COLLECTIBLES AND MEMORABILIA: Gary Moranhears from an accidental collector who in narrowing his focus found a fascinating and colourful niche peopled by Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones and suchlike

IF IT is possible to be an éminence grise among comic collectors then Charlie Haviza is that man, at least for American comics with golf-themed covers.

It is not quite accurate to say that Haviza has been a lifelong golf collector. It just feels that way. As the 59-year old from Indiana puts it, he started collecting golf items long before he realised he was a collector - a process with which many others who have become serial scavengers of golfing memorabilia would be familiar.

Haviza's first big collection was golf books and by 1990, he had acquired almost 700 titles across all categories.

For reasons he cannot quite remember, he decided to sell most of them but that didn't put him out of the collecting game.

He was already a member of the (American) Golf Collectors Society and from books he moved on to collecting sports cards, which were highly fashionable at the time.

In particular, he found a niche in non-sport golf cards that portrayed characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny and The Flintstones with some golf theme, and from there it was but a little leap to start collecting comics with golf-themed covers.

If only to preserve his sanity or to keep some balance in his life, Haviza limited himself to American-issued comics with golf on the front cover rather than the back or inside pages.

"You have to narrow down what you collect or you'd go nuts," he told The Irish Timesafter another long day working at Portland GC in Indiana.

To date he is aware of 350 comics that meet the criteria and he owns copies of all but 10. For the ones he doesn't have, he has colour copies of the covers.

Included in the latter group is Famous Funnies No 1, which sells in good condition for up to €13,500, according to The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the annually updated bible of the comic-collecting world, first published in 1970.

It's a fair increase from the 10 cents the comic cost when published in 1934, coincidentally the first year of the Masters tournament, but the increase in value is not related to the image of Mutt (of Mutt and Jeff fame) swinging a club on the cover.

The 68-page comic is considered by historians to be the first publication sold to the public in the style we now consider typical for comics.

It proved popular with cash-strapped readers in the era of the Great Depression, selling 90 per cent of its 200,000 print run. In light of the price today, you would have to conclude most of the 200,000 are no more.

Haviza had the opportunity to buy a copy several years ago but it wasn't in great condition and he declined to shell out the €1,700 asking price.

There are several other American collectors who specialise in golf-themed comics and some of those do have Famous Funnies No 1and a couple of others that are typically priced over €3,500, but nobody has as many different issues as Haviza.

One he does have is Action Comics No 99, which Overstreet values at €700, a figure based on the first appearance of a new Action Comics logo rather than Superman being hit by a golf club on the cover.

Changes in logo, the identity of the cover artist or particular characters in the comic strips are factors that can inflate prices.

Like many collectors, Haviza is not really seeking financial gain out of his hobby and has relaxed his efforts in the area in recent years. It has become more of a winter thing as he likes to spend time working on his game in summer and still plays off a two-handicap approaching his 60th birthday.

He has also resumed collecting golf books and has around 350 hardbacks dating from pre-1949, the year of his birth, which was a novel criterion whereby he would limit his library.

Haviza created the website golfcomicbooks.com to share his information with other collectors and there is a huge amount of data on the site along with pictures of many of the covers.

"If you start collecting you can get 200 of the golf covers within a month but the next 50 might take you 10 years or more," he says. "You really have to dig and it's not necessarily the valuable ones that are hard to find."

His most recent discovery came earlier this year when a comic unknown on the collecting circuit came to light.

Will To Winwas a promo comic given out by Goodwill Industries and has a likeness of Ed Furgol on the cover. It has stories about people who overcame obstacles to succeed in various walks of life.

Furgol's withered left arm was 10 inches shorter than his right after a childhood accident but he won the US Open in 1954 and played in the 1957 Ryder Cup.

Haviza may not have had to overcome such hurdles but he's certainly gone through a few hoops to amass and share his colourful collection.

• This column welcomes emails about golf memorabilia and collectibles. If you have an interesting item or story, get in touch via collectgolf@gmail.com.