Captain Atom Issue #24: “Captain Atom, Sir!”
Writers: Cary Bates and Greg Weisman
Art: Pat Broderick, Romeo Taghal, and Shelley Eiber

In the middle of this old school comic is an add for a very old school hobby: collecting coins. I feel like I don’t hear about many people collecting coins these days, which is kind of sad I guess. On that note, collecting in general simply seems to be down. That kind of makes me sad. Remember the good ol’ days of stamps, baseball cards, and, well, coins?

Call it nostalgia, but I miss the good old days of collecting random crap. I was a huge trading card collector. I had everything from baseball to football to Marvel to wrestling. Cards were like a lifeblood at that time, and everyone else was collecting, too, which made it even that much more fun to do. I’d go to friend’s houses, trade cards. We’d talk about players like we actually had an investment in them. Well, we kinda did, but it went beyond monetary. There was also this since of favoritism. Everyone had their favorite player and their favorite card. I still remember once trading away one of my favorites for a bunch of other cards and feeling practically sick for the next week. So I went back to that friend and gave him an even better deal to get the guy back. This was like our early stock market. It was all so much fun. What happened to that? I never see cards for sale anymore . . .

Stamps are another thing. I never really got into them, but I remember them being pushed as such a huge collector’s item. The post office used to sell (AND advertise) books to put your stamp collections in. It was like the cheaper alternative to baseball cards, and some people still collect them to this day, but it’s still not as crazy.

And then coins. I never really got into the coin craze, but they had a certain appeal to be regardless of my purchasing habits. Whenever relatives would go overseas and give me other countries’ coins, it was always so exciting to see the different kinds. I remember seeing coin shops where people would make a living off of selling coins. Heck, do you remember at the turn of the millennium when the US Gov’t released a special edition quarter for every state and you could buy books and boards to collect all 50? That wasn’t even that long ago. In fact, the other day I just found out that apparently it’s not even done taking place. Talk about a great example of trends losing their appeal over time. I don’t even think I’ve seen the one of the state I currently live in . . . probably because I’m not paying attention.

This isn’t really a call for more collectible stuff. For one, it’s really not good on the pockets. Also, things like cards can’t be good for the environment. This post is much more of a romp down nostalgia lane. Action figures, seashells, cool looking rocks, and comics. Collecting used to be such a big deal. What did you used to collect? Or maybe still do?

(oh, and sorry about the small Captain Atom image). I couldn’t scan it, and that was all my usual image supplier had.