Popular Post paqart Posted January 6 Popular Post Share Posted January 6 (edited) Like most collectors, I wasn't a collector to begin with. I was a reader, and had no idea that someday I might think comic books were more valuable than the day I acquired them. After divorcing my stepfather, my mother took a job as a secretary at NASA. We lived just a few blocks away from her office at Moffet Field, in Mountain View, California. One advantage of her job is that she sometimes brought home discarded 8 x 10 transparencies of airplane schematics. Another advantage is that less than half a mile in the other direction was a 7-11. That was where I bought my comics. Things didn't go well for my mom at her job, and she lost it. One day I asked her for twenty cents to buy a comic at the 7-11. She threw all the change in her purse at me, "what do you think, I'm made of money? I don't have anything! Go ahead, take it, take it all!" I didn't know what to do, but decided I might as well collect the coins and go to the 7-11, as planned. She'd thrown seventy-five cents on the floor. It was enough for a Captain America 161, Fantastic Four 134, and a Captain Marvel 26, the first cover appearance of Thanos. I felt guilty about spending the money, so when I got back, I stayed outside of our apartment on the lawn and read the comics there. My mom had some friends who wanted to adopt my sister and I. She strung them along so that they would pay her bills while she "made up her mind." We moved to a new place nearby, where I found a pile of horror magazines and a few Conan comic books in a dumpster outside our apartment building. Our new friends didn't approve of comics because they were Christians, but in the wooing stage they were in, I managed to get around five comics a month out of the deal. They'd give me a dollar to buy some candy at the nearby 7-11, and I'd go there and buy four comics and one licorice whip. They'd see me eating the licorice and didn't notice the comics tucked under my shirt. They did, however, pay to send my sister and I to a fancy school in San Jose, Harker/Academy, still famous as one of the best prep schools in the state. It was a little odd going to Harker, because my mom couldn't afford to buy clothes for my sister and I, but the tuition was paid for. The school gym teacher gave me some shoes and other clothes from the lost and found. It was here that I bought Avengers #93 and 94, still two of my favorite comics. I even had a dream about the first page of #94. The next day I told all my friends about it. In the dream, I'd mixed a bit of the Captain Marvel #26 story with the Avengers #94 story, and the whole thing was vivid and real in the most amazing way. My stepfather decided he liked my mom better as a girlfriend than as a wife, so he started coming around a lot. One thing that was great about his visits is that he'd take me to the 7-11 near our new apartment (a third apartment after NASA), and he'd buy me five comics at a time. This is how I got my copy of Marvel Premiere #9. It featured Doctor Strange, who immediately became my favorite character. In the story, The Ancient One is killed by Shuma Gorath. I think I read that comic more than any other. We moved a a total of six times between 1973-1975. In 1975, my grandfather died and left my mom $6,000. That was about a year's salary to my mom. For the first time in our lives, my sister and I got new clothes. We moved into a shabby motel room in Saratoga, California, where my mom decided to start a business sewing quilts. I just kept buying comics. To do it, I earned money by doing odd jobs for people, and started trading silver coins which at that time could still be found in circulation. There wasn't much else I could do for comics, since I wasn't even ten years old yet. It was while we were at this motel that I got my copy of Hulk #168, the first appearance of the Harpy. A friend had once asked me how many comics I had, because it seemed like a lot. "Eight hundred," I answered. He didn't believe me. We went up to my room and counted them. I had sixty. By the time we lived in Saratoga, coincidentally about the same time Steven Spielberg was going to school right behind our motel room, I had about 200 comics. The collection was growing nicely. Unfortunately, my mom's business didn't take off. She sold her quilts, but never seemed to factor in costs and a reasonable profit when she set prices for them. The inheritance disappeared in nine months, and we moved again. By 1977, I had lived 20 addresses and had experienced a brief bout of homelessness. I didn't think of it that way, because when you live in your car, the car is your "home." My comics were in the trunk, I had a grocery bag for my clothes, and we could always find a Red Barn or Jack in the Box for food, even if we couldn't always eat as much as we wanted. Then, everything changed. My mom met a wealthy man who proposed to her. She accepted. I got a bonanza of brand new comics. By then, I had Hulk 180 and 181, Werewolf by Night 32, Giant-Size X-Men 1, X-Men 95 (I missed #94), Spider-Man 121, 122, and 129, Tomb of Dracula 10, and many other Bronze age classics. The problem with my mom's fiancee is that I think he was sort of deranged. My first collection of comics disappeared in November of 1977. The night before, my mother and sister and I had stayed in a cheap motel in El Segundo, California. We were there because my mother's fiancee (currently a Hall of Fame inventor and professor emeritus at a large California university) had tried to strangle her the night before. We returned to our house with a police escort. We were told to collect some clothes and then leave. I wanted to grab my comics also, but the police said we could only take what we could carry, and had only five minutes to find what we wanted. They didn't want to be there. My mom insisted that in the time we had, I collect my clothes that cost dollars, not my comics, which were worth pennies. On my way in, the ex-fiancee gave me a kick that lifted me off the floor. The police didn't notice. I never saw those comics again. For the next six months, we were homeless again, bouncing around from friend to friend, sleeping on couches and floors. Once, we slept in the guest bedroom of the house owned by a Denny's restaraunt manager. My mom had fainted from hunger while eating and he didn't know what to do with us, so he brought us home to his wife, who gave us some food. All I could think about was getting my comics back from the ex-fiancee. Eventually, he was forced to return our things, but he had trashed everything in the most ingenious ways possible. If I wanted a comic collection, I had to start over. That was my first collection. My mom settled into a new job in Cupertino. By then, I had decided that my comic collection would be my life's work. I discovered the Overstreet Price Guide at a nearby book store. It was the 1977 issue, with a Carl Barks painting of Porky Pig on the cover. That was when I discovered that the condition my comics were in made a difference to their value. I resolved to trade my way up to the best collection I could possibly manage. Over the next two years, I acquired about 3,000 comics. They filled my little bedroom, stored in boxes taken from dumpsters behind liquour stores. This was when I finally completed my run of Avengers, and came very close with Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Iron Man, and other key titles of the time. I also had a near complete set of Carl Barks duck books, and many early DCs, dated as early as 1940. Then, I was forced to sell my collection so I could give the money to my mother to pay for a move to Las Vegas. It's been a long time since I lost both collections, but I am determined to get them back somehow. I decided to start with the "First" collection because it was smaller and most of the comics are less expensive than the second collection. So far, I've re-acquired about half of it. I started with the Marvels, because the prices were going up faster than the DCs, so I decided to get them while I could. The problem was trying to figure out which comics were first or second collection. The reason is that after buying the first comics, I went back and filled in many or all of the gaps between issues. How to differentiate? The condition is what gave them away. I didn't pay attention to condition until after the fiancee made off with the first collection, and I still remember what those comics looked like. The spine rolls, creases, writing on the covers, and missing interior parts were all I needed to identify most of the comics from that group. With the exception of a half dozen issues that are well outside my budget, even in low grade, I have managed to reacquire about half of the group. The difficulty was in remembering the covers more than anything else. Once I'd pinpointed the issue in my mind, they usually proved easy to find on eBay. It is great to have these comics back in my house, more of a pleasure than makes sense, given waht they are and what they remind me of. And yet, they also remind me of good times hopping on my pogo stick all the way to the 7-11, even after the rubber guard fell off the end and punched holes in the sidewalk as I went. It reminds me of hours scouring old comics in used bookstores, reading under a tree in the local park, and all sorts of ways a comic can be enjoyed, like when I actually used the Sea Monkeys coupon, and the "Giant 6 foot tall ghost" coupon, the joy buzzer, and other things that no real collector would ever do with their comics. Nowadays, I'm careful about the condition of my comics, but I enjoy the memory of at one time using the comics exactly the way they were intended to be used: as disposable entertainment. It makes me wonder about paintings and other artifacts found in museums. I once bought a painting for $40,000 in New York and had it on my wall at home for years before selling it at a loss via auction. Living with the painting was a totally different experience from seeing it in a museum. How many other readers remember their first collections? What was it like to buy them, what did you buy, and how did you treat your first comics? Attached are some of the comics from my first collection, along with notes on where they were purchased. Edited January 6 by paqart Corrected grammar comic_memories, mrwoogieman, PopKulture and 12 others 12 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post Get Marwood & I Posted January 6 Popular Post Share Posted January 6 On 1/6/2024 at 5:56 AM, paqart said: It is great to have these comics back in my house, more of a pleasure than makes sense, given what they are and what they remind me of. And yet, they also remind me of good times hopping on my pogo stick all the way to the 7-11, even after the rubber guard fell off the end and punched holes in the sidewalk as I went. It reminds me of hours scouring old comics in used bookstores, reading under a tree in the local park, and all sorts of ways a comic can be enjoyed, like when I actually used the Sea Monkeys coupon, and the "Giant 6 foot tall ghost" coupon, the joy buzzer, and other things that no real collector would ever do with their comics. Lovely post, Paq. It doesn't have to make sense really, does it. Comics make us feel good. They made me feel good when I was ten, buying the Spider-Man Comics Weekly UK reprints for a few pennies second hand, they made me feel good when I was thirty, paying thousands to put an Amazing Spider-Man run together, and they make me feel good today, paying a few pounds for old pence Charltons. The look, the smell, the feel, the warm glowing reminder of simpler times passed. Opening parcels, ordering, bagging, recording, filing. Rooting around in old shops and fairs. Wants lists, new discoveries, variants. Everything about them brings me peace. My gravestone may as well be a comic box. People aside, and music, they're the most important things I've ever had. I couldn't be without them, in some shape or form. So I 100% understand why you wrote this post mrwoogieman, comic_memories, ADAMANTIUM and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post LowGradeBronze Posted January 6 Popular Post Share Posted January 6 Thanks for sharing. Your tale illustrates how the story of our lives is often inextricably linked to items that give us pleasure. How it feels when they are taken from us and what we do when compelled to replace them. In your case, more than once. Many would be defeated yet I sense no negative sentiment in your account of what was, essentially, an unsettled youth. I have many of the books you show and they come from both my first and second collections. That makes your story resonate with me all the more. Spider-Variant, comic_memories, paqart and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...