By Brad Bradley
This year the third week of June brought about the comic convention known as Wizard World Philadelphia, located as usual in the beautiful Pennsylvania Convention Center. CGC was in attendance as you would expect, but in addition to our booth being manned by our helpful customer service reps who were there to answer people's questions and help them submit their comic books, there was also the added bonus of many of the CGC graders being at the show to provide on-site grading. Books that people submitted on Friday and Saturday were guaranteed to be graded, encapsulated, and ready for the submitter by the time the show was over Sunday. A lot of popular modern comics had healthy numbers submitted like New Mutants #98, Amazing Spider-Man #300 and newcomers Batman & Robin #1 and Chew #1. What made this show different from last years, though, was the offering of on-site grading for vintage comics as well! Some of the great historic comics that got submitted were Action Comics #7 (2 copies), 10, 12 and 13, Captain America Comics #1 (2 copies), Superman #1, Batman #1, Archie Comics #1 and several copies of Amazing Fantasy #15! By the time the show closed early Sunday evening, more than 1,800 comic books had been graded and encapsulated, with an additional 1,500 comics having been submitted for CGC to take back to our headquarters.
If you didn't bring any comics with you to submit, it wouldn't have been hard to find some good ones at one of the many other booths set up at the show. Comic dealers from all over the country were in attendance including Harley Yee, Comic Link, Bedrock, and Graham Cracker Comics. So many different genres of comics were represented, from Golden Age to Modern and everything in-between, a lot of sales were made.
Helping to draw people in, this year the show featured such media celebrities as Ray Park, Erin Gray, Marina Sirtis and Yancy Butler. With so many TV shows and movies being represented like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, The Incredible Hulk, Witchblade & Star Trek, it was the perfect time to buy a comic book tie-in and get it signed by the stars. And if you arranged for the signature to be witnessed by a CGC witness or employee, it was eligible to be submitted for CGC's prestigious Signature Series. This also applied to comics signed by any of the many comic book creators on hand like Garth Ennis, Steve Dillon, Jim Calafiore, Amanda Conner, J.G. Jones and Greg Horn. By the time the show ended there were a great many Signature Series books featuring not only autographs, but some some amazing sketches as well!
If you missed your chance to get your books graded on-site, don't despair, because since the show was so successful, CGC will be offering on-site grading at Wizard World Chicago in August. And yes, that will include vintage comics as well! But as for Philadelphia, CGC would like to thank the folks at Wizard, the convention center staff, the many dealers, our hard-working witnesses, and course all of our customers for making this show so successful.
For more information visit: CGC.
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