I am comforted by the camaraderie of the journals.

I love reading about everyone's acquisitions I did better at the NYCC than I ever would have expected. One invoice with five books came back to me. I graded three of those as 9.8's, and two as 9.6's. I was happy that I was eighty percent correct. The book that I was wrong on was a free giveaway from Image.

Over the years I never paid attention to the greats. They were before my time. I paid no heed to Stan Lee or Jack Kirby. I cared for naught about Infantino, Adams, Giordano, Cardy, nor Steranko. The artists that I started with were Claremont, McLeod, Buscema, Layton, John Romita Jr, and for which I never would have collected, Tom Mandrake. These are my legends; my greats.

Recently I have been trying to get everyone to sign my New Mutants #15. An error occurred that CGC said they would fix. The signatures affixed across the cover were not posted properly on the label. Unfortunately for me I had already turned it back over to CGC for it to be corrected the first day of the NYCC.

Tom Mandrake was there for one hour signing with J. Michael Strazynski. It was Ten Grand that I had signed. But it was Sidekick that gave me the chance to talk with an icon. I blathered on and thanked him while showing a 9.8 copy of my New Mutants #15. He asked what I wanted him to do with it. So now I have to wait. I will one day have my New Mutants #15 signed by the creator of the cover for which I place all credit on to my collecting endeavors.

The free giveaway was a bit mangled. I wasn't going to have CGC grade it. I figured I would be lucky to get a 9.6 with a press. And why would I want something that was only a 9.6? But it was Tom Mandrake, how could I not? But if it wasn't for this community I would have kept collecting like I always did, silently.

And it was because of this community that had me start seeking out signatures and actually meeting these creators. In essence, my life is better for it. May everyone have a great collecting year for 2014. I look forward to reading what everyone has to say and what they get.

Thanks for Reading

Tnerb

Ps. I would have taken a better picture if the Sidekicks comic book, but my cat is making sure I don't go anywhere by sitting on my lap. Happy New Year.

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