Original Comic Book Art And The Collectors - TwoMorrows

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LEFT: Crack Comics
#17, (Oct. 1941), pg.
1, art: Lou Fine.
RIGHT: Star Spangled
Comics #8, (May
1942), cover, pencils:
Jack Kirby, inks: Joe
Simon.
Characters TM & ©2009
DC Comics.
OPPOSITE: The Amazing
Spider-Man #90
(Nov. 1970), pg. 10,
pencils: Gil Kane,
inks: John Romita.
Characters TM & ©2009
Marvel Characters, Inc.
SPARTA
the Timely company. What I didn’t know was that all of those
stories were published in the first ten issues!” Vince convinced
his mother to write a check for $25 to get issue #11 of Captain
America only to find the issue had no Kirby art. He sold it
for $50. And though his parents were impressed with their
son’s business acumen they were hesitant to finance his next
bid, a $250 purchase of Captain America #1. Buying a lesser
grade copy of the issue for $125 of his own money, he sold
that for $250 and his parents finally started to accept that they
had a business tycoon for a son.
“To make extra money I started loaning my rare, key Golden
Age books to Alan Light for reprinting in his Flashback series.
Those classic reprints from my books are all over eBay now.” His
parents took him to his first convention where he got to meet a
lot of the dealers who knew him by name only. “They were
amazed to learn that all along they had been dealing with a kid.
“When I got my driver’s license I began setting up at shows
in Chicago. It was 50 cents admission and $3 table fees for the
monthly show at the downtown YMCA. As there were only
about 100 different comics existing that were valued at $50
or more – we referred to them as ‘heavyweights’ – I was able
to own a great many of the classic Golden Age books. As I put
pg. # 72 Book GRAILPAGES: Original Comic Book Art and the Collectors
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runs together of those rare books I started sending information
to the Overstreet Price Guide.”
At this point Vince still had not gotten into original art. He’d
seen pages by Kirby from the early Hulk issues going for the
“astronomical” prices of $100 - $300. “Reasoning that there
was no way that I could ever get my money back if I had bought
stuff like that, I passed on art. Obviously I was wrong.”
His art collecting started in 1981. “I purchased a complete
Captain Marvel story from C.C. Beck for $125. It was one of
the ten stories he did for DC around 1972. I also bought a killer
Kirby Thor page from Journey into Mystery #87 for $75. That
was my start.”
From there Vince contacted John Romita’s agent. “He had
loads of Romita’s work on Spider-Man issues #39 - #100, Captain
America in Tales of Suspense, Hulk in Tales to Astonish, and
Daredevil.” Through Romita’s agent, Vince bought his splashes.
“Large art splashes were $65, interior pages $45.”
Romita had been Vince’s all-time favorite. His first newsstand
purchase was Spider-Man #57. “I picked out well over
100 pages from Romita’s agent, going heavy on splashes and
cool on interior pages. I took what I thought were the best
pages from issue #39, pages 6-11, the battle pages with
Spidey in costume. While Romita’s agent had complete books
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