How did I get here?

[DeadpoolJr.]

Very interesting story that i'll continue to read, since your writing about your life do you have a title in mind?

[ThoseBackPages]

man, the wrap on the GS1 is about as perfect as could be!

[etanick]

You can replace the sale of the 8.5 with Schmell's 9.8 Pacific Coast.

 

And that GSX1 is absolutely stunning. Perfect registration and white pages.

 

indeed that GSX1 is a keeper for life. I need to mannup to a 9.2 X-men #1 one of these days

 

sold that 8.5 to upgrade to this stunner 9.0 but that wasn't good enough either...sold that too and haven't found a replacement for 2 years now

 

[etanick]

Very interesting story that i'll continue to read, since your writing about your life do you have a title in mind?

 

hmmm....not really. For sure if a book ever get done, it won't "how did I get here?"

 

thanks for reading..It is Cliche but the core of the story is about living/achieving the "American dream"

 

So by mid 2003, I got my first 2 slabs and now a complete run of X-men from 1 to 275 including GS #1 and all the annuals. My work with the title is done and so is my collecting days...so I thought. I abandoned plan to get Hulk 181 or anything else. I swore off Ebay and any conventions because I was insanely busy with my business.

 

2003 was also big because I bought my first loft in Boston. A sweet bachelor pad...damn I wished I kept a few pics of that loft. I had great neighbors. I think one of my neighbor was one of the earlier investor in Google. There were 12 lofts that were converted from a big auto warehouse. It was a good times then, all of the loft owners were young (30 to 35 years old) and successful. I was the oldest of the bunch and did we partied. I think comic book was definitely out of my thoughts as soon as I moved into the loft in the summer of 2003. I think for the first time in my life, I went crazy with luxury. I worked 80 hours a week, making insane money so why not? fancy car, fancy clothes and shoes...hell I even started to collect expensive watches

 

2004 was just as crazy but by October on a business trip to Naples Florida, I met my wife and that changed a lot of things.

 

I sold my loft in Boston in April of 2005 and moved to Sarasota Florida. I was still working insane hours. Between 2000 and 2005, i was retained in 1300 cases....an insane number of cases if anyone understand security litigations.....but changes were coming fast.

 

I always wanted a family and I told my wife if we start a family, I will cut back on working. I have made enough and time to enjoy life and raise a family. Just like that, I sold off my fancy car, watches...tossed the fancy suits in the closet and focus on starting a family. Life is too short. I debated for years from my 20's thru my 30's with my buddies about life and work. All of them wanted to play hard when they are young because...well, when you are old, what is left but work?

 

I approached life differently than they did...when I am young and can work 80 hours a week, lets do it because I have no desire to be 50 and worry job securities or retirement plan. As silly as it sounded, I told my family since my 20's that I plan to retire before I am 50.

 

.....I had no plan what so ever to return to the hobby and did not even know CGC was right here in Sarasota. The next chapter of my returning to the hobby will be another post.

[Beige]

You deserve great respect for laying your life and feelings open to those who may savagely mock you...especially on here!

Thankyou for being brave and secure enough to share.

 

Next chapter please!

[scooter99]

You can replace the sale of the 8.5 with Schmell's 9.8 Pacific Coast.

 

And that GSX1 is absolutely stunning. Perfect registration and white pages.

 

indeed that GSX1 is a keeper for life. I need to mannup to a 9.2 X-men #1 one of these days

 

sold that 8.5 to upgrade to this stunner 9.0 but that wasn't good enough either...sold that too and haven't found a replacement for 2 years now

 

 

 

That 9.0 looks like it was a 9.2. The top left corner has wonderful color retention unlike many copies. But I certainly will always defer to you on grading. Here's hoping HA or CL has 4 copies of X1 in one auction from 8.0 to 9.4 which should drive prices down!

 

Anxiously awaiting the next installment!

 

 

[etanick]

no worry Andy, I think I am mostly ignored on this board

 

most people prefer to butthurt each others on CG. It might seem like I post a lot based on my post counts but a large majority of them were in the "Hey Buddy, Can you spare a grade " threads. Other than that, I mostly fly under the radar.

 

 

I bought a few small collections between 2000 and 2003. Even back then on Ebay, my strategy was to contact a seller that I see has nice books to see if I can buy more outside of Ebay. Once in a while I hit the "jackpot". I have always been more than willing to pay a premium for nice books if I can skip the entire auctioning process. I didn't have time sitting around watching auctions back then.

 

I bought one large collection with 4000 books or so from 1976 to 1980 this way

 

fun story...

 

back in 1976, he was a freshman in college and his roommate was a collector. His roommate convinced him that they should put some money away into comic books so they can open a store in 20 years and enjoy early retirement running the store.

 

..so they cooked up a plan that in order to open a store 20 years from 1976, they need to build up an inventory of back issues. They noticed in 1976, that the LCS had many early 60's books for 20 times to 40 times the value on the cover...12 cents x 20 = $2.50 so it looks like a gold mine of an investment.

 

..they made a deal with the LCS near campus that for every book, buy 10 or so and give them a deal so literally, they were buying hundreds of issues per week. They couldn't afford every titles so they told the owner to just go with the top 20 selling titles...so 20 titles x 10 copies per month = 200 books. Do this for 4 years = 8000 books....got to have beer money right?

 

can you imagine if they did this 5 years earlier...wow, the first issue of X-men they bought was 102. Even if they did this 1 year earlier, they would have gotten 10 copies of X-men 94 and GS#1.

 

He was selling one at a time but was eager to find a buyer that will buy the entire lot. He claimed 4000 NM unread books and I haven't heard the back story yet so I was kind of dubious about it. I asked to see some pics if he can and he sent me 2 pics of a run of X-men from 102 to 116 and I was stunned...pristine near flawless. I took all of 2 seconds to decide I want them all. I didn't buy the entire lot in one deal. It was many deals and many boxes. Basically one title at a time.

 

fast forward to 2009, I decided to sub the best books and sold them all...out of 4000 books, about 600 was slam dunk 9.8, 400 or so is about 9.6/9.4 and about 10% of the book is lower 9.0 but the rest was easy 9.2. I did keep a few 9.8/9.6 bronze X-men slabs that are nicer than the one I already have but I sold most of them on Ebay or on this board. I sent a bunch to ComicLink but I ended up selling most of them on my own.

 

One important note....they were all Marvel. Until this point, my DC collection is very small, just Neal Adams books....and Perez' s Teen Titans.

 

 

 

[etanick]

very astute observation Scott. Indeed the majority of the 9.0 slabbed X-men #1 had on the top left corner. Annoying indeed wouldn't shock me if a resub of my old 9.0 on a "bad" day at CGC could result in a 9.2.

 

weird, but there are more 9.4 for sales than 9.2 in the past few years so my quest to upgrade has been few and far in between. I can't see myself spending 6 figures on a 9.4 ever so I will keep waiting for the "right" 9.2

 

Ok, back to buying collection. My 2nd big "find" was also thru Ebay. Once again I contacted the seller and asked if he/she has more I can buy off Ebay. Thru those few emails exchange, it turned out this collector grew up in New Scotland Ave at the same time I was there. For those that skipped the early parts of the journey, this was the street where I lived and encountered my first US comic.

 

Wowza, what was the odd of that right? he is a few years older but we lived a few blocks apart. A nice coincidence indeed. Anyhow, the bulk of what he wanted to sell at that moment was DC war and horror books. He collected both Marvel and DC as well as others but what he was willing to sell then and there was the DC war and horror books so I bought them. Not really something I was looking for but we struck a nice friendship that I said "why not?". I bought them and that was one heck of a fun set of books to look at. For the first time, I discovered Wrightson. I love Neal Adams but have never bought any of his DC horror books because the genre didn't interest me until this point. For the most part, I didn't realize how nice they were until much later when I re-enter the hobby in 2009.

 

Just so I won't bore any readers of these walls of texts...I did acquire a key book from this collector recently. It was good to keep the friendship all these years and stayed in touch with him and when the time was right, I bought a few other books. Most notably these 2..

 

 

and finally..after a life long love of Wolverine, I got the book. Not the well centered cut I really wanted but I am very happy to buy it raw and keep it raw. This book color is off the hook and yes white PQ all the way

[etanick]

so 2005 was a big year.

 

I moved to Sarasota and got married. I also decided at that point to cut back on my business because traveling all over the country to testify as well as working 80 hours a week is not what I want any longer. I met a wonderful person so why the hell would I want to not enjoy life? She was very happy living a simple life even though she is successful with her own business. For the first time in my life, I met someone that really didn't care what I have or made, or what car I drove. I was very happy to ditch the fancy stuff and scale down my lifestyle. I no longer care to work 80 hours a week with my security expert business but I was itching to get back into the stock market. From 2000 to 2005, I really didn't participate much in the market. I am a firm believer that if I didn't have the time to follow the market, I shouldn't play in it so I didn't. At the end of 2004, I decided it is time to re-enter the market and focus my energy there as I wind down my other business....pretty much started my own little hedge fund for myself. The first 6 months were rough because I was rusty...took a a few months to get the mojo back and I have done well since.

 

 

getting back into comic books was not even on the radar from 2005 to 2008. My sister in Boston was nagging me during this time to get the junks out of her house that I have store there since 1993. Basically everything I bought from 1981 to 1993 are still at her house in the furnace room in boxes. She told me the furnace had a big problem and there was a small flood in there and a few boxes got water damaged...I didn't care.

 

speaking of the big bronze collection I bought with all the 9.8...I went thru this weekend and see what are still left and dug out a few beauties. Nothing really special but I high grade bronze books are just cool for me...might not worth a lot of money any longer but hell, for books that are over 30 years old...they are great to read with fantastic arts. I still have about 500 or so left of this collection. Mostly in the 9.2 to 9.6 with a few 9.8....too lazy to sell them these days.

 

 

[Awax]

Very interesting story that i'll continue to read, since your writing about your life do you have a title in mind?

 

So far I like the title "Mind the wrap".

[etanick]

Geoff,

 

what is going on? I am jealous since you are in SD, SDCC is an annual event you can attend without all the traveling hassles.

 

hmm....where to keep going from here?

 

NO doubt rom 2005 and 2008, not much was going on as far as comic books with me. My son was born was 4/19/2007 and that was a fantastic moment. I am now now a full time at home dad for the most part. I still work about 10 hours a week with my business while managing my hedge fund and the rest of my time was full duty on changing diapers and feeding. Back in my early days of collecting, I only had 2 friends that collected. Other than that, I didn't meet anyone else that collected so I didn't share my love for the hobby with others...not because I was ashamed of being a geek...just didn't meet anyone that cared.

 

Once I was out of college and entered the world of finance, I did meet a cool guy that collected. Rob was a super cool "geek". He was very smart and we met working together as Quantitative Analyst. He was about 5 years younger than me but collected about the same time I started. Unlike me, he never stopped and by the time he met me, he has "graduated" to the the Sandman, V for Vendetta, Watchman era. He spoke about how great those stories are and I really should start reading comic books again. I would say that at that time, Rob was my best friend. His wife also work with the same company and they were a great couple. He and I can sit around all day and talk about movies and comic books and the Steelers. Both he and his wife decided to go back to school to get an MBA and both got into NYU MBA programs in 2002. Not a surprise to me since they were both extremely smart people. I think she got a full ride scholarship to attend so she was a tad "smarter".

 

Anyhow they moved to NY city, and started a family and careers after both graduated from NYU. I stayed in touch with Rob via email mostly. We failed to connect a few times when I traveled to NY for business due to schedule conflicts but we stayed in touch until my son and his son were born in 2007. It was his 2nd child and my first but for sure, we drifted out of each other 's life and career. I did get an invite from him with Facebook in early 2008 but forgot about it. It was over a year since I got that facebook invitation but early March of 2009, as I was cleaning out my email box, I found that facebook invitation and decided to join facebook. The next day, I got a devastating email from his wife that Rob died last month...wow....unbelievable sadness.

 

don't read if you don't want to cry but she sent me a blog she started 8 months back on his final journey. She sent me a link to the blog.

http://milaccifamily.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00:00:00-05:00&max-results=3

 

I am sure those short few months were hellish so I don't fault them for not contacting me. I am more sad and angry with myself that I was too busy/lazy to join Facebook to be in the loop.

 

So what is next? my wife was great and as we discussed about Rob and my friendship with him, she saw comic books was a big part of that friendship so she encouraged me to get back to the hobby. "why not go back to comic books? you said you had a ton of them, why not? you have all the free time in the world to enjoy the hobby again...do it...life is short"

 

so here we go again! I asked my sister to send me all my books and she gladly sent everything I stored at her house. It was insane how many boxes I stored there. I stored everything I bought from 1981 thru 2003 there. Outside of the X-men #1 and GSX #1 slabs, I dumped everything there.

 

So I researched CGC and to my surprise, CGC is right here in Sarasota. This is the summer of 2009. Now I faced with the task to pick out some books to send to CGC.

 

...and join this forum.....oh boy.

 

...and no, I am not dying and this journal is more my exploration of writing with my free times.

[greggy]

I has pho last week.

[etanick]

Did you put in a lot of Sriracha and Hoisin sauce?

 

[etanick]

Great stories! I really enjoy reading them

 

thanks for reading (thumbs u

 

Ok, so there I was with thousands of books in my office....which one to submit? how to submit? at this point I haven't found my way to this forum yet. Since I was a high grade collector or tried to be, I did a quick search and found Highgradecomic website...blazingbob's own website and see that I can submit book thru his site and get 10% discount so that was what I did. I called CGC to see if it was possible to drop off my submission since I am right here and they told me i can do so if I have at least 100 books. This policy has changed since then.

 

So I need to find 100 "worthy" books. It was a no brainer to focus on X-men since I have a ton of them. My grading skills were certainly not up to par at this point. I will say at least half of my books came back lower than I expected but I was lucky that only 2 books came back with a purple label...unfortunately, it was X-men 94 and X-men 16...two of the nicer books I had. Overall, most of the Silver age books came back in the range that I expected with many mid grades. Most of the disappointments were with the early Bronze books where many were not high grades and not worthy to slab...lesson learned.

 

I submitted X-men 2 to 60, not a complete run since a few were low grades. I then submitted a run from 94 to 135. Same here, not a complete run since a were low grades but all together made up 100 books. This was about July 2008, right before SDCC and I will have to wait a long 3.5 months to get the result. In the mean time, I decided it is time to give Ebay another chance and right away I was a big fan of Robo I remembered exchange emails with him saying "dude, your books are so nice, you should get them graded"...big duh

 

I also bought from another Ebay scammers such as Lotrfan, etc...

 

As I sit and wait for my submission result, I was very curious in grading and thru my search, I found this forum. i spent a ton of time in the Grading threads...it was a great learning experiences right off the bat.

 

Founding the forum also let the discovery of the Ebay scammers shortly. Quickly I returned the books to Robojo. The one notable was a Captain America 100 that I bid and won as a 9.6 that in hands, might be a 9.2 at best. I don't think it was restored but I was pleased that he took the books back. I was not so lucky with the other scammers.

 

From joining the forum, I then discovered ComicLink, Heritages, and all other auction houses....oh lord. Now back with even more disposable fun money than ever, I went craaaazy. I didn't know about GPA yet and I bid like a mad person

 

Wow, did I go crazy...I joined this board in 9/09 and by January of 2010, I bought just about every keys. By late October, my slabs are back from CGC...so wow, I was swimming in slabs.

 

I sold many of my silver age slabs since but I still have these 4

 

 

I did upgrade them with these and these are keepers...I am a high grade snob but I had half a common sense back then to not chase 9.6 or 9.8. I think 9.2 or 9.4 are real sweet to look and I am perfectly happy with them.

 

 

 

[scooter99]

Sweet early X-men's, Nick! You are so right about 9.2's and 9.4's being the sweet spot, too.

[etanick]

indeed 9.2 and 9.4 are very nice especially if you can find books with sharp corners. I can live with a few spine ticks or tiny corner creases that are 1/8" or less.

 

From my own observations, I have been disappointed far too often with 9.6 slabs than other high grades. Sure, there are overgraded and undergraded books in all grade levels but 9.6 seems to be problematic for me. I have seen many 9.6 slabs with books with 6 to 8 visible CB spine ticks. I won enough 9.6 slabs in auctions and get disappointed with the books in hand that I no longer care to bid on 9.6 slabs on ComicLink. Unlike Ha or CC, CL 's scans are not good enough. Sure, I can email and request high resolution scans but why do I have to? just load high resolution scans from the start and be done with it.

 

Before I got my first submission back, I also decided to sub a few hundreds more because I have so many high grade books. I went thru my collection and pulled out about 800 books that I want to sub. I also pulled a bunch of silver age books to send to Matt Nelson for restorations check. Matt found a bunch of silver age ASM and X-men that have restorations.

 

I participated in my first Christmas gift exchanges in 2009 and I am embarrassed to send such a crapy gift to my boardie. I was new here and didn't know anyone so I have no idea what was "right". Below is a collage my wife put together 2 years ago after my son's 3rd B-day party. The pic of me holding a spiderman cookie and my son holding wolverine is the Christmas gift I got from my secret santa, thehumantorch. Zeman, Kenny, was the boardie that got the crappy gift from me....my apology for that cheapo gift.

 

 

[scooter99]

I think the best thing about the pics you posted is that there is genuine happiness in all of them. Great looking family, Nick. (thumbs u

 

 

[etanick]

thanks Scott. I am lucky indeed...What more does one man need? loving wife and son...and lots of free time to look at comic books. I can't ask for more.

 

As I made my return to the hobby in the summer of 2009, I also start to focus on the horror genre. I left the hobby back in 2003 with buying some horror books and as I go thru the boxes, I couldn't help but drawn to that genre more than ever before. I love Neal Adams so naturally I started to focus on the horror books he did but it wasn't long before I focused more on Wrightson and Kaluta. Wrightson is the king of this genre as far as covers. I don't think his interior works are all that great. His style likely required lots of time to draw all those lines so his interiors felt rushed and "incomplete" to me...They are still nice but comparing his covers to his interiors and there are a big difference in my opinion.

 

Kaluta is also great and I actually like his and Wrightson's covers over Neal Adams in this genre.

 

House of Mystery and House of Secrets are my two favorites title. I got a ton of these gorgeous books from the same seller as my Hulk 181 and 180 I shown in earlier post in this thread.

 

stunning book, one of my favorite Kaluta's cover

 

gosh, so many Wrightson covers to choose but here is one I pulled randomly.

 

 

 

[Logan510]

Thanks for sharing Nick. I find your stories entertaining and insightful. Please keep 'em coming

[etanick]

thanks Casey.

 

Outside of the new found appreciation for the Horror genre in 2009, I also found new love in square bounded books. I don't really know why but I started to get obsessed with those books....perhaps because they are hard as hell to find in NM or NM+ conditions and we all know about us collectors, it is the thrill of the hunt that is more fun most of the time

 

and lastly GA books. I have never bought one GA books until this point. I just didn't know where to start? I was a completist(full run of X-men from 1 to 143 and ASM from 1 to 101) up until this point so how or where to start with GA was a tough decision....more on GA later.

 

Sure enough, I have quite a few really nice square bounded books that I bought long ago in the few collections I purchased but I really never paid much attention to them until now. Now, they are keepers and deservingly to into Mylar along with my other keepers.

 

square bounded books like these are well love in my collection.

 

I bought this TOA way back in the early 90's and it was stored for over decade in that furnace room and still have snow white page today.

 

 

 

Yes, many would consider this one a drek but hey I love it just as much as the rest of my high grade square bounded book...I have been looking for an upgrade for a while....not an easy one to find.