jbud73

cough cough the magic number is 7 and I haven't bought one off you in a while

Well .... since my colleague above is a bit longer in the tooth (sorry Marc I meant Pov, as I took too long to write this) I will try to fill in the blanks A long time ago in a galaxy far far away ..... I used to write extensive comic con reports for the 4-5 shows I traveled to as a buyer in CG, they were written from the perspective of the comic BUYER/COLLECTOR and related to the 'books only' and a straight forward opinion on what was at the show book wise, as well as some of the vendors who I purchased books from. The latter half of that got me into a bit of steamy water here around 2008-2009 so here is the disclaimer that I used then and use now... 'the forthcoming opinions that these of one comic collector on a lazy weekend spent spending his (1000s or 100s of $$) of hard earned money on things that used to cost a dime or quarter. These opinions are solely the provenance of the OP and should not in any way, shape, or form be used as a basis for your A) attendance B) expectations C) DEALINGS WITH Comic related people at the show for which this Con report is in reference too.' On to the show.... Ok, so Marc and Tim to a great job at this show, its a COMIC BOOK show with 10-12 dealers (a mix of local collector/dealers, local shop owner dealers and 1-2 National dealers, meaning hey travel to multiple big shows throughout the year). The space is about right so as to let the smaller guys set up as well as let the larger dealers bring their set up. The benefit here is you get 12 comic dealers is a smaller room right next to each other, so 12 dealers you would see at Silicon Valley or WonderCon except its $5 to get in and you don't have to look for them between toy and other vendors. There are no guests, its just books, one day for 6 hours ... I honestly think the Con is almost ready for a bit bigger room, BUT I applaud Tim and Marc for building slow and making sure they get a good dealer mix so everyone has a buying audience and that is A LOT TOUGHER THAN IT SOUNDS. How about the books ..... There is a great cross section of books, GA, SA, BA 1 dollar books on the floor boxes, so something for everyone. You can see pictures of the wall books from previous photos, all I can say is I have never failed to spend less than $500 at the show. Ok lets meet some of the dealers that I dealt with and got my money. CW (GIFT SHOP Banner in Photos): Chris and I have know each other since he was not able to come out for a drink with the Bay Area collector / dealers after Wonder Con when it was in SF BECAUSE HE WAS UNDERAGE for a drink and I have purchased a number of books off of Chris over the years. Chris will bring a nice cross section of BA and SA and he will usually have "hot books" and BA Keys around for the purchasing. You can deal with Chris but he knows as much as anyone about the current market trends so low ball asks on hot key books is probably not going to go very far, but if you are remotely serious he's not "going to the coffin" with the books, waiting for a sucker to buy them either. Heroes/Comic Collector Shop: They had an entire side, and rightly so with their stock. Lots of Raw keys, grading is solid, they offer discount boxes for VF range books as well. So basically you can spend some cash on NM stuff or, they will discount the VF stuff, which is nice because VF range non-keys rarely sell for guide so at least they're consistent with that. It is also great to talk comics with Phil and Alan (who was not there, though his books were). House of Comics: Definitely a stop if you want some titles on the 'more difficult to find side' including Westerns and War books. Probably the widest selection, meaning Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Atlas etc. I've purchased a lot of books off of Marc over the years and buying some books is a nice way to garner an invite to his storage facility in Berkeley. Steve Wyatt: Steve started the Big Wow Con, which was cultivated from the Golden State Con and built small, from the grass roots level up. I remember the early 2000s shows in Oakland, which would go on to become a large tent event at the San Jose Civic/Convention Center. When WonderCon left for Anaheim this was the only large comic con in the area and for that a lot of us Bay Area collectors owe a thank you to Steve for the tireless work he did to pull off one of the best artist attended shows outside of San Diego I have ever seen. Steve has an absolute encyclopedic knowledge as well as being a big art collector, as it happens Steve and I were just talking about OA when I decided to go through his HG boxes. As it turns out he hasn't set up at a show in a while and was actually trying to get some projects done around the homestead. Cut too .. he found a bunch of stuff in boxes that hadn't been opened in a while including some DC Don Rosa's and brought them to the show. I ending up buying every one he had a nice 20 book stack. Funny hobby, how just chatting about comic conventions and original art will lead to a larger comic deal. I can honestly say I've never had a bad experience dealing with Steve and as large national dealers go, that's not always the case. I think it went something like, "uh this is the part where I give you money for comics." Ya, then we can go back to talking about comic art. Ok, cool. Independents: So the guys like you and me. Tim and Marc save a few spots for some local collector/dealers that have enough books to make a dent at the show. Very easy to deal with two of them that had some nice OO Bronze Age books, white pages, willing to do a deal on larger volume. So ya I bought some books, even if they were less expensive, the price is usually right, again if you buy some volume. Overall I put in probably a B+ effort, meaning I didn't really hit all the vendors in force, but did larger deals with a few of them. This is probably due to many of the cool collectors that attend this show, where we end up talking books with the dealers which detracted from my going through every box at the show. I mean I spent almost an hour trying to see if Pov would buy a She-hulk 1 just so I could get a pic of (Mr. Pre-Code, million year picnic, uber collector) buying a She-Hulk 1. Ok here are a sample of some books (I bought a lot more) that were purchased at this Con - All of these are NON WALL BOOKS, yep these were in boxes for the taking.

WOW look at the colors on that book. Ah Pedigrees = yes please.

Are Ghost Town's books still up there? Its hard to look at them and not burn all my comics LOL. I've got a few new ones that I will post. Hard to believe that was a 2004 Thread. It should be pinned but hey that's me, provenance and the history of some of the greatest collections purchased off the stands being an important topic in Comics General

You know I think it goes in cycles, for a loooooooong time I thought it was KC208 and WWT15. Then 3-4 years ago 5-6 WWTs hit the market in a short period of time. I still think the KCs are all just tough. I think the Ringo 28 had a bit to do with the original 30c Variant site that went up as it was the book pictured for the 30s. I would have said KC205 (non-starburst KC) but 3 more of those have surfaced in the last 2 years. I also think that once a variant collector gets their copy of a toughie they tend to diminish its rarity. These are some that took me a long time to find.

WTF I think its in my saved threads that were migrated but I'm scared to look.

that might be the 30c Variant purchase of the year. Its pretty much like finding it in the wild.

I will agree with the poster who said that variant collectors tend to be RAW first, there are exceptions, including people on this forum. But i have seen variant collectors crack slabs at multiple Cons over the years and I also crack all the slabbed variants i have purchase and pop the label behind the backing board. That said, I've also got 4.0 Western 30c in Mylite2s with full backs and micro chamber paper.

With the caveat that there are Definitely REGIONAL VARIANCES and I bring the San Jose 30c Bias with me. Chamber 23 is more difficult than 22 and they are both easier than the Tomb of Darkness books. I'd call them both Gerber 7s. Looks like the 2nd CoC you got is a very solid copy so kudos, you can now cease collecting 30c variants.

WWT 15 is now probably a Gerber 7/8. I have tracked 8 sales over the past 5-6 years and would anticipate there are 20-25 copies of this book in 'known' existence. As for the westerns, ya they continue to be and will always be tough Kid Colt definitely leading the way as FD and others have illustrated.

Phillip just completed a purchase with me, easy transaction good communication. Thanks again.

Ok, that's it. I will do a tally for the top 2 buyers as it relates to Free Shipping in a few hours, Invoices tonight shipping tomorrow. thanks for all who made purchases this far. I will leave the thread up until Friday noon.

X-Men 140 9.4 $35

X-Men 137 8.5 - White Pages; basically fresh off the newsstand 1/2" tear at base. $30

Thor 338 9.4 - White Pages $12

Thor 204 9.4 - White Pages $35

Thor 200 9.0 - White Pages $37

Thor 197 7.0 $6

Thor 152 8.5 OSPG in 8.0 = $52 $27

Swamp Thing 22 8.5 $7

Swamp Thing 21 8.0 $4

Swamp Thing 17 9.2 $15