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I'm happy that I was able to fall back on consigning this book and getting the advance to cover the tremendous financial burden that Harvey has been for us. Five stores that were shuttered for five days, one of those sustaining some fairly significant flood damage, then two weeks more with no new product to sell, and all of that being uninsurable even though we had business interruption insurance...you can guess the math. So not to toot my own horn or ask for a pat on the back or anything...but the choice between a Marvel 1 and getting all of my employees their paychecks is a super easy one and I am so thankful that I had that option. And one other thing...I know that Vincent and Stephen take a lot of heat on these boards (heck, I have been right in the middle of it on many occasions), but I really need to give credit where credit is due. On the Tuesday after the storm I realized that our payroll transfer had bounced because the banks had been closed since the previous Friday and were probably not reopening for a few days. I started doing some math and suddenly realized that we could potentially have no cash flow for two weeks with both rent and another payroll due in that time. I called Vincent and simply said how much loot I would need to be solvent. He wired it before even knowing what I would be consigning. Thank you Vincent, and all the folks at ComicConnect. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Hopefully the Marvel does well in the auction!

Here's the story.... I did a random search on Craigslist last night to see if anyone had posted any comics for sale. I came across a post that was advertising a garage sale that had some comics. There were a few boxes pictured. I decided to stop on my way home from work today because it was relatively close. I pulled up and there were three kids set up with one table each in their front yard. One had books and movies, the other with toys. The oldest, which turned out to be the person who posted the ad, was 14. He was visibly nervous when I walked up and said hello (I'm 6'1 with a giant, foot long beard and tattoos). I asked him if these were his books, he said yes and I continued to make small talk about comics. He had a few dollar boxes and a box of "higher priced" books. We chatted for about 10 minutes and I picked out two Batman books. After a few minutes, he started telling me he how he liked Superman and Black Terror. I was a little dumbfounded. I wasn't expecting Black Terror. He then proceeded to say that he wanted to sell some books to fund purchases for some early golden age. We talked about Marvel Mystery and Captain Americas and how they don't come around in our area very often. I was so shocked that a 14 year old kid had such an appreciation for "older" books, let alone golden age. He was extremely knowledgeable too! He was telling me about how Action 23 is the first Luthor, things like that. He said I'll be right back. Rushed into the house, came right back out with a coverless Action 20 and an Exciting Comics 12 that was about a 2.0 that had the Comic Connect sticker. He told me he had recently won them online. He was so excited to tell me about his golden age. I paid him the money he wanted for the Batman books, said my goodbyes and started to walk away. Before I left he asked if I wanted to sell a Marvel Mystery that I had (I showed him a pic of it on my phone). I said if I do, you'll be the first to know. I drove away feeling surprised and refreshed. It's was really awesome to see someone that young so jazzed about comics. It didn't matter if it was beat or coverless, he was just happy to have it! I feel like sometimes I forget why I love comics so much because of the "money" aspect that collecting vintage comics has with it. The buying, the selling, the profit and in all honesty, sometimes the "cutthroat" aspect of our beloved hobby. Sorry for the wall of text, I just figured I'd share because maybe some here would appreciate the story. Here are the two books I bought:

Richard, I will take this one based on two things I hope you will agree to. 1) You will give it to the first customer in the store you're working at on Saturday. Explain to them the coolness of Bronze Teen Humor, Romance, Westerns and other lesser collected genres. 2) Take the extra payment (already sent through PayPal) to buy your staff pizza and drinks tomorrow for lunch (or dinner). I'm not sure how many people you'll have in the store with you. If there is money left over, send a pie to another store or two. It's not much, but hopefully it'll take your mind off things for a little while.

Supply is the same, demand is down. New people would buy some of everything if they weren't being told by experienced collectors that they really want to sink their money into keys because that's the only thing that goes up in price... I used to have full runs and got bored... quality over quantity... only a handful copies graded... Speaking as a relatively small dollar collector, I'm not allowed to like what I like around here. A lot of boardies spout off about how they have such wonderful collections after they flushed all the garbage (which usually ends up being things I collect), and they can't be bothered with cheap books. The politest thing you guys say is that a low grade book is an "entry level copy," which couldn't make you sound any snobbier. If you guys are the experts, people are listening to you, and watching you show off. If you want new collectors to keep buying low to mid grade, tell them to buy low to mid grade, don't act like there's a bad smell coming off it.

Anyone who thinks Steve B. suddenly forgot how to grade or lost his integrity when he moved to Tampa is not playing with a full deck.

How about a show of "likes" on who saw this buy coming? i'll take it!

A personal grail OW-W Pages Blue-Label Goodness

in no particular order *just the highlights* /

Picked this up on CC this time around, my first ever Hulk 181. Loved the QP! Dan

The Marvel Mysterys that you will see in this thread are from the same collection. I purchased them from a long time resident of San Diego who bought them off the newsstand as a child. I don't have very many Timelys in my collection and one of the reasons is that they are difficult to find with both strong colors and nice pages. When I saw these copies I was quite smitten and I don't think that any buyer will be disappointed. Marvel Mystery #17: These early Timelys are wide and fat, full of energetic if sometimes amateurish art. Everett's Subby story is almost always the high point, drawn in his early looser/impressionistic style. Census: Sole Second Highest behind one in 9.2. This exciting WWII cover is yours for CGC 8.5 ow/w for $8000.

Local ad yielded the following trio

Ties the Church copy:

Thanks to our own @jimjum12 I have a sweet LB Cole book personalized right to me!

My newest acquisition from Edgar's stash.

Grand Opening less than 12 hours away!!!

No longer... https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?PubID=16031

Very happy to finally have tracked down the highest graded copy. Many thanks to the boardie who gave her up!

So glad they got this guy! We were contacted by him last week. He claimed to be selling these comics for his uncle, but something just didn't seem to make sense after talking to him for a few minutes. I did a quick search and found the notification of the stolen books on the boards. With my suspicions confirmed, I contacted the person who posted the thread and they passed me off to the victim. I also reached out to my buddy at NYPD and he put me in touch with a Det. who was working on the case. We tried to connect the perp with with the police and passed off all the info we had, he made some mistakes that made it easy to track his real identity. The Det. seemed very interested in pursuing this and the victim was just as adamant so I was confident they would get this guy. I'm not sure if our actions contributed to this or not, but clearly the collecting community played a role in making sure the right thing got done here. Good job boards!

Answered a local neighborhood site saying they had some old comics. Nothing "old" but this unopened bag was in there. Can't see a stress mark or crease...

Long ago I got a gig as a Production Assistant on a movie shooting in Cleveland. Office work, errands, copying scripts, etc.The movie was about a comic I'd never heard of called "American Splendor", some indie thing from the 70s that was big in Cleveland. The writer got on Letterman. Crumb did some art for it. The movie was gonna star Pig Vomit from the Howard Stern movie.For a month of preproduction I did PA work, running errands, picking people up, and making photocopies. Mixed in, I doodled, constantly aping more of the Crumb art surrounding me. I drew office jokes. I added Crumbish Harvey art to dry erase boards and notices. It was like a theme office.We began to shoot but hadn't worked out the legal stuff with Crumb and his art, so they had to hire someone to do props. Because everyone knew me and saw my Crumblike scrawls everywhere, I got the gig.I ended up creating the sketchbook Crumb(James Urbaniak) draws in, the Big Yum Yum Book, and a bunch of Frank Stack's art too. If the actor is holding a sketchbook or drawing, it's my art you're looking at. Looking back it's not all that great, but for the brief moments of screen time I think it seems passable. It was a pretty darn cool experience for a young 20-something kid. My little scrawls ended up in the trailer, the movie, and I even got mentioned in the commentary.It was a cool moment in my life.Ever since that experience, I've wanted a Crumb original from American Splendor. Not only wanted, but almost needed. How many people can share this weird credit of doing fake Crumb art for an Oscar nominated film?So for 15 years I kept an eye out. There weren't a lot of solo pages emerging, stories mostly travelling in packs. In 2016/2017 a few old Crumb collections slipped out, and while some art set records, Splendor stayed "cheap" and within mortal reach.This is a page from "Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines", my single favorite Splendor story and featured prominently in the film. It's one of those great every day experiences about Harvey picking the right line at the supermarket. It was a short 5 page story, so finding any page is a miracle in itself.Given that Crumb is known for his weirder stuff, finding simple blue collar storytelling is a nice change. It's a Crumb you can hang on the wall without feeling too awkward about. It's also at a much more mature point in time, past the eye of the fame hurricane, when he could be a little more patient. I loved seeing a Crumb original too. A spiral bound page of bristol with the full title handwritten on the page. It's so quirky and cool and awesome, I can't even begin to explain:) Let's be palsy walsies! http://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1419636

An older acquisition.

Well for an awful show I think I did awesome, as this represents some but not all of what I rescued from the walls of the bathfitters and psychics Jim

Picked this up at Wizard World Chicago today!

And here is a pic for the fans......love love this cover

I think this qualifies for DC goodness...

The comic book publishing industry has been in a secular decline for more than two decades. Short-termism and greed led to overexpansion, a speculative bubble and an unprecedented decline in quality in the '90s, which all culminated in the Marvel bankruptcy, consolidation of distribution and the rationalization and diversification of LCS's. Meanwhile, the Internet, broadband and other technological/communications breakthroughs disrupted society in an unprecedented manner, splintering interests and norms which had lasted for years/decades/centuries into an infinite number of directions, as content, innovation, distribution, communications etc. all expanded exponentially as never before. To put it in plain English: we lost the next generation of comic book readers just as an infinite number of alternatives suddenly showed up. We would have seen a big shift away anyway (just as we've seen happen to all traditional media, from network TV to newspapers to periodicals), but, that really jump-started the secular decline in a big way. Sure, comic books staged a rebound in both unit and $ sales after bottoming out in the late '90s. Quality improved dramatically (contrary to what some here believe, I think Marvel's quality in the early 2000s was the best the company had produced since the early 1980s), robust back issue markets (buoyed by improved information, distribution, third-party grading, liquidity, easy money, etc.), spillover interest from other media (re: Hollywood), etc. all helped comics to stage a cyclical rebound after the dark days of the mid-to-late '90s. But, as we are seeing with other print media and other businesses that have been hugely disrupted, this just papered over what is clearly a long-term secular decline. Yes, Marvel shot themselves in the foot with poor business practices (e.g., variant mania, constant re-boots, too many titles, too many crossovers, questionable editorial decisions, etc.) and has undoubtedly accelerated this long-term downtrend. But, even if Marvel was firing on all cylinders creatively, while they may be doing better than they are now, it's not like they'd be killing it and that the industry would be facing a bright future. I think that battle has been lost; eventually, more and more of the current customer base is going to age out and there will need to be some serious right-sizing in the industry. Clearly, the market cannot support 100+ titles from Marvel plus another 80 or whatever from DC and then all the indies, while the print-to-digital ratio is probably going to have to shift a lot more in favor of the latter as well over time. As an interesting aside, I read an analysis of Maxim magazine last week that some of you might find interesting. The short version is that the American version of Maxim was launched in 1997 and became a huge hit. But, it's popularity and profitability peaked in 2007 - I'm sure changing content tastes was part of the subsequent decline, but mostly it got caught up in the secular shift towards digital and interactive media (both consumers and advertisers made the shift). Anyway, the magazine was sold a number of times starting in 2007 until it was acquired as a turnaround project by a publicly-traded investment holding company, Bigliari Holdings (BH). The article I linked above shows how Bigliari has tried to turn Maxim around, but has only succeeded in racking up tens of millions of dollars of red ink over the past few years. I used to read and subscribe to Maxim in the late Nineties and in the Noughties, but, like many, ditched it. About a year ago, I picked up a copy of the revamped magazine at the airport and was really impressed by it - production values are up, and it clearly wants to cater to a higher-caliber of reader and advertiser. Though, I didn't end up continuing to buy it (I might consider subscribing to the digital version, but haven't yet), and therein lies the problem with both the print magazine industry and the comic book industry - even if you make the product better, or even cheaper (Maxim actually did both - lowered the price vs. peers and improved the quality dramatically), changing preferences (for both consumers and advertisers) means that it's unlikely that you will be able to fight the secular headwinds. Marvel publishing cannot save itself by catering to kids, lowering prices, firing its PC editors and whatever else has been suggested here. While some of these moves may certainly help, ultimately, the secular headwinds are the bigger factor in consumers finding other places to spend their time and money.

There has been a lot of discussion/debate around here about framing/displaying CGC comics so I though I would share my experience. All books have been up for years now with no fading.All are displayed in a room which is humidity controlled with no windows. The comics are behind UV masterpiece glass. Please keep in mind that I took these photos quick and you get some glare and reflection which is normally not there in person.

9 copies. 6 blue label, 3 restored.

Highest graded.

I received my mystery box prize today from Azkaban.He asked what I collected and he definitely delivered. Thank you again Dwayne for such a generous prize.

Way back in 1985 my dad and I went to my first comic book convention in Atlanta. That year I feel in love with Flash Comics, especially the ones with Hawkman covers. I've always wanted a decent copy of #2, the first Hawkman cover and this week the opportunity finally presented itself. 1985 Me is very happy right now:

I wanted to update this story with a positive ending!! The box showed up at our friend Matt's place in the UK (board name *matterus023*) I'm still not entirely sure how a box that was shipping from Rochester, NY to San Diego, CA ended up in the UK! (I think the label got ripped off the box and they delivered it based on a return address from an old CGC invoice in with one of the books. Not sure, but regardless of how they wound up halfway across the world, I'll take it!) So the box has been found and the books are being returned. HUGE Kudos to Matt for finding the books and reaching out immediately, thanks to SECollector who helped make the connection for us, and a big thank you to everyone who flooded our inbox this morning with the good news

Fellow boardie, art collector and film maker Mike Avilla was nice enough to ask me to draw, ink and narrate a little video for SYFY. Since it's me doing a piece of original art, I thought it would be ok to post here for your enjoyment. This was done on the last day of San Diego Comic Con, and Mike and his crew were true professionals. Not sure how they managed to turn my on camera muttering and scribbles into something so entertaining. The focus is on the the process and particularly the inking since that's what I'm mostly known for. Hope you like it, and I'm going to auction off the Batman drawing and donate the proceeds to disaster relief (I just need to decide which disaster, since there unfortunately seems to a number to choose from). Will keep you posted on that. Let me know what you think, and thanks again Mike! Scott

I randomly stumbled upon my grail & happy to add it to my collection while visiting my folks! 😬

Posted years ago but no longer accessible, thanks to the board transition: Part of my Strange Tales superhero run, compiled professionally for a catalog by the auction house that sold it. The picture is blurry from being re-sized with posting, but shows up much sharper when you click on it.

This is probably the coolest thread on the boards! Why has it been buried?! I just went through like 50 pages or something. Anyway, I posted this elsewhere but I wanna be in the cool kids club as well. Here comes more or less my whole collection by now .

Went 0-6 the first night on CLink, then went 3-0 last night. Very happy with my wins, especially the Mask 2 - a book that's been eluding me.

Big C-Link Win Last Night - Dastardly GGA Bondage! Last night I went all in on lots closing in the C-Link auction. I went to bed before it closed and actually dreamed about the auction. I woke up early and checked my bids. I won it! Here it is. There's something about torture wheel comics that I really like.

These two Blue Beetle covers by Ramona Patenaude look like they belong at the end of the Mystery Men run.

Speaking of favorites, here we go!

I believe every defect that keeps a book from a 9.8 should be noted.

Decided to pass by a local 2nd hand book store by my girlfriends house. They carry alot of comics for a dollar a piece and i've found a few gems over the years but it's usually just comics. Today i showed up as they were stocking a collection that had recently been sold to them. I started going through the books as one of the workers was stocking the shelf and was amazed at everything that i found.. Ended up walking out with a little over 100 books with Saga #1 first print being the best in the bunch. Check out the pictures below.