Sure enough, when we stopped in Sandusky, Ohio on the way to the park, I had the opportunity to go into a convenience store for snacks. There, much to my delight, was a spinner rack with bagged 3-packs of comics on it! Each package was priced one cent less than the total of the cover price of its contents, meaning that a trio of 25-centers would be advertised as "3 Comics for Just 74 Cents!" Also, by the nature of there being only 2 covers shown (one on the front, one on the back), it was very difficult to tell what the middle comic actually was. However, since I was only 2 comics away from 1000, I figured it didn't matter what the hidden comic in between was, as long as I picked out a package that had 2 comics I needed visible in it. So I did. In the worst case, the mystery title would be one I already owned and I'd have blown 24 cents on it.
When I opened the bag in the car, I discovered that the "sandwiched" comic was Detective Comics # 452, which I did in fact need. Just as I saw it, I also realized that it didn't matter which side of the bag I considered to be the "front": 'Tec # 452 was the 2nd comic out of the bag, either way, and hence was the 1000th comic in my collection!
As of today, it's now been 35 years since I had fewer than a thousand comics in my possession (I'll soon hit 28,000 as I'm only a few dozen away). Over that stretch, countless people have been impressed, shocked or possibly just amused upon learning that I have such a large collection of anything, let alone comic books. My Grade 7 girlfriend, with whom I corresponded for years after her family moved to the States, would invariably ask for an update on the total, in each and every letter she wrote to me. (She, like Vicki, knew what was important to me!) It's quite a constant to have had in my life over that long a stretch, when you think about it.
1 comment:
And would you have ever imagined that you would amass 10,000 never mind 28,000? Or thought that 35 years later they would still provide so much enjoyment?
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