Scenes from an Amatuer Comic Collector's Life

Walking along Sixth Avenue Sat., I passed a guy selling comics. He had a suitcase open with mostly recent titles. I'm really into Silver Age (mid-1950s-early 70s) books. Bronze Age followed into the 1980s and I like some of those too. We are now in the Copper Age of Comics, I think. The seller, a tall African-American in his 30s, did have a couple I could see buying if they were cheap enough. There was a Mighty Thor from the early-mid 60s (original price 12 cents). The cover by Jack Kirby (The King of Comics and an artist I collect) displayed the blonde and buff thunder god in battle with Magneto, now known through his portrayal by Sir Ian McKellen in the X-Men films, but here the Malevolent Master of Magnetism was cross-breeding on another Marvel comic. I asked the guy how much he wanted for said mag.

"It's worth $300. I could get about $1oo on ebay." Uh-oh, I thought. The most I was willing to spend on these things was $5, $10 tops. "I'll let you have it for $30," he said. I felt like saying if you can get that much on ebay, why don't you sell it there?

He read my mind and answered: "I would hold out for more, but I need the cash now. I lost my job, so I'm selling them this way." I'm not an expert, but I didn't think it was worth $300 or even $100. I would have graded it in good condition, not mint. Mint means it's in exactly the same state as when it was first printed. There were slight tears on the edges and the colors were marginally faded. I passed, thanked him and walked on. As I headed for the subway with my non-eccentric purchases from Bed Bath and Beyond (a plastic Lazy Susan) and Macy's (two pairs of pants and two pairs of shorts), I wandered what would drive a person to sell their comics on the street and not online? I thought about how much money he needed and how much he would make that day.

I started thinking about my own collecting. I must have thousands of comics. What if I had to sell them. Could I do it? I just started collecting again about four or five years ago. As a kid, I would spend all my allowance money on them. Of course, I treated them like shit--I cut out pictures I liked, wrote all over them, didn't keep them in plastic bags. They are all gone now except for a handful of mostly coverless readers--collector's jargon for issues so beat up they're only good for reading. That kernel of my original collection forms the core of the new one. I've recreated my childhood collection with them. Every Wed., the day new comics come out, I go to Forbidden Planet or Midtown Comics and look for new collections of old reprints--Marvel puts out Essentials and DC has its Showcase Presents. Few of the new ones interest me--only those by Mike Allred who does Madman who has a kind of retro cool.

Maybe it's immature, but I see a lot of guys my guy (40s-50s) in the comic book stores every Wed. It makes me feel safe to escape into this fantasy world of super-heroes. Maybe the ones I have are worth thousands (the ones I've bought recently, not the ones I treated like shit as a kid), maybe they're worth nothing. But they mean something to me and it would be hard to part with them.