A Reprieve

Big news on the warehouse front. Last week I signed a lease for one more year at our warehouse location, so same warehouse location without the actual warehouse. What we get to keep are the two big upstairs offices and one small room on the main floor, what we loose is the big warehouse space and the almost as big room adjacent to the warehouse space. We’ll have about 40% of the space we’ve had up to now. We simply ran out of room at the new storage facility I had found (free storage!) and my plans to move the ICE Collectibles operations back into Big B Comics on Upper James in Hamilton just can’t happen quite yet as the area we were going to use for the new ICE offices will now be storage of what is left in the warehouse. This development will still reduce some costs from November 1st on, we’ll be able to operate the ICE offices at about half the current cost, so that’s at least a win. This is a big stress relief as I was not sure if the move into the shop could have happened given all the space constraints. This is the part where I’m supposed to realize that selling the stuff is top priority, this reprieve will give me an added year to thin out what will be a clogged Upper James basement and make enough room to eventually complete the move. Again, a plan that looks good on paper. We’ll see.

OK lets have a look at what I found in the “going to the weekly icecollectibles eBay auction” pile. I’ve always loved Herb Trimpe’s cover to Incredible Hulk #122 with its great Hulk vs Thing Battle cover. There was a little sticky note on the bag that said this was the 2nd Hulk vs Thing battle, I don’t have the time to fact check this but it is something that I was unaware of. Battle Covers have always been very collectible and this great battle cover is our Cover of the Week.

Blackhawk #61, from way back in 1947, gives us our Splash Page of the Week. Drawn by Chuck Ciudera this splash page begs the question, what was wrong with the girls back then? Girls always seemed to need saving back in the Golden and Silver Age of comics, today they all seem to kick butt. Just another example of comics mirroring and time capsuling the social norms of the day.

We had a busy icecollectibles weekly eBay auction close last night, I was following the Action Comics #91 in CGC 7.0, there hasn’t been a CGC 7.0 recorded sale since 2015 but a 6.5 did sell for $820 back in 2023 and a 7.5 got $1000 back in 2020. Quality Golden Age has been one of the bright spots in an otherwise tough marketplace, I’ve seen some strong results in quality GA recently and our copy closing at $1025 is more proof of that.