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Good luck with your con this weekend. I'm hoping to go to a con this weekend too as a buyer with my want list. As for the freebie bag, I think put a coupon in the bag for a piece of candy. That will get people to your table.

Recent Acquisitions (Nyoka, LB Cole, Berthet, Bettie Page, Gwen Stacy & Lauren Cohan) Here are a few recent inexpensive eBay pickups. It takes time to find these cheap gems among all the thousands of books offered on eBay, but it's a lot of fun too (I guess that's why they call it a hobby). It's both fun and satisfying to get cool things for the collection that cost little money. First, a couple of ladies in peril. I got the Nyoka for $9 and the Terrors of the Jungle (with an LB Cole cover) for $22. Next up is this small print by Philippe Berthet. I started collected Berthet a few years back because many of his characters are based on Betty Page (as with Dave Stevens). I got this from an eBay seller in France. I think this was actually a giveaway at a gallery or wine tasting. I won it for $3. Speaking of Betty Page (I guess the actual spelling is Bettie), I have a small collection of stuff devoted to her. I keep the stuff in Mylar sheets that are 3 hole punched (I get the sheets from E. Gerber). There are 2 sizes, comic-size and mag-size. The sheets go in extra thick binders, and right now my Bettie Page collection is up to 3 very full binders. This new acquisition though is too big for the binders. It's the issue of the old Comic Buyer's Guide where Don Thompson wrote about finding Bettie Page, and urging people to pay her if they use her likeness in their publications. I subscribed to CBG for over 20 years but never kept the issues (other than the few where they published my letters, and a few special issues, like the sideways Cerebus issue). It's nice having a copy of this again. I won it on eBay for $9. Here's a cool addition to my Gwen Stacy collection, the Danish version of ASM 121 (I got it for $9): Finally, to commemorate the new season of Walking Dead, I got this signed autograph of Lauren Cohan. She plays Maggie in the TV show. I won it for $21. Thanks for reading.

Walt Disney World on Election Day As I mentioned before, my family's tradition is to be in Disney World on election day. This is the third election in a row we've been here. We arrived very late Friday and we'll be leaving tomorrow. The voters in my family (me, my wife and my 2 oldest daughters who are in college) voted early. I can't do a Disney trip report without showing Cinderella's castle. And the Magic Kingdom is already decked out for Christmas, 3 weeks before Thanksgiving! Saturday night, after watching Fantasmic at Hollywood Studios (one of our favorite shows, we never miss it when we're here), we rushed back to the Boardwalk and ate dinner at Flying Fish. My family is into traditions, and we always eat at FF when we visit Disney but this might be our last time. They have a new menu and it's ungodly expensive. It's delicious though. For my appetizer I got the Kurobuta Pork Belly that's served with a shank croquette, apple slaw, bing cherry jelly drops and quail egg. Here's more food. Disney is expensive but they have some bargains. Like, the turkey leg which is under $15 and a meal by itself. And also the fish and chips at the Great Britain pavilion in Epcot -- it has 2 huge fillets and lots of fries. It's delicious and cheap at $10.49. Another good and delicious deal is the brat at the Germany pavilion in Epcot. The brat is only $9.49. Here's what I got last night, with a frosty beer: Right now is Epcot's food and wine festival. Epcot also used to have my favorite all-time Disney ride, the Norway ride (and you always have to stay and watch the short movie). BUT, they replaced the Norway ride with a very lame Frozen ride. Still, the food and wine festival is fun to graze at for dinner. Last night I got the brat and turkey leg plus beer and wine for my meal. I was also going to have a Peking Duck steamed bun, but my daughter ate it. Finally here are my 4 kids in Magic Kingdom. Our vacation this time was kind of melancholy because my two oldest -- the 2 girls in the middle -- had to leave early to get back to college (one left on Saturday, the other on Sunday). But, as your kids get older, you learn to cherish any time they can spend with you. Thanks for reading.

What I Got - Part 1 (Original Marvels Collection - I Need Just 1 More) I mentioned a few days ago how I sold about 22,000 comics and a bunch of Star Wars toys from my collection. The buyer of the comics showed up this past Sunday with a big van to pick up the comics. It was easy to sell the comics -- they were comics I no longer wanted -- but I'll admit it was hard to see the long boxes go away. Those comics have been part of my life for many years, practically decades. It wasn't terribly sad, but kind of sad. Anyway, here's where I wrote about the sale: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7287580&fpart=65 I immediately went on a shopping spree; it took me about a week to spend the money (about $3500). Since I bought so fast I was a prisoner of what was being offered right now on eBay and C-Link (and a few other vendors). I know I could have gotten better deals if I waited. But if I waited, I probably would have used the money on other things. I didn't want that to happen, as I wanted to have some special comics to commemorate those comics and toys I no longer wanted, but still was sad to see go. I'll write about what I bought in a few posts. First, here are my 3 big acquisitions: Spider-man #2 (first Mysterio), Spider-man #3 (first Doctor Octopus), and Fantastic Four #5 (first Doctor Doom). Three major keys! These books were harder to buy than I expected. The supply is out there, but GPA prices are all over the place. And, eBay prices (either BIN or opening bid prices) tend to be way higher than the high end of GPA. I got ASM 3 from an eBay seller; we started on eBay but then completed the sale off eBay. I won ASM 2 last week on C-Link. I bought FF #5 from a boardie here. Of the 3, the best deal for me was the ASM 2 I won on C-Link. I'll talk about this more in another post, but C-Link closing prices seemed to be down this month. I bought ASM 3 and FF 5 towards the high end of GPA; but after doing market research I think GPA is low for both comics (in fact, for all 3 books). I spent the most on FF 5; ultimately I decided to pull the trigger because of Stan's signature. I don't put a lot of financial value on his sig, because it's become so common. But still, it makes the comic special so it made it easier for me to spend the money. On top of getting these 3 major keys, I'm now only 1 comic from completing my Original Marvels Collection. With these 3 comics, I have complete runs of ASM, Avengers, Cap, DD, Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man. Now I only need Fantastic Four 1 to complete that title. Thanks for reading.

I love Timm art too, and it looks great next to the statue.

BLT Steak (Atlanta) and The Palm (Tysons Corner VA) / Modesty Blaise Silver Mistress Recently I've had 2 great steaks at restaurants. The first was a couple weeks ago at BLT Steak in Atlanta, when my wife and I were visiting our daughter who's a freshman at Georgia Tech. BLT Steak is in the Westin hotel where we were staying so it was an easy choice for dinner. I got the ribeye with a side of mushrooms. They were delicious. Even better though was the Palm in Tyson's Corner VA, down the road from where we live. My wife and I went there for dinner after walking around the Tyson's Corner mall last Saturday. I got the prime rib of beef. This is essentially one bone of a rib roast and, as you can tell from the picture, it was huge. I couldn't eat it all. I took the leftovers home and ate the rest for lunch the next day, then gave the bone to my dog (she was very happy). I also got their chimichurri sauce and it was delicious too. To tie this post to comics, here's a collage of my Modesty Blaise Silver Mistress books:

Thanks for the link to the Wrapper. I didn't know it still existed. I just subscribed and I'm really looking forward to getting it. Were you a fan of the comics buyers guide? I was a subscriber off and on (mostly on) for over 20 years. But, the best years for me were when it was a newspaper format. I didn't save my copies except ones where they published my letter (about 3-4). Recently though I picked up this copy on ebay, the one where they reported finding Bettie Page. Reading it again, I really miss this newspaper.

Exactly. Although the boxes I got are a little bigger, I think they have one more row. I can store my entire collection in 2 of those boxes. You can buy dividers that extend above the cards about a half inch, so I write the name of the set and have them all stored by group, then alphabetically. I have 3 groups, Star Trek, Star Wars and everything else. Everything else has all my comic cards but also movie cards like Black Hole and ET. I don't collect sports cards (except for special players, my favs, like Fran Tarkenton and Walt Frazier). Before the internet I used to subscribe to the Wrapper and buy cards that way. I wanted to ask about your models -- don't you ever have the urge to build them? For a while I collected unopened Lego Star Wars and Harry Potter sets. Then the urge got to strong and I had to open them and build them. Now I display them on top of my long boxes.

I love your thread. I used to keep my cards in notebooks but they took so much room, so now I put them in those big huge boxes that I can put thousands of cards, and stack them on top of each other in a small amount of space. (for some reason the wrong picture is showing up)

Disney World and the Presidential Election My family has a tradition. We go to Walt Disney World in Orlando for the Presidential election. We've done this for the past 2 elections. The first couple of times just happened to fall on election Tuesday (actually, we went because the kids get off from school on election day so we could take a long weekend and they would only miss 1 day of school). So now it's a family tradition. We'll be at Animal Kingdom on Tuesday, then I'll be sipping a bourbon later in our hotel room (Disney's Boardwalk hotel where we have our time share -- Disney calls it their Vacation Club) while watching the election results. This all means I had to vote before the election, so I voted today. It's been a crazy election season. Seems fitting we'll be in Mickey Mouse land. Thanks for reading.

Modesty Blaise Collection - Last Day In Limbo Something else I collect is Modesty Blaise. I collect the comics and books, although books are more interesting to me. I got interested in Modesty from the reviews from Don Thompson years ago in the Comic Buyers Guide. At the time, Bud Plant was selling the hardcover books from Mysterious Press so those were my earliest acquisitions. There are only 13 books so I quickly got all of them. They're fun reads. If you're not familiar with Modesty Blaise, she's like a female James Bond. Along the way, over the last 15 years or so, I decided to collect every cover of every English version book. So, for example, if a particular book has 10 editions but just 3 different covers, I try to buy 1 book of each cover irrespective of edition. It used to be hard to build this collection. I remember in the early 2000s, going to the San Diego Comic Con and hoping to find 1 Modesty book. Most times there were none; I remember seeing a book one time and it was priced over $100 -- I passed. Collecting is a lot easier now because of eBay. But that's only happened in the last couple of years. Before, the pickings were slim. Now, the supply is out there, it just depends on how much money you want to spend. Recently I got lucky. A seller on eBay offered a lot of almost a dozen Modesty Blaise books at a reasonable price. Even better, only a couple were duplicates, and both duplicates were upgrades for me. Here are the copies I have of Last Day In Limbo. I also collect other Modesty paraphernalia. Below is a Film Heritage magazine that has an article about the Modesty Blaise movie (in the movie Modesty is blonde, but in the books and comics she's a brunette; to me that's a fundamental flaw with the movie; it's like there's a fan movie out there with Gwen Stacy, where the actress is a brunette ---- WTF???!!!!!!). Thanks for reading.

Now that you're adults, have you ever talked to your sister about throwing out your comics and wrecking your models? Has she ever apologized?

Waking Up and Realizing You Won (C-Link Auction) This morning I was cleaning out my inbox and saw emails from ComicLink. I won some auctions last night! I've been traveling for work this week so forgot about these bids. Earlier in the week I was paying more attention because there were 2 I really wanted. But the ones from last night were lower priority so I forgot all about them. I ended up winning 3. Here's the first, Before Watchmen 5 with a great Darwyn Cooke cover. I got it for $22. Next I won this Mazie, which I've recently begun selectively collecting. I got this one for $21. Finally I won this special edition of the Overstreet Price Guide #35. It's signed by Overstreet and numbered 15/100. I love limited edition oddities like this. I won it for $30. What's even better is I don't have to pay much more for shipping because of the comics I won earlier this week. Thanks for reading.

I assume the OP was factoring in the cost of comics in his profit calculation. Yeah, sitting behind a table is work, but probably more fun than sitting before a desk in an office. On the other hand, I was happy to sell 20,000 for 10 cents each rather than trying to lug long boxes to a con and try to sell them in $1 boxes.

I've done the same price comparisons. I also don't see how MH stays in business. Sometimes I can find expensive comics there (under $2) but otherwise their prices are 10x more expensive. I like Chuck, I enjoy his emails and his articles from the old Comic Buyer's Guide. But I don't see why anyone would buy from MH, their prices aren't even close to Lone Star, Metropolis, etc.

very interesting. I recently sold about 20,000 comics from my collection, no keys or high value stuff, perfect for $1 boxes. I sold for about a dime a piece and, frankly, I was glad to get that. The buyer is a collector/seller. He pulls what he wants for his own collection and then sells everything else. I assume he sets up at shows too.

Classic Covers -- Spirit, Airboy & Bruce Gentry Isn't it something to own a classic comic? Comics with covers you often see reprinted in magazines and books. Here are 3 in the GGA genre. Somewhat surprisingly, Spirit and Airboy have some of the best GGA covers. I recently picked these up, from eBay and also from boardies here. Honestly I probably overpaid for the Spirit -- I have to remember to temper my excitement at seeing an offering on these boards and do some comparison shopping before pulling the trigger. The Bruce Gentry I got on the cheap on eBay; it has a flaw inside, I think a coupon cut out (I can't remember). For all 3 though, I can check them off my list. None are high grade, but with rare exceptions I typically don't try to upgrade. There are too many comics that I want, so once I've got a copy I typically don't look back and think about upgrading. Instead I move on towards checking the next one off the list. When I'm shopping, if I don't like a comic to the point of saying to myself "If I buy this I'll need to upgrade," then I don't buy it. That's just how I'm wired; I know others are different.

Oh yeah, the Diamondback Deck. I have one of those too. Someday I'll have to learn how to play the game.

Yeah, I bought it via mail order years ago. I also joined the Cerebus fan club and got some cool stuff via that. But you still have the black vest. I lost mine somewhere along the way years ago.

Selling the Dreks of My Collection I've mentioned how, last October, I pared down my collection from almost 50,000 comics to about 25,000 comics, and also reduced other parts of my collection like my comic-related books and Star Trek / Star Wars collections (action figures and books). I had to do this to fit my collection into my new comic room, which is about a third the size of my old room. (The new comic room is at our little place at the beach where my wife and I plan to retire in 7-10 years.) This house cleaning has been more liberating than painful. It's let me focus more on collecting the things I really want, rather than the stuff I'm been collecting more out of habit than enjoyment. (see http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=7287580&fpart=31) At the same time I don't want to get rid of things I really want. So for the past year I've been sifting through these long boxes of comics and toys and deciding whether I want to keep things. I've probably moved about 750 comics from the "Get Rid Of" to "Keep It" pile, most notably Batman Adventures #12 that I found in my "Batman - Misc" box. (I submitted it to CGC and it came back a 9.8 Blue -- it would've been a disaster if I let it go on the cheap!) So now it's down to the dregs and I'm ready to sell. This stuff is crowding my basement so I've got to get rid of it. I contacted Mile High and they showed little interest (I guess they already have too much drek). I thought about calling Lone Star but their buying rules seem too complicated. I sold some stuff via eBay and I found a buyer via eBay interested in alot of my DCs -- I sold him 5 long boxes for about 50 cents a comic, all my unwanted superhero action figures at a few bucks each, and my DC Archives collection -- but having to ship such big heavy boxes is a major pain. What I want to do is sell everything as 1 big lot. So I finally listed the comics on Craigslist. Here's the listing: It took only 1 week to sell. I sold it for half my asking price, $2750, about 12 cents per comic. Maybe I could have gotten more if I waited, but I wanted them gone. They sold to 2 guys who buy collections like mine; they keep what they want and sell the rest. Here're some pics of the comics in my basement: Next I turned to my Star Wars and Star Trek toys. Again I sold a few things on eBay. Big playsets went fast, like the Millennium Falcon. I was new to selling though and lost some money on shipping. Also it was a pain to find (or make) boxes big enough to ship this stuff. So again I turned to Craigslist. Here's my listing: Here are some pictures: To my surprise, I got alot of responses, way more interest than the comics. But most were just fishing. Like, one guy emailed me "What's your bottom line?" Another guy said "How about $300?" I didn't even respond -- I wasn't going to negotiate against myself. There was a local guy -- who lives about 5 miles from me -- who was persistent in contacting me. We set up a time for him to view the toys. Turns out, he's a major Star Wars and Star Trek toy collector and has devoted his entire garage to his collection. He looked at my collection and immediately offered my $400 cash. I took it. Since then, I've sold the rest of my "Get Rid Of" ST & SW toys and books to him for $300. So, from selling this stuff, I've cleared alot of room in my basement and made $3450. In a future post I'll tell you want I bought from this. Thanks for reading.

Thanks Sagii!

Fiction House and Collecting Covers When I first started collecting, I was a completist. I collected titles and, in some cases, every issue of some companies. Like, for example, I've almost got complete runs of every Marvel title I've ever wanted (missing just FF 1 and 5 and ASM 2). I have near complete runs of the entire output of Continuity, ABC, Defiant, and the original Valiants. I have a complete run of Cerebus and every Stranger in Paradise comic. I have a long box dedicated to Overstreet's price guide magazines (I'm missing a few). I'm about 3 issues short of having every Dennis the Menace comic ever published. But, there's a limit to being a completist -- because really you can't collect everything. When I was younger -- in my 20s -- I wanted to get complete runs of DC titles like Action and Detective. Well, not only has that become financially impossible, as I've gotten older I've lost interest in collecting such long runs. Now in my 50s, my collecting interests have changed. In some ways I'm still a completist, but not so much based on titles. For example, I'm focused on my Dave Steven Covers registry set, and also getting a copy (graded or raw) of every comic with a Matt Baker cover. Over the last couple three years I've dabbled in Fiction House. Not for a moment have I been tempted to collect complete runs -- more evidence that completist bug inside me has been toned way down. Instead I collect Fiction house by cover as part of my GGA collection. Here are a few I've picked up the last couple months. Thanks for reading.

Update on CGC Turn-Around Time and Latest Matt Bakers In the last 18 months I've submitted 23 CGC invoices; mostly Modern but also Economy, Value and Magazine. The average turn-around time is just under 3 months. So probably no surprise with this data. CGC is slow, but it's easier if you periodically submit comics so you've got them lined up to get something back every month or two. Right now I have 4 invoices pending; 2 Economy and 2 Modern for a total of 16 comics. It's fun getting a CGC shipment about once a month. But I get double the fun because I always look on the website when the invoice ships (and later I have fun when I get the comics entering them into the Registry). Here's my routine. I cover the computer screen with a piece of paper and then go down the list one-by-one, each time comparing the actual grade with what I predicted. I did the same thing as a kid with my report cards. I do it with ESPN too. If I go to bed before the end of a game (and I tell my wife NOT to tell me who won, if she stays up later than me), the next morning I click on ESPN on my computer and I close my eyes as it loads. Then I open my eyes and I can tell from the picture who won. Is anyone else as crazy as me? Don't answer that ... I have a fragile ego. Anyway .... Here are the 3 books I got back in my latest CGC submission. First this FF. Only 0.5. Ugh -- I didn't notice the missing page. Curses! And then these 2 Matt Baker covers. Again, I didn't notice the trimming, but that's okay, I'm still happy with them. Thanks for reading.

A Couple Oddities for My Gwen Stacy Collection I found a couple things on eBay lately to add to my Gwen Stacy collection. First this "Death of Gwen Stacy" card from 1992. What caught my attention is it's graded a perfect 10 by RGA. Before this I never heard of them but I guess they're still in business (at least their website is still up). They seem to grade everything, including video games. Anyway, for $5 it was worth adding this oddity to my collection. And 2nd up is this Marvel Fact Files, which I guess is a UK title. In addition to having a great Ms. Marvel cover, it describes Gwen's death. It starts with "If you ask anyone to name the most shocking comic ever, the chances are they'll say The Night Gwen Stacy Died." This of course refers to ASM 121, and that is certainly the case for me. Now, 40+ years later, I still remember the first time reading that issue and how surprised/distressed/sad I was by her death. I still think about it so it's still influencing me.

I'll take 497 498 501