Hepgwyn

John Romita Sr Alex Ross Sam Kieth

Just got this sub. crease book back from CGC. I think it presents pretty nicely despite the crease.

Just wanted to create a master journal to keep everything all in one place Been on the boards for a few years but just finally decided to create a master journal. My last few journal entries haven't shown up on the boards. Hopefully this works. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

4 Coupon books have returned After some consternation about their whereabouts, my 4 collectors society coupon books are safely back home. And with the change from 4 standard books to 150 dollar credit with the coupon, this might be my last submittal for a while. I dropped these books off at ECCC on Mar 27 and they shipped back on Apr 23rd. Had a tough time figuring out which 4 to choose. Most of the no brainers have already been slabbed ?and ?now i?'m? just trying to choose between 40 or 50 similarly valued books. So I tried to pick the books I thought would bring back the best grades. My self-grading definitely turned out to be hit and miss. As I've mentioned in the past, as a kid I was always much more fixated on completeness rather than high grades, so one of my main goals was to get all of the new X-men books and as many of the original team books as I could afford. Three of these 4 are part of that effort. The 4th book was one that may have been passed down from my brother and was in rather good shape and turns out to be pretty relevant to some small movie you might have heard of... In defense of my mediocre grading, I only graded by looking at the front and back covers. Here are my grades... X-men 4 - 5.5 X-men 12 - 7.0 X-men 94 - 6.5 Avengers 57 - 7.5 So ?my grading? was kind of all over the place. ?While ?happy about my pessimism on two of the books and only really disappointed about the X-men 4 but looking at it now I can see that there is quite a bit of front and back cover creasing.

4 comics traveling west, missing possibly dead... Well I was holding on to my post about the 4 comics I dropped off with CGC at ECCC this year until they returned graded. I was even showing remarkable willpower in not checking the grades in advance online. They departed CGC on Thursday the 23rd, they were last seen by the USPS on Friday the 24th departing Tampa for Seattle supposedly to arrive on Saturday the 25th... no updates on the USPS tracking site since then. I waited the required 5 days from departure before contacting the postal service and inquiring as to the whereabouts of my comics. I'm now waiting for the 48-72 hours to elapse before they promise someone will contact me. Trying to not think about all the bad outcomes and hoping the box is sitting somewhere unscanned and not, fallen out of a truck or a plane, crushed into dust or stolen by some comic book villains. Where's spider-man when you need him? Oh yeah getting re-booted. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

For once I ended up with the variant I was always more focused on the super hero comics and usually felt out of my depth whenever I took a gamble on one of the weirder line of comics. Sometimes I think I only bought the Vertigo books to look more cool to the older guys that ran the comics store. A few years before I started regularly buying Sandman, Hellblazer and Preacher, I was given a promotional copy of Sandman #8 on one of my many trips to my LCS. I'm pretty sure I never did get around to reading it or the editorial on the front cover. Nevertheless it made into a bag and a box. Many years later when doing an inventory to decide which books to put in storage, I noticed mention of an editorial variant of Sandman #8 in the Overstreet guide. Usually whenever I would see mention of a variant in the guide I always would have the more common type. So I went and cracked open my copy and you guessed it a Karen Berger editorial variant. Sadly the comic had been in one of those promotional displays in the store and had picked up a few minor creases, perhaps they might some day be pressed out. I graded it at a 9.2, so I was happy with what I got. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

Why did it take so long to get my own book? It's weird to me to look back now and think that when I was a kid Iron Man and Captain America were kinda second banana heroes. Spider-Man and the X-universe seemed much more popular. What a difference a couple of half-billion dollar movies makes. Having said that Tales of Suspense #39 was still out of my price range and I was never a huge enough Iron Man fan to save up for one. I did eventually stumble onto this pretty nice copy of Iron Man #1 for a decent price. My estimate of 7.0 was dead on. This one did come back with one of those pesky bubbles on the back. P.S. Isn't it weird to think all those years Iron Man and Cap were sharing a title? To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

A Giant Size introduction After attending ECCC last year I really wanted to start reading comics again but with most of mine in storage and not really wanting to handle my best books, I finally broke down and bought a few omnibuses and some digital comics. One of the omnibuses that I bought was the Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1. Containing the first issues of the new X-Men team written by Claremont and drawn by Cockrum and later Byrne. These were my favorite comics as a kid. I think I started reading X-comics in '84 and slowly tried to work my way back to Giant Size X-Men #1. In reading the omnibus, one of the things I'd forgotten was how surly the new X-Men were, particularly Wolverine and Thunderbird. Nevertheless I really enjoyed re-reading those books for the first time in nearly 30 years. My dad bought me this copy of Giant Size X-Men #1 as a reward for good grades in high school in 1989. I really didn't know how to estimate a grade for a squarebound book. It has that typical wrinkling and the staples have made slight indentations in the cover. I estimated 7.0, so I was close but a little over. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

Coupon submissions at ECCC have returned So if it wasn't obvious from the teaser I submitted 4 comics with a collectors society coupon at ECCC. Last year I was rushed trying to get my books together to submit and never bothered to make my own grade estimate for comparison. This time I did. As with many of my older comics I picked this one up on a road trip with my dad one summer during high school. Way back when before the days of the internet I used my handy Overstreet guide to find comic stores in every decent sized town. This book I found in a store in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm pleased that CGC graded it higher than my estimate of 4.5. A little surprised, but I'm not complaining. For those of you who were reading my posts last year, there is no bubble on the back of this one. Back soon with the other 3. P.S. Anyone else think the Goblin glider looks like an Electrolux vacuum cleaner? To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.

Has anyone received recent slabs back from CGC that can speak to whether this issue seems to be persisting or diminishing? thanks, Jelani

Joey, Did you ever have a chance to look further at those cracked out inner wells to see if the indentation also points in towards our books? Also has there been any further response from CGC about whether they have solved this problem going forward?

joeypost, did you notice any damage to the back cover of the book that corresponded with the case indent?

I have posted my complaints in several journals on this board and I have pictures of the backs of all of my books with the indentation problem. I've only ever sent 10 books to CGC and 7 of them have this issue and all of them are the key books in my collection. I don't want to send them back for re-casing unless CGC is going to pay for it and guarantee that they won't have the indent next time. Which from the responses we've gotten they won't do. With the potential damage and loss from shipping I definitely don't want to send them back and forth across the country unless the issue is guaranteed to be fixed. Let me know any way I can help.

Heymikesays, I recently submitted 10 books to CGC at the ECCC, 5 silver age, 2 bronze age and 3 moderns. They all came back at different times. The first 7 to return all had that similar indentation as yours and the 3 moderns did not. I emailed CGC to ask them about it after the first one came back and this was their response, "That is a by-product of the injection molds used to manufacture our inner wells and is more cosmetic than anything. That will not affect your book in any way." since all of mine were coming back that way I assumed that there was no way around it, but then when the final three books arrived without it, I wondered if I should contact them again about re-slabbing, but I haven't yet. I'm really interested to hear how it goes for you, please keep us posted.

ASM 298 and 300 If you read my first journal you may remember that I took 10 books from my collection to ECCC on March 3rd to be CGC'd. This was my first experience with professional grading. They were submitted in different tiers and have been trickling back ever since. It has been an interesting and thrilling experience hoping for the best and sometimes settling for the worst. Of course there was that mysterious bubble that showed up on back side of all the CGC cases(more on this later). The last three which I submitted as modern tier arrived home yesterday so that would be about 70 days since drop off. These three: 1 copy of ASM 298 and 2 copies of ASM 300 were the only books submitted that I bought new. By 1988 I had been collecting for 4 years and took pretty good care of my books. I was a regular reader of ASM and my dad always thought it was smart to buy a couple of copies of milestone books. When they were still priced in the buck range, I usually would, so I ended up with a few copies of ASM 300. Most of the time this policy has left me with multiples of *spoon* but this time the universe aligned for the 300th ASM to have early McFarlane and the first Venom. I have been very curious to see what grade I would get on books that I bought, read, bagged and then stored away. Well no disappointment here. 9.8's across the board and interestingly enough no bubble on the back. I had pretty much resigned myself that the bubble was a fact of life, but now that these three came back sans bubble I'm reconsidering my decision to not make a fuss earlier. Does anyone have an opinion about whether I have missed my window of opportunity to make a further complaint about the bubbles? To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.