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Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane There's a seller on eBay called barnhollow. He specializes in celebrity autographs and has an interesting (although small) stock of CGC SS items. I've bought a few items from him over the last couple of years, including Star Trek and Game of Thrones collectibles. What's great is he offers a lot of his stuff via auction (rather than buy it now). So if you're lucky you can get a really good deal. This is my latest win from barnhollow, Superman 700 signed by actress Kate Bosworth who played Lois in Superman Returns, and Brandon Routh who played the big guy with the cape. Barnhollow has a bunch of these (they must have signings) and I've probably bid on a dozen or more of them, losing each time. I finally won this one for only $69. Clearly I lucked out with the timing of the auction. Something else I collect is CGC photos. They're few and far between on eBay. Barnhollow used to have a nice selection (and I bought a few) but they seem out of stock at the moment. But here's a Kate Bosworth I won via auction about a year ago. Again, I lucked out with the timing as I won it for only $29. The 2 pieces will be great to display together.

Flashback - Vinyl LPs! In moving my stuff from the old to the new comic book room, I found this: This is the original Star Wars soundtrack. I bought it from the record store (remember those?) soon after the 1st SW movie came out. I also found this one among My Stuff. It's not the soundtrack of Empire Strikes Back but a dramatic reading of the story (with parts of the soundtrack in the background). I didn't have an LP player but there are tons of cheap ones for sale on Amazon. I got this one for under $50. With Amazon Prime I was listening to my LPs in a couple days. Brought back a lot of great, teenage memories.

Latest Baker Acquisition I won this Baker on eBay about a week ago. There's a Baker frenzy right now, as discussed in this excellent thread: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=8844131&fpart=1 Nice looking (yet far from high grade) Baker covers are going for well over $300. I managed to win this one for a tad under $200. I think I lucked into a lull between big Baker offerings on eBay. Still, a year ago it probably would have sold for closer to $125-$150. Anyway, I'm happy to be able to check this one off my Baker covers want list.

THE Gwen Stacy Collectible I bought this from a boardie last week. It's the Spider-Man Movie comic with the Emma Stone (as Gwen) and Andrew Garfield (as Peter) cover. What makes this rare is the signature by Emma Stone. There are 40 SS copies (among all grades) of this comic. I suspect most of them are signed by Stan Lee (I have one of them). Of those signed by Emma, I have one (the one I just bought) and there's one with a collector in Hong Kong. The boardie I bought mine from said he got Emma's signature while she was performing on Broadway. There was a charitable event. The boardie told me "Basically it took a big donation and a buddy met her and got some stuff signed." The Hong Kong collector thinks there are 8-10 out there from this signing. I bought this comic in a moment of weakness. It had been listed on eBay for a while at about $1000. I think I made one or two low ball offers (like, $500 or so) the last few months but they were quickly rejected. Then the boardie offered the book here. His price was $800. I offered $600. We settled at $650. I admit, this book is kind of an obsession for me. Probably because I think Emma Stone is the prototype Gwen Stacy. She looks like Gwen, and I like the way in the movie they portrayed her as a strong character (instead of just a girl friend-type chick). Anyway, I now have 3 copies. A universal 9.6 I got for $29. An SS 9.8 signed by Stan I got from the Hong Kong collector for $120. And now this one signed by Emma Stone. (I also have the SDCC program with this photo on the cover in CGC 9.8 -- I posted about this one a couple weeks ago). This is the most I've ever paid for a modern book. I still can't believe I paid so much for a modern book that doesn't have the words Walking, Dead, #1 on the front cover. Surprisingly though I don't have buyers remorse about this purchase, at least for the moment. Of course, that'll change if Emma starts going to Wizard World cons and her sig becomes common. The side benefit of that though is I'll be able to easily get more sigs so I guess it balances out. Thanks for reading.

Sagii - Yeah, it's torture to leave. Problem is we're not there too often and we won't be until I retire in about 10 years. Rune - Using the ceiling was the only way I could display my Star Wars and Star Trek action figure collections. And there's really no room for more action figures so I've put boundaries around what I'm collecting. For example, I'm not collecting any SW toys from the new movies, and I actually stopped collecting action figures from Episodes 1-6 a few waves ago. As for Star Trek, my collection is mostly the figures released by Playmates (and not even all of those). I'm on the fence right now about whether to keep the Art Asylum figures I already have. Something I'm still collecting are the vintage 12" figures. I'd like to complete those collections for both SW and ST. They are very cool and surprisingly affordable.

Before and After Pictures of My New Comic Book Room My wife and I visited our beach house this weekend to get the tomato plants into the raised bed. There's nothing better in the summer than sliced, ripe tomatoes and basil from your garden, sprinkled with a little EVOO and salt & pepper. I took the opportunity to take some pictures of my new comic room. As of today I've moved most of my collection over to the new space. So much in fact I've transferred our insurance rider over to the new room from the old comic room (actually, the insurance company lets me designate primary and secondary storage spaces). Here are pictures of my new comic room, from before I moved stuffed over (from early last summer), to after (present day). Before: After: Before: After: Before: After: As I've gotten into selling the stuff I don't want to keep, I've noticed Star Wars toys get more interest than comics (based on views and people watching). I'm fairly certain these Princess Leia's and Amidala's would sell fast but I'm holding onto these.

Additions to Dave Stevens Set Made a few additions to my Dave Stevens set lately. Plugging away at it but still far short of taking over the top spot. My goal now is not so much the top spot but to fill all the slots. Yes, that might result in me getting the top spot, but it'll be one of those things where I'll have the top spot until someone with more motivation decides to get higher grade copies. For this set, higher grade copies are possible but you've got to be motivated and have patience, as you'll probably have to purchase and grade the books yourself (as once you get passed the common issues there's not a lot of graded Stevens books out there).

My Staging Table and Pax East Here's my staging table for organizing new purchases before going into the comic room. I've got my Mylars and acid-free boards stacked and ordered by size. This is outside my existing comic room, where I have a lot of space in the basement. Space is tight though in my new comic room (which is in our little beach cottage that we plan to retire to). So, I have to figure out how I'm going to store my storage supplies there. I'm anal when in comes to the Mylar size I use to store gold, silver, modern, etc. I like them all to be in the same size bag. To keep it straight I have this little cheat sheet: Switching topics, I went to Pax East this weekend with 2 of my daughters. I'm not really gaming so I was going just to be with my kids. Here's a picture of the vendor floor. I came home sick. I've gone to tons of conventions but this is the first time I got hit with con plague. Welovefine had these Marvel Spider-Gwen bags. I wasn't interested in any of their stuff so I asked if I could just buy a bag. They said no, they came free with a $25 purchase (I guess it was a Marvel promotion). Anyway, there was a young 20ish girl who bought 2 t-shirts. I cautiously approached her, not wanting to creep her out as I'm an old guy. I offered to buy her bag for 10 bucks. She looked at me like I was crazy (like why pay money for a stupid bag?) but she sold it to me. So here is my only thing I got from Pax East (other than the memories of being with my kids). Changing topics again, I picked up this original Mopsy art on eBay a few weeks ago. If you're interested in Mopsy, there's a ton of art for sale on eBay and the seller accepts reasonable offers.

PM'd you

Modern GGA / Gwen Stacy Recently got these back from CGC. First up is this Jay & Silent Bob cover. I bought this at a con years ago and filed it in a long box without a bag or board. Yet, it comes back 9.8. In comparison, often I spend hours looking through brand new comics at my LCS and they're all dinged up, oftentimes arriving that way from the publisher. Maybe the fact I stored the book so long gave it a natural press that helped the grade. The next is a donation book from Inkwell. I got it to add to my Franchesco collection. Someday I may try to add a Franchesco registry cover set, although CGC didn't help me out here as they didn't note Franchesco as the cover artist on the label. This book is kind of unusual because the cover continues vertically to the back cover rather than horizontally. This next picture shows what I mean. Finally, I recently bought this Adam Hughes SS book on eBay. Hughes must've done a ton of these books lately as they're all over eBay. It looks like Gwen but it's not; it's Mary Jane. How do you know? In this one the girl isn't wearing a headband. Here's how Adam draws Gwen on these quickie sketch covers. They could be twins! To contrast, here's a Tim Sale Gwen. He draws an elegant Gwen. And here's another interpretation. Probably elegant isn't the word.

Mound City Auctions I never heard of this auction house until a boardie posted a link. I went there and saw a restored Amazing Fantasy up for auction. I had dreams of winning it for a steal; after all, who ever heard of Mound City Auctions? But the bid price got above GPA early on the last day. Not by a lot, but given it was restored, I decided to pass. Still, less people were definitely watching this auction judging by the final prices. I imagine this auction was based on comics that were part of estate sales and they didn't have nearly the exposure of C-Line and C-Connect, for example. I won Spectacular Spiderman 1 CGC 9.6 for $48. I remember when this comic was on the comic spinner. It was a big deal, the 1st ever new Spider-man series. I think I bought 5 copies. Alas, I traded them over the years (I remember 1 trade involving Nova #1 with a high school friend) but still have 1 of the original copies. What's great about this book is it also earns 300 registry points. I won X-Men 141 CGC 9.6 for a bargain at $84 (as a comparison, I bought X-Men 142 CGC 9.6 for $142 last year and I thought that was a great deal; I still do). I'm glad to finally have this book. I've wanted it for a while to go with my #142. I must have bid on it about a dozen times in C-Link auctions but it always went above what I wanted to pay. This one also earns 300 registry points. My biggest win was FF 12. I got it for $180 and I think that's a really good price (it depends on the grade of course, but Overstreet pegs this at 2x - 3x what I paid). Now I'm regularly checking the Mound City Auction website to see when they're having their next comic auction.

I envy you. I'm bidding now on a Frozen pic with Idina and Kristen Bell's signatures, but not CGC SS.

Another SS Book from the Hong Kong Collector Here's another book I recently bought from Ultramanking, the collector in Hong Kong. This is the first Stan Lee SS book in my collection. It's a nice pair with this San Diego 2012 Comicon program I recently got graded. Here's how I've got the program displayed in my comic room. It's standing on a stack of Star Wars books. Since my room is small, I have to stack books (rather than line them up horizontally) to ft everything in.

Yeah, I doubt I'll ever be drinking those bottles of wine

Recent Acquisitions and Pics of the Comic Book Room I won this Baker cover on eBay a couple days ago. It closed after I went to sleep. The first thing I did when I woke up was to check the auction. I hoped I did NOT win it as I felt my bid was too high given the condition. But I did win it for $82 and immediately had buyer's remorse. That was until I saw the other Baker closing bids, as 3 other Bakers closed that night too. Two of them closed at over $400 and the third closed at almost $200. Wow. If you keep up with this on eBay, you know that a lot of Bakers are coming up for auction and they are getting incredible prices. My win is in sketchy condition but at least I can check it off my Baker cover want list for a somewhat reasonable price. Also, I like the vibrant colors. I'll probably submit it to CGC and see what comes back. I recently bought a few CGC SS books from a boardie in Hong Kong. I asked him how he gets so many great SS books and he said he has some really good facilitators in the US (makes sense). Here's one of them, a TV guide with signatures of the Frozen TV cast. Also here are pictures of how I'm displaying the book in my comic book room.

Grail Fund Update The fund is now up to $939. This is what I've sold (new sales shown in bold): 25 DC Archives $250 Star Wars AT-AT $145 DC Lot #1 - about 295 comics -- for $150 (Batman Gotham Knights 1-74; Batman Legends of the Dark Knight 1-214 plus Annuals 1-7) DC Lot #2 -- about 250 comics -- for $120 (Teen Titans Spotlight 1-21; Teen Titans Year One 1-6; Legends of the DC Universe 1-41 and Giant Size 1-2; L.E.G.I.O.N. 1-68 and Annuals 1-5; Legend of Wonder Woman 1-4; Superman Confidential 1-14; Superman Birthright 1-12; Superman Adventures 1-20; Wonder Woman (3rd Series) 1-44 and Annual 1; Batman/Robin 1-26; Showcase 93, 94, 95) Star Wars Micro Machines Millenium Falcon Marvel Lot #1 – 27 issues of Strange Tales and 12 issues of Marvel Premiere: $150 I have 1 buyer who is buying alot of DC runs. These comics have little value. They are dollar box material and would take years to sell at cons. If I sold to a store I'd get -- what? -- maybe a dime each? A nickel? So I'm happy to sell in big bunches at about 50 cents each. I'm becoming an expert at shipping via media mail. Selling silver is more fun. I had 1 buyer scoop up the mixed lots of Strange Tales and Marvel Premiere at an average price of about $3.8 for each comic. I'm ecstatic with these sales. Again, what would a dealer pay for these VG books -- a buck each if I'm lucky? To sell them all to a single buyer is great. Easy transaction, fast money. That's my mantra with these eBay sales, easy and fast. I'm pricing low to blow them out. Star Wars toys are slow to sell. I knew the AT-AT would go fast. In contrast, Micro Machines are in low demand. I was delighted when an offer came in last night for the MM Millenium Falcon. My price was $45, the offer was $40 -- I accepted it immediately. Thanks for reading.

Jennifer Janesko Jennifer Janesko is one of my favorite pin-up artists, along with Olivia. Here's information from her website: I recently won this Janesko sketch on eBay: Jennifer used to set up next to Olivia at the San Diego con. Maybe she still does, but the last time I was there (a couple years ago) she didn't set up. A few years ago a wine company called Haut Wine released some wine with labels by Janesko. There were regular and limited bottlings. Jennifer had the bottles on display at her table at the SDCC and I eventually bought a few bottles. Here they are, one each of the regular and limited bottles.

They were easy to sell because I'd already emotionally taken them out of my collection. It was harder to sell the Gay comic book (published back when gay meant happy instead of a sexual orientation; not that there's anything wrong with that) because that one was still part of my collection when I decided to sell it. So I definitely see where you're coming from on it being hard to sell stuff from your collection. I've learned alot about shipping in the last couple of days. I'm putting the AT-AT in a shipper box Hot Flips used to ship me some CGC-size boxes (luckily I still had the box). The AT-AT happens to fit perfectly. I'll mail it by USPS Parcel Post and I figure it'll cost no more than $20 (which is what I charged for shipping). Shipping is actually more affordable than I thought. I shipped those 25 DC Archives (about 50 pounds) using 2 day USPS Priority mail that has a weight limit of up to 70 pounds. I lost just a few dollars on what I paid versus what I charged for shipping. Update: I just shipped the AT-AT. I had to cut down the Hot Flips box to save on postage (it was a big savings, about $20). I used Parcel Select Ground and it cost me $25, so I only lost $5 on shipping. eBay makes it easy because it shows you all the shipping choices, the restrictions on each, and the different prices. For Parcel Select, it lets you enter the size of the box, so I was able to quickly see that if I made the box smaller I'd save $20.

The Grail Fund The other day I sold Gay Comics 31 to a boardie who PM'd me out of the blue. Believe it or not, it was actually the first book I ever sold over the internet. In fact, the last time I sold a comic was Gaiman's Sandman #1 over 20 years ago when I was trying to raise spending money for the old NY convention at the Jacob Javits center. I guess I'm a dinosaur but I was shocked how easy it was to ship the comic to the buyer. I imagined having to go to the post office but no, I was able to buy a postage label via PayPal. Then it was just a matter of taping the label to a box and dropping it off at my office's shipping department. Easy Peasy! That experience motivated me to offer some stuff for sale on eBay yesterday. As I've written, in about 10 years I'm retiring and my wife and I are moving to our little cottage at the beach. We've recently done a renovation to add a small comic room that is about 1/3 the size of my current comic room (I've already moved a lot of my collection over to the new comic room and I've posted pictures a few pages before this one). I can't fit everything so I'm focusing my collection on what I really like. As a result of this pruning, I now have tons of books, comics and toys I need to get rid of. If I sold this stuff to a big dealer like Mile High or Lone Star, they'd give me pennies on the dollar, and that's even assuming they want this junk. But one man's junk is another man's treasure. So, I figure I'll sell what I can to other collectors on eBay and then whatever I have left (in a year or 2) I'll sell as a big bulk lot. I did incredibly well yesterday. I sold 25 DC Archives to 1 guy for about $10 each. I'm really happy to see those books find a good home. Yes, I sold them at a major loss at what I paid, but it's still $250 and 48 hours ago I didn't think I'd get anything for them. Also, pruning this stuff is liberating. It helps focus my collecting. For example, now that I'm rid of all these DC Archives I don't want, I'm more mentally and emotionally able to focus on getting the ones I do want (mainly the Legion of Super-Heroes). I also sold an unopened Star Wars AT-AT (the re-released one, not the original). There were a few on eBay being offered for $200+. I wanted mine to sell so I priced it at $145. It sold by the end of the night. So, wow, in 1 day I made almost $400. I've decided to put this money into what I'm calling my Grail Fund. My goal is to eventually use this money to buy either Fantastic Four #1 or Amazing Fantasy #15. I'll give updates from time to time to let you know how things are going. Here's what I sold on eBay yesterday. Thanks for reading.

Thanks! I've enjoyed your recent Wabbit posts too.

Thanks - Yes, I'd rather have the Baker than a half box of cheaper comics. I have some buyer's remorse but I'm always that way when I buy an expensive comic. But probably, if I put it up on eBay right now I'd be able to get my money back, so maybe that's the way to look at it.

So I Went To a Local Con Yesterday ... It was a slow Sunday (no football, little baseball, the in-between day for the Final Four) but luckily there was a local con, about 75 min drive for me in Timonium MD (run by Clandestine Comics). I've bought alot of comics lately so I figured I'd just browse around for a couple hours. I hoped to get a couple raw books to submit to CGC, fill a few holes in my runs, maybe a statute. In other words, I had low expectations for the show, which was a good thing. Just a relaxing way to spend a sunny not quite spring Sunday. Here's a pic of the con when it just opened. It got a bit more crowded (but not so crowded you couldn't easily browse through long boxes). And here are the only wall pictures I got around to taking (sorry): I only spent 2 hours at the con. With the drive it was close to 5 hours away from home and that was about the most I wanted to spend away (otherwise the wife gets kind of annoyed and that's not a good thing). I left home at around 815am and stopped by Sheets for gas. I also got my favorite fast food breakfast from Sheetz MTO -- a burrito with scrambled egg, double sausage, cheddar cheese, LTO and jalapenos. I was home by about 230 after stopping at the Wegmans for stuff to grill for dinner. At the con, I spend most of my time at Basement Comics. They had the best (only really) selection of gold. Here's the problem with cons -- there's limited selection and that's leads to bad decisions. In contrast, at home on your computer, there's so much selection it's easier to be disciplined. Basement Comics had this Baker on their wall: It's a beautiful copy, even though it's only a 5.5. As I browsed through his boxes I thought about whether to make an offer for it (because it was priced pretty high). If I saw this on eBay, with all else available, I might be tempted but never pull the trigger. But at the con, this was the only book I wanted. So that leads to bad decisions. Anyway, I made an offer of 35% off. I picked that because I heard the dealer tell someone else he sometimes gave 35% sales on his website. He didn't go for that (no surprise there). He said he had a customer who bought alot of Bakers and would probably sell to him in a couple weeks (certainly some salesmanship there, but it didn't matter what he said, I have a fairly good idea of the current demand for Bakers). His final offer was 15% off. I took it. Like I said, bad decisions. But was it really a bad decision? I don't know. The problem is, there are so few Baker sales on GPA. And there are only 7 graded copies of this book. Yes, this is the most I've ever paid for a Baker. But it's also probably in the top 3 of the Bakers in my collection. (And no, I'm not going to say what I paid for it, although if you do a little Internet research -- or call Basement Comics -- you could figure it out pretty easily.) Also, for the same money, I could have a pile of spoon comics. Or this grail. So maybe it was an okay decision. Also, I had something in my backpocket. The day before, out of nowhere, a boardie made me an offer for this book. I hated to sell it but it didn't really fit in my collection and it was a fair offer. We closed on a price and he immediately paid me via paypal (thanks Mr. Lady Luck!). So I had some found money in my pocket that helped offset the price of the Baker. Thanks for reading.

Torchy -- Bill Ward Compared to Other Artists I have a few Torchy comics (above) and I've recently started buying other appearances of Torchy. She appears in Doll Man and Modern Comics. Bill Ward created Torchy but others penciled his creation. Here's a comparison, Doll Man 27 (by Bill Ward) and Modern Comics 91 (by Gill Fox according to the Grand Comic DB). Ward's Torchy (above) is noticeable more suggestive than Fox's, both in dress and poses. Sort of like Ward's is R rated and Fox's PG 13. The differences are even more apparent as you flip through the rest of the stories.

ComicLink Winner #3 and #4 (March 2016) I was definitely bottom feeding this month but I managed to pick up 2 more comics at C-Link's auction. I got Amazing Spider-Man Annual 5 CGC 7.0 for only $35. It goes into my Gwen Stacy collection as it has her face on the cover. What's funny is, as a kid I had an incomplete copy of the book, so I was never able to read the whole story. And now I have an encapsulated copy so I still can't read it. Don't feel sorry for me, I do have a raw complete copy now. I just haven't gotten around to reading it (in fact, I forgot all about it until just now). I bid on Gidget 2 because -- well, what the heck, why not? I won it for $21. Gidget is a short run of 2 issues but, alas, there's no existing registry set. So I don't know if I'll resubmit it to CGC or just leave as is. Winning the book did motivate me to hop on eBay and buy an autographed photo of Sally Field so I can display them together in my Comic Book Room. This is a great time to be alive, that the world's shopping mall is open 24/7 (and you can get lunch delivered via uberEats too). So anyway, here are my 4 wins from this month's C-Link auction. I won them all for a grand total of $122. Auctions are fun so there's some entertainment value there too. Thanks for reading.

ComicLink Winner #2 (March 2016) Just won this tonight, my second C-Link win this month. I've been looking for an affordable DD #7 for some time now for my Original Marvels collection (which are complete runs of ASM, Avengers, Cap, DD, FF, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk). I already have a beat up, raw DD 7 so this is an upgrade for me. Personally, I don't mind the missing page (because it does not affect the story) or the torn page. That's just me, but these defects don't bother me; so, these are EXACTLY the kind of books I look for. For a hammer price of $40 I'll take it every time. So now I've completed Daredevil. Also complete are Avengers, Cap and Iron Man. I need 11 more comics to complete this collection (listed below). In Fine, Overstreet has the price at about $34,000. I don't want to spend near that much so the quest for restored and qualified books (with defects that don't bother me) continues! ASM 2, 3, 14, 50, 119 and 122 FF 1, 5 and 12 Incredible Hulk 181 and 182