Set Description:
It all started in July of 2015. I went into my local game store just to check it out. I had always been a video games and board game nerd, little did I know I was about to step into the world of comic books. Rick and Morty #1 caught my eye as I had just watched the first season premiere on TV the previous year. I even started a pull for this title. I also picked up a copy of Adventure Time #42 because I liked the cover and it’s also a good show. These were the first two comics I ever bought at age 27. Fast forward nearly three years.
I was randomly on eBay and I remembered I had a copy of Rick and Morty #1 in my dresser. I happened to look it up and it was selling for $50 loose and like $500 for a CGC 9.8 graded copy. How did my $4 comic become worth $50? Also, what the heck is comic book grading? I decided to go back to the comic shop. They could submit the book for me and they would let me know when it got back. So that’s what I did. I sent my book in and it came back as a CGC 9.6 cert #1488336022, it’s not perfect because I read it a few times. Even though it's only a 9.6, I will never get rid of this book, more on that later. I was pretty happy. My $4 investment was now worth like $250. I still didn’t understand it, but I decided to roll with it.
Needless to say, I was hooked. I had #1-#16 from my pull at the store. However, #1 was seemingly where the money was at. I convinced myself that I needed to spend all of my excess money (which wasn’t very much) on buying Rick and Morty comics from eBay. I wanted as many #1’s as I could get. I wanted every variant, the reprints, the side stories, the one-shots, the double issue, the treasury editions, the special editions, the oni exclusives, the mini comic that came in the season one blu-ray. I wanted it all!
In 2018 my goal was to collect everything. I tried to source a decent list of all the books and https://ram.bymachin.es/ did a decent job. I ended up just making a google sheet and checking them off as I got them.
In May of 2019, I got my own CGC account and started submitting some of my books. The first submission was 19 books with a quick press. Five #1’s, one #2, two #3’s, two #4’s, two #5’s, #1 and #2 3rd print, and a #3 variant. Not sure why these were the books I chose. Probably just what I had laying around. The #1 in 9.8 eluded me. It would continue to elude me for years, more on that later. I sent 25 more books in 2019. Some nice #1 variants and some other cool stuff, too. Including two of each #50 Colas variants that I bought directly from the artist Julieta Colas. Super cool of her to sell them to me. She was living in Japan at the time and I just randomly hit her up and asked if she had a couple extra. I bought them from eBay but the store I bought them from canceled my order and re-listed them to make more money. Pretty frustrating but luckily Julieta came through and helped me out. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the best way to ship comics and they were shipped loose to me with no bags and no boards. They surprisingly graded 9.6. I would later upgrade these to 9.8’s with a pricey eBay purchase.
I continued collecting everything until late 2019 early 2020 when something major happened. The ongoing series was coming to an end. This marked the end of the era I cared about and started down a path that I didn’t agree with. Let me start by saying I was not a big fan of the variant craze seen around Rick and Morty issues #35-#42, #44, #48 and some others here and there. #50 was fine because that’s a milestone issue. The occasional sketch variant from a convention, also perfectly fine. Seven variants on issue #41, two of which are sketch variants. Stupid. Absolutely ridiculous. Some of you familiar with the mini series and one-shots may already see where I’m going with this. By 2020 we had the Rick and Morty Presents one-shots going strong with The Vindicators, Krombopulous Michael, Sleepy Gary, Pickle Rick, Jerry, Mr. Meeseeks, The Flesh Curtains, Unity, The Council of Ricks, Birdperson, and Jaguar, with seemingly no end in sight. Not to mention the four and five issue miniseries Lil’ Poopy, Pocket Like you Stole It, and D&D. All of the aforementioned one-shots had three to nine variants. The #1’s from the miniseries also had insane amounts of variants. Just look at Rick and Morty Vs. Dungeons and Dragons #1, it has twenty-three variants! These variants often had to be sourced from multiple places. Conventions, store exclusives, direct from the Oni Press website. It was getting a little out of control.
So, the ongoing series was coming to a close. Oni Press still had the mini series and one-shots announced. So it seemed like they would just stop the ongoing series and continue with the bombardment of one-shots and mini series along with their many variants. The onslaught of variants had worn me down. I made the decision to ignore the mini-series and one-shots and just collect the now dead ongoing series and its variants.
Which brings us to the CGC registry. I discovered the registry in April of 2020. I don’t really know how I stumbled upon it, probably just from browsing around the website. Anyways, I added what little books I had and noticed that this set was missing a ton of books. That led me to the forums and learning how to ask for slots to be added to a set. I’m proud to say that I helped build this set by adding 34 slots in my first post. I was also the one that recommended that the miniseries and one-shots be broken out into their own separate list. I created that post and got the second list started strong with 28 slots. As I stated earlier, I don’t care much for those books so I have not been maintaining my watch over it in the same way I watch this set. However, I am glad that someone is collecting it. Godspeed to you!
More details coming soon…
|