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PETE HARRIS
CONFESSIONS OF A COLLECTOR, Chapter XXXVIII: It would be difficult to pinpoint the exact moment that old comic books were transformed from yesterday's trash into today's treasures, The resurgence of interest in comic books of the 1930s and 40s can, of course, be measured against such yardsticks as
Jules Feiffer's 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, which was excerpted that same year in Playboy. The first time that Golden Age comic book collecting surfaced was in the Aug. 21, 1965, issue of New Yorker magazine which ran a piece on the second annual ComiCon of the Academy of Comic Book Fans And Collectors which had been established in '63, (At that Con, incidentally, according to the New Yorker article, Batman #1 was auctioned off for $37 and Action #1 for $40.) But, it's safe to assime that Golden Age comic book inflation set in much earlier than that,
Before that magical turning point, whenever it was, old comic books were merely paper survivors that cluttered up basements and attics and garages, Old comic books were routine items that littered second-hand stores where they might fetch a nickel or three cents, depending on whether they had covers, The world's first comic book generation suddenly had other things on its collective mind, and it firmly believed it had outgrown such childish pleasures. And so, a king's ransom in comic book futures was slowly dissipated... until that day when somebody actually sold an old comic book for more than its cover price. Whenever that day was, though, I believe I can top it,
As most of you may or may not know, American comic books were not available in Canada during World War II because of a Canadian government embargo, The result of that vacuum was Canada's first and only indigenous comic book industry, a large part of which was Bell Features and Publishing Co, in Toronto whose titles were Dime, Active, Wow, Funny Comics with Dizzy Don, Commando, Triumph and Joke.In early 1945, there appeared in Bell's publications an ad in which Bell offered a premium price for specific back issues, The ad didn't explain why they wanted these particular issues and I have never been able to find out why. What Bell was offering was 50 cents a copy, FIFTY CENTS, five times the cover price, for issues 1, 2, 9 and 13 of Active, 1, 2, 3,4,5,and 10 of Dime, 6 and 7 of Joke, 4 of Funny, and 1,2, 3,4, 5 and 6 of Triumph. And they wanted anywhere from four to 20 copies of each.
Being at the age when money was always in short supply, I leaped at the opportunity, Ransacking the giant corn flakes carton containing my collection, I came up with all but one of the issues Bell wanted. I packaged them, sent them off and, sure enough, a cheque for $9 arrived in the mail. In one fell swoop I had recouped most of what I had spent on Bell's product at a dime a throw. Of course, I had no way of knowing (nor had anyone else) that years later I would pay several dollars an issue to regain only part of the collection I once had, But what the hell, if we had known then what we know now, the whole collecting thing that engulfs us today would never have happened, And the world would be just a little bit duller.