Izlo

I hadn't really kept up with comic collecting since 1992. Had sold off much of my favorites around that time and just had around 60 or so comic books like X-Men, and the aliens. Oh, I rebought a nice punisher collection around 2011. But mostly forgot about my books.

My son has been into Pokemon for years and he was like, "those comic books look cool, you should see how much they're worth"

And that sparked a whole lotta activity lol. I was aware of CGC but I've definitely learned a lot in the past few months. I cursed CGC definitively declaring them "bad for comic collectors!" And then this aliens 1 2nd print CGC 9.8 graded thing happens.  I was like.. "okay, I was wrong lol"

There's definitely an interesting dimension that CGC brings to collecting and I'm happy to be learning and participating in collecting again.

It was quite a rollercoaster 🎢

I started out being really excited. I figured I had a high grade book. I also had totally forgotten #1 and #2 in my collection were 2nd printings. I was thinking I had a few hundred bucks or possibly several thousand for #1 first print.  As I was preparing to send the books off I start inspecting and "OMG 2nd printing... Ohhh that's right!". All the memories came back lol.

I was sunk. Figured I might not have much worth grading. It's funny. I didn't understand there just weren't any 9.8s out there when I was trying to figure fair market value.  I knew about census but hadn't bothered to look it up. But, there was some data for 9.6 and lower grade sales and that market looked like it could possibly be worth it.

So about three weeks after I sent the books to CGC I checked status and saw the grades on all my books. 9.8. I was stunned. And then it clicked. I did a search in census for my first time. Found nothing.  They update weekly and so the next week I saw my 9.8 there.

Then I was like... Great, now I have to navigate the market. And that's what led to some probing posts here and on Reddit. I figured it would be worth some percentage of what first printings go for. But then I wasn't really sure of the significance of being the only 9.8. So I did some test listings on eBay. 

Had some nice chats with Parabellum. Teetered back and forth on a decision. Mulled it or over for another week or so and came to an agreement.

The books survived household goods shipping when I moved from one state to another.  That happened more than once

I'm happy to be collecting again. I like the idea that part of collecting is selling and that is something I'm working on. 

I'm still an aliens fan but as a collector I'm interested in new series/originals and keys. I like wolverine, iceman, Spider-Man, Batman. I thought the American psycho sequel was interesting. I recently found a high grade wolverine volume 2 #27 at a LCS.  So that's pretty much where my head is at