The Four Color Media Monitor

WBTV-3 has a report on a comics store in Charlotte, NC, where the proprietor keeps around one of the largest collections possible to find in his warehouse:

Shelton Drum has been buying and selling comic books for decades. His Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find comic book shop in Charlotte is one of the most popular in the southeast.

But the hundreds of comic books you can find here in the shop are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what Shelton’s collected over the years.

And for the first time ever, he allowed Carolina Camera to go into the secret location where he keeps his comic book collection. It’s something very few others have ever seen.

It’s like something out of the movies, according to Shelton, who describes it by saying, “It is the last graveyard. It is the warehouse from Indiana Jones. But it’s mostly comic books and comic-related magazines and things.

There are shelves and shelves and shelves of boxes in this secret warehouse. Each box is filled with comic books.

There are comic books of every kind - everything from A to Z and from every year since comic books first came out.

The warehouse even has a distinctive comic book smell. It is a comic book lover’s comic book nirvana.

Although there is no exact count, Shelton estimates there are anywhere from 800,000 to a million comic books here. It’s believed to be the largest collection of its kind in the Carolinas. [...]

So just how does one amass such a huge collection as this? Shelton said he thinks a lot of collectors have a gene.

“You know, it’s like, you gotta have ‘em all,” he said. [...]

And no doubt, Shelton’s made some good deals and gotten a good return on his money. Many of his comics are worth thousands of dollars.

Sure, but it's still no substitute for the value of reading. When one speaks of wanting to have it all, it should be within the context of reading too. That's why I'd like to own much of the most relevant Spider-Man stories, and also Superman, et cetera. But acquiring it in pamphlets that could be hugely expensive is not the way to go. It's in trade paperbacks and hardcover formats that is. I wish I could admire the guy for his acquisitions, but alas, I can't, because it's clear he's got no issue with the pamphlet collector's mentality that's only resulted in speculators buying the heck out of all this for the sake of monetary value, going on to store all those pamphlets in plastic "slabs" and vaults, where they'll never be seen by a mass audience like museum artifacts are.

Maybe if the store manager were to donate them all to a museum, then something admirable would be achieved. But shutting all those great stories of past decade away in a dark warehouse isn't something to appreciate at all.

Labels: exhibitions, history, msm propaganda, sales