Classic Rant #115 (October 21, 2009): My Comic Book Collection

As a kid growing up in the Rochdale Village co-op development in South Jamaica, Queens in the 1960s and early 1970s, only two things mattered to me: sports and my comic book collection.

Today, as an adult, many things matter to me, but one thing that doesn’t matter that much to me anymore is my comic book collection.

I still have the collection, some 2,000 comics mainly from the 1960s, but also from the 1950s and the 1970s. Most of them are DC comics, although I have plenty of Marvels, and also such labels as Dell, Charlton and Gold Key.

The comics have been sitting in a closet in my parents’ house for nearly 40 years. I have tried to sell them as a lot, with mixed success. I did sell about 50 of them about six months ago, but that has been it.

I tried to interest my kids in this collection, but today’s kids aren’t into comic books. Comic books today are pricier than when I was a kid, when they were a dime, then 12 cents, then 20 cents, and annuals were 25 cents. The people who are reading comic books today are generally older, and they are still highly collectible, especially those from the World War II era and the early Marvels from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

I would still like to sell the comics as a lot, which means you get both the good and the bad. You will get lots of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Daredevil, but you will also gets some Archies.

If anyone has any interest in this collection as a single lot, let me know. I would like to sell the collection, but I won’t take pennies for it. I want something substantial, maybe averaging out to at least two or three dollars a comic book.

Yes, these are tangible items from my childhood, probably the last vestige of things from my youth, mainly ages 7 to 14, probably the best times of my young life.

But they are sitting there, collecting dust, while they could be enjoyed by somebody else.

Yes, I am looking for a good home for these comic books. And if I don’t find one, they can sit in that closet and grow old as I grow old.

Maybe my future grandchildren, if I have any, would be interested …