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n2wdw's comic book room
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San Diego 2014 - Some things I got

 

Due to travel and work I wasn't able to unpack from SDCC until last night. Here're some other things I picked up.

 

I ended up buying a total of 68 comics. Kind of tells you how much SDCC is not really a comic convention anymore. Here are a few comics I picked up (sorry for the glare). They were on-sale for half off sticker.

 

 

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These comics were freebies. Aspen had a spinner rack of free comics. Zenescope gave away a bag with the Jamie Tyndall cover. I got the Cyberforce from someone, I was walking buy and he pushed it into my hand. I could barely say "thanks" before the crowd pushed me along.

 

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TwoMorrows had everything on sale for half price. I bought both of these and would have bought more but these books are heavy and hard to carry around.

 

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I think I got these from Entertainment Earth. Or maybe not, I can't remember.

 

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Finally, I thought both of these were cool. They got kind of dinged up on the flight home. I'm trying to decide whether to keep them in the box or take them out.

 

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J. Scott Campbell's Gwen Stacy Statue

 

 

I finally got a chance to take the Gwen statute out of the box. The detail is amazing. I wanted to share these pictures. I think it's the best comic related statue I've ever seen.

 

The Gwen was limited to 4000 pieces. MJ had 6000 pieces. It'll be interesting to watch how the 2 statues track in price over time.

 

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J. Scott Campbell's Mary Jane Statue

 

Campbell's MJ statue is also very detailed. I have it displayed in my comic book room next to the corresponding signed print I bought from dscott back in April.

 

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Next to it Campbell's variant Superior Spider-man #20 is displayed next to the signed print (also from dscott).

 

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Here's a story from SDCC. Campbell has a print of the Gwen too and he was selling it at the con. On Friday after buyng the Gwen statue I went over to his booth (way over on the other side of the hall). Campbell wasn't there so the booth was mostly empty.

 

The sales guy asks me if I want anything. I tell him I want the Gwen print and he tells me it just sold out. Ugh! I asked if I can buy the remaining copy displayed on the wall. He says sure!

 

Just then another guy (the interloper) walks up. He says "Hey I was here first and I want that one!" Me and sales guy look at this guy like he's from Mars. I mean, it's not like the booth is crowded, if he was really there first he could have approached any of the sales people before I got there.

 

So sales guy looks at me, as if worried I'm going to make trouble. Nope. I'm annoyed but inside I'm chuckling. The interloper clearly thinks the print is rare because it sold out. No, it's not rare (it's not even signed by JSC, and certainly not a limited run). I'll just buy it the next con I'm at or on eBay.

 

So then sales guy peels the print off the backing. It's held on by some glue, so by the time he gets it off the print is pretty mangled. Sales guy asks interloper if he still wants it. Interloper is clearly unsure. I mean the print now has 3 long creases, no one in his right mind would buy it. Interloper eyes me. Just to with the guy I say to sales guy "I'll buy it if he doesn't want it." So interloper squares his jaw and says "I definitely want it." After interloper leaves me and sales guy grin at each other.

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This Matt Baker beauty came up on eBay earlier this week. It's been on my want list for a while. The 2nd highest on the census and not outrageously priced. GPA is of limited use for comics like this because there's so little traffic. I'm sure though If it had been on display at this price at SDCC it would have sold in seconds. More likely it would have been a wall book and offered at at least 50% more than the seller's price.

 

I almost bought it for the asking price. But the seller had it set up for best offer and the cheapskate in me couldn't resist, so I offered 25% lower than the BIN price. I was afraid someone else might snatch it up, but I decided to wait a while to see if the seller would counter.

 

But the seller accepted my offer! I couldn't believe it. I paid immediately via PayPal, now I just have to sweat a few bullets waiting for it to arrive.

 

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Edited by n2wdw
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How Does CGC Grade Missing Pieces?

 

I bought this Hawkman #1 from a boardie a couple weeks ago and just got it. It was accurately described as around Good with a piece missing that doesn't affect the story.

 

I'm working on completing this Hawkman title on the cheap. My goal is an overall average of around VG. This book was offered at $30 postpaid, so it was a great way to check it off the want list. When I bought it I didn't intend to grade it.

 

But having gotten it, I'm tempted to send the book in to CGC, if for no other reason to better understand how they treat certain defects. The book actually looks pretty nice. It could go anywhere from Good- (1.8) to Good+ (2.5) -- I think it's definitely better than Fair/Good (1.5).

 

But, as the seller said, the book has an advertisement missing (see the last picture). It doesn't affect the story. Well, it mostly doesn't affect the story, as it does take out the lower part of the last panel (but not the captions).

 

I believe CGC grades incomplete books at .5, where "incomplete" means something missing that affects the story. I'm curious whether this Hawkman 1 will get a .5, or maybe something higher with a notation of the missing chunk. I doubt it would get qualified (?).

 

Anyway, if I end up grading it I'll post what happens here.

 

 

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CGC SS Photos

 

Something I'm having fun collecting this year are CGC photos of actors wtih certified autographs (I don't really see the point of CGC photos without autographs). Here's one I got recently of Drago from Game of Thrones. As with all collecting, it's all in the timing. Even as recently as late last year, Drago's autograph was pretty expensive. But he's no longer on the show so the prices of his sigs is going down (those with Dani don't count since she's still on the show and hugely popular -- how can she not be as the mother of 3 dragons?).

 

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Love the statues. It's nice that you have room to display them. Mine sit in boxes in storage. I boarder between hoarding and collecting.

 

James

 

Yes, displaying statutes is definitely space-intensive. We're going through a home renovation now where I hope to have as much space for my comics as I have right now. We'll see, got my fingers crossed.

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Easing Up on the Grades for Walking Dead Keys

 

I'm mostly a completist, I like collecting runs. But for the Walking Dead I'm collecting just the keys, as collecting the entire run would cost more than I want to spend.

 

For moderns I prefer 9.8 (who doesn't?) but again I've eased up on this with some WD keys. 9.8s are very expensive and more than I'm willing to pay (I'd rather work on getting Amazing Spider-man 2-5 and FF 2, 3 and 5). There's a big drop off in price for WD going from 9.8 to 9.6 so I've decided to ease up and take 9.6s for the high ticket items.

 

Here are a couple I've picked up the last 2-3 months. WD #2 with the first appearances of Allen, Dale, Carol, Amy and Andrea (and a few others). And WD #27 with the first appearance of the Governor. I was close to a deal for WD #1 in 9.6 a couple weeks ago (on these boards) but we couldn't quite agree on a price.

 

 

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Jumping Into the Dave Stevens Covers Registry Competition

 

Recently I've decided to compete in the Dave Stevens Covers registry. It kind of snuck up on me. Dave Stevens is one of my favorite artists and I collect his work. I've always collected his stuff raw, but over the last year I've been collecting graded copies of favorite covers. Then I started picking up other graded Stevens comics if they were at good prices. That all led to my decision to compete in the registry.

 

It's fun, but a challenge. Right now there are 26 sets, with Doctor Joe way in the lead with 3317 points. His set is only 45% complete so it'll be hard to overtake him if he decides to build his set (although he's had no changes in over a year).

 

I'm way back at #8 with 1195 points (26% complete). I'm not sure if I'll ever catch up. Some comics are tough to get in 9.8, so if you have one it gives you a huge advantage. 3-D Zone 16 is a good example, 308 points in 9.8 versus 105 in 9.4 (which is what I have). I've recently bought 2 raws; I haven't gotten them yet, hopefully one of them is a 9.8 candidate and I'll submit it in Baltimore.

 

Lately I've been going for the low hanging fruit. Orbit #1 is 200 points and DV8 #1 is 104 points (in 9.8) and both are fairly easy to get on eBay and not too expensive (especially DV8 -- I can't figure out why that one gets so many points). Others are going to be hard to get in high grade, like Amazing Heroes 37 -- where the heck are you going to get this 1983 fanzine in high grade? But then it's only 32 points in 9.8, which I don't really understand.

 

This set also includes comics with back covers by Stevens. Recently I contacted CGC to add Dark Horse Presents 100 to the set. This comic had 5 covers and originally CGC had only a single listing for all 5. That would be a bad thing to get them to add this comic to the set. Fortunately, CGC eventually added a listing for each cover. So now the copy with the Stevens back cover is 100-1. My problem is, the copy I bought off eBay has the original listing. But, CGC has been great. Gemma told me to submit it in Baltimore and they'll relabel it for free. They might even be able to return it to me in Baltimore. Now that's customer service!

 

Here's the comic with the current label and the Stevens back cover:

 

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Stevens was an amazing artist. Although his art is an 80's institution, utilizing modern tools of the trade like air brushing, his style was reminiscent of the Golden Age comic art featuring fantastic damsels and heroines in pin-up fashion. I also see the fabulous illustrations done for the war effort in the 40's as well as commercial advertising artwork of the 30's to 50's represented in his style. It is brilliant and deserves to be collected and immortalized.

 

I hope you manage to obtain the elusive high grades you are searching for, and I also wish you much success in building the set.

 

SW3D

Edited by SW3D
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Love Dave Stevens :) My favorite covers are

3-D Seduction of the innocent 1

Airboy 5

Johnny Quest 5

Alien Worlds 4

 

And I agree with SW3d. While I only collect Golden age comics these days, I have picked up a few Dave books just because they have the same visual feel :)

 

I hope you will find the time to post more of your Stevens books as you get 'um :)

Griff

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Hey SW3D and Griff,

 

Thanks for your words of support! I definitely agree, Stevens has a golden age feel to his work, similar to LB Cole. I think J. Scott Campbell is a modern artist who uses some (but certainly not all) of those visual elements.

 

Here are a few books from my collection. I'm trying to upgrade the first book. The last 3 were graded on-site at WW Philly. I was of course ecstatic to get the 9.9 but it only gets 30 points! (A 9.8 only gets 25 points.)

 

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Here's one of my favorite LB Cole covers. I definitely see parallels between Cole's work and Stevens' (and JSC's too).

 

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Wow!... the redhead in VG#2 is simply gorgeous. Why do I think of Sucker Punch? Did Scott Snyder get inspired by Dave Stevens work like James Cameron to Roger Dean for Avatar?

 

The cover to RA#1 is a work of art! Damn DS makes his women so sexy and provocative! This collection would keep me up at night. ;)

 

And I totally see the LB Cole influence.

 

Thanks for posting these beautiful covers.

 

SW3D

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Getting a deal when no one else is looking

I picked up this nice looking Brenda Starr on eBay recently. I watched it for a couple of weeks. There were no bids but that's not unusual, typically all the bids come in the last seconds. I did the same, using bidnapper (even with my bid coming from bidnapper I watched the last couple of minutes on eBay.) I was shocked when mine was the only bid! I can only assume no one else happened to be looking (maybe the summer and vacations).

 

I'll include it as part of my next Value submission that I'm dropping off at the Baltimore convention. Could this book get 8.0? I'm really excited to see.

 

 

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Two issues closer to completing my Original Marvels Collection

 

I picked up 2 issues for my Original Marvels Collection (completing my runs of ASM, Avengers, Cap, FF, Hulk and Iron Man). Now I'm down to just 17 more issues!

 

I got the ASM 5 from a boardie. I paid more than I originally wanted, but it looks good for a 3.5 and they're expensive on eBay.

 

The FF 26 I got via best offer on eBay. It's a nice looking book except for the chunk out of the upper right corner. The left corner looks funky, but the seller assured me it was fine. I haven't gotten the book yet so I can't say. Either way it was a fairly nice looking inexpensive book to fill a hole. I don't plan on submitting to CGC.

 

 

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Are Sketch Ops on these boards worth the bother?

 

Frankly, I don't think so. They just seem to take forever. It's different for commissions at cons. At least then you know you'll have it by the end of the con. Once though an artist was taking commissions at a con but said he could not finish at the con. He promised to get it done within a month. My mistake, I went for it. Well, it took 4 months, not 1, and most of the time I was unsure if it would really happen because he wasn't good at responding to my emails.

 

And then there's the cost. You're certainly not getting a deal when working directly with the artist.

 

The one thing you do get is the chance to get a commission to your specifications. And that's a big thing if it's a special artist and special characters. But I think you have to have that combination to make it worth the cost and hassle.

 

I really do like SS cover sketches, I've gotten into them the last couple of years. But I think it's a lot better to buy on eBay or these boards. Here's one I just got on eBay by Anthony Castrillo. I was the only bidder and was able to win it for only $89, less than half his commission rate (from what I could gather from some searching). I've read some threads here about how Anthony's commissions take some time. I don't know him and never dealt with him, but it's those kind of threads and my own experiences that make it doubtful I'll ever participate in another sketch op unless it's someone really rare like Dave Sim.

 

For an artist like Sim he's rarely at cons and there's not alot of his art flowing around. I'd love a commission of Cerebus with Jaka, so for an artist like him I'd be willing to pony up the money and I'd wait however long it would take. But for most other artists -- especially the ones you see at cons and have alot of art available on eBay -- it doesn't seem worth it. Just my opinion ...

 

 

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Edited by n2wdw
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By the way, I don't know Anthony Castrillo and I've never dealt with him, so I have no first hand knowledge on how he is to work with. So I'm not trying to start anything. I do like his art. Here's another I got earlier this year from a boardie here.

 

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