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As far as I know, these are the only 2 golden age comics with Marilyn Monroe (photo) on the cover. Does anyone know of any others?

A limited auction so far -- I wonder how many lots will be in auction once it opens.

It's been a while since I've posted. With covid, my wife and I have been in our forever home, and I've been busy doing inside and outside chores. I'm still very active with comics, but mostly with finishing runs. Not many Bakers, but I've gotten to the point where the Bakers I still need are not often for sale. My wine and Bourbon collections are still going - I traded a Screaming Eagle for a Pappy 15 year last year -- I'll eventually write about that (it tastes ... f***ing amazing). I'm still working, but mostly from home. Every now and then, I'll go to the office, mostly because some wine places will ship to my office but not my home. That's what I've done today (though I miss my wife and my dogs). Typically I'll stay overnight and and go to a nice restaurant for dinner. Nowadays though, I'm all about Door Dash. I've been vaccinated and booster (and don't understand the resistance), but I don't want to get sick because in a week my wife and I go on a cruise and they won't let you board if you have covid (even if asymptomatic) -- which I agree with, but still it would suck to get to the gangway and then not be allowed into paradise. Anyway, assuming my wife and I are go to go for the cruise, I'll post some pics.

take it (and thanks for the pm)

take at 10% off

take

take it, thanks

take

Greece Cruise (Pre-Cruise Post #1) We are very much looking forward to our first trip out of the country since covid (not counting Mexico). We leave on Wednesday. We will be in Athens for 2 days, and then a Seabourn cruise around Greece for a week (our itinerary is in the pic). One of the things we like about Seabourn is the caviar. They give you caviar whenever you want, and from order to delivery is less than 20 minutes (better than Door Dash). The caviar is not Beluga, but via some sleuthing I figured out it was Ossetra caviar which is available on Amazon for $100 a tin (see the pic). Our goal is to feast on caviar on the cruise to offset the cruise cost.

The First Appearance of Jaka I have the original art for only 1 entire comic, and it's a big one for me. Cerebus #6, which is the first appearance of Jaka. To this day, it is still the most I have spent on any comic related purchase. Here is one of my favorite pages from the comic -- the first conversation between Cerebus and Jaka. It has one of the all time great romantic dialogues in comics: "If you wished, Cerebus would kill you a Yak for your supper." I mean, that's right up there with: Leia: I love you. Han. I know. I've tried for years to get a 9.8 copy of the comic. There are only 10 copies. First I tried grading my own copy. It came back 9.4. Then I found a 9.6 copy on eBay so I bought it out of impatience (and maybe desperation). I lost out on an eBay auction. Finally another one was offered for sale on eBay a couple of weeks ago. I placed a ridiculous high bid on Bidnapper. And I won it! (Fortunately for less than my high bid.) I've thought about selling my undercopies, but I've decided to keep them. In fact, now, I may try to get 9.0 and 9.2 copies to complete my 9.x set. There is one signature 10.0. I've never seen it, but I assume it is signed by the Dave himself. If you're the owner and are open to a ridiculous offer, please PM me.

Some Recent Modern PG-13 GGA Additions 'Nuff said!

Collect the tops! You can get this on Amazon to hold your Blantons and display the tops.

I have my list in Excel so it's easy to know how many comics I have at any moment.

Yes, the con was in Richmond VA at that round shaped hotel on Broad Street (it's probably not there anymore). I grew up in Henrico to the west of Richmond. I went to Tucker HS. I went to UVA for college, and at that time, my dad got transferred so my parents moved to Northern VA. That was close to 40 years ago, and I've only been to Richmond once since then. That was about 15 years ago, and things had changed so much I was barely able to find our old house. The house looked the same though. I know Richmond now has regular cons but I've never gone, even though I lived in the DC area my entire life since college -- except 3 years ago when we moved to Bethany Beach, DE. I actually got out of comic collecting and focused on books around that time I sold my Uncle's comics to that dealer. In fact, thinking back, I probably spent that $40 on books, not comics. I used to go to used book stores and I still love the smell of old books (and comics). I collected SF and mysteries. In college, I got back into comics. There was a used records and comic store on the Corner at UVA that I went to all the time. During the summers, I'd go to small local cons. When I graduated from college, my collection was about 6 long boxes. Most were Marvel as I was trying to complete runs of what I call the Original Marvels (ASM, Avengers, FF, Captain America, DD, Thor, Incredible Hulk) -- I'm talking about the titles that began in the 60s, not GA. It took me over 20 years to complete those titles. When I graduated college, I still lived in the DC area but I had to work in Atlanta for a month. While there, I went to Dragon Con, which was the first big convention I'd ever been to. I remember seeing Wendy Pini walking across the hall dressed as Red Sonja. She was with Deni Sim (now Deni Loubert), Dave Sim's then wife. Deni was dressed just as revealing as Wendy, but unlike Wendy, Deni was just kind of out there -- I mean, I got the sense she was acting single even though she was married. So it didn't surprise me when she and Dave eventually split up. When I was in my late 20s, my older brother gave his comic collection to me. He collected DCs (whereas I collected Marvels). His collection was about 3 long boxes. That gave me something else to collect. I don't have the biggies like Action 1 or Detective 27, but I do have Superboy 1, WW 1, the first Legion, 1st Batgirl, 1st Supergirl, stuff like that. I've also completed long DC runs, like Detective 325-881, Batman 200-713, Superman 150-423, JLA 1-261, etc. At its biggest, my collection was over 50,000 comics. But a few years ago, my wife and I decided that we would move to our little beach house in Bethany DE when our kids were out of the house. In our beach house, I only had a small bedroom for my collection, so I decided to sell a big part of my collection. I sold a little over half my comics, but I kept all the good stuff. I remember going over my collection list a million times, to make sure I kept all the good stuff. Right before selling those comics, I found Batman Adventures 12 in one of the boxes I had planned to sell. It was a raw copy but it looked pretty good, so I sent it to CGC and it came back 9.8! If I sold that comic it would have been a disaster, as I only got about $3000 for all those comics. That might not sound like alot for 25k+ comics, but what I was selling was junk. I sold the comics on Craigs List to a local dealer, but before that, I tried to sell to some of the big national dealers like Lone Star and Mile High. After seeing my list, they told me they weren't interested -- they didn't even make me an offer. So like I said, what I sold was junk. About 10 years ago, I started getting into CGC. Also, with my big runs finished, I started focusing on keys, GGA and golden age. I used to focus on titles, but now I'm mostly a covers collector. At this moment, my collection is 27086 comics. Ten years ago, I didn't have any CGC books. Now, I have over 1300 CGC books. And I mostly only buy graded books, or books I plan to grade myself. My focus right now is books with covers by Matt Baker, anything Dave Stevens, Bettie Page, golden age GGA (especially what I call Dastardly Bondage covers), and pretty much anything that catches my eye. So @jimjum12, that's a quick history of my collecting life. I'd be very interested to hear about yours!

Recent Additions To Lady In White Collection Here are a few additions to my Lady in White collections, which are books with covers that have an eerie gothic feel, with a damsel in distress wearing a flowing white gown. For the most part, the only times I grade mags are for this collection, and I'm always struck on how hard it is to get high condition mags. I think that's because (1) it's harder to store mags, due to their larger size; and (2) the people buying this genre -- monster and scary stuff -- are probably more likely to read and re-read the mags, as opposed to being collectors who might read once then store away. I remember as a kid -- this was about 50 years ago -- my uncle used to buy these kind of comics, along with war comics, and he kept them in piles around his favorite lazy-boy and read them to death. Eventually he would give them to me and my brothers in grocery paper bags. We stored them for years in the attic -- along with the monster, ghost, and DC war books, there were a lot of early Charltons. Eventually, as a kid, I sold them to a local dealer for, I think, $40. I remember my dad was pissed that I had made the executive decision to sell them and pocket the money for myself, but I think secretly he was glad to get rid of them as they were taking up space. Looking back, I think I got fleeced by the dealer, as he was a college age dealer and I was just a pre-high school kid who didn't know anything about comics except Spider-man. But I used that $40 to buy more comics so at least I was consistent. That dealer had kind of a sleazy feel to him. He was still living with his parents, and every now and then he would sell comics in his parents' garage. I distinctly remember walking in that garage door and seeing piles of comics stacked in piles on foldable tables. The dealer called these events "conventions." Even though I was a kid, I'd been to real conventions by then (in Richmond), so I knew his sales were more yard sales than a real con. I didn't buy any comics from him, as I collected mostly just ASM at that time. Like I said, I'd been to the Richmond con by then, and while there I'd bought a stack of 1960's ASMs, so I was getting to know what was good stuff and what was junk. I eventually sold my ASM collection to another dealer in Richmond, which was another time I got fleeced, but that's another story (when I got into my late teens, I re-started the ASM collection and now it's complete). Anyway, thanks for coming along with me on this journey down memory lane.

Yes, I saw those defects too, and I was no doubt blinded by the big number as well. I think that contributed to my bidder's remorse right after I placed my bid. On top of that, I personally don't place much value on pedigrees (other than the Mile Highs), so I regretted placing a high bid where some of the price was due to the pedigree. Again, I'm glad I didn't win.

Sometimes You Win By Losing Gangsters Can't Win # 3 is one of my grails. I've looked for years for a good looking copy. Then this week, this copy pops up on Heritage's weekly auction. I decided to go all in with a $2500 high bid. Of course, with Heritage's 20% buyer's premium, that would be $3000 if I won. $3000 is a lot of money, and I immediately began regretting my bid. This morning when I woke up, the first thing I did (after feeding the dogs) was to check if I won. I had mixed feelings as the Heritage page loaded. I'm sure I would be happy if I won, but $3000 is a lot of money. Well, I didn't win. The book closed at $3,400 ($4,080 with BP) so I wasn't even close. I congratulate the winner, but frankly I am relieved not to win. So far I've tried twice at grading copies. My first attempt came back 3.0, which was expected -- I just wanted to get a placeholder for the collection. My second attempt came back 3.5 -- this was kind of disappointing as I was hoping for better - although as I look at it again, I suppose that was too optimistic. At this point, I feel like this box on my want list has been checked off and I can go after other things. Thanks for reading.

@Robot Man and @jimjum12 - Thanks for your kind words. @DocHoppus182 - Nice to see Tinsel among your collection. Peekaboo would sit with me for hours in my comic book room. I don't yet let Bella and Daisy in the comic room, as usually they'll poop there! (Yeah, we're still potty training them.) Shifting gears, I have yet to go to a comic convention since covid. I've gotten the vaccine but I'm so used now to staying home and buying from my computer, I'm not sure if I can handle a big con like NY or ECCC. Luckily Baltimore is having its con this year, so I'm going to that one. Baltimore seems like the perfect size right now, not huge but bigger than a small local fire station con. I've only been there once before (which is strange since it's close to me), but it still is one of the best cons I've ever been to, in terms of buying comics. Shifting gears again, if you've read this thread, you know I'm a big Dave Stevens fan, and also a Bettie Page fan as the 2 go together to some extent. Here is a Bettie collectible that I've gotten that I don't think I've ever posted. Bettie was the model for the cassette tape of 2-Pump Louie. I've never listened to the music as I don't have a cassette player, but I suppose Bettie was an appropriate model given the name of the band. Thanks for reading.

The main thing that threw me for a loop and made me lose interest from posting was, my dog of almost 15 years passed away in January. This really kicked me in the gut. I never cry -- part of being Asian I guess -- but I could not stop crying. Here's a picture of me and my dog, Peekaboo, the day before we had to put her down (she had cancer and was in pain). My wife and I weren't planning to get another dog right away, but the void left by Peekaboo was frankly too much to bear. Some people said to us that it was a disservice to Peekaboo's memory, that we should mourn her for a while before getting another dog. They got it completely backwards. Peekaboo was so big in our lives, that when she was gone, we HAD to get another dog to try to fill the void. In fact, we ended up getting 2 dogs, so it took 2 dogs to replace Peekaboo. To me, that's a testament to how incredible Peekaboo was. Anyway, sorry for the downer posting, but I just wanted to fill in the gap as to why I have not been posting this year. Here is a picture of my 2 new puppies. The Dachshund is Bella (Peekaboo was half Dachshund), and the Cavapoo is Daisy. Thanks for reading.

Hello all - Thanks to those who reached out to me to see how I'm doing. I'm fine and my family is good too. We've dodged Covid so far (we are all vaccinated). My kids are mostly adults now and on their own (almost). My wife and I moved to our forever home (where my comics are). I'm still buying comics but maybe not so much, but maybe because my high bids aren't high enough nearly as much anymore. I'm still hoping to complete my Baker covers set before I retire. I'm happy to say, though, that I've built up my Pappy collection -- I now have a 10 year, 12, 15 and Family rye. Anyway ... here are a few comics I've gotten since the last time I posted. As always, thanks for reading.

take

take

Sorry for not responding to your pm ... I was moving stuff. Anyway, I'll take the Jon Snow

take

I collect Overstreet mainly because of my long history with the books and mags. In addition to working on getting a complete run of the books, I'm collecting every OS mag (which seem to fit in a single long box). OS has been part of my comic collecting hobby for my entire life, and I can't imagine not having them. I think it's fun to read the market reports from the past. Below are a couple of pics - taken at different times - of where I store the books. I never spent a lot for them. Usually I'll buy ones I'm missing from people here on the boards, often on the cheap (where shipping is often more than the cost of the books). I'll probably wait until the end to buy the first edition as then I'll no doubt have to pay some big bucks.