Golden Age Collections 2 2

[mysterio]

Would this be the right place to see if anyone knows about this Blackstone collection that is auctioning on ComicConnect this month? They had a small info section that basically said they found in when they were up in Chicago for the 2021 Wizard World. With the breadth and depth of what they showed it seemed like a pretty extensive collection. I bought several Marvel Tales issues and was just curious to get more background. If there is a thread elsewhere please point me in that direction. Thanks!

[jimbo_7071]

On 9/20/2022 at 12:34 PM, N e r V said:

Not really. Comics were 20 cents in 1973 and went up to 25 cents in 1974. When I got into actually collecting that year I was probably buying 30 titles or so a month or about $6.00 a month worth. Add things like 60 or 75 cent magazines and it was probably something like $15.00-$20.00 a month. I was probably getting a $5.00 a week allowance (I’m guessing now) back then. 
 

Boomers and Gen X’ers had a secret little thing we did back then when we wanted extra money. It was called work. I did side jobs like cut grass, deliver newspapers, etc. 

We actually spent summer vacations having fun and working to save money. When kids saved money family members often would kick in money too if you were trying to save. Good times.

Fantastic four #1 in 1973 probably cost me around $30.00-35.00 in high grade. Richard Alf had a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 for $25.00 in 1974 in VF+ at his store but I’m pretty sure my mom scored my first copy for around that on a trip to Arizona when I gave her a “hit list” of comics to look for. This was the era of good, fine, mint too so when I say VF+ by a legit dealer back then it would probably be a 9.0 or 9.2 today. Howard Rogofsky and others were not the grading standard you wanted. 
 

If you look back in old Marvel comics say 1974 or 1975 (can’t remember exactly) they noted Fantastic Four #1 was selling for around $50.00 by then (might be Stan’s soapbox?). I knew I scored big by then when I read it. 
Comics were not only fun but they increased in value fast. Very cool.
 

If you were getting $5 per week as allowance in 1973, your parents were rich. I was getting $1 per week in 1983, and I didn't know anyone in my neighborhood who was getting anywhere close to $5.

Edited September 26, 2022 by jimbo_7071

[paqart]

On 9/16/2022 at 7:02 AM, Larryw7 said:

The first book I remember buying was Batman 207. Actually my grandmother bought it for me. I was four years old.

Obviously not my original copy.

 

I think this was my first comic but I'm not sure. I remember trying to figure out the overlapping shapes in a crowd scene cover on (I think) a Buscema Avengers. I tried drawing the way Thor's hammer, or the handle, overlapped something else, thinking it was very clever on the part of the artist. The style of the cover, as I recall it, would make it earlier than this Avengers #93. The other thing is that I had a dream about the next issue (94) where Captain America fires a dart into the Super Skrull's inflated belly. I remember telling my friends at school about the dream in 1973. The other Avengers (if that is what it was) is from when I lived at a different apartment 1-2 years earlier. That said, I've been unable to identify the cover, so this Avengers #93 is the earliest comic I know I had before I started collecting back issues. Eventually, I had a full set of Avengers.

Edited October 12, 2022 by paqart

[lou_fine]

On 10/12/2022 at 3:10 PM, paqart said:

That said, I've been unable to identify the cover, so this Avengers #93 is the earliest comic I know I had before I started collecting back issues.

Absolutely love this squarebound Avengers 93 as it's 52 pages of absolute Neal Adams artistic goodness from cover to cover.    

I still remember when this book was considered to be the BA key to acquire and the most valuable BA book out there. Definitely not the case anymore as this book has seemingly been forgotten by this current generation of collectors/investors/speculators as a ton of other BA books have rocketed up into the stratosphere while this once iconic book here still seems to be stuck in the launch pad.  

[paqart]

On 10/13/2022 at 2:51 AM, lou_fine said:

Absolutely love this squarebound Avengers 93 as it's 52 pages of absolute Neal Adams artistic goodness from cover to cover.    

I still remember when this book was considered to be the BA key to acquire and the most valuable BA book out there. Definitely not the case anymore as this book has seemingly been forgotten by this current generation of collectors/investors/speculators as a ton of other BA books have rocketed up into the stratosphere while this once iconic book here still seems to be stuck in the launch pad.  

I agree on that. There are plenty of excellent Bronze Age comics but this one is special in several ways. It is an iconic story, the art is not only excellent but in my opinion, slightly higher than the usually high standard for Adams, it is a full-length story in a double-size issue, and it is early BA. Other contenders tend to be first appearances that aren't as interesting on their own merits as this comic. The first Swamp Thing is a good story but not in the same league as this comic. After that, other firsts tend to be fairly ordinary as stories go: Hulk 180-181, Werewolf by Night #32, Marvel Spotlight #2, Marvel Premiere #1, Marvel Spotlight #5, etc. The comics just mentioned, and a few others, had significantly lower print rums than Avengers 93, so they are harder to find. On the flip side of that, we have Giant-Size X-Men #1. That comic has a lot of the same things going for it that are true of Avengers #93 but it is worth considerably more due to Wolverine and the New X-Men.

When I was a kid, Fantastic Four #1 was the most valuable of all the Silver Age Marvels. Now, it is about the same value as Avengers #1, thanks to the MCU. The same phenomenon accounts for FF prices advancing more slowly than MCU titles. Avengers #93 might not have any first appearances but the story is, for the Avengers, every bit as iconic as the ASM #121-122 story that has made those issues so expensive. Another sleeper in this category is found in FF #'s 90-93, where the Thing is taken to a Skrull planet and forced to fight as a battle slave. Now that I think of it, there are several important stories in the first 150 or so issues of the FF, none of which have been explored yet in the MCU.

Since this is a Golden Age thread, a few comments on the first GA comics in my collection, all of which were bought as back issues in the 1970's:
1) Walt Disney Comics & Stories # 118 (Walk Kelly cover). As far as I can recall, this is the first GA comic I ever owned. I bought it at Atlantis Fantasyworld in Monterey, California. The year was, I think, 1975. It cost $3, an exorbitant price given its condition. It was, generously, a "good" condition comic, or in today's grading system, around a 3.0.

2) The next GA comics in my collection was a small stack of about 20 Classics Illustrated, one of which was a first printing of #3, The Count of Monte Cristo. I obtained these from a fellow member of the Vitaphone vintage film club in Saratoga, California. He knew I liked comics, so he came in one Friday and gave them to me during an intermission. That also happened around 1975.

3) My comic book collection was stolen in 1976 by one of my mother's many boyfriends. I was determined to get everything back, and then some. Starting in late 1976, at the age of 11, I aggressively hunted down comics, traded them, and dealt in them, usually to other dealers. At around this time, I picked up the three most important GA comics I owned at that time: World's Finest #2, Comics Cavalcade, #2, and Batman #2. And then, someone broke into my house and stole about 75 comics from my collection. Luckily, he didn't know which were valuable, so he grabbed mostly low value comics that are hard to sell. Even better, I figured out who did it and got his parent's homeowners insurance company to pay me full guide for the stolen comics (which the culprit had gotten rid of). With that money, I took the bus to Comics and Comix in Palo Alto and bought a VF+ copy of Thun'da #1. I know it is less interesting to modern collectors than the DCs just mentioned but as a kid in 1977, I was pleased as punch to own the first comic by Frazetta, and in very respectable condition.

4) In 1978, I went to a comic book convention in San Francisco called Bay Con. I met a couple of dealers there who called themselves, "The Comic Detectives". One of them made a deal with me for a number of Carl Barks duck comics. This was when I learned about Barks and he became my favorite comic book creator, a position he still holds. The "number of" comics included in the deal was around 200, and it cost me around $300-$350, I forget which. Most of the comics were in the VF-NM range, none less than fine. The majority were WDC&S but there were a few key Four Colors as well, including Christmas on Bear Mountain and Only a Poor Old Man, both closer to NM than VF condition.

5) I picked up quite a few ECs in 1978, most of which were in VG-F condition. My favorites were the Frazetta/Williamson Sci-Fi covers. I also had the classic "Monkey on his Back" drug story Feldstein cover (forget the issue offhand) and the only Frazetta story in Crime Suspense. I had a MacRaboy Captain Marvel Jr, a Bulletman, Nickel Comics, some Spirits (my second favorite title), Lou Fine Plastic Man, etc. Then, in 1979, My mom forced me to not only sell my collection, but to give her the money to pay for a move to Las Vegas ( a place I did not want to live). We lived in Vegas for all of about three months, then left with no money and lived in our car until my mom found a women's shelter for herself and my sister and then stuck me in a home for runaways. Now, I had another collection to recreate. This time, a much more serious collection that today would easily be worth more than a million dollars thanks to the high grade early Marvels it contained. Actually, I had maybe a few dozen comics that together would be worth a million today, and another few thousand that might add up to another half million or so. For instance, in 1978, I worked for a comic book store. I bought 25 copies of every issue of the new X-Men, starting with issue 107 but then bought many multiples going back to #94 and GSX#1. I did that kind of thing with everything. I had a collection of Detective and Batman comics with Adams stories and covers that was 4 deep for every related issue, and almost all were in NM/M condition. My Swamp Thing set was 9 deep, all in high gloss white page NM/M condition. The most valuable comic I ever owned was probably my 9.6-9.8ish FF#5. It actually looked better than comics straight out of Phil Seuling's distributor box at the comic store. At the time, we called it "pristine mint". I'd like to think it could have been a 9.8 but it's hard to say because I no longer have it.

[paqart]

On 9/26/2022 at 12:23 AM, jimbo_7071 said:

If you were getting $5 per week as allowance in 1973, your parents were rich. I was getting $1 per week in 1983, and I didn't know anyone in my neighborhood who was getting anywhere close to $5.

I didn't get an allowance. My mom made me give her money when she needed it. I traded comics for money, then started working at a comic store. Later, I sold coins and other collectibles until I got into college and then a real job...drawing comics of all things.

 

[Cat-Man_America]

On 9/25/2022 at 11:23 PM, jimbo_7071 said:

If you were getting $5 per week as allowance in 1973, your parents were rich. I was getting $1 per week in 1983, and I didn't know anyone in my neighborhood who was getting anywhere close to $5.

 

On 10/13/2022 at 11:47 PM, paqart said:

I didn't get an allowance. My mom made me give her money when she needed it. I traded comics for money, then started working at a comic store. Later, I sold coins and other collectibles until I got into college and then a real job...drawing comics of all things.

 

 

...And no, my collection isn't recognized (but my GA collection isn't original owner either) 

[paqart]

On 10/14/2022 at 2:18 AM, Cat-Man_America said:

 

 

...And no, my collection isn't recognized (but my GA collection isn't original owner either) 

That was very funny, thanks. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, unlike these fellows, I wasn't joking about having to give my mother money and not getting an allowance. As I watched the video you posted, I was comparing my youth with the things these actors were saying. At first, I felt they were describing circumstances that weren't that bad compared to my own childhood. As they went on to living in shoeboxes and so on, they left me in the dust in the "I was so poor that..." competition.

I will mention a couple of things I could have said truthfully in such a competition though: 1) at times of financial distress, my mother had my sister and I, aged about 7 and 8 respectively, search pay phones for discarded change with which to buy food. On one such occasion, I recall scraping out 35 cents that we used to buy a single hamburger that we split three ways. 2) Without money for clothes, my mother came up with a number of methods for obtaining them at no cost. One such method involved driving up to a Goodwill bin at 9pm and lifting my sister up to the level of the donation slot so she could crawl inside. She'd root around for clothes in the dark, heaving them out through the slot for our mother to decide what we'd keep and what would be thrown back. As for beds, I remember having one to sleep on occasionally but more often, it was a sleeping bag on the floor.

Edited October 14, 2022 by paqart

[Cat-Man_America]

On 10/14/2022 at 8:28 AM, paqart said:

That was very funny, thanks. Just to avoid any misunderstanding, unlike these fellows, I wasn't joking about having to give my mother money and not getting an allowance. As I watched the video you posted, I was comparing my youth with the things these actors were saying. At first, I felt they were describing circumstances that weren't that bad compared to my own childhood. As they went on to living in shoeboxes and so on, they left me in the dust in the "I was so poor that..." competition.

I will mention a couple of things I could have said truthfully in such a competition though: 1) at times of financial distress, my mother had my sister and I, aged about 7 and 8 respectively, search pay phones for discarded change with which to buy food. On one such occasion, I recall scraping out 35 cents that we used to buy a single hamburger that we split three ways. 2) Without money for clothes, my mother came up with a number of methods for obtaining them at no cost. One such method involved driving up to a Goodwill bin at 9pm and lifting my sister up to the level of the donation slot so she could crawl inside. She'd root around for clothes in the dark, heaving them out through the slot for our mother to decide what we'd keep and what would be thrown back. As for beds, I remember having one to sleep on occasionally but more often, it was a sleeping bag on the floor.

I was hoping this would provide a bit of amusement without conveying too much snark.  The Four Yorkshireman is one of the greatest observational comic sketches ever done.  This is the original, but it would morph into the Monty Python sketch as would Graham Chapman and John Cleese; Marty Feldman would become famous in other comedic efforts including Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. 

About the only places our GA collections slightly overlap are EC's; I've always been a fan of Wood's, Williamson's & Frazetta's work.  I started collecting EC's in the late 60's, but didn't get serious about it until decades later, but I do have a personalized WSF cover signed by Williamson back when I knew him in '74...

[paqart]

On 10/14/2022 at 4:50 PM, Cat-Man_America said:

I was hoping this would provide a bit of amusement without conveying too much snark.  The Four Yorkshireman is one of the greatest observational comic sketches ever done.  This is the original, but it would morph into the Monty Python sketch as would Graham Chapman and John Cleese; Marty Feldman would become famous in other comedic efforts including Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. 

About the only places our GA collections slightly overlap are EC's; I've always been a fan of Wood's, Williamson's & Frazetta's work.  I started collecting EC's in the late 60's, but didn't get serious about it until decades later, but I do have a personalized WSF cover signed by Williamson back when I knew him in '74...

I love all of those covers. I don't remember if I had that one or not but it was on my want list. At the time, ECs were much harder to obtain than the Barks duck comics I collected. The same goes for random GA publishers like Avon, ME, Charles Biro, etc. I remember running into boxes full of Famous Funnies (except the Frazetta issues) and other funny animal comics. The same goes for westerns and war comics. The sci fi and superhero genres were always tougher to get. In that context, EC was a bit odd because the type of stories they published were readily available in the back issue bin for any other publisher but not EC. After I moved to NYC, I bought a run of Mads from issue 2-15 or so, all in NM condition. I also picked up some early Adam Strange and Green Lantern appearances in Showcase, a really weird Basil Wolverton comic, some early S+K titles, and even the original art for a Severin/Kurtzman story in (I think) Frontline Combat #1. My favorite was a copy of Sub-Mariner Comics #2 that I bought from Bob Burden at an NYCC in about 1993 for $750.

[paqart]

On 9/20/2022 at 1:13 PM, circumstances said:

I made lots of flea market finds in the 1970s.

Quarter books, 50 cent books, dollar books.

There was one guy who would set up every week.

 

He had a big three ring notebook with dozens of plastic sleeves that he'd always put out on one of his tables.

 

In each sleeve, back to back, was 1950s horror and Sci fi comics (except EC).

Dozens of them. Brain Bats of Venus and the like. All in nice shape.

I loved them, but the prices were exorbitant. $12, $15, $18. Brain Bats was $35!

I tried on numerous occasions to buy the whole binder, or to get more reasonable prices on individual books or groups of books. I don't think he ever budged on price.

I can't recall him ever selling anything at those prices in those days.

Wonder what ever happened to them/him.

This reminds me of something I once saw at Bob Sidebottom's shop in San Jose around 1978 or so. At the time, I was in the habit of going to Recycle Books a few stores down the street to buy underpriced comics. Sidebottom's prices were too high for me but I went into his shop occasionally to get new comics for cover price. 

The store was tiny, and made even smaller by a curtain that segregated the underground comics from everything else. My impression was that he had devoted half his floor space to undergrounds, an unusual decision at the time.

He always had a full set of Marvel #1's on the wall: Avengers #1, FF#1, ASM#1, X-Men #1, and Hulk #1. I don't remember seeing JSM #83, AF #15, or other first appearances. It was just the #1's. He wanted $500 each at a time when Overstreet had them listed at $375 in mint. I figured he never sold them because they were so overpriced. I was quite wrong about that, as I discovered one day.

I was in there to buy some new comics when I realized I had to use a rest room. I asked the kid behind the counter if I could use the one in the shop. He said sure, as long as I didn't tell anyone what I saw. The shop's gone now, so I don't mind saying. We stepped through a beaded curtain that led into an enormous warehouse-sized space filled from floor to a height of about 14 feet with boxes of comics. I couldn't see the ends of the room in either direction because of the enormous towers of comics in every direction. Between them, a narrow aisle barely wide enough for a grown man's shoulders snaked back to the bathroom. 

It was so cramped in that aisle that I took a bad step and kicked a box on the floor. The flap flew open, revealing its contents. It was an entire box of Hulk #1's. The kid who was leading me to the back told me all of the boxes are like that: most were full but contained only one issue of any given comic. He said the FF#1 on the wall regularly sold every month or so, and was then quickly replaced with another from the box in the back. Sidebottom didn't want to kill the market by releasing his comics all at once, so he priced them a little high and sold them one by one.