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Foolkiller's Baltimore Comic Con Report

Started by Foolkiller,

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Foolkiller

Foolkiller

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This year's Baltimore Comic Con has come and gone, and it was an absolute blast. Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, but there are plenty of scans of books. I spent most of my time chatting with friends and looking for books and chatting with friends. The theme of the Baltimore show to me was "bargains" and "discounts". If you were a buyer who was looking primarily for books for their collection, there were was an absolute plethora of material for you. If you were looking for books to flip, it was probably a little tougher, but there was still ample material on the floor. I found some incredible books, mostly for my collection. I thought the selection of dealers was pretty good, though I missed Dale Roberts and Harley coming in person. Despite this, I thought it was great that Terry O'Neill and Brian Peets could come to this show.

 

If you are looking for high grade bronze, you could literally find it in droves here at this show. Was it all 9.8 worthy? Probably not, but there was just a ton of great material. I'll share my thoughts about dealers of significance or dealers I bought from as I go through the report day by day. For the most part, I looked through almost every dealer's inventory and could have found something to buy at almost all of them. That being said, everyone has a limit, and I was able to purchase a number of fantastic books.

 

Friday:

 

I left work early and got to the show around 12:30 in the afternoon to meet Tom Gordon for lunch. I ended up parking down by the McCormick and Schmick and hoofing down to the convention center in order to have lunch with Tom Gordon. Bruce Coller and Brian Kondravey were also on their way down, so I decided to wait til they got there and we’d all go over together.

 

Before getting to lunch, I wandered around the convention hall for a bit to get my badge. I ran into Marc Nathan (a new father I believe) on the floor as well as Bob Storms and a few other dealers getting their books unloaded. Nobody was really set up yet as the dealers were not allowed into the convention center until noon. I grabbed my badge and met up with Tom Gordon. We got the call from Bruce and Brian that they were in town and we headed to Five Guys for some burgers and chatter. After we had our fill at lunch, we went back to the convention center for another look. Most dealers were still getting set up, but a few had their booths together. I was anxious to check out Brett’s new bronze age collection but couldn’t really see it. I wandered around and checked out a few booths of dealers who were ready, but nothing really grabbed me at the time. Then Bruce suggested we step out and get a drink (along with Brian Kondravey) and kill a little time with a couple of beers. We had a bunch of laughs and after about an hour went back inside to do some early shopping.

 

After going back inside, we did eventually get a peak at Brett’s new collection of bronze age books which looked promising when we first saw it, but unfortunately, Brett wasn’t quite ready for set up and he asked if we would until the next day.

 

We moved on to some other dealers, and I stopped by Dave Kapelka’s booth, who had some new stuff from even last week in Chicago. Interestingly, there were some incredible books in his inventory, and I was happy to jump on them. From Dave, I was able to pick up the following awesome books:

 

HOM 195 (9.6/9.8)

 

HOM195.jpg

 

JIM 85 7.0

 

JIM85.jpg

 

DD 99 9.6+

 

DD99.jpg

 

and a few other really nice books.

 

After Dave’s booth, I was really gearing up for the evening forum dinner, so I spent the rest of the time wandering around trying to just touch base with everyone.

 

The forum dinner was tremendous. I really enjoyed meeting up with everyone, and I’ll probably forget some who were able to attend. A large group of us headed over in advance to meet up with a group of the dinner attendees and we were able to get a huge portion of the bar because it wasn’t super crowded while we waited for dinner. I ran into George Mihalik, a dealer friend I wish spent more time in comics. He joined our group and it was great he came out. Spent some time with Ken Lin (decepticon), Greg Reece and his son chatting about a variety of things and then chatted with my friend Mary Ann and her boyfriend Scott.

 

Finally, at 8, we were ready for the dinner. We had a large turnout, probably around 45, and I hope next year that I’ll run one again. McCormick’s, all things being equal, did a fantastic job. The food was good and the accommodated us on relatively short notice, 10 days or so. I had great time finally meeting c-mack, Baltimore Lauren and Han, seeing old friends like Richie Evans, Bob Storms, Bruce Coller, Dave Kapelka, Roy/Louise and others. It was also great meeting Southjerseyjake and his wife and getting to see zuckuss2003 and his wife Jackie. Glad rob react also made it out as I hadn’t seen him in like 4 years at a convention! Time to get back on the circuit!

 

Dinner didn’t run super long and by 10:30 PM, I was on my way home with Dave Miller to crash for the night.

 

I intended to be up at the con by 8 AM, so after we caught up for awhile, it was time to get some shut eye… more tomorrow about my Saturday at the con…

 

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rob_react

rob_react

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Glad rob react also made it out as I hadn’t seen him in like 4 years at a convention! Time to get back on the circuit!

 

I had a lot of fun at the show. Definitely made me miss getting out to the bigger shows- especially without a table to man. Digging in boxes, haggling and talking to the folks behind the table is a lot of fun after not being able to do it for a long time.

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VintageComics

VintageComics

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Brian, great books! Thanks for organizing the dinner (and being patient with me lol ).

 

It made for a terrific evening!

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Foolkiller

Foolkiller

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Just some more general observations before I continue. I think the state of the market was fairly good, though many dealers I spoke to did not have a tremendous show. I had a little of $10k available to buy books, but I sold a number of books on top of that and utilized a good deal of the money on forum member books that I had committed to. Baltimore is definitely a show where most dealers seem to have lowered expectations about what kind of sales they will do, and the crowds tend to be bargain shoppers which is why I believe that many discount and bargain bin dealers do well. I think that many of the dollar guys near artist alley did well as did Brett from Brett's comic pile as they seemed to have heavy foot traffic all day Saturday.

 

There was a really nice selection of Gold and Silver but an extremely heavy presence of bronze as I mentioned. I saw multiple new collections of very high grade bronze material. There were several dealers blowing out material as well, especially on Sunday as I heard multiple dealers pitch blowing out their inventory to another dealer.

 

On Friday I had seen Dennis Keum of Fantasy Comics getting ready to get set up, and of course, I was actually looking forward to seeing his material, which is generally very good stuff at nice prices. While it may not be pre 1965 Marvels in 9.4, there was some certainly some solid stuff. Well, on Saturday I see Dennis wandering around the floor and I asked him what had happened, and he said, I sold the booth and all my comics -- both waves. He sold both his bronze and silver that he brought to the convention (and he was also walking around with a nice DD 1 CGC 8.0 that he just bought).

 

The buyer was Chuck Rozanski. Normally Saturday is not a shopping day for me, but at Baltimore it has to be because the show is only two days. I stopped by Chuck's booth probably around mid day on Saturday to check out the inventory, and there was a fairly good crowd pouring through the boxes. Chuck had the stuff out at roughly $2 a book or 3 for $5. I thought the material inside was pretty nice. I had a very nice conversation with Chuck who was extremely pleasant and affable. Say what you will about Chuck and his pricing, but he has an important role in the dealer pyramid and still has a genuine love of comics.

 

For instance, I picked up multiple copies of this:

 

batman429.jpg

 

which looks to be a 9.6 minimum. In addition there 20 copies of Cap 148 in roughly VF, but very respectable. I purchased high grade copies of several Marvel Reprint books from the 70s as well as other nice odds and ends. 54 books for $80 is certainly not a bad haul.

 

So let me go back and talk a little bit more about Saturday, start to finish.

 

I woke up very early at around 6:30 to get down to the Con by 7:45 or so. Most of the dealers were at their tables while a few were still getting set up. Terry O'Neill had some new material as did Brian Peets. I saw a few dealers digging through. Brian was one of the few dealers who did not seem to be interested in discounting heavily on any of his wall books or high grade material. He did have several long boxes of material he was discounting, and there were definitely deals in there because: 1) Brian is a very conservative grader and 2) there were some second tier SA keys in there as well. I did not buy anything from him at the show, but wish I had gotten to his new material quicker as there was some tremendous high end stuff that he brought that I know other dealers looked and bought from.

 

My first stop was to stop by a friend of mine's booth who I know from some dealings at a local comic shop. I picked up some more of the super X-Mens and Avengers with terrific color strike and page quality. I really loved these books, despite a few nagging flaws on a few of them. Here's a small handful of the books I snagged:

 

xmen23.jpg

 

xmen29.jpg

 

avengers32-1.jpg

 

He also had a Suspense 8 in really nice shape with the exception of a tape pull on the book. I was able to help broker that sale at a very fair price that both were happy with.

 

By about 9:30 AM, Brett was set up and I finished looking through the high grade bronze collection. For me, it was disappointing as I couldn't find anything that I needed. For the most part, it was multiple copies of a variety of issues in very high grade. While there were tons of 9.4 and 9.6 copies, there weren't that many 9.8 candidates. Good for the collector, but not for what I wanted them for. However, if I needed any of those issues, it would have been fantastic. Most of it was late bronze, and it was very cool, but just not what I was expecting. A few other boardies did find some stuff for their collections, but I did not continue to look. The display for Brett's booth was massive and there was a ton of material available.

 

After finishing up with that, I wandered back to Bob Storms' booth which was sort of a mini base for me during the show. I saw Matt Nelson and Steve Ritter wandering the floor, and chatted with Steve Ritter for a bit and paid for a few Mystery in Space books that I needed.

 

Ran into several boardies as well on Saturday including bronzebruce, silverandbronze, zuckuss2003, chainball, Rich Henn, chrisco, han, roy delic, hotflips and a slew of others I'm probably leaving out. The floor was very well packed on Saturday, especially by artist alley. I wandered through to talk to Buzz, who I was having a commission done with. He's a great guy and it was awesome to reconnect with him after a couple years of not seeing him.

 

It was also great seeing Steve Borock through this weekend who I had seen at many shows and exchanged some quick chatter with, but finally had a chance to really talk to more this weekend. Great seeing you as always Steve! It was also a great chance to catch up with guys like Chris Cormier who I don't see as much either, and that's what the cons are really great for, seeing the people. Chris spent his time looking for an FF 5 and managed to snag a nice copy.

 

I stopped by Ted VanLiew's booth as well, a necessary stop in the convention cycle. Ted had some nice new material and always manages to pick up some cool stuff. I was able to snag the following two books...

 

JIM 103 8.5/9.0

 

JIM103-2.jpg

 

Strange Adventures 80 4.0 (I love this cover! and the colors/gloss were awesome)

 

SA80.jpg

 

As always, awesome Ted!

 

I met my wife for lunch over at the M&S grill which has decent food but the service is pretty sloooooowwwwwwwwwww. My friends Mary Ann, Scott and Dave joined us and I thought the meal was decent.

 

After lunch I continued to hit the floor. A couple of people thought about the idea of going to a steakhouse, but decided on fogo de chao, a Brazilian bbq place. We ended up with a nice group of 14 folks and I called for a reservation. The rest of my afternoon was generally spent hanging around Bob's booth and doing a little digging.

 

Late in the day, another collector showed me a new collection of high grade bronze at Big Ben's. After pulling a large stack of books that looked awesome from the front cover, I found several had water damage and some that had little nagging problems. Still, with patience, I was able to sift through and find a few gems including these:

 

hulk153.jpg

 

avengers106-2.jpg

 

After the show ended we ended up heading over to Fogo a little early for drinks and then a fantastic meal. As always, I enjoyed the conversation with the multitude of boardies and friends. Dinner ended around 10 and I was home by 10:30, ready to finish out the con on Sunday...

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