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My Art Gallery Recently I was reading Doc Joes journal about where he stores all his art (http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4656281&fpart=657). I don't have as much art as Doc but it's still a challenge to store. Most of my art is stored in mylar with acid free full-backs for support, on a 12" deep shelf, standing upright. This picture gives you an idea (although the shelf is about 12 feet long). I try to "layer" the art to see more of it, but there's still a lot of pieces underneath you can't see. So every now and then I'll move things around to bring the back stuff to the front. I have some framed art that's a major challenge to display. So I display art on both sides of the door to my comic room. I screw the frames to the door so there's no swing, and use heavy duty door stoppers so the glass doesn't hit anything solid. Here's the inside of the door (limited and signed prints by Dave Stevens and Jennifer Janesko): And the outside of the door (Marilyn Monroe original by Olivia): My wife also lets me display art in the hallway just outside my CBR. Here I store my other Olivia and Janesko original art (as you can tell, they are 2 of my favorite contemporary artists). This is an artist proof by Jack Vettriano, a Scottish painter, of his painting Beautiful Losers. My copy is 29 of 30.

ComicLink Wins - July/August 2016 Lately I've scaled back on my purchases. Part of it is, it's summer and I've been organizing my new comic book room -- and I'm more interest in how my heirloom tomatoes in the raised beds are doing and what I'm smoking tonight. Another part is, I'm still adjusting to the limited space in the new comic room so that's been a deterrent to buying more CGC books. But, I dipped my foot into the water a little bit with this month's CGC auction. First up is Adventure 275, the "story" of the Superman/Batman team ups. Only 3.0 but I won it at the bargain price of $25. Next up is a photo cover of Lois and Clark. Someday maybe I'll get Dean and Teri's autographs. Won this for $45. Here's an important win for me, Love Romances 82 with a cover by Matt Baker. My major collecting emphasis right now is Matt Baker covers so this lets me check one off the list. Haven't decided whether to submit this to CGC (probably not). I won it for $45. As I'm writing this, I won another one, Thor 135 with the 1st appearance of the adult Sif. As a big fan of Sif, I'm happy to win this for $45. Thanks for reading.

My Little Beach Cottage So, I'm about 10 years from retirement. Between now and then, I've got to put 4 kids through college. Here's the scorecard (as of Labor day): my oldest a college junior, my 2nd a college freshman, a high school senior and a HS sophomore. After my youngest graduates from college, I might work a couple years or 3 more, then I'm DONE! Not sure what I'll do -- hopefully travel alot with my wife -- but maybe I'll work part time at something. Honestly I'm not sure. Good news though, my wife and I have our retirement home all set. It's a little beach cottage. It's bordered by canals that lead to inland bays for fishing, crabbing and clamming (yeah, we always keep a good stock of Old Bay in our panty). Yet, it's also just a couple blocks to the beach (the Atlantic). Here's a few pictures of our beach cottage. These 2 are our backyard and my XL Big Green Egg. I LOVE smoking meats. There's something about low and slow that really appeals to me. You wake up as the sun rises, get the fire going, pick out your wood, and then smoke the pork butt all day long. When you come off the beach -- and there's nothing better than a shower after coming off the ocean and sand -- you have a tender and juicy meal to look forward to. Tomatoes and pesto pasta from the garden top it off. This is our little nook of paradise! Speaking of pesto and basil, here's our little herb garden. We have 4 planters of basil. Next year I'm going for more, as my kids love pesto yet with 4 I can only harvest once a week. Something I'm into is birds. Yeah okay it's weird. But, it's cool having fountains and bird feeders and seeing how the little winged guys respond. As a lawyer, I think there should be a contract -- if I feed you, you don't poop on my garden furniture. Unfortunately, Purple Marlins aren't cooperative. But, nothing a good hosing down can't solve. Here are some of my bird sanctuaries. Around this time the duckings are out. I feed them with cracked corn. Here's a family. Thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying your summer.

Tales of the Comic Room - Making Space to Display CGC Books I haven't bought any new comics lately (at least nothing major and worth posting about). Since it's summer I'm spending alot of time at our beach cottage, so I'm able to tinker around my new comic book room. This weekend I worked on making more space to display CGC books. Something I've done in the past is to pull out the comic boxes on the bottom to make a shelf to display books. So, for example, if I've got long boxes stacked 4 high, I'll pull out the bottom 3 by a few inches, to make a shelf. Here's an example: Problem with this, you only can make a shelf of 2-3 inches. And it's not too stable -- I'm always worried about the books falling over. So I decided to fix that this weekend. First step was to go to Home Depot for supplies. Here's what I got. A thin but strong panel of white birch, and 2 long pieces of wood about 1/2" thick. Total cost was about $30 (I could have saved money by going with common plywood rather than birch, but I really liked the look and feel of the birch). One of the long pieces goes under the birch for support. The other is used as the side. Here's how it looks after a few screws: Now I put this underneath the top row of long boxes. The weight of the boxes keeps the shelf from tipping over. Here's how it looks before I put the comics back: And here's the finished product. It's more stable and I can store 2-3 times the number of comics. Here's the breakdown: Materials cost: about $30 Construction time, including rearranging comics: Less than 2 hours Time I got to play with my power tools: Alas, only about 5 minutes Thanks for reading.

Displaying CGC Books I have (at the moment) 10 boxes of CGC books. I'm actually trying to sell a big stack to get down to 8 boxes. But that story's for another post. It's more fun to display books than keep them hidden in boxes. So I'm always looking for ways to do that. Recently I found these Comic Mounts on Amazon. Essentially, it's a plastic support that holds the top and bottom of the comic from the back. You can adjust it up and down for different size collectibles. Then you hang it on a nail and, presto, you've got your comic (or other collectible) displayed. Below I've got some of my comics displayed. You can barely see the support at the top and bottom. These things are cheap and they work. Can't beat that combination! Thanks for reading.

Tales of the Comic Room - Where Do I Store Supplies? This one has stressed me out. Where do I store my mylars and acid free boards? In my old comic room, I have a table in the basement where I have bags and boards neatly stacked organized by size. But in the small cottage we plan to retire to (where I've converted a bedroom for my new comic room), there's no space outside the comic room to store comic stuff. And the comic room is packed; where can I store bags and boards in a neat organized way, so I can make the space a real working comic room (with my collection still growing) rather than a static museum? So, after much thought I finally decided to convert this corner of the new comic room. Here's the before picture, where I've got DC Directs and Tomb Raider action figures stacked about 6 feet high. I relocated those action figures to other places and slid in this vertical shelf. Each shelf is big enough to hold about 2 packs of mylars and 2 packs of matching full backs. In this vertical shelf I'm storing (from small to large): Paperback, Current, Standard, Silver/Gold, Gold, Super Gold, Standard Magazine, Large Mag/Sheet Music mylars and full backs. There's also a shelf for my 3-ring binder mylars (both comic and mag size). And I've got bigger mylars (all the way up to poster size) stored other places. I buy them direct from E. Gerber. Here's a close up of the shelves. Thanks for reading.

Update on My (Collecting) Life Some good news and bad news to report. First, the good news. My wife and I have paid off our little beach cottage where we plan to retire (in about 10 years). We sent in the last payment earlier this month. It's a great feeling to own your house free and clear. I've still got kids to put through college, but even if mess hits the fan (with the economy or my job) at least we've got somewhere to sleep for our retirement years. Hopefully we'll all keep our health; that's the most important thing (and it would be nice if social security is still around when it's our turn in line). But again, after having mortgage payments for literally decades, it's nice to finally own our little spot in the world. Now the bad news. I've decided to pare down my CGC collection. My new comic room in the beach cottage is small and I'm coming to the realization I can't keep everything. In addition to the CGC books I display on shelves, I'm got 10 boxes full of these slabs. So, last week I went through the boxes and pulled out about 60-75 slabs that don't really fit my collecting interests anymore. I've decided to sell them. I'm starting here first, and last night I sold 9 Zenescope books at blowout prices (picture below). My goal is to get back the money I spent and so far (with these 9) I'm pretty close. I call it bad news but it's really not. As I'm going through these books, I'm thinking "why did I ever buy this?" So I don't mind letting them go, and maybe using the money for a few books that better fit my collecting interests. If I had the books raw I might keep them; but CGC cases are big and I don't have the room for CGC books I don't really want. I'm still continuing to collect, but I'm trying to be more disciplined, focusing on things I really want as opposed to what might catch my eye. When I see something and I'm tempted, I ask myself where I'm going to store it. Especially CGC books that take a lot of room. But I still collect what I really enjoy. Recently I picked up 3 Matt Baker covers (below). Thanks for reading. I hope you someday own your own home, and may we all keep our health into our golden years.

Patsy Walker and More Tales of the Comic Book Room I'm a big fan of the Jessica Jones TV series. So when a boardie offered a Miss America 2, I had to have it. This comic has the first appearance of Patsy Walker who is a major character in the story. I was hoping for a higher grade (to me it looks better than 1.8). And, unfortunately, the amount of my offer was based on getting a higher grade. Oh well ... that's how the CGC game goes. Here are a few additional pictures of my comic book room. The first 2 show how I'm displaying the original art for Cerebus #6. I have each page in Mylar with a thick acid free backing boad, and they're standing up in a strong plastic holder. This is the pride and joy of my collection, the original art of the entire issue where Jaka first appears. I won it a few years back on C-Link (the most I've ever spent on a comic anything). It's a charming, touching story. I periodically rotate which page is on display. Currently, it's the page where Cerebus offers to kill a yak for Jaka's supper. Here's a better view of the page: I've mentioned before my comic room is pretty small, so I have to use every inch of space. Here's how I'm storing my "New Mutants"-size graphic novels. I store them in a stack. Probably not the best way to preserve condition, but most of my collection is mid-grade and for reading anyway. I've got the Hulk sitting on top of the graphic novels, and next to them I've got my small Star Wars Lego collection. Thanks for reading.

My New Favorite Book -- Cast Signed Gotham Central Recently I binged watched the 1st season of Gotham. Now I'm hooked but I'm struggling to get access to season 2. Hulu doesn't have episodes 1-12 (why the heck do I subscribe to it?) and I don't want to spend $35 to buy the season on iTunes. Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait for it to come out on Netflix. I collect actor autographs of shows I like so I've been looking around on eBay for Gotham SS books. This one came up for sale recently. It has these 8 actor sigs: Ben McKenzie (Detective Gordon) Sean Pertwee (Alfred) Donal Logue (Bullock) Camren Bicondova (Selina) Corey Smith (Riddler, also added a ? sign) Jerome Valeska (also drew a Joker face) Robin Taylor (Penguin) Drew Powell (Butch) Can you imagine what it would cost to get a VIP pass at a Wizard World con for a cast signing like this? At least $1000. Or at SDCC you might get it for free but you'd have to wait in line forever or get lucky for a ticket. Anyway, I lucked out with this eBay auction and won it for $260. I'm sure part of the reason it doesn't have David Mazouz (Bruce). But it has Gordon, Alfred, Selena, Penguin etc. so I'm happy to have it. Someday I'll get a Bruce sig. Ideally it'll be with Selena and Alfred, which is the dynamic I find most interesting on the show. I think this book is another example that it's almost always better to buy SS books on the resale market, rather than getting sigs yourself if the sigs cost more than $50 or so. Similarly -- and I know this might sound like heresy here -- it's better to buy SS sketches via the resale market than directly from artists or through sketch ops here. I've done sketch ops, and the one advantage is you can specify the sketch you want. But that doesn't mean you're going to like the finished product. And there's the risk of the sketch taking forever (this happens to me about half the time). In contrast, if you buy through the resale market, you get to see it before you buy it, there's immediate gratification as you only have to wait for shipping, and almost always it's cheaper than buying directly from the artist or via a sketch op.

Rune - I agree with your concern. The books were only stacked that way for about a week. I definitely wouldn't recommend long term storage stacked that way. Sagii - Surprisingly it hasn't been that hard to part with those comics. For example, I used to have many many long boxes of Batmans. I've gotten rid of most and now I'm keeping just Detective, Batman and some other favorite other Batman titles. Now, instead of wasting time (and money) on those other Batman titles, I can concentrate completing Batman (to issue 250) and Detective (to 350), plus select keys. Same thing for Superman, Legion, Avengers, Spider-man, etc. As I'm getting older, I'm more interested in keys and select GGA, rather than collecting titles. A big part of that is I've already completed (or close to completing) most of the titles I want. Also, at this stage in my life I'm not going to start on a new big "completist-type" collecting project, like trying to collect ECs. Instead, I'm going to invest the money in an Incredible Hulk 181 (I've put that off forever) so I can finally say my Incredible Hulk run is complete. My biggest problem now is what to do with those 20,000 comics I no longer want as they're taking up most of my basement. I've sold a few long boxes on eBay and made decent money (around $1000) but, while kind of fun, it's a pain too. The idea of a comic store cutting me a check and then rolling in with a truck to cart them away is very tempting.

Tales of the Comic Book Room The title of this post is a homage to one of my favorite features of the old Comic Buyers Guide (may it rest in peace), Chuck Rozanski's Tales from the Database. These articles are highly recommended and are located here: http://www.milehighcomics.com/tales/main.html This post is about my new comic book room. As I've mentioned, my new cave is about half the size of my old CBR and it's been a challenge to get all my stuff into it. The only thing I've had to purge is about 20,000 comics. That's a lot but I'm keeping the ones I really want (about 25,000, including around 800 CGC comics). (BTW Chuck, if you're reading this I'll give you a great deal on those 20,000 comics.) Whittling my collection down has actually been liberating as now I'm focusing on the comics I really want, rather than keeping up with titles just out of habit. There's good news and bad news. Bad news is, my new CBR is in my future retirement house (I'm about 8 years from retirement), which is a small cottage at the beach and I'm only there during the summer. Good news is, it's summer! Last weekend I worked on my display shelves. Before they were about 4-6 inches deep. Now they're about 11 inches. So I've doubled my display space! Here's how the shelves looked before. You can see I was about out of room. Step 1 was pulling off all my art and CGC books. Here's one of the stacks (there were a few more): Step 2 was putting up shelf brackets big enough to hold 12" boards. Here's a tip if you plan on doing something like this. Buy the brackets from Amazon.com instead of Home Depot or Lowes. They're a lot cheaper at Amazon. Step 3 was putting up the new 11" shelves. Funny thing, at Home Depot they call them 12" common boards but they are really only 11" deep. I also put up 2x4s for additional support. Here's the finished product, with my stuff back on the shelves. In case you can't tell, now I have a ton of space (twice as much space) to store and display future new acquisitions. Thanks for reading.

Another Matt Baker Win Lots of Baker covers being auctioned on eBay lately (also on this month's C-Link -- Matt Baker is super hot right now). I bid on 7, lost on 6 but won the comic I wanted the most. First, here are the 6 I lost. Something I noticed. Most of them closed for less than I expected. I think prices were lower because they closed within about an hour of each other. From the same seller too. I think he would have gotten more if he spaced out his auctions over a few days. Here's the one I won and wanted the most, Seven Seas 5. My high bid was $225 and I won it for $178. It has some water damage and I usually hate that flaw, but from the photos it didn't seem that bad, and I really covet the Seven Seas books. There are 4 with Baker covers: 3, 4, 5 and 6. Of the 4, I like the cover of #5 the least. But, you have to start somewhere and now I can cross this one off my want list for a somewhat reasonable price. Thanks for reading.

Hi all, Won this Baker the other day on eBay. If you're interested in the story of this win, I wrote about it in my journal. http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=9399878#Post9399878

Matt Baker Wins and Losses A lot of Baker covers being auctioned on eBay recently. Yesterday I lost 2 and won 1. Here's one I really wanted, Teenage Temptations 2. But it went over my max bid with 4 hours left and eventually closed at $405. I've never paid that much for any Baker (with one exception) so, alas, I had to let it go. I'll probably regret losing this next one. This cover doesn't come up for sale often and it closed at only $155 (my high bid was $150). But, you can't buy everything, and I'm watching a few major auctions that close in a couple days. Here's the Baker I won, Wartime Romances 17. At the end of the day I had to choose between Teenage Temptations 2 and this one as both are high on my want list. I eventually decided on WR 17 because of the condition. TT 2 has something going on around the staples that bothered me. WR 17 isn't perfect either, with spine stress lines and a scuff under the right word balloon, but the flaws don't bother me as much for some reason. Often choices like this are based on emotion and your gut feel. So in bidnapper I entered a high bid of $325 for WR 17. I wasn't optimistic about winning, and in fact that bid wouldn't have won TT 2 that closed at $405. But I won WR 17 with a high bid of $285. I think I may have been helped by all 3 comics closing within 15 minutes of each other. Thanks for reading.

Gwen Stacy and CGC Update Won this cool Tim Sale Gwen Stacy sketch on eBay a couple weeks ago. Went for a low price ($33), I assume because it's kind of abstract (or maybe because no other Gwen / Tim Sale collectors were shopping at the time). I guess this is a good time to show off my other Tim Sale OA: another Gwen, and a Mary Jane. At WW Philly there was a dealer with high grade modern books, including stacks of Spider-Gwens. I found 8 Gwens that were 9.8 possibles, along with a Game of Thrones. I immediately dropped them off at the CGC booth for grading, electing standard turnaround time (i.e., not on-site). This was around 3pm on Friday. They told me they were still accepting on-site submissions. Does anyone know if they ever closed that? (Just curious) I've been submitting an invoice every month for about a year now. Now my invoices are lined up so I get something back every month. That's satisfied my craving so I have no temptation to submit things fast track or on-site. Nice to save some money on CGC fees. My invoice at WW Philly was unusual for me as it included 9 books -- nowadays I go for 3 or 4. In fact, I purposefully hold books back so I have something I want to grade for the next month (instead of scrambling around to find something I really don't want to grade). Next month's submission will probably be an Economy submission of 3-4 Matt Baker covers. Thanks for reading.

Yeah, I agree. I thought about making an offer but I didn't want to come across as insulting him so I decided to pass. There's actually a nice looking copy on Lone Star for $600 right now. Lower grade (I think it's 2.5 or 3.0) but I think a fair price. I've decided to pass as I've got some Baker covers I'm bidding on.

Wizard World Philadelphia 2016 - Con Report Here's my report for this year's WW Philly con. There are no pictures of wall books because, frankly, there wasn't much there. Greg Reece and Michael Carbonaro were there and I went into the con intending to take some wall books. But I quickly lost enthusiasm for it. You have to remember this is a pop culture con more than a comic convention. I had fun (sort of) but at this con comics seemed ancillary to everything else. Here a good example of the feel of the con -- the biggest vendor at the con was a tattoo parlor. It was busy too, with people lining up to get tats. I was there Thursday (3-8) and Friday (12-7). I drove up Thursday morning and went to Reading Terminal for lunch. I got dumpling soup and peking duck from a place called Sang Kee. It was so delicious I got the same thing for lunch on Friday. I got my 4-day wrist band and got into line around 2pm. Below's a picture. The line on the right is the VIPs. I'm in the non-VIP line. I couldn't justify getting a VIP pass this year -- they're like 2 or 3 times the cost of a non-VIP ticket. Unless you want to see a high demand actor, VIP isn't worth it. Here's a picture of the con entrance. This is actually on Saturday about 15 minutes from opening. Something that bugs me about Wizard World -- they always open the doors late. Not a lot late, but noticeably late, usually 10-15 minutes. During this time their employees act like cheerleaders trying to get the crowd to yell and clap. This all seems very contrived to me, like WW is trying to create artificial excitement for the show. A highlight of the show was meeting Howard Chaykin. I got this American Flagg sketch from him (for only $35). His original art was just as affordable as his sketches. I got this for $75: Another highlight was seeing Gerhard again. He did this sweet drawing of Cerebus and Jaka for me: I had my eye on this box of Bettie Page cards from the moment I saw them on Thursday. I got the whole box for a reasonable price. Now we'll see if any of the packs have the premiums. I picked up these action figures for a good price. Nice to check these off the want list. And I got this cool framed ASM 122 reproduction for my Gwen Stacy collection: The only major purchase I considered was this Richie Rich #1. But for $2000? Whew. I didn't even try making an offer at that list price. So that was the con for me. Honestly it got boring around 3pm Saturday. I only waited around until the end to get the Gerhard commission. Later that night at the hotel I got a Basil Hayden Manhattan with wings and a salmon cobb salad. So, it was a fun way to spend a couple days, but certainly not a true comic convention. But then, how many are there of those nowadays? Thanks for reading.

Modern GGA, a Sim Miss, and the WW Philadelphia Comicon To start, here's a GFT I recently got back from CGC. This is one of my favorite David Nakayama covers. Next, this Jaka original art was recently offered on Heritage. I lost out but have this high quality scan. I'm going to the Wizard World Philadelphia con this week. Alas, I can only go Thursday and Friday so I'll miss most of the celebrities for sigs. But, a threshold decision for me is whether to submit comics for on-site grading. Here's CGC's On-site Comic Tier Pricing: Modern (comics 1975–present, valued $200 or less) — US $30 Economy (comics valued $400 or less) — $55 Standard (comics valued $1,000 or less) — $90 Express (comics valued $3,000 or less) — $140 WalkThru (comics any value) — 3% FMV; min. $250, max. $3,000 So no, I probably won't be submitting anything for on-site grading, not with normal modern being $18 versus $30 for on-site. The decision is easy for me since I've got my invoices lined up so I get one back every month or so. Along those lines, I probably will submit an invoice or 2 to save on shipping costs. I don't have any major goals for the con. Fill a few holes in the want list, a statue or two, some hard back trades, some golden age GGA. Mostly just relax and go through long boxes, and then in the evening a Manhattan followed by a medium rare ribeye. (As for the Manhattan, I usually go with sweet vermouth but I might go crazy and might go with sweet & dry vermouth.) I'll try to post lots of pictures.

The wife and I have started watching The 100 too, actually it's quite a good TV show (we're halfway through Season 2). I mean, I've been married for 7 years, I deserve to enjoy some Clarke and Octavia! And congrats, your GOT #3 SS CGC 9.8 is simply awesome Just wait to Season 3, it gets better!

Update -- This just closed on eBay last night, for just under what I bought my CGC 5.5 for. Gives me some comfort that I got a competitive price on my copy. Thanks for reading.

Game of Thrones Right now, my favorite TV shows are Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, The 100 and Last Ship. It's nice the way their seasons are staggered so usually there's at least 1 show going on at any time. I like collecting autographs of actors from these shows, and even better if they are CGC SS autographs. I can do that for GOT and TWD since comic books exist. But, no comics for The 100 and Last Ship at the moment. Here are 2 Game of Throne comics I recently got back from CGC. Frankly I'm tempted to sell them. GOT CGC 9.8 comics are like guaranteed cash in your pocket with supply low and demand high. They easily go for $75-$100. The reason these comics fit with my intro is because of the 3rd comic below. This one is signed by Emilia Clark and Jason Momoa. I'm really happy I got this when I did because Emilia's sig is in real high demand now since her character (khaleesi) is probably the most popular one right now on the show.

Thanks Brandon. Yeah, I really like that Wrightson cover. It was one of those things I was surfing the web when it was offered for sale and was lucky to drop a flag before someone else claimed it.

Dave Stevens Covers Set Got these 2 back from CGC this week. They go in my Dave Stevens covers set. I've managed to climb into the 2nd position. Getting the top spot is actually possible although maybe not this year, as it's tough finding high grade copies.

Latest SS Books -- Bubbles, Wrightson and Amanda Segfried Here are the latest additions to my CGC SS collection. All these came from boardies. First, a Bernie Wrightson. Such a great cover. It's my first Wrightson SS book and picked it up for a good price (fifty bucks). When my girls were kids we watched a lot of Power Puff girls. (BTW, PPG was a big improvement from Barney IMHO.) Their favorite was Bubbles. So really happy to pick this one up, Tara Strong the voice of Bubbles (another great deal at $75). Tara's also Raven on the Teen Titans. Here she is at the 2012 SDCC: Finally I was surprised to see this one come up for sale, an autograph of the actress Amanda Segfried on a Justice League book. Apparently she's in the running to play a character in a future JLA movie. Wish it had more than just her sig. Maybe someday I'll crack it open (in front of CGC of course) and add a sketch. I paid $150 after some negotiation. Kind of steep, but I figured I'd pay around that much at a Wizard World con, assuming she ever appears there. Also, here's another autograph of Amanda in my collection:

Jaka -- Wow! This just sold on the Heritage weekly Sunday auction. A very cool Dave Sim pin-up of Jaka. I got priced out early on, and during the live bidding it spiked up another $300. It finally closed at $800 plus buyer's commission. So almost $1000 for this. Wow. Sim sketches are rare, but still, wow.