Trading Comics Past and Present

[14 of spades]

anyone have any stories to share?

 

as a budding collector in my early teens, i was fortunate to have 2 other friend collectors. we bought basically all our stuff off newsstands as we had none of the "big money" (e.g. 5 bucks would be considered a "very big" purchase) to buy any significant back-issues. nonetheless - we all managed to acquire some of the bigger keys of the 1980s, all in decent condition (not bad for 12 y.o.s with no budget).

 

anyhoos - i remember the "biggest" trade i made at the time with one of my friends (i was like 13). it seemed reasonable at the time - interesting to see how time changes things. anyhoos, I GAVE:

 

ASM 299, 300 (both "NM")

 

in exchange for

 

Punisher LS 1 (VF), Detective 576 (Yr 2 Part I Mcfarlane) VF, Spawn 1, 4 (both NM)

 

all the grades should have "asterisks" as they were the relative grades we would've given them at the time. i.e. the ASMs were basically "flawless" to us, while the VFs (we didn't call them that) basically had some minor wear.

 

this trade occurred at the turn of the nineties - recall how significant both Punisher and Mcfarlane were at the time (Punisher LS1 was arguably the most expensive comic of the 1980s at the time). and spawn had just come and was red-hot. at the time, i felt the black-costume thing was still a fad.

 

obviously - i wouldn't do that trade today - but i had 3 copies of ASM 299, and the ASM 300 was actually previously my friend's comic and was essentially, a "trade-back".

 

any childhood blockbuster trades to share??

[falderal-migration]

A somewhat similar story from I think around 89. A friend of mine was in need of money and so I bought his Nintendo with a stack of games off of him for $30. I had it for less than a week and he had sellers remorse. He begged me to sell it back to him but I didn't really want to... I thought I had a good deal. I proposed a different arrangement, since he wasn't really into comics anymore I traded him his Nintendo and games for his punisher limited series, the first 15 issues or so of the new regular series, his McFarlane ASMs (including 298-300) and some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles... basically all of the "hot" books he had at the time. He was perfectly happy with the deal and I still remember riding home on my bike steering with one hand and holding a big stack of books in the other.