We received an email question regarding the MARVEL STAMPS that the USPS is selling next year.  Possibly the question was asked due to our constant posting of Jack Kirby items in our Blog and eBay Stores ?!

(The Marvel stamps mentioned in this post are pictured in the second blog post below this one for those that missed the first entry.)

The question aked was, which of the comic book cover stamps are Jack Kirby's artwork?

The following are what we believe are Jack's artworks:

The California State Fair is one of a few State Fairs in the nation to house an actual working Postal Office on the grounds!

The photo above inset is of Noel Neill, the original Lois Lane.

This is the same USPS Stamp Set that debuted at the San Diego Comic Con International earlier this summer that we blogged about in an earlier blog post.

Ok, we have oohed and aahed over the DC Superhero Stamps that were issued this year at the San Diego Comic Con  International !

Our local post office is now sold out of those sheets of stamps, so we are now looking forward to next year's sheet of Superhero Stamps, this time from Marvel Comics!

A preview of what the stamps will look like are below:

I am personally looking forward to the FANTASTIC FOUR STAMPS as the 'Flying Bathtub' cover for FF #3 was one of my earliest favorite FF covers! Plus the Thing is my favorite Marvel Comic Book character....

This is a Great Time to be a comic book fan, as we have plenty of comic book movies to watch now and more in the pipeline to follow, and now stamps to use for postage!

Michael

These signatures were originally obtained for Michael's collection of Fantastic Four and FF related comics items that are being sold through our eBay Featured Store and / or eBay Pro Store.

They were obtained mostly at SDCC (San Diego Comic Con International) during the past decades, or at Wonder Con in Oakland, or at the LA Sci-Fi & Comic Book Convention.

As the signed comics were meant to be part of his collection, Michael only cared that he obtained the signature, usually along with a picture of the writer or artist signing the book or holding it.

Indeed several of the comics are personalized 'to Michael', so if you or the person you are buying the comic is also named 'Michael' you have a very special signed item !

CGC has come up with a program of Signed Series collectibles where they certify they saw the comic signed and it went straight to CGC for grading. However this is a new program, and those comic book greats who have already passed on, (i.e. John Buscema, Gil Kane etc.), are not around to have their signatures certified.

Thus in our case, a prospective buyer would have to trust the seller that the signature(s) are genuine.

In our case we do have pic(s), not of each and every artist or writer, (as Jim Steranko and a few others do NOT like their pics taken), but we do not sell signatures that we did not obtain in person, unless it is a DF item, where they include a COA that the signature is genuine.

Below is a picture of Stan 'the Man' Lee signing one of our early FF comics. Just click on the pic and you will be taken to our eBay Featured Store aisle where we have Signed Comics for Sale.

As you will see, we do NOT charge a hefty premium for signed comics.

Thank you for reading our blog post today!

Tina and Michael

We tweaked our web site earlier today, and didn't check out all four major internet browsers after doing so, like we normally do.

The change worked fine for the IE browser and the AOL browser, which is what we normally browse in, but the changes made the Netscape & Firefox browsers present the tables and graphics VERY MUCH DIFFERENTLY when viewing! Not at all what we thought would be presented!

We had a nice visitor email us as to the problem, which we fixed immediately.

So if you make your own HTML changes and haven't downloaded the other browsers yet, you might want to do so, so that you can see what potential buyers are viewing on those browsers!

Firefox is a browser that more and more users are downloading in lieu of the Microsoft IE broswer for internet viewing. And Netscape has been around for a long time...

Michael

Received the Update #3 news pamplet magazine from SDCC Comic-Con International  over the weekend.

It has the following articles:

the Comic-Con 2006 Recap

Inside WonderCon 2007

First Look at Comic-Con 2007

Interview with Neil Gaiman

Interview with Brian K Vaughan

and more articles!

For those of you who would like to go to the next SDCC, July 26-29, 2007 you can write to:

Comic-Con International
Po Box 128458
San Diego, Ca 92112-8458

to get on their mailing list.

The Con is more than just comics and comic books!

We go every year and look forward to next year's con, which starts after Michael's birthday for a change. We have celebrated several birthdays at the Con, as it is Michael's favorite place to be during that event!

Tina and Michael

Besides being e-mailed a copy of the Blog Directory for personal use, there is a copy in the blog posts on eBay Blogs.

Thanks for the inclusion!   Tina and Michael

We enjoy selling out of our eBay Featured Store and our NEW eBay ProStore.

To find product to sell we attend multiple comic book conventions during the year, from the West Coast to the East Coast. We also enjoy meeting in person dealers and collectors that share the same passion for comics that we do!

We have written many positive posts about attending the SDCC (San Diego Comic Con International) which is held once a year.

However there is a monthly convention north of us in Los Angeles, which has many regular dealers that exhibit monthly.

The show also usually has one to two featured guests, this upcoming November show has David Carradine of the Kill Bill movie series, and Sergio Aragones of Mad and Groo fame!  We have seen other Comic & Film greats at this Con, including Jackie Chan, The Lone Gunmen TV show cast, and many more !

The web site for additional info on the LA Comic Book & Science Fiction Con can be found by clicking on the following great sci-fi / sword & sorcery comic book cover.

It has been a while in coming, as eBaying has been a part-time endeavor, but as of today
We Are Pleased to Announce Our 5,000th Order Completed!

We have 4,324 different eBayers who have posted positive feedbacks for us,
1 eBayer who left a negative,
1 eBayer in the last twelve months who left a neutral,
several who did not leave feedback,
and 9,661 TOTAL POSITIVE feedbacks left for us !

(Not everyone who buys leaves feedback; we have left 10,151 feedbacks, which is 490 more than what has been left for us, which is why we now leave feedback after feedback is posted for us.)

Anyway, we feel that this is a nice Milestone to hit, and want to wish all our past customers
THANKS for letting us MAKE IT SO for YOU !!!

Michael and Tina

We had previously enhanced our 'My World'entry in preparation for the day the feature would be presented to the rest of the world.

If you think you think we can add something to the feature, MY WORLD
please post below!

Michael and Tina

We are now entering week nine of the Spider-Man Collectible Series in Sunday Newspapers.

For those of you who have not seen this insert in your Sunday paper, they are being printed for some twenty plus weeks or more.

The quality of the 'comic books' are quite poor as the paper is the old style newsprint that comics used to be printed on.

The comics themselves are very hard to keep in decent shape. We are bagging and boarding our copies after they are read as they are very flimsy.

Are these collectible? Well, the majority of the copies we have seen have NOT been Near Mint to begin with. Poorly stapled, newsprint bends, rough handling during the packing process, etc are keeping the ones we see in less than Near Mint grade to begin with.

We are sure some people will be getting them graded by the third party grading company, CGC, so possibly some will be worth money right away, but basically we don't think so for the common copies in less than Near Mint grade as there are multiples being printed.

You might see a few of the early issues selling as some people did not know about the series when it first started.

There are currently 35 of these comics on auction at eBay.com, ranging from 1 cent to $9.99 each being asked.

In the past two weeks 30 core format (auction / BIN)  listings have closed with actualized sales of 1 cent to $4.25 paid plus shipping costs.

There are 6 listings for these comics in the eBay Stores section.

We think Marvel Entertainment is doing a good promotion giving them away for free as inserts in the Sunday papers, but getting kid's parents to pay $2.99 for the real Amazing Spider-Man comic book would be sticker shock. Most adults don't think of comics as costing $2.99 to begin with let alone being worth the $2.99 retail price, and kids would think that $2.99 is a lot of their allowance for a ten minute read if they paid for them!   What's your thoughts on this?!

Michael and Tina 

Ed Benedict passed away recently. He was 94 years of age.

It was in the late 1950's that Benedict was recruited by former MGM animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera,  to provide character designs for their first animated television series, The Ruff & Ready Show.

Ed Benedict eventually became the primary character designer at Hanna-Barbera, designing Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, the various characters on The Flintstones, and so many others for Hanna-Barbera.

Ed left Hanna-Barbera in the late 1960's,  but continued to do free-lance work afterwards.

We bring this up as Michael grew up on these cartoons in the late fifties / early sixties and the Gold Key comics that published the Hanna-Barbera characters were some of his earliest comic book readings before he started collecting.

Perhaps that is why Michael makes a point of attending all the Mark Evanier Panel Programs at the SDCC, (San Diego Comic Con), as so many of the cartoonists / comic book artists are in their 70's - 80's - 90's, and several only make one or two appearances out here on the West Coast, (John Buscema for example, made only one visit and passed away before the next con).

To fully appreciate Ed Benedict's work, you should check out the DVDs from the early TV shows or comic books that can now be obtained on eBay. So many are being listed on eBay as DVDs based on old and new TV shows are being issued quite regularly.

Indeed, you should also check out next year's Comic-Con guests and have those cartoonists or artists sign your items that you can buy now before they come out for next year's comic-con. Here are several already signed up for 2007's comic-con:

George Gladir, Miriam Katin, Mel Keefer, Lily Renee Phillips, Roy Thomas, F. Paul Wilson, and more.

Michael has several items signed by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers, Joe Sinnott and more, that really make him appreciate his collection! Take the time to chat with and have your nostalgic item signed by the creators of those special shows or comics.

Tina and Michael

We have earlier posted that we have some interest in the new NBC TV Show 'Heroes'.

Giving it a chance to win us over, an earlier blog post stated that we had left the screening of the show midway at the SDCC as we wanted to see Stan Lee's new show 'So You Want To Be A Super-hero?' which was starting during the Heroes viewing. We still haven't fully made Heroes a 'Must See' TV Show at this point, just taping it for later in the week viewing.

This new TV Show also has comic books, and there is quite a bit of bidding activity going on right now. We did not pick up any at the San Diego Comic Con International (SDCC), so have none to sell to you.

However you can see the current activity on eBay at:
HEROES

Get out your wallets if you really want comics from this show!!!

Michael

(With the San Diego Padres finally winning one game in the Divisional Series, they are on at 10:00 am PST this morning, and then Tina's Eagles are on at 1:00 pm PST, and then the San Diego Chargers on at 5:15 pm PST, so we're posting early this morning!)

Beau Garrett has been cast as Frankie Raye in Rise of the Silver Surfer in the Upcoming Fantastic Four Movie!

She's probably most well-known for her role as Fiona on HBO's "Entourage".

For more background history on the Silver Surfer, we have several comics that either cameo or feature him in our eBay Store at:    our eBay Store

or in our eBay ProStore at:     our eBay ProStore   just type in Silver Surfer in the 'search' box.

The question has been asked before... "Will Whirligigs fly in the fall and winter?"

My dad, who is a master craftsman of whirlygigs says that if you are on the East Coast, it would probably be best if you brought your whirlibird in during the winter if your area is prone to high winds and storms.

His models are made with quality materials but will last longer if brought in during rough weather.

He gets a lot of orders during the holidays since they make great gifts for people with front or back yards, and in the springtime you can see flocks of whirleygigs flying in neighbors yards!

(If you don't have one yet for yourself, there are 89 models currently featured in the Whirlibirds eBay Store...just click on the Seagull(s) below to view them !)

Right now we have a Fantastic Four comic book featuring the Silver Surfer,  with a grade of 7.0, who is the main opponent in the upcoming Fantastic Four movie due out next year.

The item number is: 140038394854

For more CGC graded comics that we have listed either in core listings format or in our eBay Store, just
click here