Not sure if I count as "older", but...

Flea markets, trading with other fans, and Mile High Comics.

QUOTE: Not sure if I count as "older", but...

Born in 1983, you don't.

I had Marie's Books and Things in downtown 1970s Fredericksburg VA, when I was a kid. I didn't know what the hell a back issue was until I discovered that place. This was a funny hole in a wall run by two odd older people, and back then it was a tiny bit of new comics and then nothing but long boxes of back issues and towers of back issues and back issues hung on the wall. The owner was always trying to foist off some kind of Fantastigraphics book on me, but I wasn't interested. Marie's also had tons of used paperbacks, and I kick my own ass today that I didn't know to seek the kind of pulpy genre stuff I'd be paying dearly for in later years.

Even so, this was back when you could buy actual issues of the Lee/Kirby FF for like a buck-fifty to three dollars. But three dollars was a friggin' fortune for a comic book. Once I figured out that Marie's had issues of the comics I loved that existed before I knew what comics were, I guess I began to "collect comics."

For a few brief years, I worked at a major back-issue comic and magazine fulfillment company. Periodically (Ha!) issues would roll in that were absolute, "must-own" comics. The Harvey Spirit reprints, for instance. One of the "perks" of working there was that you could, at certain specified times, shop for what you wanted. These were then kept in one of the higher-up's office where they could easily sit for weeks waiting for him to regrade the books, since obviously either the original grade was defective or we, scheming rats that we all were, would attempt to cheat the company by switching out the grade stickers. Finally, an announcement would be made that employee books were ready for sale and you had to get there by Wednesday, as I recall, or they would be refiled. No discounts. No shipping them out to stores where we might put one over on the mooks working there.

You could use some of the Trade Credit you inevitably accrued working there because the company would not pay overtime. They paid trade credit. This worked out so well for them that they began declaring certain evenings "Mandatory Trade Credit Nights." Show up, work for trade credit, or be fired the next day. I didn't make too big a show of it, but I did not show up for Mandatory Trade Credit Nights. Somehow, I squeaked by.

Finally, someone (many still think it was me. It was not, unfortunately) ratted out the practice to the state and weirdly, Mandatory Trade Credit Nights went away... I was gone by then, as well.

Still, it was a grand old time of it shopping in the files on those occasions when we could. That place often had stuff you would not believe...

I used to ride my bike down to the local book exchange after school during the mid to late 80's. I found many great books this way.  I still do, in fact I found some of JB's Marvel Team-Up issues and the three Power Man/Iron Fist issues this way last week, along with the early Killraven Amazing Adventures stories, for $2 a pop.

My first comic shop experience came at 13, when an older friend took me on the then two-hour commute from Wollongong to Sydney.  I started doing this regularly with friends my own age at 16.  Fond memories of picking up holes in my Byrne FF collection.

These days I occaisionally use eBay and other online places, but mainly, I still try my luck in book exchanges and the like.