As *spoon* as Arch comes back from vacation Hepcat will still be Hepcat.

8 8

I reckon Scout is trying to get at those small, flightless birds and the wrecked decorations are simply collateral damage.

I feel like i've known Ace and the rest of the gang for a long time now..sniff...my heart goes out to you all.

Jim

I reckon Scout is trying to get at those small, flightless birds and the wrecked decorations are simply collateral damage.

Actually I think we've gotten off easy with respect to Scout and the tree:

I feel like i've known Ace and the rest of the gang for a long time now...

Well then you might enjoy seeing these photos from previous Xmases again. First here's Phoebe(2005-2008) in the large bedroom:

And yes, I did hang the lighted garland in the bedroom again this year right after putting up the tree.

The Christmas tree:

Here's Deuce(2006?-2015) beside it:

As I mentioned the tree is a fiber optic one to which we add multiple strands of seven colour C6 LED lights and decorate it with predominantly silvery or white decorations including lots of little birds. Adding multitudes of silver icicles and swaths of angel hair turns the tree into a scene from a magical wintry wonderland where a riot of colour can be seen breaking through a haze of snow and ice. Unfortunately, The MAN has never been able to accurately capture the effect with the camera.

Here's Phoebe with her soul mate Blizzard while he still shone brightly:

So after we'd taken down the tree in January 2007, we put Blizzard in the upstairs closet. One day the following summer I opened the closet door and Phoebe discovered that her long lost friend was dwelling there! She happily lay down beneath him again.

Here's Styx(2000?-2015) with Blizzard:

Here's Cowboy with Blizzard:

Here's Blizzard out on the front porch with Deuce:

This TV show aired for the first time just over fifty years ago in December:

It's become a much beloved Xmas classic of course. I've been an ardent Dr. Seuss fan even before I bought my first comics though.

We had moved to within a block of the Fred Landon branch of the London Public Library when I was six years old in the fall of 1958. The branch became a regular haunt of mine and I visited several times a week. For one thing we didn't get a television until 1961 and even then we got only one channel so I watched very little anyway. I was most decidedly not a TV watching kid as a youngster. The library though was something else! It was filled with wonders! From the magazine section with Boy's Life, Model Airplane News, Life, Post and Look magazines to the childrens' book section, I spent hours there poring over the offerings before checking out a book that couldn't be quickly devoured on the spot.

And the first books I ever read may have been one of the Dr. Seuss offerings. I can still remember the shelf where they were placed. Here are some favourites:

One of the Uncle Remus Golden Books was another favourite of mine for on-site reading. It may have been this one:

The first book though that I actually checked out may very well have been The Adventures of Reddy Fox:

It was part of a wonderful series penned by American naturalist and author Thornton W. Burgess which were located on the bottom shelf right below the Dr. Seuss books. The Burgess books became a staple of mine at the checkout counter by early 1960.

Looking back I've often wondered why I didn't "discover" the DC superhero titles featuring the Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Atom and Hawkman before the early months of 1962. I know I was knocked out by The Adventures of the Fly 12 when I spotted it at the corner Lamont & Perkins drugstore early in 1961:

Therefore how much more would I have been impressed had I seen these covers on the newsstand at the time?

The answer must be that I didn't chance upon seeing any DC superhero titles featuring characters other than Superman or Batman until 1962. Lamont & Perkins didn't carry any comics other than Dell, Archie, Harvey and (uggghhh) Classics Illustrated. The closest two variety stores/groceries from which I bought bubble gum cards and various penny candies didn't stock comics. The best selection of comics in the immediate neighbourhood was at Ken's Variety three blocks away but I usually didn't have to travel that far to spend what little money I had. I usually didn't make it as far as the spinner rack at Ken's anyway since it was in the back corner of the store and other offerings at Ken's had already coaxed the nickels and pennies from my pockets well before I made it that far. All I can say is that my earliest recollection of these DC superhero titles dates back no further than early 1962.

Even then spotty distribution was a problem. Why in July of 1963 I must have scoured a whopping total of seven different newstands in London in my efforts to locate a copy of Green Lantern 23 and the first Flash Annual:

To my dismay I didn't succeed even though my search included a variety store newsstand in the High Park neighbourhood of far off Toronto where we were visiting relatives. I did pick up this overlooked gem that day though:

I might have had better luck in finding the elusive issues had it occurred to me to devote an afternoon to riding my bike around to the other eighteen or so variety stores and drug stores that stocked comics in my school district. Oh well. C'est la vie. I eventually acquired the Flash Annual through trade

The next comic that I couldn't find at any of the seven or eight regular outlets I frequented was Green Lantern 31 exactly a year later. I finally chanced upon it in a variety store well off my beaten path when I was in the company of fellow newspaper boys who had routes adjacent to, but therefore further removed from, my own.

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my ten favourite covers from the comics in my collection cover dated 1956:

Here are some shots of my 1967 Topps Terror Tales cards:

I love the contrast between the fronts with their sickly greenish tinge and the bright pink backs.

Terror Tales is actually a very tough set to complete.

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my top twelve DC covers from my collection cover dated 1966:

Here in alphabetical order are scans of my top twelve non-DC covers from my collection cover dated 1966:

Now I've mentioned before that the love of the comics and cards I had as a kid never completely left me and throughout my high school and college years I'd often look back and wish I still had my childhood collections. In fact I bought a bunch of packs of 1971 CFL, 1971-72 Hockey and 1972 CFL cards at the News Depot on Dundas Street in downtown London as a lark I actually felt a bit sheepish buying those packs and didn't actually pursue completing the sets. Of course after I finished school in a few years I was secure enough to no longer felt sheepish about collecting anything, kid stuff or not.

I may have read about the ground-breaking Green Lantern - Green Arrow series in Time magazine or some place. Nonetheless I was enchanted when I saw a copy of this paperback at Coles Books on Dundas Street and bought it immediately:

It collected the stories from these two issues:

It left me with mixed feelings though.

On the one hand I was very pleased to see Green Arrow in his new costume as the co-star in a comic book. As a kid I'd always wanted to see Green Arrow get his own title. Secondly Neal Adams' artwork was quite simply the best I'd ever seen in comics. Thirdly my buddies and I were delighted by what we considered the raw edginess of the language! It was just so much grittier than we remembered from the comics of the early to mid-sixties. In fact we took to belabourng the line "Bug off old dink 'fore you're hurt" ad nauseam in our everyday conversation!

On the other hand the "pop" political context left me annoyed/disgusted. Denny O'Neil was thirty years old at the time but his thinking had no more depth than that of my typical feeble minded classmates from back in high school. For example, the old fellow on the cover of the pocketbook is asking Green Lantern what he's done for the black skins. The response of the mighty emerald crusader, near omnipotent ring wielder for space sector 2814? "I can't." Huh?! This was the daring dialogue promised on the cover of the book? A more daring not to mention fitting response from Green Lantern would have been "Let's see, how many times have I saved your sorry butt from extermination at the hands of the interplanetary menace du jour? Or should I have somehow extended a special saving grace to you more darkly pigmented fellows?"

And in the meantime, the problem of the existence of injustice, evil, etc. in the world had already been dealt with in Green Lantern 61 by a deeper thinking Mike Friedrich:

I guess we have to conclude that Dennis O'Neil had neither read issue #61 nor had taken any Logic, Metaphysics or Ethics courses in university. But I had.

And no, the problem isn't that the Dennis O'Neil Green Lantern - Green Arrow series hasn't aged well. The problem was that O'Neil wrote the stories to further his own particular one-dimensional political agenda. The stories were filled with sappy dialogue and were out-and-out preachy.

Still that pocketbook ended up being an enormous influence on me. After reading it I went out and bought my first comic in almost five years:

I loved it! I swiftly bought several dozen more comics such as Batman 243 & 244 penned by the same Dennis O'Neil and illustrated by Neal Adams, Teen Titans 40, Adventure Comics 423 with Supergirl and the JLA, Phantom Stranger 20 & 21, World's Finest 213 with the Atom, New Gods 10, Forever People 10, Mister Miracle 10, Demon 1, Flash 218 and Diana Prince Wonder Woman 201 & 202.

Moreover I also journeyed to a used bookstore on Dundas Street in East London that was reputed to stock old comics. It was there that I met the proprietor, a high school age Marc Emery who was to eventually gain national renown as a libertarian oriented marijuana law crusader. (Look up the name.) While Marc had nothing of interest for me in inventory, one of his friends had brought in a small stack of Aquaman and Atom comics from the 1967-1970 period for showing off purposes. I was very much impressed and I distinctly remember him telling me to "Now go slowly ape!"

Sometime in the next few months I also attended a full fledged comic book convention at the University of Western Ontario with dealers from as far away as Buffalo and Rochester! Visions of early Silver Age Green Lantern, Justice League, Flash, Aquaman, Atom, Wonder Woman, Fly and Jaguar comics danced like sugar plums in my head. No such luck though. Just a bunch of late Silver Age Marvels and even more recent Bronze Age comics. Hmmmmppppffff. (That's what comic book collecting was like in the seventies though.) I still remember some insufficiently_thoughtful_person dealer from Buffalo who, rather than trying to determine what turned my crank and fanning that interest, immediately tried to sell me on his subscription service for new comics so I wouldn't miss a single issue(!). For whatever reason I still resent that. To my friends' subsequent amazement I did spend a whole $1 on an issue of Green Lantern - Green Arrow. Overall though I was so disappointed in the selection that the convention acted to put my budding enthusiasm for comic collecting into hibernation for five years or so.

So despite the shortcomings of the stories, those first two issues of Green Lantern - Green Arrow may very well have precipitated the building of the collection I now have today.

Howdy Doody was hugely popular with little kids during the Howdy Doody show's run on NBC from 27 December 1947 to 24 September 1960, but there seems to be a dearth of Howdy Doody fans here on CGC. In fact think I'm among the very few Howdy Doody fans on this forum.

Nonetheless, here's a good shot of my Milton Bradley Howdy Doody Adventure game

And here are scans of my five File copies of the Dell Howdy Doody title:

13

20

22

Forty issues in all were published with cover dates between 1950 and 1957. The first 38 issues ending 1956 were under the Howdy Doody title while the last two cover dated 1957 were under the Four Color imprint.

My father had taken out membership in the YMCA for me in 1964-65 and a couple of the comics I most highly treasure today remain strongly associated with the trips I took to the downtown YMCA on Saturday mornings as a kid. After getting off the bus, I would always stop off at the News Depot on Dundas Street which was right around the corner from the Y. On one of these occasions this comic immediately caught my eye:

Solomon Grundy, Doctor Fate, Hourman, a head shot of the original Green Lantern, all on the night of a bright orange full moon against a striking purple sky, I mean how could it not draw my gaze? I must have bought it on the spot because our favourite comics became the topic of discussion in that day's Boys' Club meeting at the Y! Otherwise one of the other boys would have had to bring in a comic or two to the meeting that day because the older(twenty year old!) who functioned as our discussion leader raised the subject of our favourite comics upon spotting those one of us had brought into the room.

For whatever reason I think it might even have been later that same day that I met another comic enthusiast of roughly my age at the News Depot. I agreed to visit him to trade comics. He turned out to be attending a rather upscale boarding school with semi-private rooms near the University of Western Ontario. He only had a few comics but among them was a copy of Brave and the Bold 43, one of those legendary early appearances of Hawkman that I'd read so much about in the Julius Schwartz letter columns!

To that point I'd still not managed to secure a single one of those Brave and the Bold issues featuring the Winged Wonder. I tried to stay calm and not tip him off to my almost palpably eager craving for that comic, and I succeeded! He agreed to take a fairly recent 1965(?) issue of one of the Superman or Batman family titles I typically used as trade bait.

What a prize! It was my best back issue score ever as a kid.

Those two comics still resonate strongly with me to this very day because of the memories I have of the day I acquired each as a kid. They're both just loaded with nostalgia for me.

I've been asked about the extent of my non-sport card collection on occasion. I therefore took the trouble of totalling up my non-sport binders last week so I can now provide at least a partial answer which should give some indication as to the size of my vintage card collection at which I've been pecking away since 1980. My vintage(pre-1990) non-sports cards are sorted by subject/topic and then housed in alphabetical order within red binders to differentiate them from my sports cards.

I have twenty 2 1/2" binders for vintage non-sport cards. Many of these topics require more than one of these large binders. Here are the topics:

Cars/Racing

Comics & Cartoons (2)

Finks & Weird-Ohs

Humour (2)

Monsters/Horror (2)

Rock & Movie Stars (2)

Science Fiction (2)

Secret Agents & Detectives

Superheroes - DC

Superheroes - Marvel & Other

Television/Film (2)

Wacky Packages

War & Military Stuff

Miscellaneous

I have four 2" binders:

Animals

Cowboys & Indians

Jack Davis

Transportation (including Aircraft)

Finally I have two 1 1/2" binders:

Bazooka

Red Rose Tea

Where categories overlap, I file the cards in the narrower more specifically defined category.

Jack Davis

Monsters/Horror

Science Fiction

Superheroes - DC

Superheroes - Marvel & Other

War & Military Stuff

I've been posting here for a few years now so I guess it's high time I told you other fellows a little about myself. I'm a baby boomer born in 1952 and raised in London, Ontario. There were a number of defining moments in my younger days that turned me into the monster related toy enthusiast I am today:

1. The first was perhaps the You'll Die Laughing card set that Topps issued in 1959. These featured artwork by the legendary Jack Davis and are perhaps my favourite card set of all time. My association with these at the time didn't go beyond admiring the older kids' cards as I didn't yet have the disposable income to buy cards priced at five cents a pack.

2. My mother used to haunt the Kresge, Woolworths, Zellers and Metropolitan stores in downtown London looking for bargains I suppose. As a youngster I was invariably in tow. I didn't mind of course as there was always the chance I could score a dish of ice cream at the restaurant counter these stores typically featured. And of course there was never a shortage of other items to occupy a young boy's interest, goldfish, little turtles, budgies and all those toys! It was on one of those trips to Kresge that I came face to face with a Great Garloo, which I immediately brought to my mother's attention. With a sticker price in the twenty dollar area, there was just no chance I'd be given one though.

3. It was some time in 1961(?) that my buddy and I took in a double bill featuring the "Curse of Frankenstein" and the "Horror of Dracula" at the Capitol Theatre in downtown London. My buddy was so frightened by the events on the screen that he actually closed his eyes during the graveyard scene in the Dracula movie. I was made of sterner stuff but these movies were like none I'd seen before and left a profound mark on my impressionable young mind.

4. I energetically collected the Spook Stories card set that Leaf issued in late 1961/early 1962.

5. Around that time in perhaps the summer of 1962 I also succeeded in getting my mother to buy me a Hasbro Marble Maze at Woolworths. It featured pitfalls such as the Haunted Mountains, Devil's Pass, and Man Eating Plants and was the best toy I'd ever gotten to that point.

6. On another trip to Kresge within a few months I came upon the Aurora monster models. Up to that point I'd just dabbled on the fringes of monster culture but those Aurora kits were so awesome that they sent me right off the deep end. Although I was most attracted to the Creature at first, it was the Mummy, Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein's Flivver I ended up building.

7. At some point I also became aware of the Revell line of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Fink model kits. Rat Fink and Angel Fink would be the two I'd build. I also bought a T-shirt Iron-On Transfer of Brother Rat Fink which I successfully applied to one of my shirts which my disgusted father promptly used as a rag in the garage. I never built any of the Hawk Weird-Ohs but a buddy down the street had an assembled Francis the Foul.

8. By selling fifteen newspapers on a Saturday morning in the spring of 1963, I earned a prize beyond my wildest dreams - that being a Standard Plastics monster wallet featuring Wolf Man and the Creature, albeit it was the one with the Mummy that seemed to be the most popular with the other fellows.

9. It was in September of 1963(?) that I took in the "King Kong versus Godzilla" movie at the Odeon Theatre in downtown London. I was left awestruck.

10. I then made the biggest score of my young life on a family trip to Detroit to visit relatives in the summer of 1964. I got my father to buy me a Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory! My two best buddies were more than eager to be my demented half-brained lab assistants and enthusiastically fetched tapwater for me while I mixed the concoctions.

11. Trick or treating on Halloween with my two best buddies in 1964 I was given one card in a generic wrapper. Opening it up we discovered the "Hairy Fiend" card from the Topps Mars Attacks set. We were awestruck since Mars Attacks cards had not been distributed in London and we had therefore never seen any. Without the wrapper, we failed to even figure out the name of the set.

12. A few months later I discovered Big Daddy Roth magazine on the newsstand and ended up getting all four issues. I dutifully did as the ad suggested and sent away to Roth Studios in California for a Rat Fink sweatshirt, which my father just as dutifully turned into yet another rag.

13. I'd also discovered the first issue of Creepy magazine on the newstand while checking to see if the new Green Lantern or Flash comic books had come in and was immediately taken by the Jack Davis artwork on the cover and the stories inside. I ended up becoming a big Warren Publications fan and remember haunting neighbourhood stores waiting for the first issue of Eerie to hit the newstands. Curiously though I never bought Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine because I thought it was for bigger kids!

The model kits I'd built as a kid had a lifelong influence on me. So did the comics and bubble gum cards I'd collected. Therefore despite the fact that my boyhood treasures all went by the wayside at some point in time, I never completely lost interest in these things. Throughout high school and university I always wished I still had my models, comics, cards and sundry toys. My first job after university was in 1977 and by 1979 I was back to collecting. Big time!

The comics and cards came first because of their availability in several shops here in Toronto. By 1981 or 1982 though I discovered that unbuilt Aurora monster and other kits could be bought. I've been collecting them ever since - the Aurora monster and other figure models, Hawk Weird-Ohs, Revell "Big Daddy" Roth Finks, AMT Star Trek vessels etc. I have well over 100 of these including most of the ones I want. For example, the only Roth kits I need are Surfite, Scuz-Fink, Boss Fink and Robbin' Hood Fink and the only Aurora monsters I need are the King Kongs, Godzillas and Mummy's Chariot. These are very tough to find. I have all the Hawk Weird-Ohs and Silly Surfers though and need only one Frantic kit.

I also collect unbuilt Aurora and Hawk plane and ship models from the sixties and some drag and stock car model kits from the seventies.

I have a very impressive collection of unbuilt slot car kits from the sixties, primarily Monogram and AMT. As you might imagine, these are particularly difficult to find. I have over forty Mint in Box slot cars.

I currently have seventeen Mint in Box board games from the sixties including Casper, Terrytoons Hide n' Seek, Outer Limits, Shindig, Howdy Doody Adventure, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Deputy, Mighty Crusaders, Johnny Ringo, Hasbro Dracula Mystery, Superman, Spider-Man and Lost in Space.

I also have a modest collection of other toys including eight Kenner Presto or Sparkle Paint Sets, three different Hasbro Marble Mazes, some Hamilton's Invader items, a couple of dozen Mint on Card Duncan Spin Tops and a Marx Three Keys to Treasure Bagatelle:

The "toy" I most covet though is a Mint in Box Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory chemistry set which I had as a kid.

I've also taken up collecting NM unused kids' lunch boxes with their thermoses. I now have 22 thermoses and nineteen lunch boxes. The Steve Canyon lunchbox and thermos is the oldest of these but others include Shari Lewis, Casper, Atom Ant & Secret Squirrel, Woody Woodpecker, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Yogi Bear.

I have a small collection of Lionel HO trains. Eventually I'd like to have a 1/29 scale garden railroad outside with Aristocraft and USA Trains equipment. I'll model a 1950s scene and mix 4-8-4 Northern steam engines with GP7 and GP9 diesels in my layout.

I haven't really gotten into Pez dispensers, Corgi or Matchbox cars, Marx Playsets, or Collegeville and Ben Cooper Halloween costumes - yet. Maybe in another ten years.

I collect comics from 1945 to 1980. My concentration is Silver Age DC such as Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Atom, Hawkman, Mystery in Space, Sea Devils, Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected, Teen Titans, Fox and the Crow etc. I'm just about solid in my main titles going back to 1962. For example, I have all the Justice Leagues going back to 1960 with the exception of issues 5, 6 and 47.

I also collect other titles such as the Fly, Jaguar, Black Cat, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Space Adventures, Gorgo, Herbie, Turok, Doctor Solar, Lone Ranger, Gold Key Phantom and many Atom Age Jungle and Adventure titles including Sheena, Jumbo, Space Western and Commander Battle & the Atomic Sub. I have a few Harveys such as Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Little Audrey and Hot Stuff and quite a few Dell Funny Animal comics.

I also have a very good collection of the car humour mags such as Drag Cartoons, Hot Rod Cartoons and CARtoons. I also collect the Warren horror mags such as Creepy and Eerie and the Skywalds. I have a collection of several dozen Mad magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well.

My collection of CFL cards and such from the fifties to 1972 is among the best in the world. I also have a very nice collection of hockey cards from 1957 to 1973. I also have hundreds of baseball cards although these I've not pursued aggressively. I have over thirty binders of sports cards, over three quarters of them from before 1973.

I also collect non-sport cards primarily from 1948 to 1972. These I find even more interesting than sport cards. Favourite sets in my collection include You'll Die Laughing, Funny Valentines, Mr. Foney's Foney Ads, Zorro, Robin Hood, Sports Cars, Civil War News, Casper, TV Westerns, Goofy Series Postcards, Wacky Plaks, Fight the Red Menace, Batman, Space/Target Moon, Crazy Cards, Round-Up, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Monkees and Spook Stories. I haven't yet found Mars Attacks and Battle sets in sufficiently high grade. These two sets would be excruciatingly expensive. All in all, I have over 35 binders of non-sport cards of which over 85% are pre-1980.

I've also accumulated the original wrappers for dozens of these sets. As you can imagine, the wrappers can be particularly tough to find. I've not been collecting the boxes to this point.

My collection of premium coins - Shirriff hockey, football, baseball, cars, warships, space etc. - from potato chips and jelly desserts is among the best in the world.

I also collect refillable soda pop bottles, 16 ounces and smaller, and 1/4 pint and 1/2 pint round painted label milk bottles from the 1920s to the 1950s. I specialize in Ontario dairies. I now have close to two hundred bottles plus several dozen Pepsi and other collectible milk glasses in a custom built kitchen pantry with glass doors to store and display the bottles.

I have a couple very nicely restored Beaver gumball machines from the sixties. As soon as I create the space in my kitchen, I intend to acquire one of the pop machines from the sixties where you pulled the bottle out toward you horizontally. I also really want one of the small metal Wishing Well thermometers which hung in many variety stores when I was a young boy.

I love music and am constantly adding to my record accumulation of over 500 LPs and 200 CDs. My favourite artists include the Rolling Stones, Doors, Animals, Who, Cream, Beatles, Jethro Tull, Kinks, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Spirit, Ten Years After, Yardbirds, Zombies, Troggs, Box Tops, ? & the Mysterians, Butterfield Blues Band, Jeff Beck Group, Buddy Guy, Slim Harpo, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Vanilla Fudge, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Junior Walker & the All Stars, David Bowie, Blondie, B-52's, T-Rex, Prince, Meatloaf, etc.

I have a small collection of Rolling Stones 45 sleeves and concert programs.

I play my music on a Thorens TD 240 turntable with a state of the art Ortofon 2M Black moving magnet cartridge which incorporates a Shibata line stylus, a Marantz CC4001 CD player, a Marantz PM7001 70 watt per channel amplifier and a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS8 speakers. I'm also getting a custom hardwood base with interlocking layers of sound deadening baltic birch built for a new old store stock Garrard GT-55 turntable I picked up on Ebay! It will anchor a second system in my bedroom which includes a pair of BIC Venturi 5312 speakers.

I have a small collection of silver coins These are primarily Canadian but I have some U.S. ones as well.

I also adore classic and muscle cars. I had a 1987 Buick Grand National but that was stolen in 1992 out of the parking lot of a banquet hall when I was attending a friend's wedding and then trashed. A project I've not been able to get around to doing due to financial limitations is restoring my candle apple red 340 powered 1973 Dodge Charger which needs an engine rebuild. I had Jesse at the Hemi Shop in London, Ontario install the engine back in 1981.

Overall though I'd characterize myself as a kid's stuff from the baby boom years collector.

Lots to comment on there!

But for now let me just say "what a great post".

Yeah, "The Man" has really laid it all out here.

Lots of parallels with me - except for the breadth and depth of the collection(s)

Comics, cards (sport and non-sport), toys, coins, stamps LPs and a few other things are hereabouts at my place.

I really like the Board Games. Great art both on the box and the playing surface. The beauty of those as collectibles is that they can be had for peanuts - when found.

Never had a great interest in milk bottles. Beer cans and soft drink bottles, on the other hand . . .

I really like the Board Games. Great art both on the box and the playing surface. The beauty of those as collectibles is that they can be had for peanuts - when found.

Board games are of course particularly hard to find the way I collect them - MIB new old stock, i.e. in unplayed condition. I'm unwilling to relax my condition standards because there would then be far too great a potential to be overwhelmed with far too many games to display or even store.

This Milton Bradley Casper board game was the first one I ever bought around 1990:

The game with which I'm perhaps most delighted is this Deputy one because I had one as a kid that I'd received as a birthday(?) present from friends of the family:

Anyone interested in board games might want to pick up these two books by Rick Polizzi:

While not as comprehensive as some other books on board games, I found them more interesting because of their focus on the games of the baby boomer era. Polizzi was also the publisher of a short lived magazine on board games also entitled Spin Again which only ran for five issues in the early nineties.

Here's a great picture of Rick Polizzi with his board game collection from his website:

Rick Polizzi evidently started collecting board games after stumbling upon one in a thrift shop in the late eighties that he'd had as a kid. By late 1990 his collection had grown to over 400 and at last count he had approximately 1500!

Have any of you California fellows met Rick at any of the toy shows in the Golden State? I've only spoken with him on the phone some fifteen years ago.

So now that we're back here's a more detailed account of the comic and magazine side of my collecting activities: 

The first comics I can remember reading were the Harvey Felix's Nephews Inky & Dinky. The first comics I can recall buying were the Dell Cicero's Cat 1 and 2 in the summer of 1959 - which I now have once again in pristine, near-mint condition! 

The first superhero comic I distinctly remember reading was the Archie Adventures of the Fly 12. I remember reading it at the local drugstore before they chased me out! The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in 1962 which a buddy on a farm outside of London, Ontario had. I still remember how it filled me with wonder at the time. A copy of Justice League of America 8 that I read at summer camp a couple of months later that same year clinched the deal. The first superhero comic I bought shortly thereafter was Justice League of America 14. 

These comics had a lifelong influence on me. But so did the bubble gum cards I collected and model kits I built as a kid. 

Despite the fact that my boyhood treasures all went by the wayside at some point in time, I never completely lost interest in these things. Throughout high school and university I always wished I still had my comics and cards.

My first job after university was in 1977 and by 1979 I was back to collecting. Big time.

I collect comics from 1945 to 1980. My concentration is Silver Age DC such as Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Atom, Hawkman, Mystery in Space, Sea Devils, Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected, Teen Titans, Fox & the Crow etc. I'm just about solid in my main titles going back to 1962. For example, I have all the early Justice Leagues going back to 1960 with the exception of issues 5, 6 and 47. 

I also collect other titles like Fly, Jaguar, Black Cat, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Space Adventures, Gorgo, Herbie, Turok, Doctor Solar, Lone Ranger, Gold Key Phantom and many Atom Age Jungle and Adventure titles including Sheena, Jumbo, Space Western and Commander Battle & the Atomic Sub. I have a few Harveys such as Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Little Audrey and Hot Stuff and quite a few Dell Funny Animal comics.

I also have a very good collection of the car humour mags such as Drag Cartoons, Hot Rod Cartoons and CARtoons. I also collect the Warren horror mags such as Creepy and Eerie and the Skywalds. I have a collection of several dozen Mad magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well.

Here are some pictures from a few years ago of my comic cabinet and the magazine cabinet beside it:























My comics are all in Mylites/Arklites backed by Thin X-Tenders/Halfbacks. 

I've not yet Mylited my magazine collection though. It's in the third, half the fourth and the fifth row of the cabinet to the right of my comic cabinet. The top row and the second row of this cabinet are presenting false fronts. I've just put up a few high nostalgia comics from 1963 for display purposes. Behind them is just miscellaneous junk. The other half of the fourth row consists of comics waiting to be Mylited. I've run out of Halfbacks and need to put in an order for several hundred comic ones and probably a thousand magazine ones. Hopefully that will be sufficient for at least another ten years.