WELCOME TO THE BOARDS! New members, please introduce yourselves here! 24 24

[ADAMANTIUM]

Welcome Larry!! 

[Get Marwood & I]

2 hours ago, larryfk said:

Howdy Folks,

I found these boards about a year ago and have been lurking off an on since.  I collected comics from around age 8-16 and then stopped for 20+ years.  A few years ago I was bored on ebay and saw a set of Secret Wars for sale.  Nostalgia hit me hard and I pulled the trigger, fell in love all over again and have since made collecting a focus.  I love everything about them - the stories, the art, the ads, the letters to the editor.  It all takes me back to a simpler time and I'm constantly reminded why I fell in love with this medium as a kid in the first place. I've spent the past 4 years or so working on complete sets and runs.  Spider-Man is my jam.  Currently working on building up the Silver Age and Bronze Age Marvel collection, but it ain't cheap.  Grading comics has become almost as important as reading them, so I'm really looking forward to March Madness tournament on here next year.

Thanks for creating a space where people like me can feel at home, I hope to contribute instead of just reading from now on.

Welcome on board Larry.  Lots of Spider-Jam on here. Have fun 

[HunterRose]

Hello everyone. My name is Kevin. I'm in North Carolina. I collect the team books (Teen Titans, FF, legion of super heroes, avengers, defenders,and others). I also like Batman and EC comics.    I've been reading comics for a long time, but I'm new to CGC and getting books graded. Just got my first (2) books back from cgc. Marvel secret wars #8 ( signed by shooter,zeck and Betty) and solar #1 (signed by shooter). Looking through my books this week to see what to send in next. Well....thanks for reading and hope to chat more.

 

[ADAMANTIUM]

3 hours ago, HunterRose said:

Hello everyone. My name is Kevin. I'm in North Carolina. I collect the team books (Teen Titans, FF, legion of super heroes, avengers, defenders,and others). I also like Batman and EC comics.    I've been reading comics for a long time, but I'm new to CGC and getting books graded. Just got my first (2) books back from cgc. Marvel secret wars #8 ( signed by shooter,zeck and Betty) and solar #1 (signed by shooter). Looking through my books this week to see what to send in next. Well....thanks for reading and hope to chat more.

 

Welcome Kevin!! To the boards!!

 

[thehumantorch]

6 hours ago, HunterRose said:

Hello everyone. My name is Kevin. I'm in North Carolina. I collect the team books (Teen Titans, FF, legion of super heroes, avengers, defenders,and others). I also like Batman and EC comics.    I've been reading comics for a long time, but I'm new to CGC and getting books graded. Just got my first (2) books back from cgc. Marvel secret wars #8 ( signed by shooter,zeck and Betty) and solar #1 (signed by shooter). Looking through my books this week to see what to send in next. Well....thanks for reading and hope to chat more.

 

Welcome Kevin  

[Teddy KGB]

Hi folks - 

Sorry for not posting here first, my first post was just a few min ago with regards to a cracked slab that I received back from my first CGC submission. But that aside (and thanks for any comments you may have on that)  I'm a sucker for any ASM, FF or DD from the silver age. Anything mid-grade or a tad better will do. I'm one of those weirdos that prefers ungraded books for the most part to read, but I do enjoy a graded book here and there of my favorites.  Anyways, thanks for having such a great online community, hopefully it gets better from here!

Jim

[HunterRose]

Thanks for the nice welcome. 

[exitmusicblue]

On 10/15/2017 at 4:19 AM, HunterRose said:

Hello everyone. My name is Kevin. I'm in North Carolina. I collect the team books (Teen Titans, FF, legion of super heroes, avengers, defenders,and others). I also like Batman and EC comics.    I've been reading comics for a long time, but I'm new to CGC and getting books graded. Just got my first (2) books back from cgc. Marvel secret wars #8 ( signed by shooter,zeck and Betty) and solar #1 (signed by shooter). Looking through my books this week to see what to send in next. Well....thanks for reading and hope to chat more.

 

I approve of the username !!  : )

[MGsimba77]

Hey everyone my name is Martin & I live in a Miami suburb called Kendall.

Obviously I've been posting here for awhile before introducing myself. Apologies for not finding this thread before now. 

I started getting into comics in 1990 when I was really young. It continued for several years till high school came along. After a looooong layoff I am back now with an insatiable vengeance wanting to make up for lost time!!! I don't do it to profit or financial gain. Primarily I just love the books, characters & stories!

I'm new to the comic grading world but familiarizing myself everyday. My primary interest are silver/bronze age ASM, Hulk, X-Men, Wolverine & obviously the V-man (looking forward to the movie next year). Comic related souvenirs/wall decor etc. I'm a sucker for anything related to spideys black costume! 

Only book I ever sold was a good condition Iron man #5 in 2000 & regret it everyday since! Infact the first thing I looked for & bought when getting back in was that exact book in 9.0 CGC white pages.

Well there's my introduction. Hope to continue interactions with fellow comic lovers here!

Edited October 24, 2017 by MGsimba77

[ADAMANTIUM]

35 minutes ago, MGsimba77 said:

Hey everyone my name is Martin & I live in a Miami suburb called Kendall.

Obviously I've been posting here for awhile before introducing myself. Apologies for not finding this thread before now. 

I started getting into comics in 1990 when I was really young. It continued for several years till high school came along. After a looooong layoff I am back now with an insatiable vengeance wanting to make up for lost time!!! I don't do it to profit or financial gain. Primarily I just love the books, characters & stories!

I'm new to the comic grading world but familiarizing myself everyday. My primary interest are silver/bronze age ASM, Hulk, X-Men, Wolverine & obviously the V-man (looking forward to the movie next year). Comic related souvenirs/wall decor etc. I'm a sucker for anything related to spideys black costume! 

Only book I ever sold was a good condition Iron man #5 in 2000 & regret it everyday since! Infact the first thing I looked for & bought when getting back in was that exact book in 9.0 CGC white pages.

Well there's my introduction. Hope to continue interactions with fellow comic lovers here!

Welcome Martin to the Boards!! We're glad to have you  

[Cocomonkey]

Hi all! I've been lurking these boards on and off for a few years now (a bit longer than my account's age, I think it took me a bit to even make one), and figured I eventually ought to start actually posting instead of just reading...

Anyway, I'm Adam, from South Florida originally (a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale that probably only other people from South Florida would've heard of), but live in NYC now. I'm 33 (god, where does the time go), and have been hooked on and collecting comics since I was 5, when I got my first Marvel Masterworks (vol. 1) as a gift from my parents, and which I still have, among some other volumes from the early editions--though sadly, the dust covers did not survive my early childhood...

I read pretty much everything, and have a few longboxes worth of random books from when I was growing up (though only about half of what I used to have, after having to part with a portion of them), but other than a few scattered semi-keys I've picked up here and there, I'm mainly focusing on trying (on the limited budget I have) to put together a full Uncanny X-Men run, which is currently at around 66% complete (but only 53% complete in the conditions I'd like to settle at), excluding variants (which I'm including in my ultimate goal, but at a much lower priority). Though in just vol. 1, I'm at 75%/59%. With a ton of dupes, at this point, hehe. Right now, I'm mainly squirreling away what I can to try to snag myself a copy of X-Men #1 at next year's NYCC in something around the 2.0-2.5ish grade, preferably with good eye appeal.

Aaaaand yeah, I can't think of what else to mention! Hi!

[ADAMANTIUM]

@Cocomonkey welcome Adam

 

[xcomic]

Hello Everybody!   My name is Benjamin Nobel.  I don't use my CGC account in the message board area that I'd be someone you'd recognize, so this appears to be the appropriate thread for you to meet "xcomic" as the dormant handle I randomly chose back when I signed up.  Hence the reason I'm posting in this particular spot.  But the reason I am posting at all is because things have recently been posted on the CGC boards about me that I felt needed a response (any open minded individual will hopefully realize there are two sides to every story, and it is not always is it necessary to chime in with your side, but in this particular case I felt I must).

One of the ways I participate in our great hobby is by maintaining a blog.  My blog is the one recently mentioned in the "Newsstand Edition" thread.  Some might not approach comics the same way I do or have my same interests or agree with my opinions and collecting conclusions, but the response to my blog in the aggregate has been overwhelmingly positive and has introduced me to some of the great minds in the niche areas that attracted my focus.  I even got the chance to collaborate with some of these incredible people that I've met, on a recent project we feel will be a great benefit to the hobby.

Unlike a book or a printed article, or a static website, each of my blog posts on Wordpress by contrast is open for public comments at the bottom (I give you this background in the context of why I'm here, so bear with me).  That's a little daunting when the whole world wants their link included to their site, and you wouldn't believe the sheer volume of comments that fall under that link-spreading category with boilerplate remarks.  But fortunately, the way Wordpress works, that firehose of comments (including those from "bots" and those under bogus email addresses) is filtered first:  Wordpress automatically attempts detect the ones they think are "real" and emails those to me for my moderation/approval, but does not give me an email notification about the ones their algorithms decide are not real.   Only once I approve an initial comment does it then appear online.  Depending on how busy I am with work and family, typically at least once a week I have a chance to review and react to the comments that come through.  I rarely if ever check the ones that Wordpress auto-filters out, but occasionally when someone has given me a heads-up that their comment never appeared, I'll find it somehow got there into that filtered-out folder.

When one of those Wordpress emails comes through alerting me to a new comment they judge to be "real," I always approach all such comments left on my blog with the baseline of assuming positive intent on the part of the person leaving the comment.  Sometimes, however, I ascertain that the person on the other side of the conversation actually has negative intent or has a personality I would clash with or otherwise want to avoid.  Let me give an example of behavior reflective of a personality I might want to avoid, using the following real life scenario:  Have you ever purchased a comic on eBay?  Have you ever messaged a seller across eBay's message platform?  How would you feel if you were having what you thought was a private conversation with a seller across eBay, and revealed something personal to them such as how you were just laid off from your job, and the area where you live, and then later learned that the eBay seller had been posting your private eBay messages to the CGC boards verbatim complete with your eBay handle and your name, the whole time, without your initial knowledge, and then told you later that those posts were happening?  An acquaintance told me of this precise type of occurrence, sharing a link into these very CGC boards, and I learned from reading that link what the CGC handle was for the person (the eBay seller).  Note: I'm not taking sides on their dispute, just observing the posting behavior of the seller.  Keep this story in your mind for context, knowing that I myself had heard it and had it for my context, as I tell you what comes next...

I came to learn that two of the different "handles" that had left comments on my blog -- giving the outward appearance of being two separate people instead of one -- were actually really one person; and what's more, they were yet a third/different handle over here on the CGC boards, i.e. their handle here matches neither of the handles they used when commenting on my blog...  I only learned they matched up to this board handle when someone later shared a link with me into the boards, showing that back then as I had been conversing with this person in my comment section, they had meanwhile been posting our conversation to the CGC boards the whole time and talking negatively about me here behind my back.  Guess what?  That person's handle is the same one as the eBay story you kept in your mind for context.  This is a perfect example of a person who might be extremely knowledgeable about comics -- might post on average 11 times per day for 12 years running and have a ton of experience -- but where I will choose to discontinue conversing with the person across my blog comment section, not to close my mind to alternate views, but rather to shut out a personality I find toxic to interact with.  I did in fact sent a Wordpress reply to this person telling them I would not be allowing further comments (and why) but I have no way of knowing if they received that reply.

I have reviewed some of the recent posts by this person and noticed they opted to drag Jon McClure's name through the mud and belittle his contributions to the hobby and his discoveries about 35 cent variants.  Seeing this happen, I hope any reasonable observer here will now understand why I did not want to welcome this kind of behavior "in my own home" and converse with this person further -- my blog is a little like my online home and when you comment there you are my visitor; there is no reason I should allow you to overstay your visit if you start bad-mouthing my friends and people I respect or start "getting up in my face"... would you allow that behavior in your home?  Sometimes you have to say goodbye to an unruly guest and shut the door.

Excepting this one person from these boards who I wish to discontinue conversing with, please know that everybody else is welcome to reach out to me and leave your own comments (ones that you have composed yourself and are respectful), on my blog, should you wish to do so (understanding please that given this recent situation plus the increased blog traffic in connection with the recent project I mentioned, that I might naturally be suspicious that any new commenter might be this same person under yet another handle or through a courier -- I noticed over the course of their communications with me that not only had they commented on my blog under two different handles while using a different third handle here, they also maintain at least two unique email addresses as shown by Wordpress; I will not violate their privacy by revealing the addresses but I can confirm to you that they used at least the two I saw; I believe that it only takes a working email address to establish an alias on most public message boards which is one of the reasons I have avoided public message boards -- you never know how many actual individuals is behind a chorus of voices, and over on a public Yahoo board many years ago I once had the unpleasant surprise of discovering through observing a posting error by a multi-aliased-individual that such behavior is unfortunately quite commonplace on public boards).

My next post here after this one, is going to be a reply to a critique of a post I made on the topic of Amazing Spider-Man #400 (understanding the true newsstand edition).  This particular book isn't one I collected myself, but among topics I talk about on the blog, later newsstand comics are a definite focus, and the situation with #400 is both interesting and frequently-asked, so I posted about it.  In general, I particularly like newsstand comics with cover prices that differ from the corresponding direct editions, where various "classes" of such newsstand comics were being overlooked by other collectors, to the point where I could routinely find the demonstrably-more-rare cover price variant out there for sale in the marketplace for "regular price" -- in other words, cases where the seller knew only that they owned a particular issue number of a particular title and nothing further about the newsstand vs. direct edition difference (and therefore they "mis-listed" their more-rare newsstand type for sale with an ask at the going rate for the regular direct edition type, without any indication in the title or description that the pictured comic was actually the rare cover price variant, when the picture clearly showed that it was).

My posts advocate this "relative value approach" to collecting, with special emphasis on later newsstand comics as a broad category, one that I feel is still being under-advocated, not-typically-broken-out-by-CGC (although progress is being made), and under-appreciated as a niche -- think about how many thousands of comic retailers out there are educating their customers all about "retailer incentive variants" and charging through the nose for them while giving a strong "pitch" about why they are so desirable, but by contrast, very few out there in the hobby are advocating newsstand comics and articulating why they like them; that's what I've tried to do as someone who now counts myself in the newsstand-preference-camp: to study and "make the case" -- from one collector to another -- for different groups/types, such as the Type 1A 75 cent cover price (and other price) newsstand comics of the 1980's.  [Before closing this post I'll answer an anticipated question: comics are a hobby for me only; I do not earn my living in the field of comics; when I buy and sell it is to advance my own collection; my goal is to collect comics that make me happy and share with other collectors what it was that drew me to be interested in the comics I like to collect].

Sincerely,
- Ben

[Troopercat]

Hello I'm Kenny From NB Canada and this is my first post as I've just joined.  I've been collecting ASM for many many years but haven't looked at them in a long while.  The reason I'm joining is  to learn how to properly grade them to start parting them out. So much to learn it appears. 

[PunisherPunisherPunisher]

Welcome Kenny 

[ADAMANTIUM]

1 hour ago, Troopercat said:

Hello I'm Kenny From NB Canada and this is my first post as I've just joined.  I've been collecting ASM for many many years but haven't looked at them in a long while.  The reason I'm joining is  to learn how to properly grade them to start parting them out. So much to learn it appears. 

[Chucha]

Hey all, been lurking for a few months. Looking forward to learning what my books are worth, and maybe trade a few. 

[ADAMANTIUM]

1 hour ago, Chucha said:

Hey all, been lurking for a few months. Looking forward to learning what my books are worth, and maybe trade a few. 

Welcome to the thunderdome!!

 

[FN-2199]

On ‎10‎/‎27‎/‎2017 at 12:21 PM, xcomic said:

Hello Everybody!   My name is Benjamin Nobel.  I don't use my CGC account in the message board area that I'd be someone you'd recognize, so this appears to be the appropriate thread for you to meet "xcomic" as the dormant handle I randomly chose back when I signed up.  Hence the reason I'm posting in this particular spot.  But the reason I am posting at all is because things have recently been posted on the CGC boards about me that I felt needed a response (any open minded individual will hopefully realize there are two sides to every story, and it is not always is it necessary to chime in with your side, but in this particular case I felt I must).

One of the ways I participate in our great hobby is by maintaining a blog.  My blog is the one recently mentioned in the "Newsstand Edition" thread.  Some might not approach comics the same way I do or have my same interests or agree with my opinions and collecting conclusions, but the response to my blog in the aggregate has been overwhelmingly positive and has introduced me to some of the great minds in the niche areas that attracted my focus.  I even got the chance to collaborate with some of these incredible people that I've met, on a recent project we feel will be a great benefit to the hobby.

Unlike a book or a printed article, or a static website, each of my blog posts on Wordpress by contrast is open for public comments at the bottom (I give you this background in the context of why I'm here, so bear with me).  That's a little daunting when the whole world wants their link included to their site, and you wouldn't believe the sheer volume of comments that fall under that link-spreading category with boilerplate remarks.  But fortunately, the way Wordpress works, that firehose of comments (including those from "bots" and those under bogus email addresses) is filtered first:  Wordpress automatically attempts detect the ones they think are "real" and emails those to me for my moderation/approval, but does not give me an email notification about the ones their algorithms decide are not real.   Only once I approve an initial comment does it then appear online.  Depending on how busy I am with work and family, typically at least once a week I have a chance to review and react to the comments that come through.  I rarely if ever check the ones that Wordpress auto-filters out, but occasionally when someone has given me a heads-up that their comment never appeared, I'll find it somehow got there into that filtered-out folder.

When one of those Wordpress emails comes through alerting me to a new comment they judge to be "real," I always approach all such comments left on my blog with the baseline of assuming positive intent on the part of the person leaving the comment.  Sometimes, however, I ascertain that the person on the other side of the conversation actually has negative intent or has a personality I would clash with or otherwise want to avoid.  Let me give an example of behavior reflective of a personality I might want to avoid, using the following real life scenario:  Have you ever purchased a comic on eBay?  Have you ever messaged a seller across eBay's message platform?  How would you feel if you were having what you thought was a private conversation with a seller across eBay, and revealed something personal to them such as how you were just laid off from your job, and the area where you live, and then later learned that the eBay seller had been posting your private eBay messages to the CGC boards verbatim complete with your eBay handle and your name, the whole time, without your initial knowledge, and then told you later that those posts were happening?  An acquaintance told me of this precise type of occurrence, sharing a link into these very CGC boards, and I learned from reading that link what the CGC handle was for the person (the eBay seller).  Note: I'm not taking sides on their dispute, just observing the posting behavior of the seller.  Keep this story in your mind for context, knowing that I myself had heard it and had it for my context, as I tell you what comes next...

I came to learn that two of the different "handles" that had left comments on my blog -- giving the outward appearance of being two separate people instead of one -- were actually really one person; and what's more, they were yet a third/different handle over here on the CGC boards, i.e. their handle here matches neither of the handles they used when commenting on my blog...  I only learned they matched up to this board handle when someone later shared a link with me into the boards, showing that back then as I had been conversing with this person in my comment section, they had meanwhile been posting our conversation to the CGC boards the whole time and talking negatively about me here behind my back.  Guess what?  That person's handle is the same one as the eBay story you kept in your mind for context.  This is a perfect example of a person who might be extremely knowledgeable about comics -- might post on average 11 times per day for 12 years running and have a ton of experience -- but where I will choose to discontinue conversing with the person across my blog comment section, not to close my mind to alternate views, but rather to shut out a personality I find toxic to interact with.  I did in fact sent a Wordpress reply to this person telling them I would not be allowing further comments (and why) but I have no way of knowing if they received that reply.

I have reviewed some of the recent posts by this person and noticed they opted to drag Jon McClure's name through the mud and belittle his contributions to the hobby and his discoveries about 35 cent variants.  Seeing this happen, I hope any reasonable observer here will now understand why I did not want to welcome this kind of behavior "in my own home" and converse with this person further -- my blog is a little like my online home and when you comment there you are my visitor; there is no reason I should allow you to overstay your visit if you start bad-mouthing my friends and people I respect or start "getting up in my face"... would you allow that behavior in your home?  Sometimes you have to say goodbye to an unruly guest and shut the door.

Excepting this one person from these boards who I wish to discontinue conversing with, please know that everybody else is welcome to reach out to me and leave your own comments (ones that you have composed yourself and are respectful), on my blog, should you wish to do so (understanding please that given this recent situation plus the increased blog traffic in connection with the recent project I mentioned, that I might naturally be suspicious that any new commenter might be this same person under yet another handle or through a courier -- I noticed over the course of their communications with me that not only had they commented on my blog under two different handles while using a different third handle here, they also maintain at least two unique email addresses as shown by Wordpress; I will not violate their privacy by revealing the addresses but I can confirm to you that they used at least the two I saw; I believe that it only takes a working email address to establish an alias on most public message boards which is one of the reasons I have avoided public message boards -- you never know how many actual individuals is behind a chorus of voices, and over on a public Yahoo board many years ago I once had the unpleasant surprise of discovering through observing a posting error by a multi-aliased-individual that such behavior is unfortunately quite commonplace on public boards).

My next post here after this one, is going to be a reply to a critique of a post I made on the topic of Amazing Spider-Man #400 (understanding the true newsstand edition).  This particular book isn't one I collected myself, but among topics I talk about on the blog, later newsstand comics are a definite focus, and the situation with #400 is both interesting and frequently-asked, so I posted about it.  In general, I particularly like newsstand comics with cover prices that differ from the corresponding direct editions, where various "classes" of such newsstand comics were being overlooked by other collectors, to the point where I could routinely find the demonstrably-more-rare cover price variant out there for sale in the marketplace for "regular price" -- in other words, cases where the seller knew only that they owned a particular issue number of a particular title and nothing further about the newsstand vs. direct edition difference (and therefore they "mis-listed" their more-rare newsstand type for sale with an ask at the going rate for the regular direct edition type, without any indication in the title or description that the pictured comic was actually the rare cover price variant, when the picture clearly showed that it was).

My posts advocate this "relative value approach" to collecting, with special emphasis on later newsstand comics as a broad category, one that I feel is still being under-advocated, not-typically-broken-out-by-CGC (although progress is being made), and under-appreciated as a niche -- think about how many thousands of comic retailers out there are educating their customers all about "retailer incentive variants" and charging through the nose for them while giving a strong "pitch" about why they are so desirable, but by contrast, very few out there in the hobby are advocating newsstand comics and articulating why they like them; that's what I've tried to do as someone who now counts myself in the newsstand-preference-camp: to study and "make the case" -- from one collector to another -- for different groups/types, such as the Type 1A 75 cent cover price (and other price) newsstand comics of the 1980's.  [Before closing this post I'll answer an anticipated question: comics are a hobby for me only; I do not earn my living in the field of comics; when I buy and sell it is to advance my own collection; my goal is to collect comics that make me happy and share with other collectors what it was that drew me to be interested in the comics I like to collect].

Sincerely,
- Ben

Welcome Ben. You may want to consider starting a journal on this site not to duplicate your blog to for news updates, feedback, etc.

[xcomic]

40 minutes ago, FN-2199 said:

Welcome Ben. You may want to consider starting a journal on this site not to duplicate your blog to for news updates, feedback, etc.

Thank you, I appreciate this invitation! :-) There are some wonderful people here and under different circumstances I could definitely see myself becoming a regular visitor/contributor here (the phenomenal pence threads from @Marwood & I are particularly inspiring to me).  But for now I'm here just on a "short-term mission" to defend myself.  All of the members of my price guide team anticipated there would be reactions both positive and negative as soon as people discovered our project, so in that sense this brouhaha wasn't entirely unexpected. 

In the other thread, I publicly posted an offer to feature the person behind the RMA handle with a 500 word spotlight quote -- as a named source -- in the main body of one of my most highly-trafficked newsstand articles, and I said the offer was good for one week; I'm hanging out until then to see what transpires, but after that concludes in one direction or the other, I was planning to end my visit here.

Sincerely,

- Ben p.s.  If CGC was ever to make changes around here to take identity verification more seriously on these boards (all customers have credit cards on record so in theory CGC has the means to enforce a one-handle-per-customer policy), then I hope you will reach out to me with a private message and let me know of such changes.  Because if I was comfortable that I would be conversing with unique people, the environment here for longer-term participation on the boards would be acceptable to me; today, it is not, because the only requirement for a completely-anonymous handle is a working email address.