letsgrumble

Here's my report. I've gone to the Motor City Comic Con every year up to 2019. Being Canadian, it would always coincide with our long weekend in May. So I'd take the Friday off and stick around Michigan for four days with Friday and half of Saturday attending the show. Pre-COVID, my routine was simple: drop off a big submission to CGC and then scout around for comics. There'd always be big-time national dealers mixed in with some great local dealers from Michigan. Todd Lange was always a must. I'd always leave that show with tons of great books at great prices, maybe get some signatures here and there, and feeling I got a lot accomplished. This year was a little different. What has changed in 2022 that perhaps only I care about: 1) CGC did not set up at the show; 2) dealers were mostly comprised of the local yokels; 3) aside from a few quality guests, it was very limited. (What also changed, for me, is my 9 year-old, anime-obsessed daughter is now added to my comic con roster - let's just say 100% of my time is no longer dedicated to hunting comics). I spent Friday-only at Motor City. A lot of dealers I would normally see setup there were not present. So I first did the walk-around. Part of me was thinking that a lot of the larger US dealers didn't set up in Detroit this year because it fell on the same weekend as MegaCon. But I remember that a lot of dealers didn't set up in 2019 either because, apparently, the prices for tables increased significantly. Anyhoot, I don't know the full reasons why. I looked through Reece's Comics, Harley's, and a bunch of other tables. I did look for Todd Lange but didn't see him at his table. There was someone else sitting there with a bunch of $2 boxes. My expectations were therefore a bit lowered. Just had a few books on my hit list. I did pick up a Thor #134 from Warp 9 Comics, a Spidey #265 newsstand from Phil's Collectables (a Canadian who had tons of Neal Adams stuff!), a few cheapies from Bell Book & Comics, and a discounted FF Omni V2 from who knows who. This was the kind of stuff I could have found online. My kids had a great time so all was good. My son was looking for Marvel Legends figs and my daughter was on the hunt for wooden swords and Demon Slayer merch. My son picked up a High Evolutionary fig to go with my Thor #134. Biggest regret. I do like acquiring books in bulk when attending shows, and you can't really do that online. There were boxes of high-grade bronze at $5 a pop at Collector's Zone. After briefly looking though a box or two I saw that there were some bargains to be had. Unfortunately I never made it back to the table. Here are some pics:

Sweeeet! Great pics as always. I thought Nickel City Comic Con was scheduled in a few weeks. Looks like it's cancelled. Is this the only comic show running in Buffalo now?

MCS certification?

Why, will the Freedom Convoy be rolling into Niagara Falls that weekend?

R.I.P. Neal Adams. Photo from Toronto in March 2015.

Here's to another 100!

It's sad that this topic has gone on for 100 pages with no signs of slowing down.

I've found great stuff digging through $1, $2, $3 bins over the years, and still do. Man, I have no shame. I've bought books from dealers who've blown out stock for a dime, quarter, or fifty cents a book back in the day. I'm there. I'll look for books to fill runs, slab in 9.8 to keep or sell, to find great readers, lots of reasons. The hunt is part of the fun of collecting or finding books to resell. Don't get me wrong, I'm also looking at wall books and digging through other boxes too. It only takes seconds to flip through a box and determine if it's worth spending any more time whether it be a $1 box or $20 box. Why is it beneath people? Lots of gems to be had. So many times I've witnessed people gravitate only to the wall books and spend no time looking in boxes. I sometimes get asked if there's anything good. The answer is always no.

Spending $20 for 20 dollar bin comics valued at $80-$100 a pop will net more.

Happy birthday to the pride of Michigan. Here's Harley when he was a young chicken:

I went to a show in Detroit in 1985 and Sparkle City had a big stack of them raw, face up on the table for seventy five cents each. I was at a show at a movie theatre lobby (!) in Pennsylvania around 2013 that had a stack of 100 of them for $5 each. It seems like everyone has an Avengers Annual #10 story. A friend, who is a former employee at a longtime Toronto comic shop, was helping them clean out their warehouse back in 2015. They were also pulling stock that they could easily move for an upcoming show. He set aside copies of books like Avengers Annual #10 and PPSSM #64 for me, and I bought a handful in the 9.6-9.8 range. I'm grateful he did that for me. I found out later that someone named Mr. Harley Yee bought a good chunk of these "warehouse" copies before the con opened to the public. When I bought the books, I was told that sometime back in the 1990s they threw out 2 cases of the Avengers Annual #10 to make more room in the warehouse. They had too many copies.

Only issue that I didn't buy off the shelf. Finally got it 10 years later.

I bought some issues of Defenders from the Mile High II collection. The interior pages had the same colour as the creamy centre of a Cadbury Caramilk bar. Pedigree it ain't.

And I remember that someone was selling a whack of Shazam #1 comics, here on these boards, that were part of a warehouse find. That was maybe 7-8 years ago.

Not sure if this qualifies as a "warehouse find" - maybe a Cosmic Comics find.

Some older threads:

Pre-ordered books at various times last year between May and December. Now they're starting to trickle in all at once. Received a Taschen book and an Artist's Edition last week, the Dr. Strange Omni this week, and it looks like I got three more books on the horizon next week. I'm racking up quite the total.

My pet peeve is that there isn't a 1-800 number, so I'll call them long distance to place orders. They usually answer the phone "E. Gerber, please hold" and then I'll sit on hold for 20-30 minutes before speaking to someone. Other times they forget about me altogether. I've actually taken to purchasing calling cards when I know it's time to place an order with them. But what can I say? I like their stuff. I have no choice but to tolerate it.

Recent arrivals. Haven't cracked them open yet: Just over 20 years ago that John Buscema passed.

When I saw your recent sales listing that included the bound volumes, that was the first time I had seen them in decades.

I'm curious - are back-issue Marvel UK titles from the 1970s like Captain Britain or Mighty World of Marvel fairly easy to find in the UK? Where would you go to find them? I bought a bunch from UK sellers on eBay years ago. I got the impression they were fairly common and not very expensive - but difficult to find in higher grades.

I don't have that one! But I have only been looking at issues 1-39 from the first series. I used to have some of these issues in bound remaindered volumes that made their way to Canada in the late 1970s/early 1980s. That was my first exposure to Captain Britain and Marvel UK reprint titles. I noticed that you had some for sale not too long ago. Man, I wished I had kept them. As a kid, I would remove the individual comics from the glue binding.