Had some great expectations for this item.
This is a flyer sent out to comics retailers in the early 1990s advertising First Comics’s Classics Illustrated display rack. Not sure why my previous place of employment never got one…probably had enough shelves and racks and display units in a store already filled to the brim. Just didn’t have the room, I suspect.
However, at some point in the early 2000s, while perusing some of the downtown Ventura thrift shops, I found a store using one of these racks as a display for, I think, old hardcover novels. I asked the owner if she would be willing to sell the rack, but alas, she preferred to keep it to hold about $10 worth of used books.
Most of those downtown thrift shops have gone away now, and I don’t know what the owner of this now-defunct storefront did with this Classics Illustrated rack. Hopefully, once the time did come to close up the business, she eventually did sell it to someone who’d appreciate it, or that she took it home to, I don’t know, hold an array of magazines in the bathroom. I really hope she didn’t just toss it in a dumpster, to let it rot in some landfill.
Anyway, here’s a photo of one someone pulled off the eBay. The rack’s blue color was very striking. I wish I’d been able to talk that thrift store owner out of it.
Speaking of First, any inside dope on their collapse? IIRC, the bottom dropped off for them well before the real market implosion.
I have been waiting 15 years for the owner of my LCS to part with one of his “Hey !! Kids! Comics” spinner racks. I will likely wait at least 15 more.
Oh man, does that picture give me nostalgia. I loved me some First Comics back in the late 80s, and they going under in 1991 was quite the annoyance. Grimjack, Nexus, the Badger, Dreadstar, Dynamo Joe…good times, man, good times.
I’ve been looking for a classic spinner rack for a while now.
Mike,
With all the spare time you have at the shop, making a spinner rack seems like a good little project to keep you busy. All you need are a few old coat hangers.