A lot of stuff has happened to me since my last update both collecting wise and personal life and figure it's time to get back into it. Feel free to stop by and contribute too whether it be sharing your own experiences or asking questions nothings is really off the table. I should have an update posted later today or tomorrow. 

Whoops! Looks like I was a little late with updating this like I said I would. Better late than never though!

Like I mentioned in the previous post a lot of stuff has happened to me both in my personal life and in my collecting world. I'll start with the collecting part, I mean isn't that why we're all here?

Around one year ago I was offered a chance at what I consider a grail piece for me- an original art piece to be precise. It was something I never thought I would actually have had the opportunity to buy which made it all the more amazing that I had even been offered it with it not being swallowed up by a bigger more well-known collector who usually land these type of pieces before they even hit public auctions.  

And what was that mystery piece, you're wondering? The complete OA interiors to ROM Spaceknight #1. I wasn't able to buy all of the pages but I was able to get first pick and got what I think were some of the best pages in the book if not the whole series. (Pics at the end)

How did this come about you might be wondering? Well as it turns out Ebay still has some interesting auctions from time to time. This one being for second page in #1. At the time I thought I would never get a shot at owning a page from the series again and knew I had to get it at any cost... which I did.

To my surprise I got an message from the seller asking me to call them at the number they left a little after the auction had ended. Calling them I met a person named, Scott who as it turned out to be was the owner of Catskill Comics and the art rep for Sal Buscema, the artist for almost all of the ROM comic run. It turned out Sal had actually had the original art interiors to the first few issues of ROM all this time and had decided to sell them with the page on Ebay being to get an idea of market value to price the rest at. He had asked if I would be interested in buying the rest of the book since Sal wanted to if possible to keep the books together which I thought was cool of him. I couldn't afford the asking price of 40k though which meant that the book would need to be split up since I didn't want to give up on the page I had won on Ebay already. I was able to workout a deal with Sal and Scot which allowed me to pick out some of the pages I could still afford from the book before they were made publicly available. To afford them however I needed to sell a large part of my collection which included some pieces I never thought I would sell. This was an important lesson I think all collectors need to deal with eventually which is selling pieces they one time thought they would never let go of in order to afford getting something which they otherwise never could. It was hard selling them especially a few but I think I made the right choice in the end. The only thing that annoys me is that I wish they had announced the Moon Knight TV show last year when I had those pieces at auction!

After a few months of back and forth and sending the money I finally met Scott and got my hands on the art pages I picked out. Interestingly Scott also included Sal's personal copy of ROM #1 which was the only thing that wasn't signed by him LOL. The best page in the lot however, had to be the grail piece for me and probably other ROM lovers. The splash page to #1 which had also doubled as the ad which had been in a lot of other Marvel comics at the time advertising ROM's appearance in the Marvel universe.

Interesting the artwork for the splash is made from 3 different pieces. The giant splash of ROM coming out of the crater and the separate page which just shows ROM crashing down to Earth which were combined to make the third piece which combined the images into a stat whihc is the published image you see in the comic. 

 

This was the biggest thing to happen to me collecting wise with no other big purchases being made since then. I'm mostly trying to recover from the cost and want to enjoy what I have but do plan on adding to my collection and hopefully adding examples back that I had to sell. The Moon Knight TV will make that much more costly now however!

Stay tune for more interesting updates with me hoping you enjoyed this one.

 See you soon!
 

Other ROM #1 pages