Mississippi Mudcats's Bio
Welcome to our Homepage!
It has been a couple of years since we’ve had a bio, but we previously had a very long one detailing our history collecting comics and various collections. Suffice to say, my son and I love comics and have been collecting CGC books together for over 20 years. Both of us were born in Mississippi, hence the name, which was also the name of a baseball and basketball fantasy team I had in a NY attorney league for a couple of decades. My son is a musician and now lives in NYC, while I have lived in NY, DC, London, Atlanta and Houston, in addition to Oxford MS, where I grew up and am now retired.
We collect primarily Silver Age Marvel and DC titles, which were what I grew up reading. As collectors, we generally focus on putting together complete runs rather than just high-grade keys or WP 9.8s. I also collect antique English and American furniture, antique Persian and Turkish rugs and signed first edition books, although I have pretty much run out of room for any more acquisitions in those collections, hence my current collecting focus is now primarily comics. I am also a travel nut, having spent two months trekking in China, Tibet, Thailand, Bhutan and Nepal in 2025, and a sports fanatic, primarily college and anything where Ole Miss is competitive.
When I started back collecting Silver Age comics back around 2000, my focus was on just 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. Those were the primary titles I collected as a kid, although my interest in comic collecting waned in the late 1960s and 1970s as I discovered girls LOL.
Generally speaking, we targeted just the first 100 issues of the longer runs, but modified some of those parameters after discovering the registry. We initially started out buying both raw and graded books in middle grades (6.0-9.0), which were relatively easy to find and not that expensive. After having pretty poor luck with our raw acquisitions, as many turned out to be restored or not the advertised grade, we began focusing almost entirely on CGC graded books.
By the early 2010s, we had completed runs in most of the original 12 titles we started out collecting and got stuck in an endless loop of upgrades for a few years, which proved to be both frustrating and expensive. So we reached an inflection point of what to do with all these books, as much of the joy I derived from comic collecting was finding new books, not going from a 9.2 to a 9.4 or 9.6 to a 9.8 in the same issue.
While our first response was to start lengthening our sets into the Bronze Age, in the later 2010s, we shifted to adding new titles to our collection. First there was Wonder Woman, Metal Men, and Spectre, then Atom, Aquaman, Hawkman and Doom Patrol. In doing so, we found that we enjoyed much more the chase for new books rather than constantly pursuing upgrades. With the exception of Wonder Woman, which I seriously doubt anyone has ever completed from #1-#200, at least not at a high grade, all those collections are now complete as well. But despite our frustration with collecting Wonder Woman, we started dipping our toes into some of the other titles that started in the Golden Age, such as those from the Batman and Superman families, which I never really collected as a boy in the 1960s.
I found that, the more we collected, the greater appreciation I developed for many titles that I never collected as a kid or paid any attention to up to the mid-2010s. As a result, our collection has now extended to some Sci-Fi and even Western titles by Marvel and DC, although we have yet to complete sets in any of them.
The long and short of it is that our collection is kind of a mess, as it sprawls all over the place and we unfortunately lack the resources to finish all the sets we have started. And yet, there are still several genres in the comic world that we do not touch at all-and would need a much bigger house if we did LOL. Eventually, I imagine we will make some hard choices and sell books in certain titles to enable us to finish or upgrade others, but my son and I have so far failed to agree about what to sell, as he likes everything and would collect even more titles if we had the resources.
Currently, we have completed sets in 21 different titles, three of which have won best Silver Age set awards: Flash (#105-#350), Green Lantern (#1-#89) and Fantastic Four (#1-100). With a couple of qualifications, we rarely chase upgrades anymore in our completed sets, but are much more focused on finishing incomplete sets. Our goal is to finish sets in another ten titles, which vary from needing one or two books to being a little over 80% complete. We ideally try to set some minimum grade for acquisitions and primarily target books that are no worse than third highest graded examples in the census.
Let me just say here something that we repeated in our earlier bio. While we have long topped the registry since Doug Schmell sold his Marvel collection on Heritage in July 2012, we are under no illusion that ours is the best comic collection in existence, as most big collectors I know have never registered their books here. If every CGC book were registered, we probably would not make the top ten in registry points. Moreover, for monetary reasons, we have had to settle on four restored mega keys to finish four of our Marvel sets.
That being said, we do have a few unrestored books that we are very proud to own including:
ASM #1 9.4
Aquaman #1 9.8 (single highest)
Atom #1 9.8 (single highest)
Avengers #1 9.4
Daredevil #1 9.6
Detective #233 9.2 (single highest first Batwoman)
Flash #105 9.4 (highest graded)
Flash #110 9.8 (single highest first Kid Flash)
Flash #123 9.6 (single highest Flash of Two Worlds)
Green Lantern #1 9.6 (highest graded)
Journey Into Mystery #83 9.2
Journey Into Mystery #85 9.6 (highest graded first Loki)
JLA #1 9.6 (highest graded)
Metamorpho #1 9.8 (single highest)
Rip Hunter #1 9.4 (single highest)
Showcase #4 9.2
Showcase #9 9.2 (single highest first Lois Lane)
Showcase #27 9.6 (single highest first Sea Devils)
Showcase #34 9.6 (single highest first Atom)
Showcase #37 9.4 (single highest first Metal Men)
Strange Tales #101 9.6 (highest graded first Human Torch)
Strange Tales #110 9.6 (highest graded first Dr Strange)
Tales To Astonish #35 9.6 (single highest first Ant-Man in costume)
Tales To Astonish #49 9.8 (single highest first Giant Man)
Wonder Woman #98 9.6 (single highest first SA WW)
Yellow Claw #1 9.2 (single highest)
So it is not all bad despite our high grade restored keys. And while the number is constantly changing, we do own over 500 unrestored single highest graded books in our collection, about 80% of which are DCs.
Because we collect so many titles, we generally focus more on price and availability rather than any specific title. And although we have recently kept most of our sets obscured for a variety of reasons, we do periodically make some of our completed sets public and hope to someday exhibit all our books on some form of website.
While we do buy and sell books at auction, our preference is to do private deals whenever possible to avoid commissions and taxes. So if you are selling books in any titles we collect, we always enjoy the opportunity to see if any of your books are on our want list, which is rather lengthy.
We also always enjoy discussing comic collecting with other avid collectors and have made a number of long-term friends through collecting. So please feel free to reach out to us on the registry anytime. I may be out of the country, but if not, I’ll try to respond quickly.
Happy Collecting To All!
2026 Update: Over the last couple of years, I converted what was a seldom used gym over a three-car garage into a haven for our comic collection. We removed everything in the room with the exception of one flat-screen TV, and have constructed 14 cabinets out of birch and maple containing 138 glass-fronted drawers. Each drawer holds between 35-40 CGC graded books and allows us to display one book at the front of each drawer. We have also added about 15 1/4 scale statues of Marvel and DC heroes and villains, which decorate the area above the cabinets.
It was not an inexpensive endeavor and took a couple of years to build, but being able to quickly access and display on a rotational basis every book we own has really reinvigorated my passion for comic collecting. It sure as Hell beats a wall or closet of stacked CGC boxes or displaying them on library shelves and has brought back that wonderment I felt as a kid when I first started buying and reading comics. And now that we have the room, we have many people who visit me just to see the collection. Admittedly, they may start out thinking this guy is crazy for spending so much time and money on comics, but when they see them displayed in this manner, most seem to get it-even if they still think I’m a little crazy LOL. It was honestly the best money I ever spent on this hobby, because it magnified my appreciation for comics and inspired me to keep building the collection. Needless to say, I will never understand anyone who buys comics and keeps them in some vault, what’s the point of owning them if you never look at them? But hey, I guess I am a Dinosaur, after all, high-end art collectors keep million dollar paintings locked up in offshore vaults. The books have always been much more a shared passion between my son and I than an investment for us.
Not sure how to post this, but linked below is a picture of our comic room and collections:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:d1978454-3d71-43aa-988f-00fce0a901ce
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:d1978454-3d71-43aa-988f-00fce0a901ce
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