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Post by The Captain on Oct 29, 2022 7:48:45 GMT -5
Growing up, one of my neighbors had a detached three-car garage, and he and his best friend/brother-in-law were always out there rebuilding and tinkering with their classic cars. Another neighbor had a workshop in his basement where he had every tool imaginable, and he was always building something, from bench to birdhouse. My wife has recently gotten back into her genealogy research and has spent almost every night the past two weeks pouring over old family documents, pictures, etc., looking for little scraps of information that she can take online and try to get more details on.
That got me to thinking that most people with hobbies have some kind of "project" they're working on at any given time, so I wanted to create a space where CCF members could share what they're currently doing as related to their comic collections. It can be anything from working on completing a run to reorganizing your collection to creating a new space for your books.
At present, my project is identifying all of the "key" books in my collection and making sure they have backing boards for them. For years, due to space-saving considerations, I haven't boarded my books (outside of obvious high-end things like Captain America #117, Tomb of Dracula #10 or Iron Man #55), choosing instead to bag two books together, back to back, for some stability. As time has gone by, especially with the influence of the MCU, books that were previously $1 bin fodder or sort-of key but not really, have gone up in value, and I want to make sure that I not only have them protected, but also that I know what I have that may be far more valuable than when I bought it.
I've been using the website Key Collector Comics as a guide (the unpaid version of it, as I don't see the need to unlock any of the features beyond the paywall, such as alerts when a book is anticipated to jump in price due to a TV/movie casting announcement or rumor that push everyone out into the shops to speculate). Every few days, I pick a series or two, go through their list of "key" books, identify which ones are worth more than $10 in mid-grade condition, then get to bagging and boarding those books alone, without their previous companion on the backside.
So, what is everyone else working on?
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 29, 2022 8:33:43 GMT -5
Finishing The Orion Arm is definitely project #1, but it's a rather long-term thing. My current project would be to cut all the dead trees behind the house to leave room for new ones.
You can take the man out of Canada, but you can't take the Canadian out of the man!
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Post by arfetto on Oct 29, 2022 9:23:24 GMT -5
This year I was working on two comic book collection projects to make into youtube videos (one about Osamu Tezuka as a video showcase of all his works released in English so far and the other about Mark Gruenwald stories in chronological order), but I have had to put them on hold because I finally received a paid contract for one of my own comic stories. After years of losing money on my own comic projects, I am to be paid 120,000 USD for a comic series I created (well, I have only received half of the payment so far, the rest I get as I complete more issues of the project). I never would have thought it possible. But, when I finish that, I will go back to my comic video projects (though I wanted to complete them in 2022, I don't think it is possible now, because I also have my regular job which takes up most of my time).
I also hope to finish up a few "Dead Universe" comic collections, and I am very excited for a comic art commission I will get sometime in 2023 that I paid for in 2022.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2022 10:31:25 GMT -5
My "projects" are pretty evenly divided between comics and D&D/ttrpg.
As for comic projects, my current collecting project is to recreate my childhood comics, i.e. the comics I owned before I started high school (so 1973 when I got my first Batman comic and September 1983 when I started high school). Based on memory (aided by comics on sale in xxxx threads here and Mike's Newsstand) I compiled a list of just a little over 200 issues, of which I owned less than 20. Currently I have acquired a little less than half of those issues. The quirk is I am actually going for copies in the condition they would have been when I was kid if I can find them, so solid readable low grade copies with the occasional nicer book mixed in.
Still in progress were other collecting goals such as Usagi, Scooby Doo, Kubert/Toth/Baker books, Disney Ducks, EC reprints, Red Dress covers, Batman and Ghost Rider, but a limited budget means I need to keep my focus narrow.
My current organization project is a combo of purging and preserving books as I reorganize them, I am going through my books, and getting them in bags/boards and in boxes or file drawers, but I am also deciding which books to keep-stuff I have read but know I will never reread and don't want to keep for some other reason (creator, comic I had as a kid, red dress for example) are getting purged. I have been going through alphabetically and sorting books into short series (series that lasted less than 50 issues; characters with multiple shorter series that total more than 50 total issues do not go here), long series (series that lasted over 50 issues or character w/multiple series totaling more than 50 issues), or special collections. I started filing the longer series into file cabinet drawers and filled the 4 file cabinets I had before moving to put those in short boxes. The short series just went into short boxes on the shelves I have down in the finished (former gaming) room in the basement. Special collections are divided between short boxes or special displays.
At the same time, I am updating my GCD account that records everything (making sure its accurate, adding books I have acquired, deleting books I am purging, making sure everything is in the "proper" collection list, etc.) and doublechecking my hunt list to make sure it's accurate.
I started this in 2021 and am now up through "S" alphabetically. It's a slow process, made slower by the lack of availability of bags, boards and short boxes through much of 2021 and early 2022, and the increased prices of such supplies that was the result of the shortages and supply chain issues.
Those "Special Collections" include: "All in Color for a Dime" (i.e. all my books with a 10 cent cover price; DC War books, Devil With a Red Dress (all my red dress covers), D&D related comics (displayed on a card store spinner rack) EC reprints, Howard's Heroes (Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane etc.) and Oversized books (mostly magazine sized books but also Treasuries).
I don't really have a "reading project" where comics are concerned, I am basically a mood reader, so I read what the mood strikes me to read, which for the last year or so has been heavily tilted towards Marvel, but that has been petering out a bit lately.
My other non-comic "hobby" projects are skewed towards our D&D game-crafting terrain and props for our game and creating a "setting bible" for the multiversal setting I use for our games.
Getting the comics organized and put away in the finished basement room is ancillary to creating a larger workspace to to use for those crafting projects. If I get the stacks of comics off the large folding table down there, I can use it as a staging area for those crafting projects. It also includes making space for the stuff I am taking out of the finished attic geek cave to make it better suited as our dedicated gaming room for our ttrpg group.
So lots to keep me busy.
-M
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Post by Deleted on Oct 29, 2022 11:14:31 GMT -5
Something fairly textbook this time of year, put together a nice stash of books to sell for the holiday season coming up.
When the hobby helps pay for itself, it makes it more fun.
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Post by DubipR on Oct 29, 2022 22:56:26 GMT -5
I have two projects
1. Comic binding project- As some of you know about this. I've posted my comic binds on "What Classic Comics Have You Purchased Lately" but those that don't know, I'll tell you. During the pandemic I majorly scaled down my books, sold a lot of back issues to my LCS for store credit. I have 12 longboxes left of what are my essentials; the Silver Age and Bronze Age books (with some modern) I'm keeping. But I had 3 long boxes of runs I didn't want to get rid of as I love these series (minis, etc). I've put together volumes and got them bound so they sit on my bookshelf instead of my long box. These are runs I like and deserved a book treatment in some format. I'm almost done with this project. There's about 12 or 14 volumes that I have left to do and that project is complete.
2. Preserving within my collection- I've been pulling out various books, Silver Age, Underground and modern books to get CGC'd because they're going to be kept that way. Did I keep my comics in the best collection? Hardly. I'm a comic read, first and foremost. Then collector. I bought banged up books. I read books and put them away. Corners got dinged. I read the hell out of the books. They'll stay that way. My neighbor is co-owns one of the shops here so I send in my books through him. Its nice to have this as I send in about 5 to 6 books at a time.
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Post by majestic on Oct 30, 2022 2:25:39 GMT -5
Pretty much keeping certain classic stories to give to my grand daughters someday if they want them. My daughter's have already gone through my collection and have what they wanted to keep for themselves.
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Post by Cei-U! on Oct 30, 2022 5:07:50 GMT -5
After I finish my work on ACBC '45-'49 sometime in the next few weeks, I'll turn my attention back to two (technically three) long-deferred projects: beginning the research on my history of comic book westerns and completing my Marvel and DC Silver and Bronze Age character indices.
Cei-U! No rest for the weary!
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Oct 30, 2022 18:22:01 GMT -5
Pretty much keeping certain classic stories to give to my grand daughters someday if they want them. My daughter's have already gone through my collection and have what they wanted to keep for themselves. I envy you! Neither of my kids have any interest in comics. They don't even read mine!
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Post by majestic on Oct 30, 2022 19:31:11 GMT -5
Pretty much keeping certain classic stories to give to my grand daughters someday if they want them. My daughter's have already gone through my collection and have what they wanted to keep for themselves. I envy you! Neither of my kids have any interest in comics. They don't even red mine! My oldest daughter who is now 30 likes Archie Comics. Stuff like Spider-Man likes Mary Jane and Runaways. My middle daughter who is 28 likes a lot more stuff like Teen Titans and pretty much any female super hero title. My youngest who is 17 has very little interest in reading although she watches all the TV shows and movies with me.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Oct 30, 2022 20:30:25 GMT -5
I barely have enough time to keep up with work and life. I have zero projects.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2022 9:35:14 GMT -5
I'm actually now in a spot where I feel like I'm enjoying the benefits of some "project work" that started a couple of years ago. Going into 2020, my collection was very disorganized and not inventoried. Over the years, I had kept acquiring material but couldn't tell you what box anything was in and would always have to go hunting for anything I wanted to read. Even worse, I started to discover my memory was not as perfect as I thought it was, and I was increasingly making some duplicate purchases.
With 2020 and the pandemic and now working from home, I decided to use the extra time I could spend on lunch hours and not commuting and actually finally get things in order so I could really enjoy my collection again. The big goal was to fully organize and inventory, and in years past when I was a little more on top of things, I had always just used a spreadsheet. And so that was initially my approach again, but I quickly became overwhelmed by the sheer volume I faced, and how to stage and sort everything out of the existing boxes and do all the data entry.
I had never thought about using collection software before (I really didn't see the value, a spreadsheet seemed to work fine and I don't have a desire to track values), but realizing I probably needed to try something different, I found an online collection software that seemed pretty good and did a free trial before fully purchasing. Best move I EVER made...it was a total paradigm shift in thinking where I kept believing I needed everything sorted alphabetically by publisher and series and numerically by issues in the boxes themselves. With the collection software, I was able to easily just take each existing box, pencil an "index value" on it for quick visual reference, then add each issue/volume in the box into the software (which was again very quick and easy) and then just do a quick bulk assign of that index value for everything I just entered. I started doing that for box after box, and realizing how much faster this was, also ordered up some fresh bags and boards so I could replace them as I went along as needed. I also shifted most of my long box items into short boxes along the way, something I had wanted to do for a long time.
It's incredible how liberating this has been...I don't "run out of room" anymore sequentially in a given box because of new issues or resorting from other boxes. And the software itself is just a visual joy...with all the cover art loaded and very fast pivots/filters on pretty much anything I can think of (publisher/series, just series, by major era, by year, by character/property, etc.) it's like I can stare at my collection anytime and any way I want to without even opening a box. And of course the real benefit is I can find ANYTHING in my collection to read in a matter of seconds. Just this last week for example, there were 3 back issues I was researching that I don't own but just wanted to read. Before buying them, I checked Mike's Amazing World to see if they were reprinted anywhere. Turns out all 3 were reprinted, and I used my collection software to quickly confirm I owned all 3 reprint volumes, and again, literally in seconds pulled them out of boxes and lo and behold there were the stories I wanted. One of them had been sitting literally feet away from me.
Fast forward to today, now I'm more focused on my recurring "seasonal project", which is acquiring some new holiday reading and making plans for old favorites I want to re-read. Growing up, while I certainly read a lot of comic books throughout the year, November and December were always my favorite time with the holidays and time off and just enjoying the season. Plus we lived in northern Vermont which is pretty darn cold, so a great time to really enjoy the indoor activities like reading. I just put in my last back issue order last night, cleaned out my wish list of things that were available for prices I wanted, and definitely looking forward to enjoying the stack of reading that awaits.
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Post by badwolf on Oct 31, 2022 10:22:20 GMT -5
I guess my casual "project" is reacquiring all of the long-lost comics I had when I was a kid that I wish I'd kept, or just want to see again.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Nov 1, 2022 21:37:16 GMT -5
I'm in the process of switching to plastic long boxes.. I've replaced about 1/3 of them.. being picking up a couple every couple months when I sort my recent purchases, but that came to a halt when my oldest daughter came home for a while... now that I have the space again, I find I spent too much money to spend more on supplies.. but some time
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Post by tonebone on Nov 2, 2022 8:56:53 GMT -5
I am working on a 3D model of a Colonial Viper, to be 3D printed, painted, etc. at some point.
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