Any one else trade comics when you were young?

[jfglade]

 Trading comic books was a fairly common practice among elementary school students, male and female, back in the fifties and I'm just curious to see if any of the other regulars remember going through the process. Comics generally had a price tag of a dime, but I can remember some terrific arguements about the relative value of any of the summer or Christmas annuals that sold for a quarter; most considered them worth two comics in exchange but some insisted they should be worth three (the same people seemed to forget that idea when they wanted to trade for an annual rather than use one for trade). The worst scenario was trading comics with girls, because sometimes you had to settle for issues of Wonder Woman or Little Lulu to avoid getting stuck with romance books; it was also hard to get girls to take genre comics like war, science-fiction, and cowboys. Brand new comic books were the most coveted, although the newness wore off quickly.

 I was a rural kid, so it wasn't unusual to have visitors bring a cardboard box filled with newspapers, paperback books, magazines, and comics if they had kids themselves; the downside of that was if you were visiting a family that had kids of their own you could be expected to pony up a few comic books which was a good way to get rid of things like Wonder Woman and books that had more exciting covers than they did contents.

 I stopped trading comics when 'The Brave and the Bold' #28 appeared in a local grocery store. After the Justice League debuted, I became a comic book collector rather than someone who just read comics.

[Yoc]

Growing up in the 80s in Canada I mostly recall trading bubble gum cards Jon.
But when I'd visit my cousins up north I'd always bring my comics for the ride (Scrooge, DD, Archie) and trade books.  They'd mostly have Archie Digests that I never saw so I was happy for the summer catching up.  I never did grow to like Lil Jinx though.

[Roygbiv666]

Never. I bought it, I kept it.  Plus I didn't really know too many comic nerds in my small town.

[OtherEric]

Not often.  But it wasn't entirely unknown, either.  For the life of me I can't remember what I traded FOR it.  But I've still got a Looney Tunes #163 I traded for in the 80's; it was the first 10c cover comic I ever owned.  What an utter sense of wonder having a 10c comic was!  (Of course, now I've got hundreds if not close to a thousand books of that vintage.  But the first one- the idea that I, born in 1971, could even ever FIND one- was something amazing back then.  I'm getting chills just remembering the sense of wonder that brought.)

[josemas]

I certainly remember trading comics as a kid in the 1960s.  I would only trade for genres I wanted.  Primarily superhero but some war, western, humor and sci-fi/fantasy/mystery too on occasion.   
I don't ever remember trading comics with any girls as they mostly had romance and Archie comics which were low on my list-in fact I don't ever remember reading a romance comic as a kid.
I wasn't much into the teen genre but certainly read plenty that belonged to friends. 
Another genre I rarely read was the various hot rod/racing comics that were around then.  I didn't know anyone that regularly bought them and I never did.
For some reason the annuals/giant-sized comics were hard to find when I was a kid and were more prized and less rarely traded.  I remember scoring a copy of Wham-O Giant Comic #1 which was huge and very coveted and when I finally let it go a few years later it was for a pile of comics that I really wanted.  Several years after that when I had started collecting I picked up another copy, relatively inexpensively, which I still have.

I also remember reading many comics over at friends houses that may not have been up for trades but which they didn't mind sharing with a friend for reading.  So even with a limited income, between the trading and the sharing, I managed to read quite a few comics as a kid.

When I got a paper route at age twelve I could afford to buy all the comics I wanted and soon started collecting and stopped trading.  There were less and less friends to trade with about this time anyway as more and more friends "outgrew" comics just as I was getting into it heavily studying the artists and trying to learn about the history of the genre.
By the time I was a high-school senior I was enough of an "expert" on comics history that I did a musical slide show (video and computers were still some years away) for one of my classes (Christians Values Through the Media) that so impressed my teacher it helped cinch me an "A" in the class and was used by him as an example of what to aim for in a presentation for several years afterwards (my younger brothers and their friends updated me on it as they took the class in succeeding years- "Hey I saw that comic history thing you did for Father Menard today!").

Best

Joe

[Yoc]

Hmm, I'd never heard of that Wham-O before this.  GCD shows it has some Wood among others in it.
Growing up friends would lend each other books on the understanding you had to return them and not destroy them in the process.  There was the odd exchange for money.
I now recall one trade I loved at the time.  I traded a Byrne X-Men issue near the end of his run for X-Men #19 in semi-crappy condition.  At the time it was a fair trade as I had it as a double anyways.  It became my earliest X-Men.

[josemas]

Hmm, I'd never heard of that Wham-O before this.  GCD shows it has some Wood among others in it.

In addition to several pages of Wally Wood art it also contains work by John Stanley, Warren Tufts and Lou Fine's final comic book work.

If anyone wants to check it out it's available over in the Silver Age Sidestreet section at GAC.

One thing the scans just won't convey though is just how huge the comic was.  Almost two feet tall and over a foot wide!!  Try to find a comic bag for that one!

Best

Joe

[bminor]

Once I was trading with two boys at my house, all of us in high school.

I let them into my inner comic sanctum. At the time I suppose I had at least three to four thousand books at the time. ( I always picked them up at garage sales).
Well, we dickered and dickered, eventually trading a few.

Before they left I looked through their comics once more. They had slid a bunch of my other books into their piles! Needless to say I never traded with them again!

As far as Wham-O Giant comics. I had one as a kid, back in the early 70's, I think I saw it sticking out of a trash can. Years later I picked one up at a comic store for $5 bucks. The book is the size of a newspaper, and impossible to store. Has terrible color registration. But I really enjoyed most of the stories. Most of the stories were only two pages, but the panels where quite small.
What I liked most about the book was the Wally Wood "Radian" story that was the first story in the book. I guy getting zapped with energy and becoming really strong and dense, ala Dynamo. Also a story that has the first appearance of Goody Bumpkin in a comic!
There are a few stories by Stanley of Little Lulu fame in the book.

Here is more info on the book I grabbed off the comicvine website...
Pick one up if you can. I don't think the survive in mint condition anywhere....

n 1967 came a Bizzaro experiment from the people who brought us the hoola hoop and Frisbee, a comic book that measured 21” by 14” and cost 98 cents! (believe me in 1967 that was a big deal, 80 pages comics only cost 25 cents.

But for this you got a comic that if it had been regular comic size would have been something like 200 pages thick.

They promised 5 more, but this was the only one.


Inside you found:


"Clyde, King of the Jungle" / Shean. 1 p.

"The Young Eagles" 3 p. -- World War I story.

"Bridget and Her Little Brother Newton the Nuisance" / Stanley. 1 p.

"Super Sibling and His Magic Chokes" 1 p.

"Goody Bumpkin" / Wallace Wood. 2 p.

"Fugitive from a Scrap Pile" (Klunker the Misfit Monster) / Willie Ito. 1 p.
 
"Tor and the Man from the Aeons" 2 p. -- Prehistoric adventure.

"Wild Earth Child" 1 p.

"Kaleidoscope of Fear" 2 p.

"Experiment in Shock" / Steffen Agen. 2 p.
 
"The Adventures of Melvin the Magician" 1 p.

"Stellar Apes" 2 p.

"Tree's a Crowd" (Flabby and Gabby) 1 p.

"A Helping Handsome" 1 p.

"The Wooden Sword" 3 p.

"Vehicles to Suit Your Hobby!" / 2 p.

"Fantastic Flying Machines" 1 p. fact feature

"Flying Saucers Mystify the Air Force" 1 p.

"The Diary of Ty Locke" / illustrated by Tufts. 2 1/2 p.

"The Edge of Time" 3 p.

"Unexplored" / Ellefson. 1/2 p.

"Money" 1/4 p fact feature

"Galaxo the Cosmic Agent" 3 p.

"Bread" 1/4 p. fact feature

"Radian" / by Wallace Wood. 3 p.

"Captain Valoren" 2 p.

"The Razor" 1/4 p. fact feature


Yours,

B.

[Yoc]

Before they left I looked through their comics once more. They had slid a bunch of my other books into their piles! Needless to say I never traded with them again!

I'm glad you caught them before they left!

Wow, not only would I have tossed them out on their ears I'd never have spoken to them again if not worse.  Talk about sleaze-ball moves.  Heck, if they wanted to join DCM I'd ban them for you just because we don't want that kind of person here.  

-Yoc

[talia374]

I wanted comics for birthday presents and Christmas presents, and would gather pop (soda) bottles to cash in and get the 2 cents and later 3 cent deposit. When I saved a dime I would run to the drug store to buy the latest comic book. Choosing was tough and I could only get a very few monthly.

Sooo, I would lug a paper box for miles around a trade route and trade what I had read for others that I was unable to buy. I had about 6 regular  guys and 1 girl, that I would trade regularly with. These are among my most treasured boyhood times.

I see some of the comics today in these and other wonderful scans, and those great memories come flooding back.

Sadness ensues on occassion, when I recognize a title that I bought, and subsequently traded away, is today selling for many many many thousands of dollars........But the memories.....priceless!!

[narfstar]

Hope you checked out a scan of Wham-O. Took me a while to find a copy several years ago but those are not my scans. I had more the lend return police with a cousin and best friend. They later got out of comics and gave me theirs. My main trading was at barber shops that would allow me trade at my discretion.

[josemas]

I wanted comics for birthday presents and Christmas presents, and would gather pop (soda) bottles to cash in and get the 2 cents and later 3 cent deposit. When I saved a dime I would run to the drug store to buy the latest comic book. Choosing was tough and I could only get a very few monthly.

I too remember hunting for soda bottles so that I could get the deposit.  Even after I started earning an allowance, at age eight, of 25 cents a week I would still search for bottles (initially 2 cents for a regular bottle and 5 cents for the quart size bottles) so I could buy extra comics or nickel packs of bubble gum cards.  I was always quick to hit the nearby canal every Autumn (when they would drain it for maintenance) to try to find all the pop bottles that had been tossed in it during the previous year. 

Best

Joe

[paw broon]

I traded comics with my pals in the late '50's and early '60's but we called it swapping, so a lot of kids swapped comics but until American comics were distributed here in 1959, we were mostly restricted to British and Austarlian titles.  There was great excitement if someone came up with a funnies section or a "real" comic (a meccy, as I seem to recall we called them in Airdrie, which were probably sent by a relative who had moved to N.America).  But I remember the stooshie when an older boy tried to trade a Charlie Chan TV adventures (these were pocket sized comics), which we hadn't seen before, and wanted 3 comics for the swap. Indignation at an early age.
I just don't remember girls being even remotely interested, which is odd as there were a number of girls titles every week and my sister got The Bunty.  So, I suppose, they must have swapped but did it quietly and we weren't aware because there was no crossover.

[Roygbiv666]

What's "a meccy"?

I traded comics with my pals in the late '50's and early '60's but we called it swapping, so a lot of kids swapped comics but until American comics were distributed here in 1959, we were mostly restricted to British and Austarlian titles.  There was great excitement if someone came up with a funnies section or a "real" comic (a meccy, as I seem to recall we called them in Airdrie, which were probably sent by a relative who had moved to N.America).  But I remember the stooshie when an older boy tried to trade a Charlie Chan TV adventures (these were pocket sized comics), which we hadn't seen before, and wanted 3 comics for the swap. Indignation at an early age.
I just don't remember girls being even remotely interested, which is odd as there were a number of girls titles every week and my sister got The Bunty.  So, I suppose, they must have swapped but did it quietly and we weren't aware because there was no crossover.

[larrytalbot]

Comic books were big with us grammar school kids in the 1940s. Comics were so popular they replaced money as a medium of exchange. With comics we could buy things we didn't have the money for: toys, sport equipment, school lunches... I once traded my baseball mitt for a set of comics plus a thick scrapbook of newspaper clippings about boxing (a collection the kid's brother, who had joined the navy, had been accumulating for years, starting in the '30s.).  In our time a common greeting to friend, acquaintance, or stranger was: "Got any comics to trade?" Several enterprising deli owners kept under-the-counter second-hand comic book stashes to sell for pennies each to neighborhood kids.