Illustrious

Nothing major this year for me, looking at my records I only bought 6 CGC-graded books for all of 2023. Here's the best 3 out of 6:

One of my fondest memories collecting comics as a kid was buying this off the rack at my local Walden Books as a 10 year old in 1989 during the summer of Bat-Mania. 34 years later, I was finally able to snag another copy:

Finally got my #76 graded, and to my delight it came back the exact grade as my #77 and #78, so now I have the 3.0 trinity:

Issue #24 is my personal favorite TFTC cover because on my 12th birthday in 1991, my parents bought me a copy of Les Daniels book "Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World's Greatest Comics", and there was a chapter in there on Marvel shifting to horror comics in the Fifties that also had some pictures of E.C. Comics, one of which was TFTC #24. Seeing that zombie cover always stuck with me, and I knew one day I would have to have a copy of that issue for myself. Here's the panel from the book in question:

Marked off another one from my E.C. want-list this week:

Had this on my want-list for a while, finally got one this week:

Got these 2 back from the recent CGC signing:

Nothing I would consider "major" this year since I was still primarily putting most of my money into vintage sports cards, but I think the pendulum will swing back to comics in 2023:

I used to own a slabbed copy of that page as well, I ended up selling it and putting the money toward buying my Cap #3. Looking back at my records, it looks like I won my old copy for $740 on a ComicConnect auction on 09/25/13:

Since I started this thread 7 years ago, I'd thought I'd provide a current update. I had sold my 9.6 copies of #1, #2, and #3 around 2016 and was completely out of the club, but I later picked up a cheap raw copy of #1 about two years ago just to have in my collection. On a whim I included it my latest CGC submission, and today it came back as this:

I bought a signed copy of #1 Cover A off the main campaign site the first day they went live, but it looks like now they've removed signed copies from the store since they've sold so many and Eric July says he just can't sign anymore based on the sheer volume of what's already been purchased.

I went in not knowing too much about this movie, but I absolutely loved it. The visuals were worth the price of admission alone. Definitely a future Blu-ray purchase for me.

Still got mine, I bought off the boards here back in 2012 for $1500: