Kids comic exchange

[1Cool]

When I grew up in Alaska - we had a book/comic exchange every spring which was one of the highlights of the year. The kids in the school brought in comics and you got to pick out of a huge pile the same number of comics you brought in. Not a new idea - but I wanted to see if anyone else's school did this and do you remember how cool it was to dig out the banged up batman comic you had never read. Condition didn't matter - it was all about the new stories and cool covers.

 

I also remember that I was exchanging a couple hundred comics by the time I reached the 5th-6th grade. Which meant that I usually got about 1/5th of the pile of comics and had to dash around and find issues that were not mine. Best of times!!

[Comicdey]

Fairbanks, Anchorage, Juneau? Which School...

 

In Fairbanks they had a pile of unsold comics out back behind the news agency that kids would climb. There were always 10-20 copies of every book back there. I didn't realize that I should have been taking them instead of climbing them. I had acquaintences that did take them, and they had huge stockpiles of duplicates back in the mid 70's....not sure if they still have them or not. I guess I should check.

 

I remember trading straight across with friends and as you said, condition didn't matter, but never a school event.

[1Cool]

I grew up in Fairbanks and that must have been the good old News Miner building. Next to the famous train station. Don't remember a pile of comics but nothing would surprise me in Alaska. Where are you at?

 

I think the exchange was sponsored at Denali Elementary but I think other grade schools got in on the fun.

[lizards2]

We had one teacher at our Jr High (Oakridge/Westfir, Oregon) that sponsored an ongoing one in his/her classroom - I don't remember the teacher, but it would have been around 1973-1975. Basically, there was a pile of comics sitting on the shelf, and you just brought some in for one-on-one trading. It wasn't all ratball comics either - I still have the Silver Surfer 18 that I picked up from there, in amazing NM- condition!

[Comicdey]

I grew up in Fairbanks and that must have been the good old News Miner building. Next to the famous train station. Don't remember a pile of comics but nothing would surprise me in Alaska. Where are you at?

 

I think the exchange was sponsored at Denali Elementary but I think other grade schools got in on the fun.

 

I went to Denali.......lived right behind Fairview Manor on 1046 Gilmore Street but moved to Anchorage in 1976.

 

It probably was the Daily News Miner? Or maybe one of the distributers that took returns in the day. I dont' remember them being cover torn though . Piles of comics probably seemed bigger in the days when I was under 10 years old, but I still remember climbing them.

[deathlok]

[thanos_oftitan]

In the 5th grade we had a program at school on Fridays we would have one hour of reading. You could bring anything you wanted to read.so a few of us brought comics. This started a comic exchange program.

 

One kid I got to know would bring old coverless Superboy's and Flash books. I remember trading my mid- 70's books for these old gems.

 

We got to be best friends and 30 years later still are.

 

The school I went to didn't have classrooms but instead had Pods, big open areas for each grade. There were no desks instead there were round tables that would seat 5 or 6 kids and the floors were all carpeted. So on Friday's we got to lay on the carpet and read comics. Life was good.

[Dr_Neff]