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Hepgwyn

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Everything posted by Hepgwyn

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

    Jelani's Journal

    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.
  3. 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. 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.
  5. Hepgwyn

    Dumb Luck

    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.
  6. Hepgwyn

    Alone at Last

    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.
  7. Hepgwyn

    The New Team

    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.
  8. 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.
  9. Has anyone received recent slabs back from CGC that can speak to whether this issue seems to be persisting or diminishing? thanks, Jelani
  10. 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?
  11. joeypost, did you notice any damage to the back cover of the book that corresponded with the case indent?
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. Hepgwyn

    Worth the wait

    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.
  15. Hepgwyn

    Inventory

    What I did while waiting for my books to come back The last 3 books I submitted to CGC are still sitting at verified. I was a bit of a bonehead for not paying the extra 10 bucks to fast track them. But, what's done is done. So while I waited I decided to re-catalog all of my books into a software program. The last time I did this, there wasn't a very good comic book specific option for use on a Mac, but now there is. So I bought Collectorz.com's software. 10 years ago when I put my comics in storage, I went through and inventoried them all in a notebook. What at the time seemed like enough information was now seeming a little vague. I didn't know there were going to be 5 volumes of some of these titles. Usually I was able to deduce which ones I owned by the publishing year. If it was published after 1998 I knew I didn't own it. For the older stuff, usually I could look at a picture of the cover in the software and hopefully remember if I owned it. So after a couple of weeks I got them all input and I ended up with a grand total of 5808. A quick breakdown: 3514 Marvel Comics, 2112 DC comics, Dark Horse a distant third with 52 and the rest. By eras: A whopping 4609 worthless... oops, I mean Modern Age. 770 Bronze Age, 393 Silver Age, 11 Atomic Age and 2 Golden Age. By title: 274 Uncanny X-men Vol. 1, 254 Captain America Vol. 1, 251 Amazing Spider-Man out in front by a wide margin. Here's a question for all you readers. Are there any key issues in the Modern age pre-1998 that I should look out for in my collection? For example, I never imagined that New Mutants #98 would be worth anything. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  16. Our Army At War #83 If you've read some of my earlier journals you may remember that my dad and I traveled around the US and along the way I got a chance to buy some comics. My dad was never much for fantasy so he didn't really enjoy the super-powered characters, but he did enjoy reading the war comics so I used to scavenge around in the discount boxes looking for them. The DC books were his preference. He enjoyed Gravedigger in "Men at War", The Unknown Soldier and especially Sgt Rock. When I was a kid it didn't really seem like there was huge interest in war comics, it was mostly super heroes and stuff like that. It never really occurred to me at the time that there might be key issues in those war comics. It came as a surprise to me later that I had actually gotten an "Our Army at War" # 83. Don't remember exactly how much I paid for it but I doubt it was more than a buck. It looks like it may have had some ink from the cover pulled off by another comic that was once stuck to it near the bottom . So it's not in great shape I think 3.5 OW/W is fair, but it's a great cover and my dad would be happy that Frank Rock was still popular. So that's all 7 of the non-modern tier books I submitted at ECCC. I was too cheap to fast track the 3 moderns, so it's going to be many months before I have any more graded comics to talk about. I am very curious to see what kind of grade, books that I purchased new and stored myself for their whole lives might receive. I have enjoyed talking about these books, it's been 15 years since I stopped buying books. I have really missed thinking and talking about comics. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  17. Hepgwyn

    Regrets

    X-Men #1 I'm sure every collector out there has had the chance to buy something they passed on or bought something they shouldn't have. Here's my biggest comic book regret, besides say not cornering the market on Hulk 181s in 1984. When I was a kid I was obsessed with the X-Men, being a complete nerd I even had a crush on Kitty Pryde. The only title I ever really set completion goals for was X-Men. In '84 when I started collecting Uncanny was in the 180s. At first I set modest goals to start working my way back towards 94 and Giant Size X-men 1. Eventually I started picking up some of the silver age ones with the goal eventually of having 1-20. I'm not sure why I set that arbitrary run as a goal and didn't just finish the the whole damn series. That's one small regret but the big one was when I bought X-men #1. The price of good copies of #1 were already out of my budget range by '88 when I started looking to buy one so I set a more modest goal of just getting any decent copy I could afford. Eventually I found one for $80 that was pretty tattered. And I made an emotional and ultimately not very shrewd decision to buy it. That summer as my dad and I made our usual scouring of comic book stores around the country, I remember very vividly being in a store in Madison, Wisconsin that had a shiny seeming X-men #1 for $100. I knew it was way better than mine but did I really need 2 copies and $100 would have been most of my summer buying budget. I thought about it for a long time and eventually decided not to get it. Of course now in my memory that copy is way better than it probably was in reality but $100 might have gone a lot further in Madison than in San Francisco... Without any further ado I present my 2.0 X-Men #1. I think the pictures speak to the condition of this book and if memory serves the cover was pretty loose on the staples as well. Anyone else care to share some of their biggest comic collecting regrets? To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  18. Hepgwyn

    Mr. Versatile

    The hardest working man in the Marvel universe He's been a soldier, a spy, an agency chief, an LMD, a Hasslehoff and Samuel L Jackson. Has anyone in Marvel been used in so many different ways? Especially a guy mostly without super-powers. When I was a kid my brother turned me on to the amazing Jim Steranko drawn Nick Fury Agent of Shield books and to this day those remain some of my all time favorites. As an 11 year old however it took some convincing that at practically the same time he was appearing in the 60's comic book world he was also battling the Nazis in World War 2. My dad was never much for super hero comics so during many of those hours on the road, if I was driving, he might poke around for a comic book to read. He generally preferred the DC war comics like Our Army at War and Our Fighting Forces but if desperate he might grab a Sgt Fury and His Howling Commandos. He laughed a bit at the fictional multi-ethnic, multi-national unit but they were just my speed. I loved the tough talking Fury and his indomitable gang. Dum Dum Dugan and his bowler shaped brain bucket and Pinky Pinkerton constantly saying "Wot" and carrying his brolly. I know I know it's a bit corny, but the art was cool and it was fun to see many of the future scourges of Captain America's rogues gallery earning their stripes as evil Nazis during the war. I don't really remember where I picked up my copy of Sgt. Fury #1 but I think it was on the road somewhere. I'm happy with the 7.0 grade with white pages. Some stress marks on the spine and a bit of an overwrap but a nice looking book overall. So "Git the lead out" and click on the picture it's not going to expand itself. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  19. Mine is about 6500. All raw except for the 10 books currently undergoing grading by CGC as we speak. Mostly Marvel silver age to 1998.
  20. Incredible Hulk #181 When I was in college, I had one of Sam Kieth's hairy, rippling muscled, torn costume, crouching Wolverine posters over the bed in my dorm. May have had something to do with the dearth of dates I had as well. But, It was amazing how different he looked in the '90s from October '74 in Incredible Hulk #180. Wolverine has had many looks and many names through the years and I was a fan of them all. I loved Trimpe's yellow and blue costume, the bone claw era, Frank Miller's side burns, I loved his berserker rage, the playful way he was with Kitty Pryde, the snarky way he was with Scott Summers and the unrequited yearning for Jean Grey. It was inevitable that I would eventually get an Incredible Hulk #181. I found it in yet another comics store in San Francisco. $18 was a price I could afford in '89, the book looked nice perhaps nicer than the grade it got. A few wrinkles on the back but I think the biggest mark down was for the stress marks on the spine. I think I was hoping for an 8.0 but ended up with 7.5 with white pages. I think it's still a sharp looking copy just don't look too close. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  21. A VG/F first silver appearance of Cap If you have been following my journal since the beginning you might recall that I used to visit stores around the country during my summers off from school. Thanks to my dad's unwillingness to fly we drove cross country several times and I would try to remain current on my new titles and look for interesting classics. I think the summer of 1990 we drove through Denver and stopped at a store I can't remember anymore that I found in the back of my trusty Overstreet guide. That's where I got this copy of Avengers #4. I had long been a fan of Cap and always had my eyes out and this copy looked like a decent buy at $40. It was mostly nice but had some bad flaws like badly mis-located staples, some pen scribbles, a couple tears and a stain. Like I said I wasn't always the most picky when it came to grading I just wanted the book at a price I could afford. I think 5.0 Cream/OW pages is an appropriate grade for my copy. The colors look nice but the white background is kinda brown and the flaws are well... flaws. Either way I'm happy to have had Cap's origin all these years. As for the continuing bubble saga I had to take the shot of the back at an angle in order to get a good photo of the bubble which is even bigger on this one, but at the same time a little less distracting. Maybe I'm just getting used to them. To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  22. Hepgwyn

    The Gift

    Sometimes you just get lucky My brother is 13 years older than me and was a bit of a comic-book collector in the late 60's and early 70's but by the 80's most of his books had been sold to buy text books and other less fun things. Rumor has it there was an Amazing Fantasy #15 at one time, but that was sold before I was born. Anyhow, I didn't really know what to expect when on the occasion of my Bar Mitzvah in January of '86, he offered me a gift of a stack of books that were kept un-bagged in a cardboard box stored in the basement. Sure I said, I'll take 'em. I don't really remember everything that was in it now, mostly some early 70's Amazing Spider-Mans that were in pretty good shape. So, I don't know what ASM #129 was worth in early January 1986 but I took it and read it and bagged it and put it away mostly unthought of. I don't think I even thought about it when the Punisher Mini came out later that month but I bought that and enjoyed those too. I'm not sure, when I finally realized what I had been given perhaps when the first of 3 mediocre/terrible movies came out perhaps it was during a re-bagging of the collection. Either way my ASM #129 was the best present I got for my Bar Mitzvah by far. Way better than some 50 dollar savings bond. It's a little sad that my brother didn't have it bagged and standing vertically, otherwise it might have come back even better than 9.0 with white pages. There is some wrinkling of the cover at the top, some spine stress, a little under-wrap, some staple rust and a very unfortunate stamp on the back perhaps when it was received from Marvel in '74. Either way I think it's a copy and a story I can be proud of. I am a little embarrassed to add this note, but at ECCC after I had dropped off my books to be graded I walked around the show for a couple of hours trying to not buy anything. I passed Gerry Conway sitting at a table completely alone and I thought to myself I wish I'd brought a book he could sign... To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  23. Hepgwyn

    Greetings

    Long time collector but new to the collector's society Hi, I started collecting comics in 1984 when I was 11 and collected actively and some might say heavily until 1998. I stopped collecting mostly due to an unstable living situation in a new city and the higher prices and rapid multiplication of titles. I have kept my collection intact since then and have no immediate plans to sell it. It's not very focused and made up mostly of runs starting from 1984 to 1998 of my favorite books plus my attempts to go back and pick up key books of my favorite characters and titles. As a kid I was more intent on getting the books and didn't spend too much time waiting on the best possibly copy. I was never super comfortable at cons of which there weren't as many good ones then and it was pre-internet, so I was pretty much stuck with the local stores. But, my father was very supportive in this effort and allowed me to stop in comics shops around the country as we spent our summers driving from coast to coast. I know now, that from a selling stand point I would have been better served buying fewer but better conditioned classic books, but as a kid I really wanted to read as many books as I could. I was always more a Marvel guy so the collection is highly skewed towards the Marvel superheroes and teams. X-men, Spider-Man, Avengers, Cap and their ancillary titles make up the lion's share of my collection. I have been monitoring ebay for some time just to get an idea of what some of the books may be worth and noticed the proliferation of CGC graded books. Of course this scared the hell out of me since I have a large collection and it would be highly expensive and impractical to get all the books graded. However, I finally decided to dip my toe in. Recently the ECCC rolled through town so I hastily assembled a package of 10 books to drop off with CGC to at least save one directions worth of shipping, this journal will be mostly the story of how my experiences have been with them. It was a bit of a process to assemble the piles for the different grading tiers and try and figure out which books should and shouldn't get graded. The 10 I came up with are 7 classics and 3 moderns that will hopefully get high grades and be cheaper to have graded. Either way it will be a learning experience and at least 10 of my books will be pretty well protected for the future. Here is what I picked; Daredevil #1 Sgt Fury #1 Avengers #4 X-men #1 Our Army at War #83 Incredible Hulk #181 Amazing Spider-man #129, #298 and 2 copies of #300 So far 5 have come back... To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.
  24. Daredevil #1 has returned I filled out all the paperwork on-line for CGC and took my 10 books in for the last day of ECCC. Not being sure what to expect from the CGC receiving crew I headed there first and was able to hand off my books in about 10 minutes while all the I's were dotted and T's crossed. My copy of Daredevil #1 was the highest price paid of any book in my collection a present from dad in 1989 for a great year of grades in high school. It was bought in a now defunct San Francisco store called Don's Com-X Exchange or something like that. I think $250 dollars was what he paid and it's always been my prized possession. So I submitted it as express and anxiously monitored the submission tracking link. I dropped it off on March 3rd, it was listed as received on March 6th and arrived back here on March 16th. Of course I didn't have the willpower to wait and be surprised and checked the grade as soon as the website would let me. Of course I saw the flaws, the small stress creases on the spine and the corner on the back but not having gone through this before I had no idea what the grade would be. I started worrying about overwrap and underwrap and rusty staples. In hindsight I probably should have taken the book out of its mylar before I dropped it off so I could see the page color and taken some photos. Alas I did not. I think 9.0 OW/W is a fair grade it's not jumping for joy great, but it's respectable. When it arrived at the door I tore open the package and turned it over and around and then I said what is that bubble? On the backside there was what looked like a kidney shaped bubble that refracted the light in a way that I couldn't tell if it was pressing into the back cover of the book or simply distorting the text. I kind of just brushed it off for the day happy to have it back and happy to be able to let people see it with out worrying about them ruining it. When I took pictures of it the bubble started to look more obvious and ugly so I tried to research through the chat rooms to see if anyone else had seen this before. Couldn't find anything so I posted on the ask CGC registry and after 4 days of no response I tried one of the other forums and got good suggestions to contact CGC. Duh, right? CGC responded to the contact email very quickly and said, "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." So I did feel better that it wasn't going to hurt my book, but worried that if mine was the only one that looked this way then someone might hesitate buying it especially if they only saw the pictures on ebay. So I wanted to wait until some more of my books arrived. 4 more arrived today and to some degree they all have a similar bubble in the back. Once again I felt better and worse at the same time. What do we pay CGC for? To give prospective buyers confidence in what they are buying, to protect the books and to enhance their value by making them look nice? Well this seems to me like a bit of a "fail" on 2 out of 3. Not sure if we have an alternative but I can say this doesn't thrill me at these prices. I hate to say it but I hope a bunch of other people are seeing this in their books as well so future buyers are prepared and don't ask what is that weird bubble? To see old comments for this Journal entry, click here. New comments can be added below.