EastEnd1

Sure... the first group I worked through consisted of eight boxes and totaled about 500 comics. About 60 of them I considered worthy for grading, meaning that they had 9.8 potential (or lower in some cases) and enough value "in grade" to justify the cost and effort of grading and selling (and sometimes pressing). I've received back 40 from CGC so far and 37 hit 9.8... so a hit rate of about 93%. Westfield did do a great job of packaging. When I'm going through a box and I see an issue with some value, I'd say about 80% of the time, it will have 9.8 potential. And that also holds for the 440 books I'm choosing not to submit... most have 9.8 potential. Westfield was a pretty big subscription service when I was using them, and I had this vision of immense tables with huge stacks of comics that they would pull from to fill my subscription. There was no picking through the stack to pull the best one... I'm sure I just got what ever copy was on top when they got to my order. But they were dealing with such volume that most of their books had to have been pristine... they were by necessity so minimally handled. You also have to remember that CGC didn't exist when I started with Westfield, and grading, though important, wasn't quite as particular as it is today. So the fact that so many of these have 9.8 potential is a testament to their care in getting me my books in great shape. I do remember a few instances when a box arrived crunched at one corner which impacted the books inside, but this was rare. There's one box I just pulled that was badly crunched on two sides, one corner actually completely cracked open, but the books inside were still perfect. Those styrofoam packing peanuts really work! This past Sunday I pulled ten more boxes to start going through (including the broken one). I know people want to see books from the era so I'll be photographing and posting a lot more comics once I get to these boxes. I'll also post them more contemporaneously instead of waiting to get books back from CGC so I can keep a better flow of posts. I'll still post the graded books too when I get them back (good or bad) so you can see the results as I do.

Wow, that is one violent cover!

Thank you so much... really appreciate it! Nice to make the Wisconsin connection, but no, I'm from New York. I'm not sure how I found Westfield to be honest. I remember being in a panic to keep my comic runs going after my local comic shop closed down. There was no internet to research from back then, so my guess is I found them from a comic book ad. Funny you mention that they're still in business. When I was writing my opening post for this thread, I actually did think to go see if they were still around and I was glad to see that they were... I guess they didn't suffer too much from losing me as a customer! I hadn't thought about reaching out to them but that's a good idea. I'll definitely do that. They should be happy that I'm giving them all this free publicity!

One last one from the Dec '98 box... I've always been a sci-fi fan too and this painted cover by John Bolton I thought was pretty neat...

I know we have a lot of X-Men fans out there. Starting with the Claremont / Byrne Phoenix saga issues, I committed to buying every issue of (Uncanny) X-Men. Looks like I was still keeping up with it in late 1998...

I love this Abraham Lincoln Batman cover...

In the early 1980s, I saw my first independent comic book on the stands at my local comic shop... Jack Kirby's "Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers." It was from some new publisher called Pacific Comics and inside were ads for other titles Pacific was planning on putting out. Can't say I was overwhelmed by Captain Victory, but I saw this new output from a new publisher as a definite opportunity to get in from the ground up, and decided to buy every issue Pacific put out. Soon titles like Mike Grell's Starslayer, and this amazing new artist find named Dave Stevens (I especially liked Betty in The Rocketeer ), did manage to grab me and I began to buy multiples of every Pacific #1. By the time Sergio Aragones's Groo the Wanderer came out, I was buying a whopping five copies, more than I was buying for even Marvel and DC #1s at the time! So what does this have to do with the December 1998 box? Nothing really... but these are the memories that came flooding back when I pulled this other Sergio Aragones one-shot from the box... for me, Aragones will always be tied to the Pacific Comics Groo...

Who knew you can actually SQUEEZE the tanning out of the paper!

To be honest, I thought I'd given up on ordering Spawn much earlier on too, but there's been at least one Spawn comic in every box so far, even going beyond #100. If I come across a #156, it's yours!

I know I gave up on the Ultimate line well before 2012, but since Fallout was more of a short special event type of series, it's possible I ordered it... especially if Westfield was recommending it at the time.

1997 - 2014 is an interesting collecting space as it's the period that followed the 1990s implosion. Collectors were leaving the hobby in droves and circulation figures were deteriorating substantially. I remember consciously thinking at the time that new comics were going to be scarcer than their predecessors, creating an investment opportunity, and this is one of the things that drove me to keep buying even though I wasn't reading them anymore.

I was pleasantly surprised on that one too... was one of the weaker comics coming out of the box. But they're all so structurally sound from being untouched since they were shipped that even the ones with a few minor defects easily benefit from a press.

I was a big fan of Garth Ennis's work... dark, violent and complex. I remember first noticing his work in Hellblazer and then followed him over to his own Vertigo creation, Preacher. What a ride that series was... kind of an over-the-top Hellblazer with a heavy dose of macabre adult themes... truly ground-breaking and controversial work at the time... maybe even still to this day! This sado-masochistic Glenn Fabry cover from the December 1998 issue is a classic example...

Sometimes Westfield even commissioned their own variant cover comics. This is an example... Avengers Forever #1 with a great Kang the Conqueror cover that was far superior to the regular edition. There were two of these in the box...

The box also had a Wizard release Deadpool #0. Special releases like this one were easily accessible though Westfield...

Loving horror books, and the art on this series, I've sent them all in for grading. The #4 has come back... 1,2 and 3 are still at CGC...

The box also had issues 2-4. I think the entire mini-series was released in the same month... probably for 1998's Halloween.

First up were two copies of The Supernaturals #1. This "halloweenish" four issue mini-series featured some great Brian Pulido inspired Jim Balent covers, and each issue had one of five character mask cut-outs at the centerfold. The book sold for big bucks last year but the most recent sale was far more earthly. Anyone know any reason for the run-up and collapse?

Ok, it's time to take a peek into the box from December 1998. This one had some pretty interesting contents...

Yep, and by a brand new board member...

Have to say, going to the CGC boards for info on scamming CGC itself is an "interesting" approach. It does have the little issue of leaving a neat trail for the amazing comic detectives on those boards, however.

Yep! And right next to a trimming table!

That comic store also had photos with that white carpet background if I recall correctly...

Ok, so potentially the mystery may still only be why these books are not on CGC's reholdered list if they were reholdered and submitted by the scammer. Perhaps they were submitted to CGC by someone else?

True, they did admit to one from what I recall from reading the complaint, with little detail. What comicwiz is finding though makes it potentially a lot more pervasive than what CGC disclosed. And demonstrates that the straight swap activity reaches back to 2018 (so far) and includes silver keys. That's a lot of interim years of potential straight swaps involving higher value books.