I could look at videos like this all day.
Here is a 1970 news piece on the Canadian comic shop Memory Lane, run by George Henderson:
1. George Henderson is better known as “Captain George,” prolific ‘zine publisher of mags like Captain George’s Whizzbang which you’ll see plenty of in that vid.
2. The customer they speak to in that clip is George Olshevsky, whose name I knew from somewhere in the comics biz but couldn’t place it. I meant to look it up, but hadn’t before I put the video on Bluesky, and no less a person than comics legend Paul Kupperberg reminded me. He was the person behind the various Marvel Index publications, and has sadly passed away…you can read all about Mr. Olshevsky in this obituary.
3. Just seeing the thick stacks of Silver Age Marvel on the shelves was jaw-dropping, particularly since I’ve been acquiring and selling lots of those over the last year or two. Boy oh boy I’d love to be able to reach into that clip and pull out those piles of books for my shop.
3b. Seeing the person flipping through the box of unbagged Silver Age books caused quite the reaction in me. “BAG THOSE BOOKS, reduce that wear and tear!”
4. “The first Superman can sell for as much as $300!”
augh
5. The piece ends on the very odd note of “sometimes comics get stolen but the police don’t take it seriously,” which, huh, okay.
6. I would dearly love to be able to wander around in that store at the time. I’ve been in little shops sort of like this, with stacks and rows of old unbagged comics, but alas not with material of this vintage. Plenty of black and white boom comics, though, which…come to think of it, I’d still love to paw through those.
The first comic shop (as opposed to newsagent) that I visited piled all of their ‘old’ comic books up in the cellar. Not in boxes, just stacked in no order. That was around 1977 in Manchester, UK. It was like visiting an archeological dig.
To be honest it was more of an alternative magazine store — lots of Oz magazines that I quickly walked past in embarrassment :) to get to the stairs down to the comics.
To me it’s seeing all those Golden Age comics–Marvel Mystery, Human Torch, Blue Beetle, Shield-Wizard, Flash, Superman, etc.–just sitting there unbagged that is truly mind-boggling!
It looks like George Olshevsky bought a Shield-Wizard comic that day–nice choice as MLJ Comics are now increasingly hard to come by always fairly expensive.
@ Andrew Davidson
Do you wish that you had bought those Oz magazines now?
I see that even back then there were a lot of X-Men comics on the stands.
I wanted to yell at the guy flipping through the back issues. “Stop touching them! The oils!”
I can’t restrain myself from simply commenting ‘how wonderful.’ Thanks for sharing that.