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first “big buy” was the Spider-Man issue 332.
He has a copy in his shop that he dug up to
show me, and his face lit up as he pulled it
out from one of the large bins.
“Spider-Man was my favorite as a kid,”
Giordano said. “I remember having to save
up to go after the first issue. When I was a
kid there was an expensive old back issue — it
was one of the early appearances of Venom.
I didn’t have the funds to make this happen,
so I got my dad to buy me that book for
seven bucks. He warned me, ‘Do not tell your
mom that we spent $7 on a comic book.’ You
know, it was a big deal.”
Before becoming an avid hunter of Funko
Pop! dolls, Mitchell collected goods such as
Beanie Babies (which helped him pay for
graduate school) and Pet Rocks. Mitchell
discovered Pops! around 2011 while he was
browsing a Barnes & Noble that was closing
in the city. They were selling the pop culture
dolls for 50 percent off.
“They ended up getting a manager and
assistant manager to help me carry all of the
Pops! out of Barnes & Noble,” Mitchell said.
“I bought every single one. I pulled up my
car right in front of the store and five or six
employees were loading bags and bags of
Pops! I probably bought about 150 to 200
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of them. I started going to Barnes & Noble
stores that were closing and exclusively
looking for and buying Pops!”
Right when you step into Royal Collectibles,
you can’t miss the left wall with bins and
shelves overflowing with comics. They carry
issues by larger publishers like Marvel, DC
Comics and Image as well as independent
publishers. Their back wall is dedicated to
new releases, and it gets refreshed a little each
week depending on what books are released.
Some of the bins are filled with comics for
their five for $20 deal — a price any collector
or reader would consider a dream come true.
Directly across from the comics sit the Pop!
vinyl figures. If you haven’t seen these yet,
you’re missing out. Each doll is boxed and
modeled off pretty much any pop culture
character or even a real person. For example,
they have Batman, Spider-Gwen, the Joker,
Captain Marvel, Pusheen, Conan O’Brien
and Amy Winehouse. Pops! are different
from most collectible dolls because of their
cartoonish features on oversized heads
and small bodies. They are one of the most
accessible and recognizable collectibles yet.
“I was basically just a customer of Mike’s
and I got to know him as a person,” Mitchell
said. “There are things that he has taught me
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