The Beginning or the first entrepreneurial story

From today's vantage point, I realize that in my very early childhood I had an entrepreneurial endeavor with all the necessary elements to call it that. I even ended up selling the entire business.

Like any entrepreneurial story, everything stems from love, a hobby. I started reading comics at a very young age. Probably everything started from Mikijev Zabavnik, later through Zagor, Tex, Commander Mark, Spider Man, leading me to Asterix, Lucky Luke and the genius that is Alan Ford.?

In the beginning, it was only for the sake of collecting, but it grew into something else. Apart from them being available at newsagent’s, the real comic book exchange of the day was in flee markets. On Saturday mornings, they were sites of true adventures for simple collectors and full-blown stock market bargainers alike.

The real collectors were obvious: thoroughly spoiled kids (from my perspective at the time) who came with their cash-bearing parents or slightly older aficionados - both groups looking for the rarest of copies.

As a rule, no price was too high for them, as they set aside what they were interested in and paid no questions asked. I quickly realized that I could earn more from selling one or two of those hard-to-come-by issues than a dozen regular ones. I came up with a way to get older copies in two ways:

• I fill my backpack with new comics, I make sure they are in mint condition and that there is some explicit action on the front page and I walk around the neighborhoods and do exchanges with kids who haven’t the slightest idea about the running market value of the comic books they possess. From their perspective, they get one brand new comic for an old one (admittedly, there were also transactions I’m not proud of).?
• This one required a lot more hassle, but the rewards reaped were phenomenal: collecting and removing old paper - but at carefully selected locations where I would expect folks’ attics and basements to be cram packed with disused comic books. I would happen upon entire collections for free. where I located comics in the attics or basements. I came across entire collections literally for free. The by-product of the haul was old paper that I would take and sell.

Within a year, I had become one of the three biggest providers of comics in Zrenjanin. At Saturday's market, I would bring only the select premium offer because the entire collection I possessed would require a car trailer. Nonetheless, anyone who wanted to trade came to my house. Every collector or wannabe collector knew about me - and I knew about them.

Towards the end of the summer season, there was a shortage of primary school textbooks (so 1990s) and one of the serious players in the field of comic book trade had segued to selling second-hand textbooks within a couple of weeks.?He traded comics for textbook collections. I knew for a fact that he was a big fan of the Martin Mystère comics, which in meant to me that he was one with brains. He offered me to join his business, but I didn't like the idea of exchanging the knowledge from collections such as Blazing Skull, On the Wings of the Night and Hordes of Evil for a seventh-grade textbook, or Fantasy Chico for a collection of readings for the fourth grade.?

I know that the guy bought a decent motorbike mid-September from his earnings.

The following spring, there was a concert at the Belgrade Fair, "50 years of Rock'n'Roll" or something like that. My love for Rock'n'Roll has been around for a long time and I asked my parents if I could go. That was back in the day when their inflation-depleted salaries amouned to 1.5 Deutsche Mark and when I am not sure how our parents managed to put food on the table for the month.

I'm not sure what my father answered, but my mother told me that there was simply no money for me to go. I distinctly remember the moment when I asked her: "Okay Mom, if it's just money - if I find it, then can I go?" She told me, "Then you can."?

I sold the whole collection in the next seven days. A man came with a car trailer to load all of the comics. I kept for myself only the best episodes of Alan Ford and two or three other ultra-specials (I still have them in Zrenjanin).?

I remember my mother's look when she saw that my room was empty of comics. She knew I was persistent and determined, and that I would have the last say. I went to the concert and saw live what was at that time probably the entire rock-and-roll scene of Serbia and beyond.

And the new passion had its entrepreneurial moment. About that below In the following text.