Golden Age Collectables — Local services in Seattle

Tl;dr, I wouldn't bother going to this particular shop if you are a Black person unaccompanied by a white or light-skinned asian person as it seems the entire staff seemingly comprised of all white people will racially profile you as someone highly capable of stealing, even if you have come to this store many times before, during slow & peak times.

I just came back from spending about an hour or so at this shop today, from about 230-ish to 4pm.

Even for an early Monday afternoon, this shop was packed. This was fine & even not being greeted seemed understandable given the atmosphere. I took my time looking around the shop as everything is jammed in a nook or cranny, super high & super low, along tight aisles. As I revisited different comic sections to make my final choices (mind you, not all of the comics are located in the same area, so you do a lot of walking back & forth through the entire store if it takes you time to decide on things or cant remember if you saw a volume 1 or 2 comic in the sale rack or something, etc. and it is especially hard if the store is packed), I began to notice that the same staff that I walked near once or twice & made eye contact with but still didn't greet me or ask if I needed help or if they could hold anything at the register for me or any of the typical customer service things, started to follow me around the store.

They very obviously ran laps around me, at least 3 of the 4 or 5 total staff members, would stand very close to me without saying anything, all while keeping tabs on me through text messaging on their phones. This went so far that they were starting to slack on actually helping anyone else, & at one point while rounding a corner, I nearly ran full on into one of the staff as she tried to run and catch up to me (I was slowly turning a corner, but this signalled to me that they really worked themselves up).

After making my final decisions with still no check ins or help from any member of the staff, after politely putting away my declined purchases where they belonged(!), I get to the register & the woman I nearly ran into didn't make eye contact with me & acted as though she would rather I just dropped my comics on the floor & left instead of actually buy something. She rushed me through the checkout process, barely giving me time to enquire about anything else I had in mind and definitely didn't ask me anything that would prompt a conversation. I paid for my items & walked toward the door.

As I walk out, I am face to face with a large security guard that was not there when I walked in. He stares straight at me & as I walk over the threshold of the store, I turn around to see what's going on. As soon as I turn & look, I see/hear him verbally check in with the white woman cashier & about 4-5 other security guards, all of whom were not in the store for the majority of the time I was in there, immediately single file out of the store, each looking me in the eye as if to say I needed to watch myself if I ever came back.

This was indeed the most over the top reaction from the staff I've ever encountered in all of the times I had been here, but as I implied in my tl;dr, I haven't shown up by myself (a non-passing, Black person) in a while; I am normally shopping with a white person & didn't see this treatment in the past.

While I was not the only Black person in this store at the time, I was the only one shopping alone & not in the company of white people like all the other Black folks I saw there. I wasn't wearing baggy clothes & even wore a completely clear gallon sized backpack for christ sake.

This will definitely be my last time shopping here, especially since a lot of their shelved comics are not taken care of & many are only 1 random volume in a series (or 10 copies of one random volume); most of the reason it took me so long to decide was because so many of their books have been roughened up, but they still want cover price. One can hardly justify paying $20 for something that is obviously bent, punctured, or peeling and they only have 1 in...

The Old Order Changeth!

Growing up geek in southeast Alaska meant that the rare trip to Golden Age Collectables while visiting the lower 48 was like a glimpse of the promised land. Back then, I would show up with my handwritten want list of back issues and obscure rpg modules secure in the knowledge that GAC would have everything for a price - even if it that was often well beyond what my adolescent dollar could afford. Of course, only getting to visit once every couple of years meant that going to the store always felt like I was a little out of step with the cool kids in the rest of America and, unfortunately, there were plenty of people who were all too eager to play gatekeepers to fandom.

Thus, it was with mixed emotions that I took my 6-year-old son, who has grown up in more international surroundings (Singapore and China) to the store this weekend.

I’m happy to say that Golden Age Collectables has kept all of the cool but changed with the times so that now everybody gets to feel included. Back issues are not such a big deal anymore what with digital comics being so accessible. Another change: incredibly knowledgeable and friendly staff able to introduce us to fun, age-appropriate card games based on what we’d played before. I wasn’t sure at first if Unstable Unicorns and the SpongeBob version of Fluxx would click with my son but it turns out that game design has come along way since the days when I was puzzling over the rules of the Steve Jackson kits I bought by mail (though some of those games were great too!). He loves both of them and is really enjoying the goofiness of Fluxx, a game where you don’t even know how to win when you start and the stakes could change at any second.

We couldn’t leave without getting a comic book, so we got The Promise from the Avatar series (this franchise is huge in Singapore) along with an Appa stuffy. I noticed that they even had a reading order helpfully posted so we could see which books to reach before which. Little things like this are a big help to new folks getting into things.

Golden Age was always a Seattle gem but I’m happy to see that the new generation is taking better care of it than ever. My son can’t wait to go back. The kids...

I was made to feel like a petty shoplifting criminal. I visited this shop early in the day, not long after they opened and there were a handful of customers in the shop. Of the 3 staff on duty, 2 of them decided to follow me and stalk me as I browsed the store. They didn't even hide what they were doing. Based on this behaviour I decided not to buy anything - in spite of being a keen collector who came prepared with money to spend on comics and collectibles. I came across a comic book in their display cabinet I really wanted so against my inner silent protest, I bought the book. Even the buying experience was terrible. The staff were really unfriendly and hostile. They never verbalised anything untoward however their body language and aggressive stares made me feel very unwelcome. I should explain, I am a tall, well-built brown man with a beard. I have an Australian accent as well. I would like to think discrimination does not exist in a comic shop. I.E a story telling medium which has addressed discrimination for a very very long time. The staff here should be ashamed of themselves and the owner of this business should think about investing in anti-discrimination training. Starbucks (founded just around the corner from this shop) offered this training to their staff. Maybe it's time this unwelcoming and discriminatory business did...