Page 39 - september-23

Collecting Harveyana
An interview with Jonathan Sternfeld by Maxine Carter-Lome

Jonathan Sternfeld has been a collector his entire life, everything from bottle
caps, postcards, and business cards to baseball cards, comic books, gems, and
minerals, and finally back to comic books and comic merchandise. Currently, he
is focused on merchandise created featuring characters from Harvey Comics. You
can read more about the history of Harvey Comics and its stable of characters
and collectibles in his article on page 22. In this interview, we learn more
about Sternfeld as a collector, and why childhood memories can be a great
catalyst for collectors.

Please share with us a little about your personal and
professional background:
I grew up when personal computers were just starting out. I had a
Commodore 64, and one thing I did with it (other than play games!) was
to write a database for my record collection. I learned about IBM PCs in
high school and then took computer classes in college. There, I met my
future wife, and she collected gems and minerals. She got me interested
in them as well, and I wrote a database for her collection as practice with
dBase III.
After college, I became a computer programmer for a living. I reclaimed
my childhood comic collection and converted my hand-written inventory
into a database. Most recently, I turned my computer skills to creating a
website for my Harvey Comic merchandise collection, and it really drives
the collection now.
When did you start getting interested in Harvey comics and
associated merchandise?
I started collecting Richie Rich comics in 1978, and by the time I
went to college, I had pretty much every issue and took a break from the
collection. After college, it took me until about 2001 to get back into the
hobby. eBay had changed the face of collecting, and there I found merchan-
dise as well as comic books. I think it was around 2004 when I seriously
started collecting merchandise, and by 2012 had enough to start thinking
about setting up a website to display it. The website went live in 2014.

What does your collection consist of today?
I have about 1,800 issues of Harvey comic books and over 600 pieces of
merchandise and ephemera.
How—or do you—display your collection for the enjoyment of
others? And what does that look like?
Displaying my collection is important to me! We have a small display
cabinet in the living room that we rotate various things through. The gems
and minerals have been in there several times, as have parts of my comic
merchandise collection. My local library has two display cabinets that they
let the public use, and I did displays there in 2016 and 2019. The library
was shut for a while because of COVID, but it is open again, and I would
like to do another display there. In the meantime, in 2022 I did a display at
TerrifiCon, which is held at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. It was very well
received, and I would like to do more displays at conventions in the future.
Harvey Comics had a long history and a variety of characters. When I
put together a display, I try to represent different time periods and different
characters. I also try for a variety of types of merchandise, from pencil cases
and lunch boxes to Halloween costumes and candy pails, story records and
dolls to board games and puzzles. Because the merchandise was marketed
toward children, it tends to be brightly colored and eye-catching. Putting a
bunch of these pieces together always makes a stunning display!

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