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A question to the old time collectors...

Started by osborn_fr,

34 posts in this topic

namisgr

namisgr

Posted
Posted
Was 12 cents a lot of money in the 60's ?

 

Not as much as $2.99 is today. Even gasoline has not inflated to the same degree as a new comic book.

 

My dad would sometimes give me a quarter to spend at the neighborhood news agency. It went either for 2 comic books or 5 packs of baseball cards (admittedly, more often for the latter - after all, look at all the cards I got, plus the sticks of gum!).

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Red Hook

Red Hook

Posted
Posted
Was 12 cents a lot of money in the 60's ?

 

No. At that time a hotdog was about 25 cents, slice of pizza about 15 cents.

 

 

Comics have gone up in price a lot faster, figuring you can still get a hot dog or Pizza for $1.50 and up now.

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bigfiver69

bigfiver69

Posted
Posted

For what it's worth, when I started collecting, comics were 35 cents, and I could always scrape enough change toghether (mind you, I was 8!) to buy five or six books a week.

 

I don't think my eight year old could pull together enough money to buy that many books a week now.

 

Sigh

 

Shep

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TiQuinn

TiQuinn

Posted
Posted

I kind of wish comics would go back to the old newsprint, and hopefully pass on a cheaper cover price as well. I remember the rise from $1 to $2 in cover price happened within a relatively short time span.

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buttock

buttock

Posted
Posted
Was 12 cents a lot of money in the 60's ?

 

Not as much as $2.99 is today. Even gasoline has not inflated to the same degree as a new comic book.

 

Gasoline has probably inflated less than any other staple in history. By relative inflation, gas should be 3-5X higher than it is now (at least in the US).

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joeypost

joeypost

Posted
Posted

I also started collecting when books were $0.20 a piece. For a buck I could get 2 slices of pizza and a soda or 5 comics. I only collected around 10 titles so it was $2 a month. Some weed pulling, errands or snow shoveling and I was good for awhile.

 

Seems I cannot walk out of my LCS without spending $30 or more every week now.

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Scrooge

Scrooge

Posted
Posted
Was 12 cents a lot of money in the 60's ?

 

If we put that in any inflation calculator, from 1962 to about 2005, those 12¢ become 75¢ and certainly that's easy to swing these days. Of course, this is a flawed measure but the best to compare "cheapness" in the past.

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otherworldcomics

otherworldcomics

Posted
Posted

Well, I don't know if I'm an old timer since I wasn't born until the 70's, but when I was a kid, comics were $0.35. When I was in high school there were between $0.60, 0.65, and $0.75. By college, when I really started collecting, books were at a $1.00. Now I felt that was the premium time for collectors of my age. 1 book = $1 seemed pretty reasonable. I mean, I could get 30-50 books a month without stretching the wallet that much.. Now, its just crazy.. I have really cut down further and further from collecting.. Now I'm down to 10-20 books a month.. Even with discounts its just too much for the average collector.. And for kids?? Forget it.. No way could they afford it.. 1 book equals a value meal at Mcdonalds.. Not a tough choice.

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burntboy

burntboy

Posted
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Nope - i could get a fountain soda and a comic for a quarter. Mrs Jade even let me read one comic at the counter and then exchange it for another on the way out the door......... cloud9.gif

 

and similar to what RedHook already said, i could buy 10 books for a buck. and the used book stores down in Newark sold 7 old comics for a quarter...... 893whatthe.gif of course the pickings were lean and required a couple of hours to pore through the stacks...........

 

it's kind of funny in that all we ever did was look for any sort of copy of a book we didn't already own, in order to bolster our collections. can't begin to imagine how many decent 1950/60's books slipped threough our hands......... 893whatthe.gif

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Mr. Zipper

Mr. Zipper

Posted
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I'm not an old time collector, however, I'd bet that a dime was a lot of money in the 30s and 40s. My father has told me that kids would each buy one book and then swap with a friend because then they could afford to read more that way.

 

By the mid-50s and 60s, 10 or 12 cents was probably less than what $3 is today. Also, bear in mind that books back then actually took more than 6 minutes to read. In the 50s, a kid probably got a whole summer afternoons worth of entertainment from that thick 10 cent Superman comic.

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rob_allan

rob_allan

Posted
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Heck, even more recently than the 60s, is when comics were like-- 60cents in the early 80s? I mean, I remember going to the store with my grandmother when I was 4 or 5 and her buying me comics. She figured since she bought Redbook I could get approx. that much worth of comics. So every month I got to read Amazing Spider-Man, Marvel Tales, Uncanny X-Men, and X-Men classic. Growing up now, I'd be allowed to read 1 comic/month. And at 4, as much as I loved them, I'd probably opt for a $3 GIJoe 2-pack instead. (I buy those now in fact.)

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