My Life With Comic Books: Part # 31

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 31

I had loaded my car with the huge collection of comic books from the 1950’s and 1960’s that I had just bought when a man who was helping to clean out the deceased collector’s apartment pulled a large trash bag out of a closet. This bag was filled with comic books from the 1940’s! Included were Superman #2-40, Wonder Woman #1, All Star Comics #1-4, Superboy #1, World’s Fair 1939-1940, Batman #1-30, and hundreds more! I spent another couple of hours calculating the value of these comic books and made an offer that was much more than the price I had made on the rest of the huge collection. The mother accepted my offer.

My cousin, Steven, helped me bring the collection to my house in Bolton and we spent some time examining the vintage comic books. There was only one copy of each of the comic books from the 1940’s in this collection, but the collection contained as many as twenty copies each of many of the important comics from the 1950’s and 1960’s including Justice League Of America #1-25, Flash #123, The Atom #1-15, Hawkman #1-15, Fantastic Four #1-50, Spider-Man #1-100, X-Men #1-66, Daredevil #1-20 and many more. These ranged from fair condition to near mint condition. This would fill in many “holes” in my store inventory and it would help to establish my store as one of the most complete comic collector’s stores in New England. The only problem was that it would take me months to get this collection ready to sell if I didn’t get some extra help. Each comic book was inside of two protective plastic bags that were taped shut. The tape had deteriorated over the many years that the comics were stored and it was sticking to other plastic bags making it difficult to separate. I knew I would need to find some people to help me who would be very careful handling these valuable comic books. I invited two of my customers, Paul Dinsdale and Paul Silver, over to my house to help me “process” these comic books. As part of their reward for helping me, I gave them the first pick of the comic books that they wanted for their own collection. With their help, (and lots of help from my wife, Mal) I had the comics ready to sell in my store within a few weeks.

In the meantime, lots of things were happening in my personal life. Mal had found a school for our son, Adam. We signed him up for “Power Prep Preschool”. Adam was only four years old but he was already reading simple books. He seemed to be a very bright kid and his vocabulary seemed quite advanced. We knew he’d do great in school.

We had been attempting to have another child for the past year or so and we were surprised that it was taking so long to conceive. When we had decided to have our first child it seemed so easy and Mal was pregnant within a few weeks. Now that it was taking so long, we realized that we weren’t in complete control of everything. We were thrilled when Mal learned that she was expecting our second child.

Next chapter: We learn to live debt-free!