Circa 1993

I lived in Denver in the 80's, moved back to Montana for high school and then went back to Denver in the early 90's for college. I'd collected comics as a kid - mostly Daredevil, MoKF, Moon Knight X-Men and GI Joe in my early teens, getting into the independent stuff after that. By the time I was 20 in 1993 and living in Great Falls, Montana - I was the typical collector: way more books I wanted than what my income allowed, especially at the $2.95 cover price. I mean, I think I was around $5 or $6 an hour in wage back then, so I had to budget - especially because I worked at a local comic shop, and had eyes bigger than my wallet.

I graduated high school in Great Falls in 1991, and by 1993 It was time to make the big move to go to college in Denver. I was comfortable going there since I'd lived there for awhile as a kid. So I packed up my '70 Impala, swept the mullet back and blew outta town.

That's me and my dad's ex-girlfriend Cindy - who lived in Denver and visited me when I moved down there. Not bad, pops!

I had aspirations of being an illustrator and I had managed to put together a decent portfolio to get me into an art school. I enrolled at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, with a full-time job at Safeway about 30 minutes from where I lived. The job was my first union job, so I was introduced to a higher wage in making $7.75/hour, which left a little extra money for me to establish my pull order at Mile High Comics at Buckingham Square Mall:

Man, do I miss the mall experience. These younger kids don't know what they missed out on.

I strolled in and was bloooooooownnnnn away by a *real* comic shop. Not that I have anything against my classic comic shops in Great Falls - but this was a Big City comic shop that had "hot" books on the wall. Piles of non-sports cards and other comic-related trinkets in all it's bright florescent glory. It was magnificent to my 20 year old brain.

In my move to Denver - much to my mother's chagrin - I invited along my longtime on-again-off-again girlfriend (who was also into comics) to move with me. Which, most people can imagine, pissed off every adult in all families within a 50 mile radius. But, we decided to do this whole adventure together - which ended up being not a super smart choice, but that's a tale for another day. In the meantime, we decorated the house with all of our posters and made our little studio a home.

My buddy Hovland and my girlfriend Amie sitting on our futon (yep, futon that we slept on) chillin' out while I play with B&W film.

Once we were settled in, I went back to Mile High and created my pull list, then subsequently popped in every other week on payday and got to know one of the counter guys pretty well. He had several pieces of art published in the Wizard Fan Art section, and introduced me to Prismacolor markers to color comic art. So, being a young, impressionable artist dreaming of my first "published" work, I was a total fanboy of this guy who'd been in Wizard. After a few months of going there, one day he noticed that I was going through a freshly-opened box of comic non-sports card packs - touching every one of the 24 packs in the box, and putting four of them aside:

Now back in these times, you would have a box of 24 packs of cards, and randomly inserted within those packs were four special cards on holographic/prismatic/chromium card stock. These were the "premium" cards, referred to as "chase cards". When putting together your set of regular cards, you wanted to get these special cards, which were a subset of the collection. Naturally, card collectors would buy a full box or two trying to get the subset completed - thereby spending more money (sounds familiar, doesn't it?) 

I can't remember if it was WildC.A.T.S. cards or Spawn cards - but I stepped up to the counter with those four packs and he had asked if I would open those and see if I got any of the "special" cards and if I did, he'd give me $5 store credit. My eyes lit up at the prospect.

I opened up all four packs and produced all four chase cards from the box.

...

Let's flash back to a year or two before when those non-sports cards really started getting hot. When I worked at my local comic shop in my home town, I had lots of time to sit at the counter and thumb through the packs. Now, I have no idea if this talent I developed was rare or unique, but I would obsess about bending the packs of cards to see if I could feel the variance of card thickness of regular cards and the chase card. While I experimented with this, I would scrounge up some money to buy packs and try to pull out the chase cards, then sell them to one of the rival comic shops. After a few weeks, I was pretty much 100% accurate but I stuck to the old adage of "you can shear a sheep many times, but only skin it once" - so I would pull out 3 of the 4 chase cards and leave one pack so I didn't "kill" the box. I did this for probably a year before comic shop owners caught on and wouldn't let me pick the packs myself.

...

So, back to Mile High: the guy couldn't believe it.

"No way! Can you do that again?" He said, peeling the cello from a box from behind the counter. I went through the box, pulled out four packs, opened them up - and there's the chase cards.

"Only come in when I'm working and do that, Ill give you store credit - but no one else can see you handling the packs. You buy them, and I'll give you trade."

I spent the better part of my summer and fall that first year in Denver killing boxes left and right. I probably pulled out 100 chase cards for him, and got some great books to show for it. I wish I could remember his name - I'll have another tale to tell with him in a later entry, one filled with cross-state intrigue, double dealing and a massive comic book collection transported under a tarp in an old 1980's Ford Truck.

Thanks for reading!