Stephen A. Geppi (born January 24, 1950) is an American comic book distributor, publisher and former comic store owner. Having established an early chain of comic shops in Baltimore in the mid-late 1970s, he is best known for his distributing business. Geppi founded Diamond Comic Distributors, the largest comic direct distribution service in 1982, and has served as the company's head to the present. Diamond Distribution became the successor to direct market pioneer Phil Seuling's distribution dream when Geppi took over New Media/Irjax's warehouses in 1982. He further bought out early-distributor Bud Plant in 1988, and main rival Capital City in 1996 to assume a near-monopoly on comics distribution, including exclusivity deals with the major comic book publishers.
Geppi became part owner of the Baltimore Orioles in 1993, and in 1994 purchased Baltimore magazine. He is president and publisher of Gemstone Publishing Inc., through which he publishes Russ Cochran's EC Comics reprints, Disney comics and Blue Book price guide The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide.
In 1995, he founded Diamond International Galleries, which acquired Hake's Americana & Collectibles auction house (2004), and in 2005, Pennsylvania-based Morphy Auctions. In 2006, Geppi founded Geppi's Entertainment Museum in Baltimore.
Biography
Early life and career
Steve Geppi was born on January 24, 1950, in Little Italy, Baltimore and completed the 8th grade before leaving school. Geppi's "first job was handling the comics for a local store," where the nine-year-old avidly read comics including "his favorite Archie comics" and others. Ever the entrepreneur, Geppi "asked to be paid in comics [because]... [h]e could sell them off to other kids and make a better buck." By 1960, Geppi was "doing tax returns for his neighbors," and later also "handled football pools."
Having left school to support his mother, between 1964 and 1969, he undertook a number of "manual-labor jobs," while "dodging truant officers." He "enrolled in vocational school," but did not feel challenged – later recalling that "I had missed 45 days at the half, and I was on the honor roll" – and again dropped out. Later he worked for Lester White's Detecto Electronics "install[ing] burglar alarms and doorbells," before joining the U.S. Postal Service as a letter carrier. Starting aged 19 with "the crap jobs," (loading trucks and substituting for other carriers), Geppi was "starting a family... [and] needed... solid, steady work, something with a future." A "few years" after taking the carrier exam, he was assigned a flat "route in suburban Maryland," while "[t]he Postal Service kept raising salaries [and] Geppi's pay tripled in five years," allowing him to move "his growing family out to the suburbs." In the early seventies Geppi was a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses and conducted many free home bible studies. Whether or not he is still affiliated with this organization is not known.
Geppi and family vacationed every summer in Wildwood, New Jersey. In the summer of 1972, his nephew (Georgie Kues) was "reading an old Batman comic book" in the rain, and Geppi found that "reading that Batman brought [back his childhood memories of comics]... He still loved comics [and] figured there were a lot of guys who would feel the same way." Buying "a batch of old comics from a woman on his mail route," he was soon "spending weekends at comic shows, buying and trading with other fans." After "setting up at comic book conventions as a part-time dealer," he ultimately realised that he could make more money that way than at his job with the postal services.
Career in comics
In 1974, Geppi announced his intention to quit his job and "open a comic book store." Geppi recalls that his colleagues "all laughed their heads off," while The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles quoted him as saying:
Already "making more money with the comics than as a mailman," he opened his first Geppi's Comic World comic store "in a hole under a TV repair shop" in Baltimore, and – while personally specialising in "older, collectible comics," – "began carrying new comics, chiefly as a means of attracting regular customers to the store each week." Geppi "stocked his store with collections he found through the classifieds, traveling the countryside in his beat-up blue Ford van." One of "the first specialty comic retailers in Maryland," Geppi built his business as the comics industry grew. Geppi recalls