This thread will devoted to extremely unusual places where we have secured comics books.
For instance, in the 1960s, there were very few used comic book stores, and so, we relied upon garage sales, yard sales, and swapping and trading with friends, relatives, cousins and brothers to get those back issues.
But one of the most unusual places I ever found a Marvel comic was in the toy department!
As Christmas neared in the mid-1960s, I spotted a new box game that appeared on the shelves of the local Yankee store. The Captain America game.
It featured an image of Captain America and Bucky on the outside, and inside, were various images of heroes and villains on an extremely simple playing board.
But the thing that I found most amazing was the inclusion of a real life Marvel Comic book! It said so right on the cover of the box!
The box was not sealed, but you could flip it open and examine the contents. In every box on the shelf, there was one copy of Tales of Suspense #77, with Ultimo and Iron Man on the cover.
Now, think about this....why on earth would Marvel Comics ship or send a copy of a Tales of Suspense issue that did NOT feature Cap on the cover, but Iron Man? It really really puzzled me.
As it was, I never bought the game, nor did I get it for Xmas. But the memory of that non-sequitor has stuck with me all of these years.
Where else have you found unusual comics or unexpected comic treasures?
Replies
We talked about that bizarre game (and others) on the AMSA board at CBGxtra back in 2006, which might be of interest:
http://www.cbgxtra.com/columnists/craig-shutt-ask-mr-silver-age/cap...
Frankly, the most amazing place I've ever heard of finding a SA comic is in a vending machine. I never saw one back then, which is probably just as well, as it would've boggled my mind and I would have dreamed of the possibilities for ages and spent way too much money just to see what the next comic in line would be. But Dave Blanchard saw them and has talked about them before. Ironically, he now lives around where I grew up and I live around where he grew up, but by now all the vending machines are gone for both of us.
The strangest place I ever bought a comic was in a furniture store. I have no idea why, but in one aisle, possibly of office supplies or something, they had a stack of those old 3-for-a-dime comics that were illegal but highly prized by us kids.
I don't remember the details, but one of the comics was JLA #10. I'd already read JLA #11 and was surprised to find that it was essentially the second part of a two-part story. So the earliest JLA I ever bought was #10, but it wasn't the first one I bought. Needless to say, stumbling upon those comics while my parents shopped for furniture was such a shock I still remember it.
I also bought Adventure #336 (the second part of the Starfinger epic) in the gift shop at Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio, no doubt from whatever newsstand they have there. I again don't remember any of the details, but I still have the issue. I still have my copy of JLA #10, too. Some comics you don't give up easy.
Comics used to show up in all kinds of places back then, so there were probably some pretty strange places that sold them. Of course, there were a lot more soda shops, corner groceries, "five and dimes" and similar places that naturally stocked comics. On the flip side, it was a real shock whenever I found a drugstore that didn't sell them, but there were some.
-- MSA
How sad! I remember the details of comics I've read once, but can't recall that we've already discussed this in detail in another forum. I guess I must be getting old!
thanks, Mr. S.A.
Any other places you've found unusual issues?
I recall picking up a very used, highly worn copy of Tales to Astonish #74 at an old barbershop in my childhood home town near Flint, Michigan in the mid-60s. My father used to take me to this shop where they smoked cigars and talked shop, and setting on the magazine, comic rack was this wrinkled copy of the comic. I asked for it, and Brownie, the owner, eyed me suspiciously. "Why do you want it so badly" he quizzed me. "I don' t have it in my collection yet" I explained. "It's only a comic book" he stated, "and what will the rest of my customers read then?" I offered to go buy a replacement for him. He was giving me the business...a hard time for no particular reason, except I had made an unusual request for a worthless item.
I walked down to the 5 & Dime store where there were bagged Gold Key books that were two or three bagged for 15 cents... bought one that had the Man-From-Uncle gold key book in it, kept it, and took the other two books down to Brownie. He accepted them warily.
I took my precious brown covered Sub-mariner issue home with me.
Frankly, the most amazing place I've ever heard of finding a SA comic is in a vending machine. I never saw one back then, which is probably just as well, as it would've boggled my mind and I would have dreamed of the possibilities for ages and spent way too much money just to see what the next comic in line would be. But Dave Blanchard saw them and has talked about them before. Ironically, he now lives around where I grew up and I live around where he grew up, but by now all the vending machines are gone for both of us.
I grew up in Rockford, Illinois, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago, and yeah, I spent a lot of time and money playing Russian roulette with the comics vending machines, back in the mid 1960s to the early 1970s. The two I remember were in a May's Drug Store (a chain that was bought up years ago by Revco, which I think is now CVS) and an Alden's department store. The way it worked was deceptively simple: Just like any other vending machine, there were racks of comic books stacked vertically inside a machine (can't remember exactly how many, but I want to say it was maybe 12 different racks -- 3 across and 4 down, or maybe vice versa). Each rack contained maybe 8-10 different issues, none of them the same title. So if you saw, say, an Action Comics that you liked, you plugged in a dime in a slotted lever, and two pennies in another slot, pushed the lever into the machine, pulled it back out, and down slip your comic book. And having bought that comic, you could now see what comic book was immediately behind it.
So far, so good. But let's say you didn't like any of the comics on display (there were lots of Gold Keys, Archies and Harveys in the mix, besides DC and Marvel), but you could just barely make out part of a logo on a comic book underneath an issue of Little Dot you had no interest in. Was it worth 12 cents to gamble on a Little Dot on the chance that the "S" you saw stood for Superman and not, say, Scamp or Sad Sack? Thanks to the Direct Currents house ads, I usually had a reasonable knowledge of what some upcoming covers looked like, so occasionally I took the chance and doubled down, investing in comics I didn't want because I was pretty sure I wanted what was underneath. I don't know how I remember this so well, but I think my last experience with a vending machine (this would be in 1971, by which time the 12-cent slot had been reengineered to a 15-cent slot) was a successful one, where I blew 15 cents on Forever People # 2 so I could get the Superman # 234 underneath.
Later that summer of '71, when DC hiked the price to 25 cents, and Marvel bounced from 15 to 25 to 20 cents, the comics vending machines vanished, apparently never to be seen again.
I've never seen one of these, but was intrigued, and found a discussion here which includes a photo. The machine is empty, but you can see how it worked.
That sounds almost like a gambling addiction...hoping that the next one will pay off.
Were these all current issues, or were they mainly back issues that weren't available anywhere else?
I'll bet there's some of them there vending machines out in Nevada or near Las Vegas, and will be featured on "American Restorations" if we all write to the History Channel and ask Rick Dale to find and restore one for posterity!
I am reminded of my lucky haul that came my way in about 1983, when I was out of work.
I had been working in the cable TV industry, and discovering that it was all a marketing cycle, that each cable company had no real long term interest in maintaining a production studio in any city...they were just jumping through the hoops cause the current requirement was to provide a PEG trio of channels...Public Access, Educational Access and Governmental Access. And to aid in the franchize process, they hired a bunch of college or high school grads, put them to work producing video programs to apease the public/government and then laid off after a year or two.
Anyway, i was in the process of getting out of this racket in Detroit, when I stopped by my parnets house near Flint for a visit. My dad and I were working on replacing my muffler cheap (read that: No catalitic converter if possible) and money was tight. We went down to the local CVS pharmacy that had popped up across from the one-hour martinizing dry cleaner ("drop your pants here") and I stood around looking at the magazine/book shelves while my dad got a perscription filled.
Then I saw them. Comic books packed 3 for a dollar. Now this is when comics were about 60 cents to 75 cents a piece, and there wasn't much of interest for me...having seen most of these cross the comic book shop shelves in Mint. There were Star Wars, Transformers, GIJoes, and an occassional superhero Spider-man or other. But as I flipped through the dozen or so that were hanging on the rod, one pack caught my eye. I took it down and looked more carefully at the package.
It featured Wolverine #1 from the mini series with Frank Miller! I turned the pack over, and to my surprise, the back issue was Wolverine #2 from the same series. I couldn't believe it. Here was a highly prized collectable mini-series that the fans were selling for high dollar in the back ads of CBG, available for a buck. I begged a dollar off my dad, and assured him that this was an important purchase for an unemployed 25 year old to make...and then bought it.
When I took the clear baggie home and sliced it open carefully, I almost fell over. The third and final issue inside the bag, positioned so that you couldn't see the cover, was Wolverine #3..3/4rds of the mini-series which was SO HOT!
I'm not sure where or why I already had Wolverine #4 in my collection, probably because it fed into the X-men #172 or so which I do dearly loved.
So, now I had the entire miniseries for my own, for the investment of just a buck, and my father's scorn.
I got another job in the tv industry later that summer. (yes, I paid him back the buck when I got home)
Those packs were usually made up of overruns and such, and it's surprising they would have those available for a pack. Clearly, that combination was planned, unless they just happened to be the three comics that came up in the sorter, which seems unlikely.
I wonder if #4 was out there, too? Usually, #4 in a four-part miniseries gets ordered way less than #1, because retailers have to order before #1 appears, and nobody ever picks up a miniseries halfway through, but they often drop one.
You seem to have picked them up for their resale value, but what about the poor kid who bought it and then found he'd never get the end to the story? Of course, by that point, he probably wasn't going to get the end to any story in a three-pack of comics.
We also talked about current three-packs over on the CBG board a couple years ago. Amazingly enough, Family Dollar stores were still stocking them! I doubt those packs would give us the same excitement as those old ones did, though: http://www.cbgxtra.com/blogs/the-return-of-three-comics-in-a-bag
-- MSA
I never got much excitement from the old four-in-a-bag deals, which I never really saw until the mid-1970s, not exactly the greatest moment in comics history. Seems like every time I'd find one (always in what we used to call "dimestores" like Ben Franklin), the main comic of interest to me would be something like World's Finest, in its cheesy, post-100 Page Super-Spec days, while the others in the pack were generally something of even less interest to me, like a Black Magic reprint or a random Kamandi.
I actually got more bang for my buck (actually, more like 79 cents, which was a good deal when comics sold for a quarter each) with the Charlton four-packs, since that's how I got to see E-Man and Doomsday + 1. The deal with Charlton, though, was that the bags actually contained Modern Comics reprints, a knock-off all-reprint line, so we weren't getting original Charlton comics (not that Charltons ever had much value to begin with). Of course, I had to put up with also getting things like Yang, but that was okay, since I figured I was only paying 4 cents for one of the comics, and the full 25 cents for the other three.
I'd really like to see a show like "American Pickers" or more likely "American Restorations" on The History Channel go after one of these machines, restore it, and then offer it on the collector's market. Here's two email adresses for you to write to express your interest and support of this effort: Americanrestorationtv@gmail.com and Ricksestimates@gmail.com
Please write ESPECIALLY if you know of where one is, or own one, OR know of one that needs restoration and repair!
It would appear these may have been manurfactured in the St. Louis area and were deployed in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, although there were sightings in other states. ANY information would be helpful Thanks guys!
Mark Sullivan said:
Another unusual find:
I found Avengers #19, with the top of the masthead cut off, in a plastic baggie in the late 1960s in mid-Michigan.
In our small somewhat rural town near Flint, Michigan, we had several small italian family grocery shops that stocked fresh fruits, vegetables, and a little of everything. One had a spinner rack of new/current comic books.
The adjacent shop (run by a competing branch of the family) had a large cardboard box with the top and front removed, that stocked two side-by side stacks of used and coverless comics for a dime each.* (Many times, old collections from aging babyboomers would suddently show up here as the kids grew out of comics or family members sold them off.) The wire rack underneath supported all sorts of used paperback books, but I never looked seriously at them. It was in this box that I saw dozens of coverless Tower "Thunder Agent" books that I should have bought, but didn't. (sigh.)
The third such shop was on the other end of the business district, next to the new Post Office, and had a small rack of "men's magazines" (nude girls, big breasts, huge aerela, etc,) and next to it, sealed sacks of comic books, all with their titles or mastheads sliced off. (In those days, the distributer didn't need to return the book itself, just the sliced off cover title, which fit in a #10 envelope, for credit. the damaged comic books would go out the back door, repackaged and sealed into a liquidation sale to be marketed to the same people who bought produce in bulk and sold in italian family markets. It was a cheap way to find back issues, even though today, we realize it was illegal as hell.) THIS is where I found my Avengers #19 with the first appearance of the Swordsman! I still have it!
More than once, I was chastized by the owner of this shop for pawing through the men's magazines, and I had to explain to him that wasn't what I was looking at nor seaching for. I showed him the comics that he had stocked RIGHT NEXT TO THE SKIN MAGS. A couple of times he chased me out, anyway, and after a while, he came to accept that I was searching for comics. I only bought a handful of these bags, one at a time. I didn't know when or why ANY of these books might show up. To find the 19th issue of Avengers several YEARS after it had come out, was nothing short of amazing!)
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