A question for you all

[STARBOY]

Another reason we got rid of UK comics was the fact there were so many of them printed every week/month, and the fact the cheap newsprint type paper attracted damp (the 60s/70s we didn't all have fancy central heating etc) if not properly stored, which was the case in 99% of cases. And Comics were seen (in my house at least) as the "kids newspaper" and a throw away tool to help you learn to read, enjoy and keep us occupied (ie quiet) for an hour.

[RuthB]

Thanks everyone for your responses!
I too, live in a library instead of a flat...

[grumpy old man]

The only reason that my collection of seventies Victors survived my mums periodic culling was that I hid them, by removing the bottom drawer from a dressing table and stashing them in the four inch gap underneath and then replacing the draw.

[Lew Stringer]

Thanks everyone for your responses!
I too, live in a library instead of a flat...

Sounds good to me. Far better than how some people live, with their insistence that every scrap of paper is thrown away and the house looks like a photo in an Ikea catalogue.

[RuthB]

Yeah, I hate going into a house and seeing a peeeeerfect Sitting room, all state of the art... and not a sincle book in sight!
Well, when I have my own house I will probably not have many books in display on the sitting rooom, but that is because I plan to have a room all with only shelfs and books! then when I ran out of space, will stack more in the sitting room.

[steelclaw]

I might be moving soon, any idea how to move about 400 annuals and 2,000 comics and 5,000 records, I'm dreading it.

[RuthB]

In a truck? XDDDDD

[big bad bri]

i remember every christmas my mum used to make me & my brother throw away most of our comics to make room for the new annuals and toys we would expect to be getting,it used to kill me even back then at the thought of getting rid of them.I was never into the likes of victor ,hotspur back then the only dc thomsons i would buy was beezer,topper, dandy, beano and even then it was what i could manage to grab at the local jumble sale i was big into ipc titles and would share the buying with my brother who would buy maybe 2 or 3 per week and i would get anout 6 the likes of whooppee ,buster school fun,eagle but then i stopped all but eagle when 1 day i was at a friends house when i saw his huge collection of american marvel comics like amazing spiderman & xmen i had to have them and the first month i started buying them was when all the heroes was snatched away to take part in the secret wars i was gutted as i did not know there was a few specialist comic shops in london and thought i would never get to read secret wars until one day i was on the 279 bus and thought i saw a few in a shop window and just jumped off the bus nearly breaking my leg and getting hit by a car and that was when i saw eternal comics for the 1st time this was to be my after school hang out every day for years afterwards i even got quite a few of my mates into american comics then.
these years i was obsessed with american comics and took three part time jobs just to pay for them and it wasnt until maybe 6 years ago i started thinking of british comics again when i became disillusioned with the speculator market ,multiple covers ,high prices etc.the thing is now i have a lot more british stuff than i could ever dream of when i was a kid and stuff i missed then as well as sometimes i would go weeks or months without buying a paticular title like whizzer & chips etc while now i have nearly full run, and if i ever get a job or win the lottery i will buy thomsons stuff like sparky ,beezer etc

[Niblet]

The only reason that my collection of seventies Victors survived my mums periodic culling was that I hid them, by removing the bottom drawer from a dressing table and stashing them in the four inch gap underneath and then replacing the draw.

I used that kind of hiding place, too, when I was a teenager. But the publications I was hiding weren't comics

[RuthB]

Yep, I did hide pics of my boyfriends and my diary. But I guess my mum was smarter than I thought and copped on.

[bubbadog]

Sorry this is a little off-topic as it refers to US comics but nevertheless a tale worth telling......

When I was four years of age I received the first of what would become regular bundles of US comics courtesy of my sisters pen friend (thanks Jackie) at Xmas and Birthday time. If only I had known then just where those bundles would take me.

Together with a friend I began my obsession with US Marvel comics, searching them out at "spinners" wherever I could find them. We bought rail tickets every week, just to visit different railway stations as these were generally a goldmine for comics (or what passed for a goldmine back then).

Over time I built up a fabulous collection of (mostly) silver age classics, it amounted to about 1500 comics but there was little or no dross there, it was all pretty good stuff.

I moved out of the family home aged 18 as work had taken me to a different part of the country. I moved a number of times over the years but eventually settled and (following a chance purchase on a car boot sale) eventually resurrected my love of comics.

I travelled back to Oxford that very weekend to collect my stash of SA classics and give Mum back some much needed space. I think you may guess what is coming next.

Mum was delighted to see me but when I told her my reason was not just to say hello but also to pick up "a few bits", she informed me (quite proudly) that she had sold "all those old comics" and the man had been delighted to pay £40 for them all, she then added insult to injury by telling me how pleased the man had been by the condition that they had been kept in.

I never did tell her what those comics were worth but full runs of FF, ASM, Avengers, Defenders and many more do not come cheap.

I just chalked that one up to experience though I often wonder what the buyer must have thought, I guess he must have been gob-smacked!!.

If it were someone on here, please get in touch and can I have my comics back!!

[Lew Stringer]

I must have been very lucky because my Mum never threw out any of my comics as she knew how much they meant to me. The only times we threw out comics was after I'd chosen to sort through the ones I didn't want. She was always quite happy for me to have boxes of comics stacked up in the spare room.

As for girlfriends, no, they never really understood the collecting thing or liked comics very much, which doesn't help when you're a cartoonist. Probably one reason I'm single.

[RuthB]

Even thought my mum never threw away my comics or my dolls (some of them are worth a fortune in Spain at the moment), she did throw away a lot more of my stuff, like old toys that may not mean anything to yee in Uk, but meant a lot to me. I suppose it was really my fault for not claiming them any sooner.
For example, some time ago some friends and I were having a conversation about paper dolls and I remembered I had a shoe box at home with thousands of them. I called my mother in Spain and she informed me that such box, together with many other stuff had seen the bin many years back.
And got they are expensive in ebay!! Sometimes in some shops or flea markets I had seen them, and there are some forums were you can keep them in your pc and print them, but my poor box!! i will never get over it!! XDDD

[felneymike]

My dad chucked away a nice "toy", a 1981 Pegeout 305, it was brilliant. I wish i'd outbid the banger racer's £40 and kept it myself XD

I might be moving soon, any idea how to move about 400 annuals and 2,000 comics and 5,000 records, I'm dreading it.

I'm hoping to move to the other side of the world eventually to a place with hyper-humidity and no central heating. And take a load of 100+ year old story papers. I'll have to construct some kind of humidity-proof sealed cabinet with rubber seals around the doors that can be screwed shut, and cram them with silica gel!

The things we do for love. At least my possible children will be dragged up proper on a diet of Billy Bunter. Though it may give them a somewhat distorted impression of the old country. A place full of mischevious, amoral fat people who's plans to outright rob people spiral out of control and result in disaster.

Actually...

[RuthB]

Your children will probably not want to read thouse old-fashioned comics!
I do not have children but I got my love for comics thanks to my uncle. When I was a child, I used to spend the weekends at my granparents, and my uncle, being only 11 years older than me, was still living there. Since he was 13 he was going out with this girl (today, she's his wife) and she had like 5 sisters and 3-4 brothers, so he got all their comics, girly and boys. I used to read both, and boy there were loads of them every weekend!!! the girly ones I usually kept. Now he has a 16 year old boy who never read a comic, doesn't like them, neither he likes books.
Some of my friends always complein that they didn't pass their love of books and comics to their offspring...

Me?? I'd drown them in the bath!! LOL!