Long time collector but new to the collector's society

Hi,

I started collecting comics in 1984 when I was 11 and collected actively and some might say heavily until 1998. I stopped collecting mostly due to an unstable living situation in a new city and the higher prices and rapid multiplication of titles. I have kept my collection intact since then and have no immediate plans to sell it. It's not very focused and made up mostly of runs starting from 1984 to 1998 of my favorite books plus my attempts to go back and pick up key books of my favorite characters and titles. As a kid I was more intent on getting the books and didn't spend too much time waiting on the best possibly copy. I was never super comfortable at cons of which there weren't as many good ones then and it was pre-internet, so I was pretty much stuck with the local stores. But, my father was very supportive in this effort and allowed me to stop in comics shops around the country as we spent our summers driving from coast to coast. I know now, that from a selling stand point I would have been better served buying fewer but better conditioned classic books, but as a kid I really wanted to read as many books as I could. I was always more a Marvel guy so the collection is highly skewed towards the Marvel superheroes and teams. X-men, Spider-Man, Avengers, Cap and their ancillary titles make up the lion's share of my collection.

I have been monitoring ebay for some time just to get an idea of what some of the books may be worth and noticed the proliferation of CGC graded books. Of course this scared the hell out of me since I have a large collection and it would be highly expensive and impractical to get all the books graded. However, I finally decided to dip my toe in.

Recently the ECCC rolled through town so I hastily assembled a package of 10 books to drop off with CGC to at least save one directions worth of shipping, this journal will be mostly the story of how my experiences have been with them. It was a bit of a process to assemble the piles for the different grading tiers and try and figure out which books should and shouldn't get graded. The 10 I came up with are 7 classics and 3 moderns that will hopefully get high grades and be cheaper to have graded. Either way it will be a learning experience and at least 10 of my books will be pretty well protected for the future.

Here is what I picked;

Daredevil #1

Sgt Fury #1

Avengers #4

X-men #1

Our Army at War #83

Incredible Hulk #181

Amazing Spider-man #129, #298 and 2 copies of #300

So far 5 have come back...

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