Comics to worn-out bikes

Posted
My son was digging through some old comic books. The books were more than 20 years old. Sadly this is not a story of finding a $1 million book. The comic books were from the 1990s. Trouble is they produced a lot of comic books during that time. That means the books aren’t very valuable. Comic books, baseball cards or other memorabilia are governed by supply and demand just like other things. What makes some of this memorabilia so expensive is the fact that kids created a smaller supply of this stuff. Just think about the old baseball cards. I would take a clothespin and hook a baseball card to hit the spokes of the bike wheel. This would make a cool sound. This would also wear out the baseball card. Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford would likely be flapping on the spokes. Of course, this would wear out the Hall of Famers' cards. Now there are fewer cards. With that, the old cards that survived are more valuable. Don’t get me wrong: These 20-year-old comics are worth more than we paid for them. It is just a shame that the books were bought for $1 and are now worth $1 and a dime. That is not a big return. Different from baseball cards, the comic books didn’t get worn out. That brings me to the last thing. Why didn’t the bikes get worn out? We put baseball cards on the bikes to make them sound cool. The cards wore out but not the bikes. I did have some friends that put dog collars on the axle of the bikes. This was supposed to keep the axle clean and not build up great. This was going to make the bike last longer. It seemed like changing the oil in a car. This clean axle was somehow good for the bike. The bikes never got close to wearing out. The first bike I had was used by my brother when I got a new bike. I don’t what happened to the bike when he got a bigger bicycle. A flat tire was easily repaired by a trip to Mr. Laford’s station. If he put a hot patch on the tube you were set. You could buy a do it yourself repair kit from the dime store. Once you got big enough to drive a car, the bikes were parked and never were worn out. That’s why there is not much of a market for old used bikes. They were not worn out. I looked through some of the comic books. It was fun thinking about our trip to the comic book convention those many years ago. The books didn’t take up much room so we’ve decided to keep them in a box under the bed. Maybe in another twenty years they will be worth $1 and 15 cents. By that time gasoline might be so high that everyone will be riding bikes. If we start wearing out bikes, the price for an old bike might start going up. If that happens, I might start putting comic books on the spokes to make a cool sound. That might also help the price of comics, too!