SuperBird

Having seen examples of his remarks, I suspect he blows through them pretty quickly?

The funny thing is I had no idea the signing was taking place, and had actually already packed these up to send in normally. It was just pure dumb luck that I procrastinated a week Then I got the CGC email.

Bought off the newsstands in 1985... safely stored for 35 years... now off to CGC to get signed and sketched!

I've gone through similar feelings twice now, and each has led to drastically downsizing my collection. By and large, I don't miss any of what I sold, apart from the rare "oops I really sold my ASM 300 too soon", which I could say about perhaps .1% of what I used to own. It's true that the stuff you own ends up owning you. What I have kept I still enjoy, and love reading collected editions that can sit nicely on the shelf. Once in a while I'll buy a slab I like to add to the few boxes I have left, or a page of art- but I am definitely conscious of not wanting to leave my family with things to have to dispose of after I leave this world.

I was able to get it working with Safari with a free account, but there's definitely something funky with google and firefox, possibly to do with a paid membership as well. Thanks for helping me sort it out!

I have a paid account yeah. I also tried using a free account I just made up. Then clearing caches, No dice. Then I tried on mobile. Also, no. lol.

Nope, not by bookmark, going in fresh. I've also tried google and safari, just to see if it were a browser issue.

it won't let me deselect it... argghh.

I didn't click on it; it defaults to that state.

Those grayed out boxes aren't accessible for me. Are you able to click on them?

Right- I don't see the option to submit for this:

Hi, I went to fill in my submission form, but the SS options don't seem available to me?

nvrmnd

Here be Klarion, a Witch of a Boy for ye consternation.

Yes that's a massive downside for me. There's no way around it.

what the...

So, as one who has only a passing familiarity with IG, how do you go about following comic collecting there?

I've generally stopped collecting comics, and with that my posting frequency has evaporated.

Since completing the run, I've kept on collecting original art, especially new stuff from Felix.

I have CGC 9.6s with these flaws.

This cover is rockin'. Great pickup!

333! By my math, that's way more than mine.

Final thoughts: What do you do when you finish a run like this? After 15 years spent chasing essentially one title, with 90% of your comic money tied up in it, where do you go next? I tried to envision new comic collections, new runs to chase, and tried a few: golden age Sensations, silver age Marvel keys, bronze master of Kung Fu, copper series I loved as a kid. Nothing really did it for me. I got halfway into a Sensation run, but once I'd acquired all the key issues I wanted, filling the rest in seemed more like work than fun. I did get a bunch of low-grade Marvel keys like Avengers 1, Spider-Man, X-men first issues, and those are cool, but really easy to get, so not as exciting. I am a good portion into a complete MOFK run, but it's just taking up room to be honest. Then there's the money. I could afford to do this at the time because I was young, had time, and had disposable income. But the world changes. I'm getting long in the tooth. My daughter is nearly college age, and I'll have added bills to pay. Past all of that, I just don't want more of my money tied up into comics. I could break up the set and sell all but my favorites to fund a different run, of course, but to what end? So as for collecting comic books, this is probably the end for me. I do still have a great love of original comic art, and can afford to continue that aspect of it, especially with great dealers such as Felix making great new art readily available. I've been converting all the old floppies of stories I love into a collection of hardcover books to sit on my bookshelf. And I have other hobbies to keep me interested, from painting toy soldiers, to writing, to reading, to playing tabletop games. Looking back, the chase was absolutely worthwhile. I had a lot of fun digging around, collecting and enjoying these. There's nothing else quite like flipping through an unbroken run of books. I'll have some more pictures to share, including a massive group shot. For now, I can unveil a minisite I'd kept private for a while, showing the entire collection, plus a few more. Until next time: Up, up and away! https://matt3934.wixsite.com/itsabird

Action Comics 15! The start of my run. The earliest book I own. My most valuable book. My holy grail. When Metropolis pulled it out to show me, I basically knew I had to have it. The cover was so flat, so clean. It presented way better than the VG they were selling it as. I slept it over one night, and ran back to buy it the next day. It was far and away the most I ever spent on a comic (at the time, of course). I let it sit in a box for years, worrying over what age, my storage situation, or my daughter might do to it. Once I decided to have it encapsulated, I worried over how to mail it. I ended up bringing it in person to a comic con and dropping it off. Trying to avoid people bumping into me along thew way was a challenge, but I held it tight. A month later, it popped up on the CGC website as "grading/quality control", which might be an all-time record for speed in all my submissions. I remember sitting in my office, fingers crossed, when I clicked on the grade. Would it be brittle? restored? dinged for some unforeseen reason? NOPE!