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Editor’s Page
You won’t see me on TV – I don’t think...
David Lubin, MD Dajalu@aol.com
We’ve all collected things in the past, most likely when we were kids, and some of us continue to collect things now. Girls usually collected dolls; one of my daughters had many, but not all, of the Little Ponies. Boys might col- lect small toy soldiers, or cowboys and Indians, setting up battles that had to be cleaned up before bedtime, or mar- bles...I had marbles--beautiful agates, cat’s eyes, and boulders. I could flick them with my thumb and forefinger to
the hole in the pavement next to the fire hydrant on our street, and would beat anyone ready to challenge me to be marble champion on Wiley St.
I collected baseball cards, and remember getting the last two I needed for one year, both in the same pack...a miracle to this day. I had the complete sets of Topps’ 1959 and 1960 cards, but to this day have no idea what happened to them. I sorta blamed my mother, half-jokingly, for pitching them out, but she denied it till her dying day and was a little ticked off when I wore a t- shirt emblazoned with “I’d be rich man now if my mother hadn’t thrown out my baseball cards.”
I also collected stamps, not very extensively, but had the American Stamp book and tried to fill in the spaces with as many mint stamps as I could, but that collection never went very far. My major collection as a young person was my Mer- cury dime collection, those from 1916-1945. I had collected the entire collection, circulated, of course, and was very proud of the accomplishment. When I was in junior high school we had invited a band to visit our school, and although I didn’t play an instrument, I housed one of the visitors at my home, a block from the school. I was going to show him my collection, and it was missing, only to wind up in the visitor’s suitcase, which I had insisted on checking. Needless to say, that was embarrass- ing for him and one of those instances I’d just as soon forget.
Through my adult years I managed to upgrade my Mer- cury collection and had built up a fairly nice collection, then I realized that the dimes would probably not attain the value I had hoped for, and decided to sell the collection and split the proceeds between my two daughters in stock portfolios for the future. I’m sure they’re worth more now than the coins would
have been. My old proof sets were an easy sell on eBay.
I’ve also collected some sports’ memorabilia from the Light- ning over the years—playoff pins, autographed jerseys and bobbleheads, player cards that I got signed, and I still have the newspapers from when we won the Stanley Cup in 2004, along with the DVD of game 7.
I know all of you reading this must have collected something at some time, if not currently. A past member collected beer cans. One member collects baseball cards, another medicine bottles, and a recent issue of The Bulletin had Dr. Silverfield’s narrative of his porcelain collection.
I still collect MAD Magazines, just the regular issues that have been published since 1952. The MAD offices recently moved out to California and they have started a new series, now on issue #8. The old series got to #550 over 65 years. It’s now a new “Gang of Idiots.” Other than #1 in mint condition signed by Harvey Kurtzman, I have numerous issues signed by the cover artists and the people caricaturized on the cover. Those early issues rest comfortably in a safety deposit box. I even have a caricature of me drawn by Jack Davis in 1976 when I met him at the Orlando ComCon. I was fortunate enough to attend a Sotheby’s MAD auction in 1996, in New York, where I purchased two original pieces of artwork, one by Mort Drucker and one by Jack Davis. I met Annie Gaines, whom I thought was the daughter of MAD’s first publisher, William Gaines, only to find out, from her, that he was her husband. Mmmm, that foot tasted good. I met Jack Davis when he invited Elke and me to his house in 2013, and we sat in his studio schmoozing with him. Unforgettable. I have other MAD memorabilia, and the question arises, as it probably does with every collector at some point...”what becomes of all this stuff when I’m gone?” I really don’t think Elke and my two daughters want to bother with a bunch of MADs. I’ve offered my collection to the Smithsonian and other cartoon and comic museums, but I’d be responsible for getting it appraised and then they’d probably only want the early, more valuable issues. I’m not ready to sell the entire col- lection on eBay, as I have done with many of my other collect- ibles.
Now I bring up all this collecting because there’s a medical entity that I’m not sure we’re all aware of, and don’t think any of us have probably ever seen or diagnosed, and that would
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HCMA BULLETIN, Vol 65, No. 2 – July/August 2019