surfer99

Someone might think you really like comic books, haha. Great display!

Rune, I love your story and what a nice restoration job! Haha. You know I would have been sleeping with the nite lite on after reading those. Glad you were able to keep the Spidey book, and those original copies you picked up later in life...so nice.

James, at a young age you were already ahead of the game hitting flea markets to find comics! I didn't do that until I was a little older...so much fun, and you never know what you might find. Very cool that this book sparked your interest in comics and that you're still going strong today.

Thanks for sharing guys!

Do you remember yours?

It was the 70's and I had to be like 10 years old or less. My parents divorced when I was even younger and I remember going to visit my dad in the summers. He would usually end up taking me to grandma's house in French Camp, CA where I hung out with my cousins most of the time. My aunt lived there with grandma and kind of looked out for me.

One of the fun things I liked to do at that age was take a magnifying glass and use the condensed light beam like a pencil to burn images into a piece of wood. I don't know all of the images I made, but I remember very clearly making a big ant...he was like a foot long on a thin peace of soft wood and he looked awesome. Sorry, took a trip down memory lane there. Anyway, one day after I was bored of playing with fire and driving my aunt crazy she busted out some Marvel comics and was like, here look at these. I loved looking at those books. There were so many words and at that age they just interfered with the pictures...I didn't read any of them and when my aunt tried to read them to me I usually fell asleep from boredom. When I got to just flip through them on my own though it was great. Sometimes I would try to piece together the story from the images, and other times I just enjoyed looking at these cool characters.

Which books were they? The covers that burned themselves into my memory were Silver Surfer 1 and a bunch of X-men books including issue 2 with the Vanisher, issue 3 with the Blob, issue 22 with Count Nefaria, issue 29 with the Super Adaptoid, issue 31 with the Cobalt Man, issue 32 with Juggernaut, and issue 45 with Quicksilver. I guess that explains why the Silver Surfer and X-men were the comics I gravitated to most when I started collecting comics myself 10 years later. The unbelievable part is about 10 years after that, I told my aunt I has collecting comics now and she sent me her whole collection of about 60 books. Man when those books arrived the memories just came pouring back. I still have most of those books and will treasure them forever, along with the great memories.

Til next time...

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What an incredible LCS find on that #300. My LCS doesn't have anything close to cool stuff like that! (I'm guessing living in Silicon Valley means the high rollin' techies have cleared out all the local LCSes.) I guess I should visit Arizona!

You're probably right, blast those rich techies! I've heard NY is the same way...all the good stuff is gone, unless you try some of the surrounding cities. We definitely have some great books pop up here once in awhile, but there are dry spells too. Best of luck on your collection!

Surfer,

Fantastic copy! I had to put on shades to save my eyes from the gloss. It's a great feeling to buy a raw copy at a lower price and send it in and get a gem back. Also congratulations on breaking the 30,000 point barrier! Keep posting and I'll keep reading.

Haha, thanks Rockblazer! It totally IS all shiny, . Not bad for a 27 year old comic. It was just one of those things where I wasn't even looking for this book, it just appeared, like a dream, so I jumped on it.

Thanks for reading. I will try and post again soon and look forward to reading your posts as well.

LionHeart, newshane, and TJ, thank you!

Brandon, I couldn't believe the books I found that day and when I took a closer look after I got home I was amazed. Also picked up a Marvel Premiere 15 for my son who loves Iron Fist and it had some wrinkling that could maybe be water damage, I'm not sure. That one we sent to CCS for a press so I'm hoping they worked their magic to pull of a decent grade on it for him...it is in Received status now along with a couple of other gems.

Professor, welcome back my friend! Nice to hear from you and hoping you'll write a journal or two to catch us up on all things Pecora.

Thanks guys! And Ron, WE are winners my friend, thank you for the amazing press on all of these. You should go into business, serious. ?

Just arrived...

Shortly after coming home from work on Friday I got a knock on the door from UPS. I had seen a few days earlier that my invoice from ECCC in March had been marked Shipped/Safe so I was eagerly anticipating this package. So excited because I don't peak at the grades online...gotta have willpower cause I love surprises!

In the past I've opened the box and revealed the grade to myself one book at a time and then made a journal note before looking at the next book. That was fun. This time, I decided to reveal one at a time to myself and then to tnerb, bagofleas and Ronnylama via group text, sending them a pic of each book as I went along. That was a lot fun too cause we got to share in the ohs and ahs together. I just finished posting the last one, pictured below, on Instagram which is my first venture into social media, and now I'm sharing the results with all of you fine people. I wish I had made note of the grades we thought these would receive, but needless to say I am EXTREMELY happy with all of these!

Daredevil 163 CGC 9.6 WP...Hulk appearance. Bought this one on eBay as NM.

Daredevil 168 CGC 9.2 WP...1st Elektra. Bought this one from tnerb as NM minus...right on the money with that one tnerb.

Uncanny Xmen 244 CGC 9.6 WP...1st Jubilee. This one is from my original collection.

Secret Wars 8 CGC 9.8 WP...Origin of alien costume that becomes Venom. This one is from my personal collection.

Amazing Spiderman 238 CGC 9.6 WP...1st appearance Hobgoblin. Picked this up at my LCS.

Amazing Spiderman 300 CGC 9.8 WP...Origin and 1st full appearance of Venom. Picked this up at my LCS.

I gotta tell you, my jaw hit the floor when I saw the 9.8 grade on issue 300. I showed my wife what they're selling for and she was like yeah, you need to take me back to Disneyland, . Very happy to have all these books in my collection and not that it has any relevance, but it bumped me up past the 30,000 point mark so I'll take it. I've added pictures and descriptions for all these to my sets so if you have a few minutes stop by and take a look.

Til next time...

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Thank you for sharing your story and posting these cool books! I don't frequent the boards because to me they're all over the place and hard to follow sometimes. I like the journals cause they are more of a one stop shop. I don't see a lot of GA so I'm glad you posted these. Look forward to seeing more!

Stan's Soapbox...

If you've ever read some of the great Silver Age books that Stan wrote, especially Tales to Astonish, you no doubt have noticed that he was a bit of a male chauvinist...or at least he portrayed women in such a way that leads you to believe he was. He can be forgiven, it was a sign of the times, and as such was reflected in his writing. One thing you never did see though was bigotry. In fact, he spoke in depth on this topic in the Stan's Soapbox section of Fantastic Four 81 which I just read. In case you don't have this issue, or maybe just don't read this section on a regular basis, I typed it up below for your reading pleasure. After reading this, I have a new respect for Stan the man. The fact that this was printed in 1968, the year of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, tells me he was speaking out against that kind of hate in the best way he knew how.

STAN's SOAPBOX

Lets lay it right on the line. Bigotry and racism are among the deadliest social ills plaguing the world today. But, unlike a team of costumed super-villains, they cant be halted with a punch in the snoot, or a zap from a ray gun. The only way to destroy them is to expose them -- to reveal them for the insidious evils they really are. The bigot is an unreasoning hater -- one who hates blindly, fanatically, indiscriminately. If his hang-up is black men, he hates ALL black men. If a redhead once offended him, he hates ALL redheads. If some foreigner beat him to a job, he hates ALL foreigners. He hates people he's never seen -- people he's never known -- with equal intensity -- with equal venom. Now, we're not trying to say its unreasonable for one human being to bug another. But, although anyone has the right to dislike another individual, it's totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race -- to despise an entire nation -- to vilify an entire religion. Sooner or later, we must learn to judge each other on our own merits. Sooner or later, if man is ever to be worthy of his destiny, we must fill our hearts with tolerance. For then, and only then, will we be truly worthy of the concept that man was created in the image of God -- a God who calls us ALL -- His children.

Pax et Justitia (Latin for peace and justice)

Stan.

Nuff said!

Til next time...

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Joe's art is really good. Impressive collection. Crazy they're not worth more points, especially since some are SO limited. Really wish Joe was more committed to the book by producing new issues regularly...the guy, for whatever frustrating reason, just isn't motivated enough to get them done.

Thanks for sharing Rune, very interesting. It's funny, I was just wondering yesterday if there was a risk of damaging the CGC books I have on display in frames on the walls of my room. From the sound of it, the preferred environment is dark, and most of my books are stored in the closet so that's covered. My best books I keep on the wall though...I'm not about to tuck them away - I view my books as pieces of art and they are meant to be displayed and enjoyed. At least I can say that my home faces North/South so that I don't have any "direct" sunlight coming in...again, still better to store them in the dark I know, but I prefer to admire them so I'll just have to keep my blinds closed more often I guess.

Brandon, thanks for sharing your top 10. This one is definitely the cherry on top. Very nice!

Thanks guys!

Today was my birthday and I told my wife I really wanted a bookshelf for my comic room. We picked it up today and the books fit great. This is most of my raw books, and none of my CGC books, but it sure freed up a lot of room in my closet!

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I live in Northern arizona. We have all 4 seasons here.

Weather is great. Much better than in the East Valley where I live. We like to get up to Payson at least a couple times a year and we bought some land up in that area a few years ago but haven't been able to afford to build on it. Guess I could always follow your lead and sell my books but man that would just be TOO hard.