 180 and 181 I bought. Of course I had to cut out the marvel value stamps and to add insult to injury I never even sent them in. But I did hang on to them and I can't believe what they are worth now even in their tattered condition. I have over a thousand books and all but around 50 of them I paid newstand value or less. The 50 or so I didn't buy from the  newsstand include a box of about 40 Marvels from the mid to late sixties that the nice old lady up the street gave to me for getting her a Christmas tree. In that box was some early Spider-Man including the first molten man, first and second rhino, second kingpin and a few other sweet little issues. Also contained avengers 7, 11, 14, 19, some early daredevils and Thor's including #134 that I just got back from cgc graded 7.0. I got paid pretty well for that Christmas tree as it turns out.

There were two grocery stores in the little town that I lived in and both of them had these revolving racks of 3 comics in a bag for $0.39. I would regularly check these and look through the packs for either number ones or books with a $0.20 price point. I got a marvel premier #1 out of a pack and at this point I was collecting so I kept them in pretty good condition. Some other scores from the three packs were Invaders #1, five She-Hulk #1, three devil dinosaur #1, a bunch of 20 cent draculas  ( not the first blade but issues right before and after) and inadvertently because they were in a pack with a number one or a 20 center I got four copies of the first appearance of machine man, three copies of the eternals number 10, one 11 and three copies of 13. 

I sent away for about 10 books from Robert Bell. I remember being somewhat disappointed because mostly what I got was my second and third choices. I did however get the iron Man number one in nm/m condition that I wanted for the tidy sum of $l5. Apparently Mr Bell's grading was a little less strict than cgc's because although I kept it bagged and boarded and safely tucked away when I sent it in a number of years later it came back at 7.0. Just about everything I got from him was two full points below what he had them at. This included a Conan 2, defenders 1,  and an ASM 122. Kind of disappointing but I guess I still got a pretty good ROI and some great books to hang on the wall. Sorry for rambling on but it's fun to reminisce and relive the excitement of riding my bike to Leng's, walking back to the comic rack and spotting some new #1 there just waiting for me to buy every copy. That's how I got five copies of Black Panther #1 for $1.25.

[Randall Dowling]

On 1/21/2022 at 3:17 PM, PovertyRow said:

Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square with Jerry Weist and later, Tony being the dominant presence. In  their earlier days they had two stores in the same building: one for new and one filled with row after row of back issues.

On 1/21/2022 at 3:40 PM, sckao said:

The back issue part of Million Year Picnic was long and narrow and seemed so different from the bright, clean,  new-issue, front store. 

Wow.  I forgot about this.  I can totally remember the windowless area where they had the back issue boxes lined up and feeling like they had every issue of every comic I was looking for.  They also were the first store I went to where they had not only the current issues on the stands, but also the last 3-4 months of all titles as well.

For a kid, it was like heaven for comics.

[Glassman10]

The comics I always seem to not call comics were all the pogo books and I have every one of them still.  What Kelly was so profoundly funny and such an observer of politics.  I still think my favorite concern was from the cross breeding of a yew tree with a geranium.  Yewranium! Those are books I will never get rid of and I don't think my kids could care less about them  Albert the alligator, Churchy La Femme, molester mole.  Porky and Owl.  The named boats.  Great characters.  ... and the christmas carols!

Edited January 23, 2022 by Glassman10

[Ken Aldred]

On 1/20/2022 at 9:21 PM, piper said:

Fortunately, my parents viewed Comics as a way to get their kids reading. 

My vocab definitely improved from reading the very verbose Stan Lee dialogue.

I was always fascinated by Kirby's Brooklyn dialogue when I read his Golden Age reprints in the 70s.

Never enough to start using it here in England, though.

[Prince Namor]

I always had Archie Comics around as a kid and other stuff like Richie Rich, with the occasional superhero comic. 

I started really trying to collect in the summer and fall of 1973, when I was 10, though at that time it meant 'trying to find what you liked to read'. I had a ASM #125, 127, 129, 130, Special Marvel Edition #15, Superboy #195, 198, Captain Marvel 30, 31, 33, Ka-Zar #1, Detective #427, Tales of the Zombie #3, Avengers #119, Conan #34, FF #142, Hulk #172, 173, Savage Tales #3, and a few others. I was hooked.

The earliest Spidey's I ever owned were #43, #75, #80, and #113, but I also found a Spectacular Spider-man #2 (Magazine).

The following spring, the drug store by my school started getting in the Giant Size issues (starting with Giant Size Super Heroes #1and Giant Size Super Stars #1), and I was actively seeking out bookstores that carried the newest issue of Amazing Spider-man. I wasn't aware of any comic book stores in existence. But that was the start of it all for me. 

[Courageous Cat]

comics buyers guide was 100x more interesting to me in the late 70's early 80's than girls. That newspaper format with lots of dealer ads 

but i mostly went to queen city bookstore for unatainable goodies that the local drugstore didnt have

[Courageous Cat]

On 1/21/2022 at 1:25 AM, paqart said:

They tried to rescue my sister and I a couple of times but my mom always moved first, sometimes in the dead of night. I think it was partly to avoid CPS that I had to sell my comic collection to pay for the move to Vegas.

damn thats one dark story 

[Glassman10]

On 1/21/2022 at 11:47 AM, shadroch said:

Excelsior is an exclamation. It is a sentence on to itself.   It's also the motto of NY State.

Well, Miriam Webster says it's also a packing material ( fine wood shavings). Given Stan's sense of humor, you never know which definition came into his head. Torn up or shredded comic books might meet the definition. 

Edited January 24, 2022 by Glassman10

[Ken Aldred]

My first ‘comic shop’ in the late 70s was a bookstore near Manchester called Chapter and Verse, where a local dealer dropped off stacks of Bronze Age comics each month, which were then only a few years old, of course. A bit overpriced, such as a standard cent import being 35p when the cover price for a distributed pence copy was 12p.  It did give me access for the very first time to comics that didn’t appear on the newsstands here in the UK, and seemed a magical next level to a young kid.  I got my X-Men 95 there for 75p. The next step up was taking the occasional day off from school to head down to Forbidden Planet in London, which felt like a treasure trove in its early, non-corporate days.  When I discovered comic marts in Manchester I had access to a much better range of back issues, but, just as importantly, I switched over to buying the cent imports at cheaper prices from a dealer there, Paul Schofield, who I went to regularly until I left the area to start university in London in the mid-80s.  Also got many UHG Warren magazines from him.  A comic shop, Odyssey 7, opened up in an arcade in Manchester University precinct, a very inconvenient location for those of us to the north of the city, without a car and no direct train or bus connection.  The name of the store reflected the idea that local comics fans would, regardless of inconvenience, make the trip there every week, having no other practical option other than to feed their sense of monopoly.  This wasn’t true, as it soon became quite tiresome and I went back to the easy efficiency of buying new stuff from Paul at the comic marts in the city centre each month.

I was in London from 85 until 90, doing all of the centrally-located shops; Forbidden Planet, past its exciting, early prime, now soulless and corporate, Gosh!, Comic Showcase and Stateside Comics.  It was a period when at first you could pick up a lot of very cheap and high grade older material, which was great for a student with limited funds. A FN to VF FF 48 for £4. Later, Batmania had struck around the time I’d finished college and was about to leave, prices had gone up because of the speculator boom and several of the shop owners were getting inflated opinions of their importance. The paradigmatic comment and demand made to me was ‘you’ll pay our price or go and collect something else.’  Good timing for me to be moving on, to continue collecting the same thing elsewhere back in my northern home city, and bring their era and the 80s to a close.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Ken Aldred

[universal soldier]

On 1/21/2022 at 4:17 PM, PovertyRow said:

Man that shook the cobwebs loose! Now some of these memories may be a bit shaky so if anyone can add to them or correct them please do so!

In the 80s and 90s I was living/collecting in the Boston area (Cambridge). Back then the Boston area was a haven of comic book shops with lots of SA and GA offerings. Outer Limits in Waltham owned by the very cool Steve Higgins, where I started a 12 cent Iron Man run, New England Comics Quincy Store with Tom being the key guy there. Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square with Jerry Weist and later, Tony being the dominant presence. In  their earlier days they had two stores in the same building: one for new and one filled with row after row of back issues. In later years they only had the main store and the back issues were relegated to a case with a locked plexiglass top that had hand slots to allow you to leaf through the offerings. I remember picking up 2 or 3 literally 9.6 or better Doc Strange 169 and Hulk 102 (the 1968 equivalent to #1s) for $12 each from there. I would also take my godson there (we collected together) and we would get the new issues (starting with #1) of Dazzler, Moon Knight (who I liked more than Spidey), New Mutants and Alpha Flight.

Then there was That's Entertainment in Worcester (Paul Howley, as I recall a cousin of Steve Higgins who owns Outer Limits), Newbury Comics (a few locations but mainly the Boston store) where I remember seeing an Iron Man #55 for the ridiculous sum of $50 and I was like "huh?" - bear in mind I was a pre-code and pre-hero guy when I saw it). There was a relatively short-lived store in Watertown Square which had some cool Kirby big monster pre-heroes for  $10-$15. The owner and I would laugh at their silliness but I still bought them! Then there was a place called something like Amazing Fantasy out in the Boston Suburbs (I disremember WHAT city it was). The 57 Park Plaza Shows were great and I met some of the dealers there like Harley Yee, Ted Van Liew, Carbonaro and Jim Payette for the first time. I think these, or some of these, were put on by Great Eastern Conventions? A couple of times I actually made the ridiculous drive up to 

I remember David Cummings of Primate Productions would put on a Boston show monthly, in the 90s. As I recall it was there I was introduced to the concept of CGC when I met Steve Borock (funny story) who was going to the various dealers and explaining the concept of this new company CGC and its benefits. These shows may well have been at Park Plaza. Just hard to be precise because every weekend back then was a major comic book weekend with my hitting pretty much as many places as I could.

 great stores. I always forget about Outer Limits and work in Waltham. I need to make an effort to grab lunch on Moddy St and hit them up real soon.  Another store was Bop City comics in Framingham that had some sort of affiliation to That's E I believe. I would rotate between these and Million Year Picnic all the time in the 80's. I had a habit of keeping the original sticker on the bag or re-bag and and am in the process of changing a bunch of bags. Pretty cool to see some stickers from these locations with most being some VF+ of better for less than a $. Unfortunately the stickers were pretty well attached so they made their way into the trash this time around.

 

 

[djzombi]

On 1/17/2022 at 7:38 PM, g-man said:

I remember the small shows in Boston at the 57 Park Plaza and also the Comic Buyers Guide where you send off a money order and hope for the best (never had an issue). 
I also recall the vault in Brighton MA and Million Year Picnic….also there was a store in downtown crossing where you had to show ID to buy DKR. The girl behind the counter looked like the lead singer of The Bangles. 
i was usually buying older ASMs and high grade bronze. The 80s were a great time to be collecting. $100 went a long way (at least it seemed that way).

My first show was one of those!  
I got my first page of original art there, as a teenager. I think I paid $25 to Bill Reinhold for a page from a Punisher GN. 

[djzombi]

I grew up in rural NH - read: the closest comic specialty shop was 4 hours away.  Collecting in the 80s was pretty much just buying stuff off the spinner rack at one of 3 local stores, two of which were drug stores. For back issues, I actually answered ads in comics.  I think I placed orders with Mile High, East Coast Comics, and American(?) Comics.  
I eventually got the CBG, and may have answered ads there as well.  
And then there was the time I bought that customized shortbox filled with comics from the JC Penney catalogue   
I still have that shortbox, two-color with Marvel characters on it. I was kind of sad when I got some water in the basement a few years ago and it got damaged.  But I still have it. 
 

[Hepcat]

 

"Was anyone here collecting Marvel in the 70's or 80's?"

Huh? My impression is that the only comics anybody (but me) collected back in the 1970's and 1980's were Marvel. That was certainly the impression I received at comic shops and comic cons.

[F For Fake]

Oh wow, this was a fun thread to catch up on.

I was born in 77, so consider myself an "80's kid". Like many others, I was obsessed with G.I. Joe and Transformers toys and cartoons. I found that there were comic books based on the same properties, but the comics were darker, more violent, COOLER. So I started picking those up, and pretty soon I was wondering who the guy on the back cover with the claws and pointy mask was. Pretty soon I got into X-Men, by reading the newest issues and Classic X-Men reprints, picked up at the convenience store down the street.

My grade school best buddy was also into comics, and he told me about this place, a store that JUST SOLD COMICS. His folks took us there one weekend, and it was all over for me. I'll never forget that smell, of a store filled with newsprint. Magical stuff. I started collecting aluminum cans so I could cash them in and take the money to the comic shop. Comics were everything. Pretty soon I was hitting up comic shows at the local shopping malls, flea markets, other comic shops, etc. If a place sold comics, I tracked it down.

As for the question about value, sure, money went farther then, but I didn't really care about the value as much as I wanted to read the books. I was trying to piece together just what the hell had happened during those 150 or so issues of X-Men! And of course, nearly everything from my childhood, teens and 20's is now long gone. Some were lost, some were traded, most were sold as adult interests and responsibilities came to take priority. Women and rent!

I didn't start "collecting" again until I was in my 30's. If I still owned every comic I'd EVER owned, I'd be rich. As it stands, today, I barely have anything of value, and only a fraction of the stuff I used to own. But I don't care much. I loved having them, collecting them, swapping them. I've gotten as much out of the "hobby" aspect of this hobby as I possibly can.

[piper]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:10 AM, Hepcat said:

 

"Was anyone here collecting Marvel in the 70's or 80's?"

Huh? My impression is that the only comics anybody (but me) collected back in the 1970's and 1980's were Marvel. That was certainly the impression I received at comic shops and comic cons.

I tried reading DC comics post 1980 and they never caught my fancy.  It wasn't until the mid 1980's where I felt DC got their mojo back (e.g. Crisis, Watchman, Sandman, etc.).

[F For Fake]

On 3/1/2022 at 2:23 PM, piper said:

I tried reading DC comics post 1980 and they never caught my fancy.  It wasn't until the mid 1980's where I felt DC got their mojo back (e.g. Crisis, Watchman, Sandman, etc.).

Mid/late 80’s DC were so great. After I got into X-Men, my next favorite title was Justice League/America/International. Still my favorite superhero book of all time, those first 60 issues. From there it was an easy jump to Suicide Squad, Doom Patrol, Animal Man, LoSH, and the other proto-Vertigo stuff you mentioned. A really great time for readers, terrific books coming out every week.

[jdandns]

On 1/19/2022 at 10:38 AM, sckao said:

By the time Secret Wars hit, even as a teenager, I was already subscribing to Comic Buyer's Guide (It was a newspaper back then.) and ordering my new comics via mail through Westfield Comics. They were more expensive than some other services, but I liked them better because of their monthly, legal-size, carbon-copy order form. You could get twice a month shipping I think... but that was too expensive for me.

Half the fun was filling out that order form and deciding how many copies of a certain comic book I could afford that month.  

Here's one of those from 1993. Check out how I nimbly dodged (as many as I could've wanted) 90 cent copies of Batman Adventures #12.

D'oh.

(Then check the rest of my DC order to see that I indeed wore a lot of black clothing in high school.)

Also on a budget that span  one trick to get an extra book I couldn't afford to pre-order was to "accidentally" leave a price blank. (I wasn't stealing the book, as I'd be debited and would pay for it the following month.)

When I was about 14 (1985 or so), an older friend of mine who ordered from Westfield would let me get a few items with his order. We lived in a small town with no LCS. I still have a couple of early Marvel Press posters from those orders include Frank Miller Dark Knight & Daredevil plus Cloak & Dagger by Leonardi. I lived in a different small town with no LCS from 1988-1990, so I got my own Westfield order at that point, and kept that going until '94 or so, when I quit because I'd moved to a place with lots of comic shops.

I remember being very surprised when Guardian died in Alpha Flight #12. As for Secret Wars #8, I don't remember it being that big a deal, but there was a huge amount of buzz around ASM 252 eight months earlier. There were only newsstand copies of it in my town. I was lucky to get one. I'm not sure if I still have that same copy or if I upgraded down the line.

 

[nmtg9]

Great thread. 

Growing up in late seventies in the North East of England, comics were everywhere. Every newsagent had them, every market had at least one stall full of them. 

And we had of course US comics but also British comics, Disney reprints and Marvel UK. There was so much choice. 

By the mid 80s we'd moved to Leeds and then Odyssey 7 opened up (sister store to the Manchester shop). It was great but being an introverted teenager I was intimidated by the older staff and customers. 

I do remember they got a copy of X Men #2 in for £25. I would stare at it for ages. 

I preferred the comic stall in the indoor market ran by Ron, Skyrack Books. Had a pull list with him.

In about 88 at some point when Punisher was doing well I found an ASM 129 in his stock. Priced the same as surrounding issues at £3. It was going for about £100 at the time. He obviously hadn't realised he had a copy. 

It was a Monday and I'd gone into town to buy some new release records. There was an assistant working the stall who clearly knew nothing about the stock. I saw the 129 and couldn't believe it. Worse thing though, I didn't have enough money to buy it. Things were tight back then. Ron would let you leave a deposit and pay later, or in instalments so that's what I had to do. 

I sweated all week, worried that he wouldn't let me have the issue so cheap, make up an excuse or something. Credit to him he did. But when I went on the Saturday and told him I had some comic put away he saw what it was and was clearly annoyed. But he did let me have it. He was a nice guy. 

Spending time flipping through rows and rows of comics was a time in my childhood that I would always feel happy doing. Nice memories.