n2wdw's comic book room

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I recently bought a few CGC SS books from a boardie in Hong Kong. I asked him how he gets so many great SS books and he said he has some really good facilitators in the US (makes sense). Here's one of them, a TV guide with signatures of the Frozen TV cast. Also here are pictures of how I'm displaying the book in my comic book room.

Loved Georgina in the part of Elsa.

I just picked up CGC SS with Idina Menzel's signature myself.

That's so cool! I love it.

Loved Georgina in the part of Elsa.

I just picked up CGC SS with Idina Menzel's signature myself.

I envy you. I'm bidding now on a Frozen pic with Idina and Kristen Bell's signatures, but not CGC SS.

That's so cool! I love it.

Loved Georgina in the part of Elsa.

I just picked up CGC SS with Idina Menzel's signature myself.

 

I envy you. I'm bidding now on a Frozen pic with Idina and Kristen Bell's signatures, but not CGC SS.

But, I'd like to get something Elphaba related someday too.

I would love to get an Idina and Kristen sig CGC SS book someday myself.

Good luck on your picture buy. I had no idea there was such a demand over Idina's full signature too.

Mound City Auctions

I never heard of this auction house until a boardie posted a link. I went there and saw a restored Amazing Fantasy up for auction. I had dreams of winning it for a steal; after all, who ever heard of Mound City Auctions? But the bid price got above GPA early on the last day. Not by a lot, but given it was restored, I decided to pass.

Still, less people were definitely watching this auction judging by the final prices. I imagine this auction was based on comics that were part of estate sales and they didn't have nearly the exposure of C-Line and C-Connect, for example.

I won Spectacular Spiderman 1 CGC 9.6 for $48. I remember when this comic was on the comic spinner. It was a big deal, the 1st ever new Spider-man series. I think I bought 5 copies. Alas, I traded them over the years (I remember 1 trade involving Nova #1 with a high school friend) but still have 1 of the original copies. What's great about this book is it also earns 300 registry points.

I won X-Men 141 CGC 9.6 for a bargain at $84 (as a comparison, I bought X-Men 142 CGC 9.6 for $142 last year and I thought that was a great deal; I still do). I'm glad to finally have this book. I've wanted it for a while to go with my #142. I must have bid on it about a dozen times in C-Link auctions but it always went above what I wanted to pay. This one also earns 300 registry points.

My biggest win was FF 12. I got it for $180 and I think that's a really good price (it depends on the grade of course, but Overstreet pegs this at 2x - 3x what I paid).

Now I'm regularly checking the Mound City Auction website to see when they're having their next comic auction.

Mound City Auctions

 

I never heard of this auction house until a boardie posted a link. I went there and saw a restored Amazing Fantasy up for auction. I had dreams of winning it for a steal; after all, who ever heard of Mound City Auctions? But the bid price got above GPA early on the last day. Not by a lot, but given it was restored, I decided to pass.

 

Still, less people were definitely watching this auction judging by the final prices. I imagine this auction was based on comics that were part of estate sales and they didn't have nearly the exposure of C-Line and C-Connect, for example.

 

I won Spectacular Spiderman 1 CGC 9.6 for $48. I remember when this comic was on the comic spinner. It was a big deal, the 1st ever new Spider-man series. I think I bought 5 copies. Alas, I traded them over the years (I remember 1 trade involving Nova #1 with a high school friend) but still have 1 of the original copies. What's great about this book is it also earns 300 registry points.

 

 

 

 

I won X-Men 141 CGC 9.6 for a bargain at $84 (as a comparison, I bought X-Men 142 CGC 9.6 for $142 last year and I thought that was a great deal; I still do). I've finally got this book in high grade. I've wanted it for a while to go with my #142. This one also earns 300 registry points.

 

 

 

 

My biggest win was FF 12. I got it for $180 and I think that's a really good price (it depends on the grade of course, but Overstreet pegs this at 2x - 3x what I paid).

 

Now I'm regularly checking the Mound City Auction website to see when they're having their next comic auction.

 

 

Modern GGA / Gwen Stacy

Recently got these back from CGC. First up is this Jay & Silent Bob cover. I bought this at a con years ago and filed it in a long box without a bag or board. Yet, it comes back 9.8. In comparison, often I spend hours looking through brand new comics at my LCS and they're all dinged up, oftentimes arriving that way from the publisher. Maybe the fact I stored the book so long gave it a natural press that helped the grade.

The next is a donation book from Inkwell. I got it to add to my Franchesco collection. Someday I may try to add a Franchesco registry cover set, although CGC didn't help me out here as they didn't note Franchesco as the cover artist on the label.

This book is kind of unusual because the cover continues vertically to the back cover rather than horizontally. This next picture shows what I mean.

Finally, I recently bought this Adam Hughes SS book on eBay. Hughes must've done a ton of these books lately as they're all over eBay. It looks like Gwen but it's not; it's Mary Jane. How do you know? In this one the girl isn't wearing a headband.

Here's how Adam draws Gwen on these quickie sketch covers. They could be twins!

To contrast, here's a Tim Sale Gwen. He draws an elegant Gwen.

And here's another interpretation. Probably elegant isn't the word.

Can I ask what your eBay I'd is. I'd like to follow your auctions and possibly make some purchases myself!

PM'd you

My Staging Table and Pax East

Here's my staging table for organizing new purchases before going into the comic room. I've got my Mylars and acid-free boards stacked and ordered by size.

This is outside my existing comic room, where I have a lot of space in the basement. Space is tight though in my new comic room (which is in our little beach cottage that we plan to retire to). So, I have to figure out how I'm going to store my storage supplies there.

I'm anal when in comes to the Mylar size I use to store gold, silver, modern, etc. I like them all to be in the same size bag. To keep it straight I have this little cheat sheet:

Switching topics, I went to Pax East this weekend with 2 of my daughters. I'm not really gaming so I was going just to be with my kids. Here's a picture of the vendor floor. I came home sick. I've gone to tons of conventions but this is the first time I got hit with con plague.

Welovefine had these Marvel Spider-Gwen bags. I wasn't interested in any of their stuff so I asked if I could just buy a bag. They said no, they came free with a $25 purchase (I guess it was a Marvel promotion). Anyway, there was a young 20ish girl who bought 2 t-shirts. I cautiously approached her, not wanting to creep her out as I'm an old guy. I offered to buy her bag for 10 bucks. She looked at me like I was crazy (like why pay money for a stupid bag?) but she sold it to me. So here is my only thing I got from Pax East (other than the memories of being with my kids).

Changing topics again, I picked up this original Mopsy art on eBay a few weeks ago. If you're interested in Mopsy, there's a ton of art for sale on eBay and the seller accepts reasonable offers.

Additions to Dave Stevens Set

Made a few additions to my Dave Stevens set lately. Plugging away at it but still far short of taking over the top spot. My goal now is not so much the top spot but to fill all the slots. Yes, that might result in me getting the top spot, but it'll be one of those things where I'll have the top spot until someone with more motivation decides to get higher grade copies.

For this set, higher grade copies are possible but you've got to be motivated and have patience, as you'll probably have to purchase and grade the books yourself (as once you get passed the common issues there's not a lot of graded Stevens books out there).

Great updates n2wd!

My Staging Table and Pax East

 

Here's my staging table for organizing new purchases before going into the comic room. I've got my Mylars and acid-free boards stacked and ordered by size.

 

This is outside my existing comic room, where I have a lot of space in the basement. Space is tight though in my new comic room (which is in our little beach cottage that we plan to retire to). So, I have to figure out how I'm going to store my storage supplies there.

 

 

I need to get a similar supply system for my comic basement, I also need to restock mylar and switch to acid free boxes.

Modern GGA / Gwen Stacy

 

Recently got these back from CGC. First up is this Jay & Silent Bob cover. I bought this at a con years ago and filed it in a long box without a bag or board. Yet, it comes back 9.8. In comparison, often I spend hours looking through brand new comics at my LCS and they're all dinged up, oftentimes arriving that way from the publisher. Maybe the fact I stored the book so long gave it a natural press that helped the grade.

 

 

Great Jay and Silent Bob cover, amazing it got a 9.8 after the way it was stored.

Before and After Pictures of My New Comic Book Room

My wife and I visited our beach house this weekend to get the tomato plants into the raised bed. There's nothing better in the summer than sliced, ripe tomatoes and basil from your garden, sprinkled with a little EVOO and salt & pepper.

I took the opportunity to take some pictures of my new comic room. As of today I've moved most of my collection over to the new space. So much in fact I've transferred our insurance rider over to the new room from the old comic room (actually, the insurance company lets me designate primary and secondary storage spaces).

Here are pictures of my new comic room, from before I moved stuffed over (from early last summer), to after (present day).

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

As I've gotten into selling the stuff I don't want to keep, I've noticed Star Wars toys get more interest than comics (based on views and people watching). I'm fairly certain these Princess Leia's and Amidala's would sell fast but I'm holding onto these.

How do you ever leave this room? Super man cave there!

 

Before:

 

 

 

After:

 

 

 

Your room looks amazing

Just a wild guess - in case of fire, you do not exit through the window?

Love how you included the ceiling too!

Sagii - Yeah, it's torture to leave. Problem is we're not there too often and we won't be until I retire in about 10 years.

Rune - Using the ceiling was the only way I could display my Star Wars and Star Trek action figure collections. And there's really no room for more action figures so I've put boundaries around what I'm collecting. For example, I'm not collecting any SW toys from the new movies, and I actually stopped collecting action figures from Episodes 1-6 a few waves ago. As for Star Trek, my collection is mostly the figures released by Playmates (and not even all of those). I'm on the fence right now about whether to keep the Art Asylum figures I already have.

Something I'm still collecting are the vintage 12" figures. I'd like to complete those collections for both SW and ST. They are very cool and surprisingly affordable.

THE Gwen Stacy Collectible

I bought this from a boardie last week. It's the Spider-Man Movie comic with the Emma Stone (as Gwen) and Andrew Garfield (as Peter) cover.

What makes this rare is the signature by Emma Stone. There are 40 SS copies (among all grades) of this comic. I suspect most of them are signed by Stan Lee (I have one of them). Of those signed by Emma, I have one (the one I just bought) and there's one with a collector in Hong Kong.

The boardie I bought mine from said he got Emma's signature while she was performing on Broadway. There was a charitable event. The boardie told me "Basically it took a big donation and a buddy met her and got some stuff signed." The Hong Kong collector thinks there are 8-10 out there from this signing.

I bought this comic in a moment of weakness. It had been listed on eBay for a while at about $1000. I think I made one or two low ball offers (like, $500 or so) the last few months but they were quickly rejected. Then the boardie offered the book here. His price was $800. I offered $600. We settled at $650.

I admit, this book is kind of an obsession for me. Probably because I think Emma Stone is the prototype Gwen Stacy. She looks like Gwen, and I like the way in the movie they portrayed her as a strong character (instead of just a girl friend-type chick).

Anyway, I now have 3 copies. A universal 9.6 I got for $29. An SS 9.8 signed by Stan I got from the Hong Kong collector for $120. And now this one signed by Emma Stone. (I also have the SDCC program with this photo on the cover in CGC 9.8 -- I posted about this one a couple weeks ago).

This is the most I've ever paid for a modern book. I still can't believe I paid so much for a modern book that doesn't have the words Walking, Dead, #1 on the front cover. Surprisingly though I don't have buyers remorse about this purchase, at least for the moment. Of course, that'll change if Emma starts going to Wizard World cons and her sig becomes common. The side benefit of that though is I'll be able to easily get more sigs so I guess it balances out. Thanks for reading.

Latest Baker Acquisition

I won this Baker on eBay about a week ago. There's a Baker frenzy right now, as discussed in this excellent thread: http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=8844131&fpart=1

Nice looking (yet far from high grade) Baker covers are going for well over $300. I managed to win this one for a tad under $200. I think I lucked into a lull between big Baker offerings on eBay. Still, a year ago it probably would have sold for closer to $125-$150. Anyway, I'm happy to be able to check this one off my Baker covers want list.

Flashback - Vinyl LPs!

In moving my stuff from the old to the new comic book room, I found this:

This is the original Star Wars soundtrack. I bought it from the record store (remember those?) soon after the 1st SW movie came out. I also found this one among My Stuff. It's not the soundtrack of Empire Strikes Back but a dramatic reading of the story (with parts of the soundtrack in the background).

I didn't have an LP player but there are tons of cheap ones for sale on Amazon. I got this one for under $50. With Amazon Prime I was listening to my LPs in a couple days. Brought back a lot of great, teenage memories.

Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane

There's a seller on eBay called barnhollow. He specializes in celebrity autographs and has an interesting (although small) stock of CGC SS items. I've bought a few items from him over the last couple of years, including Star Trek and Game of Thrones collectibles. What's great is he offers a lot of his stuff via auction (rather than buy it now). So if you're lucky you can get a really good deal.

This is my latest win from barnhollow, Superman 700 signed by actress Kate Bosworth who played Lois in Superman Returns, and Brandon Routh who played the big guy with the cape. Barnhollow has a bunch of these (they must have signings) and I've probably bid on a dozen or more of them, losing each time. I finally won this one for only $69. Clearly I lucked out with the timing of the auction.

Something else I collect is CGC photos. They're few and far between on eBay. Barnhollow used to have a nice selection (and I bought a few) but they seem out of stock at the moment. But here's a Kate Bosworth I won via auction about a year ago. Again, I lucked out with the timing as I won it for only $29. The 2 pieces will be great to display together.

Jaka -- Wow!

This just sold on the Heritage weekly Sunday auction. A very cool Dave Sim pin-up of Jaka. I got priced out early on, and during the live bidding it spiked up another $300. It finally closed at $800 plus buyer's commission. So almost $1000 for this. Wow. Sim sketches are rare, but still, wow.