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Post by MWGallaher on Jul 28, 2022 20:18:24 GMT -5
I miss seeing ¢ after the price instead of $ in front. I recently realized that you never see the ¢ in the wild anymore, on anything. I'm pretty sure there was a ¢ key on print typewriters when I was a kid but--obviously--it's not on our computer keyboards. It's obsolete. It got me thinking: there was one day, one specific date, in this city (or any US city), when you could buy something in some store for a penny, and then, the very next day, you couldn't. Nothing, anywhere in town, was sold for a penny. I figure it was probably when the last penny gumball machine in town was removed, or was replaced with a nickel gumball machine. Strange thing to think about, I know, but it felt eerie to realize the sun rose one day and a single penny couldn't buy you anything, ever again. A date that no one noticed, no one marked, no one gave a thought to. A date we'll not likely ever be able to determine. |
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Post by Calidore on Jul 29, 2022 9:20:52 GMT -5
I miss seeing ¢ after the price instead of $ in front. I recently realized that you never see the ¢ in the wild anymore, on anything. I'm pretty sure there was a ¢ key on print typewriters when I was a kid but--obviously--it's not on our computer keyboards. It's obsolete.
I had to copy and paste it from the Windows character map. 
Seems like the ancient typewriter (sorry, Mom) we had when I was a kid had a cents key, but I also have vague memories of typing "c", backspacing, and typing a "/" over it. Maybe one of those was on a different typewriter? Not sure.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 29, 2022 9:24:38 GMT -5
I recently realized that you never see the ¢ in the wild anymore, on anything. I'm pretty sure there was a ¢ key on print typewriters when I was a kid but--obviously--it's not on our computer keyboards. It's obsolete.
I had to copy and paste it from the Windows character map.
Seems like the ancient typewriter (sorry, Mom) we had when I was a kid had a cents key, but I also have vague memories of typing "c", backspacing, and typing a "/" over it. Maybe one of those was on a different typewriter? Not sure.
The cent symbol was shift-6 on most typewriters. |
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Post by Prince Hal on Jul 29, 2022 10:54:17 GMT -5
As the first grandchild, I was the apple of several eyes: my paternal grandmother's, and her unmarried son's and her daughter's. Occasionally I would stay with them, all the way on the other side of town, for a couple, three days. It gave my parents a break having the oldest out of the house and they were able to spoil me. I could eat the treats we never had at home or had to share amongst the six of us kids, and my unlce would always slip me a few quarters that would naturally burn a hole in my pocket until I could run down to the Avenue (as we called the main drag) to prowl the three or four candy stores right near my grandmother's house. As distinctly as Proust remembered his madeleine, I recall the Coca Cola and Bugles corn chips I would inhale as I read my stash of comics. One that stands out in my mind, because of the Golden Age reprints I loved was Marvel Super-Heroes 15 from April 1968, with the Black Knight and the Patriot among the reprints. At DC I also read the latest installment in the classic "Virus-X" serial in Action and the thrilling first half of the equally classic Mordru saga in Adventure and quite a few other books to the accompaniment of the tooth-rotting Coke and the sodium-soaked Bugles. Those three or four days were probably the last few of my childhood.     |
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Post by Calidore on Jul 29, 2022 11:48:32 GMT -5
I had to copy and paste it from the Windows character map.
Seems like the ancient typewriter (sorry, Mom) we had when I was a kid had a cents key, but I also have vague memories of typing "c", backspacing, and typing a "/" over it. Maybe one of those was on a different typewriter? Not sure.
The cent symbol was shift-6 on most typewriters.
Found a picture that's either ours or a very close model. Shift-6 was the underline, but there is a cent sign on the far right with the ampersand.
As a kid, I quickly decided touch-typing on this thing was for the birds and learned two-fingered, which is still how I type to this day. At my peak, when I was typing at work regularly, I could top 60 wpm by a bit, but I'm closer to 50 now.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2022 19:16:39 GMT -5
I miss how, when I was still pretty young, my parents would sometimes let me use those old paper coin roll wrappers and roll up spare change that had accumulated, cash it in at the bank, and then use the proceeds to make some additional comic book (and candy) purchases. While it was essentially still them providing the funds, it made me feel like I was helping/doing something, plus the amount varied so there was excitement each time to see how much it added up to (anything over say $3 felt like a goldmine!).
It may also be why I eventually became a coin collector as well...we lived near the Canadian border (Vermont/Quebec) and Canadian coins regularly mixed and circulated with US coins, so I was always finding different types of coins (and of course the usual US different ones like wheat pennies, bicentennial quarters, etc.)
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Post by EdoBosnar on Aug 3, 2022 4:20:15 GMT -5
I miss how, when I was still pretty young, my parents would sometimes let me use those old paper coin roll wrappers and roll up spare change that had accumulated, cash it in at the bank, and then use the proceeds to make some additional comic book (and candy) purchases. While it was essentially still them providing the funds, it made me feel like I was helping/doing something, plus the amount varied so there was excitement each time to see how much it added up to (anything over say $3 felt like a goldmine!). (...) Well, to be fair, you were doing at least a little work gathering up the change, taking the trouble of putting it in rolls and going to the bank. My parents similarly let me keep the money from the deposit return on any bottles and cans we had in the house (in Oregon it was 5 cents for cans and 10 cents for glass), provided that I was the one who stowed them all in bags and took them to the bottle return place at the supermarket. I supplemented this by gathering discarded cans and bottles from the roadside ditches - it added up and that meant more comics.
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Post by tartanphantom on Aug 3, 2022 7:53:49 GMT -5
The thrill of finding out that you missed something that came out a couple months ago and the chances of ever being able to get it in the tiny town you live in are somewhere between zero and none. That was great.
That was great, and I learned to really exploit it when I was in college.
I went to school out-of-state, but was still only 3 hours from home. I generally drove home once a month while in college, and most of the drive was on the US highway system instead of the interstate. Before I started ordering my comics through Westfield's subscription service, I had the advantage of stopping at every little town along the way and scoping out the convenience stores and drugstores. After learning who carried what and where, I developed my own route of frequent stops to certain towns & stores, raiding their spinner racks monthly for anything I'd missed. It really helped me develop long, consistent runs on several of my favorite titles.
This was the early '80s, and the direct market-only books were still in their infancy-- newsstand books still reigned supreme.
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Post by MDG on Aug 3, 2022 8:51:13 GMT -5
The thrill of finding out that you missed something that came out a couple months ago and the chances of ever being able to get it in the tiny town you live in are somewhere between zero and none. That was great.
That was great, and I learned to really exploit it when I was in college.
I went to school out-of-state, but was still only 3 hours from home. I generally drove home once a month while in college, and most of the drive was on the US highway system instead of the interstate. Before I started ordering my comics through Westfield's subscription service, I had the advantage of stopping at every little town along the way and scoping out the convenience stores and drugstores. After learning who carried what and where, I developed my own route of frequent stops to certain towns & stores, raiding their spinner racks monthly for anything I'd missed. It really helped me develop long, consistent runs on several of my favorite titles. For a couple of years after college I had a job doing in-store ordering and inventories, so was on the road a lot in the early 80s. I learned the location of just about every comic shop in Westchester county, the Hudson Valley, Long Island, southern Connecticut and northern New Jersey. I'd usually pop in looking for unexpected oddities rather than specific books. |
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