CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) - Charlotte is home to some of the best comic book shops in the Carolinas.
It’s also home to what is believed to be the largest collection of comic books in the Carolinas.
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.
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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.
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“So all this stuff is alphabetical, numerical so that we can find it,” he said. “The question always comes up, is it computerized you know, on some kind of database? It’s not. It’s just in order.”
But why isn’t the collection computerized?
“This is 800,000 comic books! I can’t even stand to do a mailing list of a hundred, you know. I’m not a computer person,” Shelton said.
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.
Shelton has been collecting for more than 50 years. He started by going to flea markets where he’d buy whatever he could find. He buys from customers and he buys other collections.
He remembers the first time he bought a collection of 100,000 comics, a purchase that didn’t come cheap.
“Well, I got a second mortgage on the house at the time. That was scary. Yeah. That’s very scary,” Shelton 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.
Clearly, Shelton has a passion for comics. It’s something born years ago when he was just 7 years old. That love has lasted all these years and has only grown stronger, but it’s a love that goes far beyond the comics themselves and probably explains why he’s been so successful over all these years.
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“I love my customers,” he said. “I mean, I know that they’re my friends. And I enjoy seeing them not because they’re gonna give me some money for college books this week, but just the same again. You know, they’ve had kids or kids have had kids and bring the grandkids in. It’s, that’s the emotional thing is the relationships and relationships.”
Shelton says he feels an obligation to his customers and friends to keep his business going. He hopes that will help spur an interest in the next generation of comic book collectors, so don’t look for him to give up his collecting anytime soon.
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