Mississippi Mudcats's Bio
Hi, welcome to our homepage. I started this collection of CGC graded comics over 20 years ago and now share it with my 20-something son; however, my earliest comic collecting memories date back much further to buying copies of Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four off the comic racks at one of the drugstores on the Square in Oxford, Mississippi where I grew up. I am not sure what my first comic was, but I do recall starting after the earliest issues of Fantastic Four and ASM hit the newsstands. Those early issues before I started collecting always held a special mystique for me.
I was hooked on comics almost immediately and can remember scouring the comic racks as a very little boy on the day of the month that the books hit the racks and the excitement I experienced over discovering new issues.
If only I had been smart enough back then to buy multiple copies, assuming my parents would have given me enough dimes, and store them somewhere safe, how different my life might be today LOL. But instead, I eagerly read them over and over and stamped my name on the cover of many of my books to make sure my little brother didn’t take them. And I am embarrassed to admit that there was a kid in town who was also a big Marvel nut and we, my brother and I, sold some issues to him for $5 each, thinking he was a real nut for paying so much over face: live and learn LOL.
I still have a number of those old books, they might now grade about a 2.0 or 3.0 at best. The myth that any old book is valuable, regardless of condition, is one shared by most of the non-collecting public, but we all know here how wrong that presumption is, condition is everything.
My goal as a little kid was naturally to be a costumed superhero-or villain, it was the powers, not the crusade that fascinated me back then. It was, of course, a different age, as we had no computers, mobile phones or video games. Who knows what the future will hold when all the collectors like myself who were born in the SA are gone?
Fast forward a few decades and we (my son and I) are still buying comics. In fact, nothing much has changed for me since we primarily collect Marvel and DC Silver-Age superhero titles, the same books I read so vociferously as a kid. But there are substantial gaps in my collecting history, as by the Bronze Age, I had become distracted by girls. And, unfortunately, for the many years that I practiced law in NYC, DC and London, I did not actively collect comics. So I missed those days where other collectors bought entire titles of pedigree collections in the raw. During that period, while working like a demon, I became somewhat obsessed with 18th Century furniture and 19th century Oriental rugs, both of which I still enjoy, but no longer have space for any more acquisitions. I am also an audio/video nut and collected thousands of CDs, DVDs,DVD-As, SACDs, and laser discs before streaming existed. Fortunately, classic rock music and movies are two other passions my son and I share and we both play multiple instruments, although he does so far better than I.
It was only with the emergence of the internet that my passion for collecting comics reignited. I started this CGC collection when my son was a very young child focusing on nine Marvel titles (ASM, Avengers, Daredevil, Fantastic Four, Journey Into Mystery, Strange Tales, Tales of Suspense, Tales to Astonish, and X-Men) and three DC titles (Flash, Green Lantern and JLA), all of which I read as a kid growing up. Through the years, we have added more and more Marvel and DC titles, including a couple of Marvel Westerns. But our primary collecting focus has always remained Silver Age books, as we simply lack the resources to compete in the more expensive Golden Age realm. And original art, forget about it, we are far too late to that party. To quote Clint Eastwood, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” In my case, I have been fortunate enough in life to earn enough money to indulge my passions for travel and collecting, but those Golden Age and original art guys live in either another dimension of sight and sound or a galaxy far far away from mine LOL.
Initially, when I started back collecting I bought both raw and graded books. At that time, there were slews of ungraded books represented as 9.6/9.8s for sale on the market. I can still remember my son and I standing in line one year at DragonCon to have Stan Lee sign some of our books, which had been represented on E-Bay to be 9.8s. Unfortunately, when we got them back from CGC we discovered they were either restored or that they graded out no higher than 8.5s. Needless to say, I pretty much stopped buying raw books on the spot; however, we still have file drawers full of raw books from my childhood and those early years when we were still learning the collecting ropes.
For many years we had stacks and stacks of books in my audio/video room, which slowly migrated to CGC boxes in the closets. As I am sure is the case with many other collectors, we also did not start out buying highest graded examples. During the early years we had lots of 6.0s, 7.0s and 8.0s in our collection: 6.0 being our first collecting bar. Our first purge was around 2012 when, with a few exceptions, we sent all our books below 9.0 to auction. I used the advance we received on those books to basically buy three books we still own, an ASM #1 9.4, a JIM #83 9.2, and a TTA #35 9.6. It certainly made the number of books we had at the time much more manageable and I am quite certain that those three books have fared much better from a value perspective than the 100s of lower graded books we sold.
Our second purge occurred a few years later when, again with a few exceptions, we sent all our books graded below 9.4 to auction. Unlike the first purge, we did that later one on a title by title basis. But once again the proceeds went to buying fewer higher graded books. Our whole comic collecting journey has been about constantly upgrading the collection, in no year have we ever sold more books in dollar terms than we have bought. But if CGC ever starts screening 9.8s for upgrades to 9.9s, I’m done, that’s a bridge too far for me.
Although we have never replaced all of the books we sold with higher graded copies, the number of books in our collection has kept rising through the years as we have expanded the number of titles we collect. Collecting wise, we seem to be some of the only registry members who collect both DC and Marvel titles. Obviously, the majority of collectors today covet Marvels, especially in the Silver Age, and I was most definitely a Marvel nut as a kid. There’s no question the Marvel stories were better written and intended for a more mature market, at least in my mind, and the movies have clearly been better produced and far more successful. However, from a collector’s standpoint, DC offers earlier titles with far more single highest graded one of a kind books to collect. Moreover, they have always been far more affordable than their Marvel counterparts.
Our Collection: When I first discovered the registry and decided to register our books, I adopted the registry handle of Wallstreetrebel, as I had been a Southerner practicing law in NYC. Also, it was and still is my E-Bay handle. But since I no longer live in NYC, it had become rather dated. Mississippi Mudcats, often shortened to Mudcats, was both a softball team on which I once played and the long-time name of fantasy baseball and basketball teams in NYC, which I owned with a good friend, Rich Catalano, in the Sherman & Sterling lawyers league.
We generally don’t collect copies of specific key books, but instead focus on completing runs of books within a title. If asked as to our favorite titles, I guess we would both say either Spidey or Fantastic Four. Even after all these years, I still go back and forth between those two, although the Journey Into Mystery title is another personal favorite. We are also big fans of three DC titles: Flash, GL and JLA. All of our collections in those titles are complete through issue #100 (Issue #89 in the case of GL) or the end of the titles.
I should note that, while we have long been the leader in the clubhouse in terms of overall registry points since Doug Schmell sold his books in 2012, we fully realize that we hold that distinction only because some of the real heavy hitters in comic collecting have never registered their collections here, like the legendary Tom Brulato. We are under no delusion that ours is the best comic book collection in the world.
Our Collecting Goals: In truth, we currently collect too many titles and finishing all the sets above is certainly beyond our means financially. Collecting so many titles does, however, always give us books to target and allows us to be a little more disciplined buyers, as if we miss one book, there is always something else. Nevertheless, eventually we may crash some of our sets to raise funds to finish others or upgrade the restored or qualified books in our collection.
My son and I often speak about which titles to sell, problem is, we seem to never agree on which ones to jettison, it’s almost a Sophie’s Choice. One thing we hopefully agree about is our need to become more focused, we simply cannot afford to buy everything. So for now, we are concentrating on filling empty slots in priority collections and hoping to win the lottery.
Generally speaking, we try to focus on books that rank first or second in the census. While the number is constantly moving up or down, often to our great dismay when a long coveted book for which we sacrificed financially is bested, as of June 2024 we owned over 460 unrestored universal label books that are single highest graded in the census.
Our Thoughts on the Registry: One thing I wish CGC would do with respect to the registry is come up with separate Golden and Silver Age era sets for those titles that ran continuously through the two periods, such as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman and related titles like Detective Comics and World’s Finest. CGC does break up Batman and Detective by 100-issue sets, but those sets do not align perfectly with the Golden or Silver Ages; while with Wonder Woman and Superman, they have made no effort at all to establish separate Silver Age sets . The same comment may be appropriate with respect to Action and Adventure Comics, but I don’t collect either title and cannot speak with any experience there.
As to whether to register books or not, we fully recognize that there are differing opinions out there among collectors as to whether or not to register a collection. There is a chain of thought that doing so just makes finishing a collection more expensive, as it motivates other collectors or dealers to overcharge or bid you up if they know which books you need. I can see the logic there and have gone back and forth, some years obscuring our collections and at other times making them public.
There are also privacy issues, which undoubtedly keep some collectors off the registry. While I appreciate being contacted by new collectors, you do attract some real jerks when you register your collections and make them public-at least that has been our experience.
For now, we have decided to adopt a middle ground and leave our collections registered, but obscured. However, if CGC ever makes the registry awards meaningful again and not some bizarre participation deal that nobody understands, even the winners LOL, we might make public some sets for the competition.
Let’s Make a Deal: We much prefer private deals to auction buys or sales because of predictability. When one is operating on any semblance of a budget, which we always seem to be, it’s much easier when you know what you are paying or receiving upfront. I have especially soured on sending books to auction for reasons I am happy to discuss if you have a couple of days LOL (although we sometimes still do it when we have to pay for purchases).
We have done numerous deals with other registry members through the years, as both a buyer and seller, and have never encountered any problems. If you are interested in selling any high grade examples of books we collect, drop us a line. Similarly, if you are looking for any books we collect, we may have duplicates available, particularly with DCs. If you reach out, we will try to get back quickly. And even if there is no current match, we always enjoy talking comics with other passionate collectors.
Happy collecting to all!