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WELCOME TO THE BOARDS! New members, please introduce yourselves here!
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Hey everyone! I'm Jean and I'm the general manager at Acme Superstore, just outside Orlando. (Josh, whose name appears on the account is our owner)

The store has been around for 39 years and we're going strong. We've just started to dip our toes into getting books graded when we took in a pretty great collection of Marvel books that included ASM 1, AF 15, Daredevil 1, and a handful of really great key and first appearances.

As a shop, we take in darn near everything that's comic, sci-fi, and horror related.

Personally I stick mostly to the toys for my own collection. G1 My Little Pony and Care Bears are particular passions. For my personal comics collection, I've always been a HUGE X-men fan. It was the first comic I got as a kid and I'm still pretty loyal to my mutant babies.

Oh, I'm also owned by a corgi. That's about it for now! Happy to be here!

 

Edited by Josh Dinkins
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Hello fellow comic book geeks! 

Read and loved Marvel and DC growing up in the late 70's, drifted away a bit and around 1985 started to draw some comics and needed "reference material" and bought some. Read them, found out how much comics grew-up and got hooked. Bought a HUGE collection off someone circa 1986 for $180 with a loan from my Dad. Selling over the years, it's been paid off several times over! I still have some of the old but beat-up ones from the Golden Age! But primarily my collection is 70's and 80's. Came here looking for Cert info and I think I'll be attending Chicago's upcoming C2E2 to get it done live... just have to read up about how best to do that!

Favorites: any Spider-Man, John Byrne Fantastic Four, The Killing Joke, Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, SwapThing (Alan Moore run). ANY Art by Art Adams, Alex Ross or Berni Wrightson.

 

Oh....I also have a ginormous Playboy collection from 2nd year though 1968 I am trying to get sold!

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3 hours ago, Josh Dinkins said:

Hey everyone! I'm Jean and I'm the general manager at Acme Superstore, just outside Orlando. (Josh, whose name appears on the account is our owner)

The store has been around for 39 years and we're going strong. We've just started to dip our toes into getting books graded when we took in a pretty great collection of Marvel books that included ASM 1, AF 15, Daredevil 1, and a handful of really great key and first appearances.

As a shop, we take in darn near everything that's comic, sci-fi, and horror related.

Personally I stick mostly to the toys for my own collection. G1 My Little Pony and Care Bears are particular passions. For my personal comics collection, I've always been a HUGE X-men fan. It was the first comic I got as a kid and I'm still pretty loyal to my mutant babies.

Oh, I'm also owned by a corgi. That's about it for now! Happy to be here!

 

I'm a huge X-Men fan as well, they were my first books as a kid and also when coming back a few years ago!

I mostly buy them to read, but have a few graded copies.

 

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2 hours ago, Zuke said:

Hello fellow comic book geeks! 

Read and loved Marvel and DC growing up in the late 70's, drifted away a bit and around 1985 started to draw some comics and needed "reference material" and bought some. Read them, found out how much comics grew-up and got hooked. Bought a HUGE collection off someone circa 1986 for $180 with a loan from my Dad. Selling over the years, it's been paid off several times over! I still have some of the old but beat-up ones from the Golden Age! But primarily my collection is 70's and 80's. Came here looking for Cert info and I think I'll be attending Chicago's upcoming C2E2 to get it done live... just have to read up about how best to do that!

Favorites: any Spider-Man, John Byrne Fantastic Four, The Killing Joke, Secret Wars, Crisis on Infinite Earths, The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, SwapThing (Alan Moore run). ANY Art by Art Adams, Alex Ross or Berni Wrightson.

 

Oh....I also have a ginormous Playboy collection from 2nd year though 1968 I am trying to get sold!

Wrightson is well deserved!

Thank dad's for their loans! GOOD luck with your collection. Glad it's worked out so far :)

 

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Hey there.  Been reading comics off and on since college and wanted to get a little more serious about learning how to grade and sell comics.  This seems like a good place to start learning.  I'm also a sucker for Booster Gold, but I think there are pills for that.

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20 hours ago, djseifer said:

Hey there.  Been reading comics off and on since college and wanted to get a little more serious about learning how to grade and sell comics.  This seems like a good place to start learning.  I'm also a sucker for Booster Gold, but I think there are pills for that.

Welcome! :applause:

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22 hours ago, GSX750 said:

Hi. I´m a comic fan since Big Bang (well, maybe some years later) and I live in Spain. I would like to send some comics to be graded but I still have some doubts. Thanks

Big Welcome! 

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Hello everyone!  I've been a life-long comic nut and just started delving into graded comics.  I recently fulfilled my childhood dream of acquiring an X-Men #1 and Avengers #1!  Looking forward to being part of a great community here!

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On 3/15/2019 at 8:17 PM, mkluke said:

Hello everyone!  I've been a life-long comic nut and just started delving into graded comics.  I recently fulfilled my childhood dream of acquiring an X-Men #1 and Avengers #1!  Looking forward to being part of a great community here!

Welcome to that Boards! You've got a great start to the hoard that will eventually come hmlol 

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Hey all,  I'm Dave and I'm dipping my toes back into comic collecting after a long hiatus.  I also have trouble with short messages (sorry in advance for that, but it's an OCD thing, I can curb it when I try).  

Anyway, my story, for anyone interested - I grew up picking random Marvel and DC comics off of a rotating rack while my dad stopped for cigarettes and Johnny Walker at the local convenience store in the 70's.  I remember having the original Silver Surfer and Star Wars runs, the giant-sized Superman/Spider-Man epic, and I literally read them until the covers fell off, lol.  

In the 80's, a buddy in grade school kept bringing his G.I. Joe comics to class, and I went bananas for them (plus the commercials, toys, and cartoons).  I yapped until my parents caved and took me to the nearest comic book shop (about 45 minutes from our home - we lived in the "boonies" at the time), and not wanting to make a habit out of the trip, they caved again when I suggested buying a subscription.  I still have almost all of them after issue 11, and eventually got to buy some back issues, but man were they abused, lol.  My friend and I would chuck them across the room to each other as we caught up on issues we hadn't read, or traded them out to each other - no concept of future value. 

That led to subscriptions to Superman and Batman comics (got in right after Crisis, when John Byrne started his run on Supes, and then Batman a couple of issues before Year One).  They quickly got into frustrating "crossovers" at the time, which led to subscriptions to Action Comics and Detective Comics (THANK YOU Mom & Dad!!!), so I'd get at least 2/3rds of those stories, and by the time I could drive myself to the comics shop to pick up the stragglers, I was spending my money on DC Star Treks, a few Marvel issues here and there, learning about bags and boards, general comic collecting, and I started taking better care of my collection.  Sadly, the variant craze kicked in, and being a lower-middle class kid, I quickly went broke trying to get my hands on all the covers to McFarlane's Spider-Man, Legends of the Dark Knight, and Jim Lee's X-Men, wrongly believing they'd be worth the price eventually.  At the time, to me, they were the crowned jewels of my collection.

But aside from a few random trips to comics stores here and there in my travels as an adult, I pretty much gave up the habit when I left for college and got into movies.  Still, I had two long boxes that traveled with me from the deep south where I grew up to Miami where I went to school, and out to California where I lived off and on for 12 years.  I drove them - and the rest of my stuff - across the country at least four times.

During one trip, we went through a deep, punishing rain where you could barely see the road, with wind gusts so strong they would've blown us off the road if not for all my junk weighing us down, then a moderate rain hovered over us for two states after that.  When I got to my destination and finally unpacked a day or two later, I found a hole in the tarp covering my stuff, and my most valuable long box was sitting in a pool in the back of my truck, soaking in about 4 inches of rain water.  Although another long box was saved, and though many in that first one were bagged and boarded, the rain got in anyway.  I lost nearly a whole run of Gold Key Star Treks, about a hundred DC Star Trek issues, the original Dark Knight Returns 1st prints (and this was back when they were HOT), the Electra saga, an imported Miracle Man set, and so many more.  Just... heartbreaking.  After that I barely touched my collection for 20 years.  Once in a while, I'd dust them off and do an inventory, checking the issue number against the value in an Overstreet guide.  By then I'd realized that modern comics just didn't have any real value.  

Then recently, I got a free month of DCU online, and found myself forsaking everything else to catch up on comic runs through the miracle of online reading.  It was awesome, but it REALLY made me miss having the books in my hand.  So I went through what was left of my collection again, hoping that my bagged and boarded comics were all Near Mints... not a chance.  Instead I found bags that were yellowing, temperature changes and humidity in the deep south had caused a lot of warping and/or spots to form, and although the bags took the brunt of the yellowing effect of time (I didn't know you were supposed to change out the bags every five years), most were read and/or re-read and loved to the point that they had multiple spine breaks, dings, dents, little tears, an occasional circular cup stain, etc.  That was kind of heartbreaking too - I had some GREAT books that were finally showing some value after 20-plus years lugging them around - only to find that a huge percentage were, at best, dollar bin "readers".

But it's not a completely sad story - I also found a few gems: a pristine New Mutants 98 was sitting there - un-bagged for YEARS - yet needing little more than a press to remove one dent.  After the two Deadpool movies, I couldn't believe the value.  The Incredible Hulk 377 with Professor Hulk... a few years earlier it was worth $6 bucks, mint.  Suddenly the copy I had was selling at over a hundred (and mine WAS Near Mint)!  1st Jason Todd pre-Crisis, 1st Carnage, the Spider-Man Wedding Issue (both covers), Gold Key Star Trek #1 (which even at 3.0 is worth a hundred bucks - more than I paid for the whole series once upon a time). 

Out of 550 comics I found about 15 whose value landed in the hundred dollar range - not much for 20-plus years of storage, but a few others, like New Mutants 98 were worth a bit more, plus I found about 25-30 books in the twenty-to-sixty dollar range, possibly waiting for the moment someone gives them a nod on the big screen.  No quality Gold or Silver Age values sadly, but... for as I went through them with an increasing understanding of the strict nature of professional grading, I was considering just taking them to that same local comic shop and selling the whole lot for $150 bucks (I doubted they'd pay a $1 a book - I MIGHT have gotten $200).  

So here I am, trying to grade those few gems, plus a few more I picked up on eBay recently (I'm going nuts for Immortal Hulk right now), and hoping that some will look great on my wall and take me back to that rotating rack where my Dad would point at and say, "Why don't you go pick out a few" while he flirted with the girl at the counter and took care of his own fix.  Others I'd like to sell (if they be worthy), to potentially fund a new and improved comic book habit.

I've been reading various CGC threads for about two months now, as I Googled questions about grading and details on damage - how dings, dents, folds, internal wear, manufacturing defects, etc. all affect grading, and I'm just super-excited to be here.  So even if nobody talks to me from this point on, I just wanted to tell my little story and say THANKS for all the advice you've collectively given to other people; whether you know it or not, people are reading your responses, laughing (and sometimes crying) with you, and generally learning a lot about comics and the professional grading experience.  

I've missed so much in the last 20 years - I can't BELIEVE the artwork now!!!  Stunning.  I don't know about this 100 different variant covers nonsense, but there's no arguing that most of them look amazing (the "virgin" concept with no intrusive titles or writing is wonderful).  Its kind of ironic though, that I got out when the variants were driving the industry into the ground, and now I'm coming back when people are wondering if it's happening all over again, but even if my books all come back as 5's or 6's, I'll be THRILLED just to get some of them slabbed and graded for no other reason than to have them on my wall. 

I'm also grateful to DCUniverse.com for sparking the interest again.  I didn't think I'd like the live action Titans, but WOW.  I'll re-up again when the full Doom Patrol is available.  Can't wait for Swamp Thing... and access to so many comics!!!  It's a NICE feature.  I felt like a kid again, only I was getting to read all the stuff I never could afford before, and a lot that I've missed over the years.  Great service.  But unlike some folks here, I'm still on a tight budget, so getting my books graded is - while fun - a nerve-wracking affair.  I'd like to think it may be possible to boost my income a little from time to time with a few smart purchases, so if anyone's into flipping and shipping, I'd love to know more.

Anyway, sorry for the novel... truly psyched to be here.  I have a TON questions before I send in my first set in, and pictures to boot.  Hope there are many more sets to follow.  If not... well... I'm just jazzed about being back in the comic zone.  Thanks for all you do, CGC!

Edited by Artlover1
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@Artlover1 sorry to hear about the rain on cross country trips, but glad there are some still that you want graded! :headbang: 

Try the "spare a grade" forum of the boards if you'd like an idea of grade and maybe to ask some questions :) 

Glad your pumped! Keep it going! and May it all turn out to be fun and an adventure! 

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13 hours ago, Artlover1 said:

Hey all,  I'm Dave and I'm dipping my toes back into comic collecting after a long hiatus.  I also have trouble with short messages (sorry in advance for that, but it's an OCD thing, I can curb it when I try).  

Anyway, my story, for anyone interested - I grew up picking random Marvel and DC comics off of a rotating rack while my dad stopped for cigarettes and Johnny Walker at the local convenience store in the 70's.  I remember having the original Silver Surfer and Star Wars runs, the giant-sized Superman/Spider-Man epic, and I literally read them until the covers fell off, lol.  

In the 80's, a buddy in grade school kept bringing his G.I. Joe comics to class, and I went bananas for them (plus the commercials, toys, and cartoons).  I yapped until my parents caved and took me to the nearest comic book shop (about 45 minutes from our home - we lived in the "boonies" at the time), and not wanting to make a habit out of the trip, they caved again when I suggested buying a subscription.  I still have almost all of them after issue 11, and eventually got to buy some back issues, but man were they abused, lol.  My friend and I would chuck them across the room to each other as we caught up on issues we hadn't read, or traded them out to each other - no concept of future value. 

That led to subscriptions to Superman and Batman comics (got in right after Crisis, when John Byrne started his run on Supes, and then Batman a couple of issues before Year One).  They quickly got into frustrating "crossovers" at the time, which led to subscriptions to Action Comics and Detective Comics (THANK YOU Mom & Dad!!!), so I'd get at least 2/3rds of those stories, and by the time I could drive myself to the comics shop to pick up the stragglers, I was spending my money on DC Star Treks, a few Marvel issues here and there, learning about bags and boards, general comic collecting, and I started taking better care of my collection.  Sadly, the variant craze kicked in, and being a lower-middle class kid, I quickly went broke trying to get my hands on all the covers to McFarlane's Spider-Man, Legends of the Dark Knight, and Jim Lee's X-Men, wrongly believing they'd be worth the price eventually.  At the time, to me, they were the crowned jewels of my collection.

But aside from a few random trips to comics stores here and there in my travels as an adult, I pretty much gave up the habit when I left for college and got into movies.  Still, I had two long boxes that traveled with me from the deep south where I grew up to Miami where I went to school, and out to California where I lived off and on for 12 years.  I drove them - and the rest of my stuff - across the country at least four times.

During one trip, we went through a deep, punishing rain where you could barely see the road, with wind gusts so strong they would've blown us off the road if not for all my junk weighing us down, then a moderate rain hovered over us for two states after that.  When I got to my destination and finally unpacked a day or two later, I found a hole in the tarp covering my stuff, and my most valuable long box was sitting in a pool in the back of my truck, soaking in about 4 inches of rain water.  Although another long box was saved, and though many in that first one were bagged and boarded, the rain got in anyway.  I lost nearly a whole run of Gold Key Star Treks, about a hundred DC Star Trek issues, the original Dark Knight Returns 1st prints (and this was back when they were HOT), the Electra saga, an imported Miracle Man set, and so many more.  Just... heartbreaking.  After that I barely touched my collection for 20 years.  Once in a while, I'd dust them off and do an inventory, checking the issue number against the value in an Overstreet guide.  By then I'd realized that modern comics just didn't have any real value.  

Then recently, I got a free month of DCU online, and found myself forsaking everything else to catch up on comic runs through the miracle of online reading.  It was awesome, but it REALLY made me miss having the books in my hand.  So I went through what was left of my collection again, hoping that my bagged and boarded comics were all Near Mints... not a chance.  Instead I found bags that were yellowing, temperature changes and humidity in the deep south had caused a lot of warping and/or spots to form, and although the bags took the brunt of the yellowing effect of time (I didn't know you were supposed to change out the bags every five years), most were read and/or re-read and loved to the point that they had multiple spine breaks, dings, dents, little tears, an occasional circular cup stain, etc.  That was kind of heartbreaking too - I had some GREAT books that were finally showing some value after 20-plus years lugging them around - only to find that a huge percentage were, at best, dollar bin "readers".

But it's not a completely sad story - I also found a few gems: a pristine New Mutants 98 was sitting there - un-bagged for YEARS - yet needing little more than a press to remove one dent.  After the two Deadpool movies, I couldn't believe the value.  The Incredible Hulk 377 with Professor Hulk... a few years earlier it was worth $6 bucks, mint.  Suddenly the copy I had was selling at over a hundred (and mine WAS Near Mint)!  1st Jason Todd pre-Crisis, 1st Carnage, the Spider-Man Wedding Issue (both covers), Gold Key Star Trek #1 (which even at 3.0 is worth a hundred bucks - more than I paid for the whole series once upon a time). 

Out of 550 comics I found about 15 whose value landed in the hundred dollar range - not much for 20-plus years of storage, but a few others, like New Mutants 98 were worth a bit more, plus I found about 25-30 books in the twenty-to-sixty dollar range, possibly waiting for the moment someone gives them a nod on the big screen.  No quality Gold or Silver Age values sadly, but... for as I went through them with an increasing understanding of the strict nature of professional grading, I was considering just taking them to that same local comic shop and selling the whole lot for $150 bucks (I doubted they'd pay a $1 a book - I MIGHT have gotten $200).  

So here I am, trying to grade those few gems, plus a few more I picked up on eBay recently (I'm going nuts for Immortal Hulk right now), and hoping that some will look great on my wall and take me back to that rotating rack where my Dad would point at and say, "Why don't you go pick out a few" while he flirted with the girl at the counter and took care of his own fix.  Others I'd like to sell (if they be worthy), to potentially fund a new and improved comic book habit.

I've been reading various CGC threads for about two months now, as I Googled questions about grading and details on damage - how dings, dents, folds, internal wear, manufacturing defects, etc. all affect grading, and I'm just super-excited to be here.  So even if nobody talks to me from this point on, I just wanted to tell my little story and say THANKS for all the advice you've collectively given to other people; whether you know it or not, people are reading your responses, laughing (and sometimes crying) with you, and generally learning a lot about comics and the professional grading experience.  

I've missed so much in the last 20 years - I can't BELIEVE the artwork now!!!  Stunning.  I don't know about this 100 different variant covers nonsense, but there's no arguing that most of them look amazing (the "virgin" concept with no intrusive titles or writing is wonderful).  Its kind of ironic though, that I got out when the variants were driving the industry into the ground, and now I'm coming back when people are wondering if it's happening all over again, but even if my books all come back as 5's or 6's, I'll be THRILLED just to get some of them slabbed and graded for no other reason than to have them on my wall. 

I'm also grateful to DCUniverse.com for sparking the interest again.  I didn't think I'd like the live action Titans, but WOW.  I'll re-up again when the full Doom Patrol is available.  Can't wait for Swamp Thing... and access to so many comics!!!  It's a NICE feature.  I felt like a kid again, only I was getting to read all the stuff I never could afford before, and a lot that I've missed over the years.  Great service.  But unlike some folks here, I'm still on a tight budget, so getting my books graded is - while fun - a nerve-wracking affair.  I'd like to think it may be possible to boost my income a little from time to time with a few smart purchases, so if anyone's into flipping and shipping, I'd love to know more.

Anyway, sorry for the novel... truly psyched to be here.  I have a TON questions before I send in my first set in, and pictures to boot.  Hope there are many more sets to follow.  If not... well... I'm just jazzed about being back in the comic zone.  Thanks for all you do, CGC!

lol  You are not lying! Welcome to the boards, Dave.

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10 hours ago, DR.X said:

giphy.gif?cid=3640f6095c82b7174b566f2e45

Naked-gun-Frank-Drebin-Leslie-Nielsen-laughing-platoon-1382708322r.gif.7b2f4345f78f52eba39003e3bbc08d64.gif

This was the first thing I read when I got to the boards: "New members join the CGC boards everyday, but some just lurk around without saying too much."  I dared to do more, and never did worry enough what the cool kids thought of me, lol.  Oh well.  Can't win'em all.

Edited by Artlover1
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