While I’d made it to the Cleveland Comic Book & Nostalgia Show last October (2020), I missed out on the February 2021 edition due to it being far too crowded. This year’s October edition–October 3, 2021–I had no trouble getting in…was actually there and part of a small crowd there for when the doors opened.
Unfortunately, it was a rather "disappointing" show for me, in terms of finding stuff I was looking for.
I ended up buying several Marvel Milestone Editions of some X-stuff. But no luck on other stuff I was actively looking for.
Perhaps the most notable thing for ME was while I was fishing the MMEs out of a box, someone right next to me dropped about $2k cash on an actual Giant-Size X-Men #1! The seller sold 2 copies in as many minutes, albeit one for $2k, one for about $5.
I also stumbled across this display pack of vintage ’90s X-Men figures from Toy Biz. I was shocked at the low price! ONLY $20, for 10 figures! So….$2/figure! And this was still intact as a box unit.
Well….the figures are basically screwed into the plastic bases. However…given I’d want to display them anyway, and for the price, I’m plenty-ok with that!
What I was less "ok" with was going to the trouble of going to a show and not really finding anything else of interest, just frivolous-ish stuff that didn’t really MATTER long-term/overall.
So with time on my hands and money in my pocket, I decided to visit Carol & John’s since I was relatively close by, and snagged a big chunk of missing Generation X issues that I needed.
They also had a bunch of random $1 comics including some Alpha Flights; I ended up grabbing these two issues, figuring their condition’s rough enough I can have patience and find better condition copies OR a larger "run" some other time.
Plus I had my eye on another issue I spotted…
They had this issue of the original Mirage run of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Considering I am STILL kicking myself mentally for passing up a 3rd print of #1 several years back that they had for something like $125, I jumped on this. With their everyday 25%-off-marked-prices discount, this was significantly less than marked…but STILL well above what I’ve paid for ANY OTHER SINGLE ISSUE in my 33-some years of buying comics! (surely pocket change, though, for someone that drops $2k cash on a single issue some Sunday morning..!)
While I forget the exact phrasing, I remember years ago hearing on a podcast someone talking about how essentially, 90% of one’s collection costs 10% of what they pay for the collection. That’s certainly looking valid to me for TMNT stuff. All the more as I’ve also snagged the Raphael and Michelangelo covers of IDW‘s #1 from 2011 this year and am now looking for the Donatello cover. I’d intended to try to get the wraparound cover (a la X-Men (1991) #1) but as a retailer-incentive cover or such, figured if the REGULAR covers are so hard to find these days, I’d better snag those when I CAN. I’d bought the Leonardo cover when it came out, and (in retrospect) SHOULD have sucked it up and bought the other 3 at the time just to have them. Deffffffinitely paying for it now.
But that’s another story for another time!
Filed under: 2021 Non-Review Posts, 2021 posts, NON-REVIEW CONTENT | Tagged: Cleveland, Cleveland Comic Book & Nostalgia Show, comic books, comic conventions, Convention, conventions, Harper Comics, Harper Productions, IDW, Jeff Harper, Marvel Milestone Editions, TMNT, Toy Biz, x-men | Leave a comment »
Comic Reviews by Walt 