DougC

IIRC, if you are the artist and at the convention CGC is taking books at you can walk up to the table and fill out the form.  If you are mailing in the book you have to fill out the artists form (circa 2 years ago), CGC has changed the program and at one point you needed minimum for mail-ins.

If the book is for someone else you just have to accompany them to the CGC booth, I did this for a sketch 3 years ago at St Louis Comic-con (not WW).

Edit:  I really hate the boards and still waiting for accounts to merged.

Ah Wizard World, when you can't make money off of a celebrity who has passed you can do the next best thing:

I thought this was a joke at first but you lucky people in the Minneapolis area can now pay for a VIP pass to see Carrie Fishers dog!

There certainly was a lot of space to stretch your legs and plenty of empty tables and chairs if you needed to find a place to sit.  This was going to be a subpar show but I didn't expect to be able to walk the floor in 10min, though I was surprised by the number of comic selling vendors!  Harley is always a standout with a nice range of golden age books but a vendor named Kristina's Comics (not sure about name) had a nice mix of silver and slabs for this area and were priced below market (they always had alot of traffic and sales).  I ended up spending a large portion of time bothering shooting the breeze at Stuart Saygers booth as it is rare to find another Millie/Decarlo/Goldberg fan so I make it a point to stop by any convention he is at.

This is the first Wizard convention I've been to since they really fell on hard times the end of last year but the Celebrity area was in the middle of the convention floor and from a design perspective gave the impression they were spreading it out to take up space rather than showcasing talent.  There was probably about 25% of the floor space sitting empty with an additional 10% of empty booths (I was only there saturday).

With all of the above stated, the general crowd atmosphere seemed pretty good though, I would be very interested to hear the vendor and artist reaction.  I believe most of the vendors will do ok (not loose money) any artist in attendance had to be worried in my opinion.

The only money I ended up spending was at the above Kristina's Comics:

• X-Men V2 9.8 #205 (for the registry)
• X-men V2 9.8 #4 (newsstand)
• Flash #113 in Fine

All for very good and very sub market/GPA prices!

I will be there for at least one of the days, but this is looking worse than last year.  I just don't see how anyone setting up is going to make their money back let alone eek out a profit.

As someone who does a lot of contract and consulting work every year I receive 1099's after I have filed my taxes (as late as June! despite the law).  After 15 years of this I stopped stressing about it and simply file them unreported with the rest of the tax info in case one day I get selected for an audit.  I am not making light of properly doing your taxes as that would be a legal concern, but it is what it is.

Since X-cutioner's Song has been mentioned here are some of my favorites from the 90s

• Operation: Galactic Storm
• Rise of the Midnight Suns
• Siege of Darkness
• Age of Apocalypse

All of these can be found in the cheap bins for readers and some have cheap TPBs.

CGC has become very restrictive on sketch ops and only handful of people are even allowed to post them currently, this in addition to most artists skyrocketing pricing for blanks (to the price point of what their 11x17 commission was) and the diminishing returns on the actual art.  What has dis-waded a lot of potential buyers is the entire lack of value for an unknown artist, I think 40 is fair depending on what the art looks like but in no way do I expect to be able to sell it at a future point.  If I commission or purchase a sketch cover, I do so with the complete understanding that if I am lucky I will be able to sell it for 50% of what I bought it for.

I have sketch covers in CGC holders that I can not even give away at this point.  Personally last year I switched from sketch covers to getting sketches done in a sketch book as it was becoming to much hassle and money dealing with CGC and facilitators, this year I will be doing the same.  

Well my account didn't merge properly which is not good and the forums are in desperate need of a skin instead of the all white everything

This was going to happen eventually with the parties involved and how they choose to operate. It is in everyone's best interest that this came to light with a police report instead of a personal interaction that would have devolved into he said/she said.

This is only my opinion and based on my personal interactions.

Didn't DJS Adventures have something like this called the Showcase Sealer back in 92?

Found a new update for this set.

Set Type: X-Men #1-#275 (1991) Including Variants

X-Men Legacy #246 (Second Print)

Certification #1052471021

I will add to this from my experience.

I live in a very small town of 9k people the closest place to buy anything comic related is over an hour away. When asked for advice on opening a comic only focused shop here I strongly advised against it. Last year a couple a gave the advice to opened their coffee shop/comic store on main street in the town square between a bar and restaurant. As of today they are drowning in debt with only the coffee shop keeping them afloat. The actual building they are in is an amazing three story brick store front with the coffee shop on the first floor, comic shop on the second, and the third is currently inventory storage.

The coffee shop is great and caters to a robust and returning customer base. Given the low overhead for product it prints money. The comic shop is a sea of new manufactured pop culture that is a cancer.

I have been asked and given advice over this year on why it seems to be failing and here is the short of it.

• Comics are too expensive!
  New single issues are $3-$5 cover price and out of the range of anyone just looking to get into them.
  
• Trades where priced to high.
  While the shop stocked hundreds of trades they were priced at 90% of cover when anyone can go on amazon and pick most up for half that.
  
• They were buying to many "toys"
  From Q-Figs, Pop Vinyls and Retro-Action Figures that look pretty but never sold and cost to much.
  
• Nothing was older than the day they opened the shop
  Anything that could be confused for "vintage" was of the newly manufactured retro style
  
• The Customer base was either never defined or a targeted base was never realized
  Imagine if Hot Topic was a comic store, it has a lot of pretty stuff but after returning to the store a couple times it all look the same.
  
• The market was to small for the business.
  There just is not the foot traffic or inventory turnover for it to be a destination type store
  

My best advice to him was to shrink the amount of comic material and branch into MtG and RPGs which is very popular in the area. A local pawn shop had about 1200sqf of empty space they put tables in and rented them out for gaming (and later began selling cards/books). This was very successful to the point where it became the business focus over the pawn shop. The owner passed a couple years ago during a tornado and the shop was never reopened (either portion) so there was an obvious hole to fill. Unfortunately this was deemed as undesirable and "not comic related" so out of the question.

Overall this was a dream that was never thought out properly. All of the above issues are still relevant today with the same results. At this point I hope the comic portion closes and they focus on coffee or the entire business will go under.

I have had an unboxing youtube channel for while now, how is comic items doing?

I have asked this question multiple times and the answer (in reference to moderns) was that generally on 9.8/9.6 books the flaw is obvious and notes were not needed. I bought it at the time but my confidence in that statement is shaky at best.

It is going to be a long time before they get to mid 60's DC books (if ever slabbed).

I love the show

One thing I haven't heard people mention is the music, just brilliant

The string quartet they had playing when Maeve took that tour of the upper levels was fantastic.

The stripped down modern music in the show is great as well and gives just enough familiarity that you recognize something but just can't put your finger on it. Black hole sun in episode one and House of the rising sun in eight were my two favorites.

Stan Lee would sign himself if you paid him to.

UH...

 

Does....does anyone else think this is some cheap fanmade online garbage?

There is a pretty big difference in the original hand drawn animation (which had its faults) and something created in flash trying to simulate the said animation. The part where beastman is running is pretty terrible.

Tom Baker has always been "my" doctor but David Tennant is a really close second. Unfortunately I lost interest after Gillan and Durvill left and Matt Smith was on his own (I actually preferred the Amy Pond show with the doctor as a side character). I have tried to watch the Peter Capaldi doctor but it is just not for me so I am waiting until the next iteration of the doctor.

 

Please contact Brittany McManus at bmcmanus@cgccomics.com for additional information on these exciting new labels.

 

Picked up a very nice raw copy that I thought was in the 7.5 range and had Ken Bald sign it. I have a 2.0 (signed by Stan Lee) and 2.5 as well.

There is someone local (semi-local?) that in the past has facilitated shows with enough submissions, though I do not remember their name. I am sure if there is interest someone will post up.

I must have missed his name when I last looked through the guest lists, thanks! And you do an awesome job considering the revolving door of conventions.

Anyone know which NY (area) convention Ken Bald will be at this year? I have a number of his signatures but nothing CGC'd and I would like to get one this year if possible.