Welcome to THE COLLECTION

Most of my friends know I've been an avid collector of all kinds of comic-, art-, and music-related ephemera and non-paper collectibles; it's something I've been doing since I was old enough to make the decision to keep something I owned, rather than have someone else (read: parents) make that choice. I've heard lots of horror stories over the years of parents throwing away their kids’ toys and comics and it saddens me. From my own family I can hear the dissapointment in my Uncle Jack's voice when he recalls how after going to serve in the Armed Forces in the late 50's, he came home to find all his comics gone, thrown away by his mother, my late Nana Rose. We're talking Golden Age Supermans, Action Comics, along with much more DC, probably Timely, and lots of EC Horror books. In todays market, this represents thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of comic books. Of course, the only reason those same comics are worth as much as they are today is precisly because my grandmother chose to discard a few boxes of seemingly worthless “joke books” taking up valuable floor and closet space in a small Brooklyn apartment. She can hardly be faulted for failing to forsee the future worth of those cheaply printed comics. Still, there were those few individuals, even at that relatively early time, who did realize that some of the toys and comics of their day might be worth money down the line. Though—until I was ten or so—I didn't treat the comics I read as a kid with much more respect than most kids would, I still managed to hold onto most of them, even the Ghost Rider #15, featuring the villain with a big eye for a helmet, the Uncanny Orb, with multiple puncture holes on the cover. When I was nine, one of my father's theater students gave me a box of his old late 60's comics, including some issues of Spider-Man. Most of the comics were pretty beat up (the Spideys in particular!) but my mom had heard about a comic price guide, so she went to the library looking for it. It had been checked out, along with the two or three other remaining copies of the guide in local libraries. Finally, she was able to track down a copy and discovered that these comics, in better condition, could be worth a lot of money. From there, it was a natural progression to build on my comics interest and actually start collecting. That led to her writing, a few years later, one of the very first books on collecting comics, titled Collecting Comic Books (what else?). You can see the cover, drawn by one of my favorite artists of the time, Michael Golden, well known for his work on The Micronauts (and you can bet I had a lot of Micronauts toys!). You can see the cover here: Collecting Comic Books This blog will showcase some of the items that I've amassed over the years, including scans of comic covers, original art, toy pics, and various other photos (vintage and new) and scans of interesting things in the collection. Hope you like what you see!