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Post by Icctrombone on Jan 8, 2022 13:34:55 GMT -5
I keep hearing that the age of 12 is most comic collectors golden age. Of course you'd have to have started reading comics at a young age. What is your Golden age?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2022 13:57:31 GMT -5
11-12 is when I got "serious" about comic books...comic book shops, direct market titles, bags/boards, etc. So it represents an age that definitely stands out for me. But nostalgia-wise, the stuff I was reading from around 5-8 years of age I find myself much more nostalgic about and going back and reading more (70's Marvel/DC newsstand stuff). So kind of yes to the question, but in more ways probably no and that's what I ended up voting.
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Post by Prince Hal on Jan 8, 2022 14:03:30 GMT -5
Started at 8 in 1962.
Became more of a steady reader and accumulator when I was 10 or 11.
By the time I hit 12 and 13, I was in comics heaven. More pocket change and greater access to comics meant I could really start collecting. Looking back, it never got better than the years between 1965 and 1968. (not thta it got terribly bad or anythng, but those early years were so full of fun, exploring new titles, discovering the Golden Age, and developing a more in-depth knowedge of comics.
So yeah, I totally get the truth of "Twelve is the Golden Age of everything."
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Post by Cei-U! on Jan 8, 2022 14:17:13 GMT -5
I started reading comics at age 3, got hooked on super-heroes at 6, started collecting at 10, and became interested in comics history at 14 BUT my "Golden Age" happened in the early '80s when I set up my first pull list at O'Leary's Books and began ordering tons of cheap back issues from Mile High. I was in my early-to-mid 20s.
Cei-U! I summon those halcyon days of my youmg manhood!
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Post by The Captain on Jan 8, 2022 14:30:45 GMT -5
I leaned more towards sports cards (baseball and hockey) starting around the age of 7 and up until about 16 or so.
I got my first comics at the age of 5 or 6, but only occasionally got more here and there through my early teens. Started collecting G.I. Joe just before I turned 13, then got into Amazing Spider-Man a couple of years later before going full-tilt comicholic when I got into college in 1991.
That said, I didn’t really get into back issues (outside of ASM and UXM) until 2002, after I was married, employed full-time, and had money to spend. I calculate my collection grew from about 1500 books to over 7500 in the span of about 5 years or so, as I found shops with $1 bins and I had disposable income every month.
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Post by tarkintino on Jan 8, 2022 14:32:12 GMT -5
Already seriously reading/collecting comics long before the age of 12. By that time, I was well aware of titles, lore, company staff, price guides, magazines about comics, TPBs, etc. Having two older brothers who were comic collectors had me into it very early in life.
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Post by majestic on Jan 8, 2022 14:39:53 GMT -5
Started reading at 4 (my mom was a teacher). Into comics heavily by age 6. Interest declined around 12-13 although I still read them. Picked up again at age 16 when I discovered my first comic shop. Still reading at the age of 60!
So my Golden Age would be ages 6-8 and my Silver Age ages 16-18.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2022 14:47:29 GMT -5
Looking back, it never got better than the years between 1965 and 1968. (not thta it got terribly bad or anythng, but those early years were so full of fun, exploring new titles, discovering the Golden Age, and developing a more in-depth knowedge of comics. I wonder if my answer would have been different if those had been my years in that range. 12 for me was right when Crisis happened and all this "mature" stuff was changing everything. If I had been reading say new Fantastic Four and Adventure and so on at 12 in the mid-late 60's, I feel like I would have been in heaven.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2022 14:48:41 GMT -5
I voted no.
I started reading at 4. By the time I was 10, my mom decided I spent too much time reading comics and made me stop cold turkey (circa '79). The only comics I got for the next 2 years were the issues of Star Wars adapting Empire Strikes back, but we were in a financial situation where the extra 50 cents for a comic was a strain on our budget (we were barely putting food on the table). Things were a little better by the time I was 12, but not much, and certainly not enough where luxuries like comics were on the table. I had managed to scrape up enough money doing odd jobs and collecting refundable bottles and cans that I got two mail subscriptions in the summer of '81 (the park department in our small town paid kids my age a couple of bucks to clean the parks and we could keep any refundable bottles we found to turn in) to help get ready and clean up after the large "Egg" festival they held in the park every summer), but those were the only comics I was reading when I was 12, and when those subscriptions ended I didn't get another comic until I turned 16 and was making my own money to buy them. So no 12 was mostly a comic wasteland, not a golden age for me (and even if you compared the content-I liked the Avengers of 8-10 year old me the first Shooter/Perez run, so much better than the Avengers issues I got in the subscription-the beginning of the second Shooter run that got rid of all the Avengers I wanted to read about). So on al accounts, my vote would be no.
-M
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Post by EdoBosnar on Jan 8, 2022 15:34:34 GMT -5
Got my first comics at age 6, but I really got hit by the bug, in the sense of *needing* to follow a number of titles consistently every month, in late 1978/early 1979, when I was still 10. That was the started of my personal golden age, which lasted until I was about 14. So close enough for a yes.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,051
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Post by Confessor on Jan 8, 2022 17:30:03 GMT -5
Yeah, I agree that 12 is the golden age pretty much.
I was being bought comics by my mother as a really little kid before I could even properly read them myself, and by the time I was 6 I was regularly picking up Marvel UK's Star Wars Weekly and various UK Marvel reprints. So, I was certainly into comics well before 12. But when I think of the great stuff I was regularly reading in 1982-84 when I was aged 10 to 12 -- Amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker: The Spectacular Spider-Man, Tintin, 2000AD, Superman/Action, Batman/Detective, Marvel Tales (reprinting Lee/Ditko issues of ASM), Scream!, and the aforementioned Marvel UK Star Wars comic -- holy s**t that really was some good stuff.
Of course, I've enjoyed a lot of great comics since then, but there is something magical about the comics I first encountered roughly around the age of 12, yes.
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Post by badwolf on Jan 8, 2022 17:38:48 GMT -5
More or less.
I started at 5 but obviously I was fairly dependent then...
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Post by kirby101 on Jan 8, 2022 17:56:46 GMT -5
I also read comics from when I was around 6,but it wa sporatic, another childhood repast. But when was 15, I bought and read Conan #1, and all the issues after that. About a year later I started buying most Marvel books off the stands, and a few DC and others as well. A year later I was buying back issues and avidly collecting. The Bronze Age was my Golden Age. From High School to College.
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Post by commond on Jan 8, 2022 18:16:29 GMT -5
I began collecting comics when I was 9 years old. At first, I bought them from stationery shops, secondhand bookstores, and dairies (the New Zealand version of a convenience store.) Then, when I was 10 years old, I was visiting the city during the school holidays and saw a sign on the street that said "Comics." That was the first time I discovered a comic book store. I'll never forget the first time I walked into the store. It was like I'd entered the gates of heaven. Wall-to-wall comics, everywhere. And not only that, they had comics from the future! I didn't realize it at the time, but the newsagents in New Zealand were about six months behind the US. I guess they sent comics to New Zealand by boat, lol. I was still heavily into comics at age 12, but those early years were my favorite, especially piecing together runs at the secondhand bookstores. I would hit up the secondhand bookstores of any town I visited and always find something to buy.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jan 8, 2022 18:28:37 GMT -5
I started reading and buying comics regularly when I had a job next to a comic book store, I was 17. Before that, I had only a passing knowledge of comics as something that existed, as neither my parents, nor anyone I knew were into them or had any.
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