Original L.A. Times Clipping re. Collectors Book Store, Feb. 1966, Which Changed My Life

The History of Collectors Book Store and How My Collecting Was Largely Determined by that Dealer, Part 1:

One day in Feb 1966, when I was was in 5th grade and at home sick, the smallest thing occurred, yet it forever changed my life. My mother brought a newspaper clipping to me. I was about two guys, Leonard Brown and Malcolm Willets, who had bought an important group of old comics at an auction of property from a Bekin's storage facility. They had learned that someone had not paid the rent for a stored trunk, and that the trunk contained copies of Superman Comics Nos. 1 through 30 and Batman Nos. 1 through 30. Since they had no way to identify which auctioned property contained the comics, they bought every lot until they had the right trunk. They paid a total of $4.17 for what, even then, was estimated to be worth $10,000. A photo in the article showed Leonard holding Superman and Batman Nos. 1. I wanted that Superman No. 1, and convinced my parents to take me to Leonard and Malcolm's store, Collectors Bookstore in Hollywood, California, the next Saturday.

The closer we got to the store, which was then in its original location on Wilcox, just north of Hollywood Boulevad, [about an hour from where I lived], I grew more and more excited. It was late in the day when we arrived and my parents, sister, and I were the only ones in the small store, which was being tended at the time by Malcolm Willets. Malcolm was a former teacher from Portland, Oregon, who had been a collecotor of comics, primarily Disney titles. He had made one of the great buys of all time of old comics, and had become friends with Leonard Brown, a Southern California native, due to their mutual love of comic books. They had become partners in a retail store specializing in comics, pulp magazines, and movie material, which they named Collectors Bookstore. The store opened in Feb or March 1965.

When we walked into the store, the oldest comic book that I had managed to collect was a 1958 issue of Adventure Comics. I was hoping to push that date back to 1939, when Superman No. 1 had been published. Unfortunately, that dream wasn't to be realized...at least not on that day. The price for the Superman No. 1 that had been in the auctioned trunk was $100! The Batman No. 1 was priced at $150, undoubtedly due to the huge popularity of the Batman television series, which had premiered a few months earlier. Action Comics was $125. There was just no way that my parents were going to pay $100 for a magazine that had been sold when they were 16 years old, so I had to settle for a Batman No. 21 for $5.00. Still, I left a wonderful store with the oldest comic in my collection being from 1944, before I was even born. On the next visit, I got a Superman No. 16 and Batman No. 16 for $6.50 each, then a Justice League of America No. 1, and Atom No. 1, then a Flash No. 105 for Christmas 1966, and on it went.

When I returned home after the first visit, I wrote "I want Superman No. 1" on dozens of pieces of note paper and scattered them all over our house and garage. The papers continued to be found for at least a decade, but, by the time the tactic had worn my parents down, there was no Superman No. 1 to be had. It seemed like an eternity, but finally, in 1969, Collectors Book Store got another copy (and the last one that they ever had), my mother bought it to $500, and I received it for Christmas 1969. By then I already had many key D.C. and Marvel issues, including Flash Comics No. 1 ($150), Fantastic Four No. 1 ($30 in April 1969), A perfect copy of Avengers No. 1 ($6 in April 1968), An X-Men No. 1 with two covers, the inner one being in mint condition ($5), and many other Golden and Silver age comics, mostly purchased at Collectors Bookstore. I had also been frequenting the other major West Coast dealer in old comic books, Cherokee Book Store, also in Hollywood. The comic department at Cherokee was run by Bert Blum, who was rather eccentric. After driving for an hour to get there, the upstairs comic section was, at times, locked up. Once I was there and Bert told everyone to leave -- he had hives and was going to the doctor. Great!