Steve Geppi

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. 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." ==Diamond Comic Distributors==

Fore-runners After Phil Seuling established the direct market c.1972, he maintained a virtual (if ill-run) monopoly on comics distribution until a lawsuit brought by New Media/Irjax in 1978. Irjax, "a paper distribution company formed by Hal Schuster... his father, Irwin, and his brother, Jack" achieved "a sizeable chunk of the direct-distribution market," Plant had, since 1970, been selling underground comics, a field which Geppi and fellow-distributor Buddy Saunders had tended to steer clear of. in 1988 "and went national" Diamond reacted by outbidding Capital City for exclusive deals with Marvel's main rivals DC Comics, as well as Dark Horse and Image. Capital City's response saw it sign exclusive deals with Kitchen Sink Press and Viz Comics, but a year later faced the choice between bankruptcy and selling up. Diamond bought Capital City in 1996, assuming near-control of the comics distribution system. Affiliations Diamond Comic Distribution, in addition to having cornered the American comics distribution market, also includes a number of subsidiary and affiliated companies. UK and European comics distribution is served by Diamond UK, based in London, England. Alliance Game Distributors, Inc. distributes Role-playing games, "Collectible Card Games, Miniature Games, Anime, Board Games," and other periphery elements for gamers. Alliance also publishes Game Trade Magazine. In 2002, Diamond consolidated its book trade into Diamond Book Distributors, marketing comics-related books and trade paperbacks to bookstores including "Barnes & Noble, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, WaldenBooks, Amazon.com [and] Borders. Publications Diamond's monthly comics retail catalog, Previews, has been produced by Diamond for over twenty years for store owners to order products from. It is additionally available for sale to customers to facilitate personal orders. Comics publishers vie for space within the publication's pages, with Dark Horse Comics, DC Comics, IDW Publishing, and Image Comics (four of the top five publishers) taking precedence. Marvel Comics has its own separate section of Previews available separately, for contractual reasons. Diamond also publishes (through Gemstone and Diamond International Galleries) a weekly e-newsletter dealing with collectibles, called Scoop. ==Diamond International Galleries==

In 1995, Geppi "opened Diamond International Galleries," a showplace for comics and collectibles, part of Geppi's attempts to "see... collectibles attain serious respect." In May 2018, Geppi announced that Geppi Entertainment Museum would be closing after Sunday, June 3, 2018. Much of the material was donated to the United States Library of Congress. ==Publishing==

In 1994, Geppi purchased Baltimore magazine, "a 50,000 circulation monthly and one of the nation's oldest regional publications." E. Gerber Products, LLC is a Diamond-affiliated company started by Gerber in 1977 which sells Mylar bags as well as "acid-free boxes and acid-free backing boards" for comics collectors to store their collection in. In 1993, Geppi bought Russ Cochran Publishing. In 2006, Gemstone began producing a more durable and luxurious series of hardback reprint collections; the EC Archives – similar to the DC Archives and Marvel Masterworks volumes – which reprint in full-color hardback ('archival') format sequential compilations of the EC titles. Designed by art director/designer Michael Kronenberg, a number of volumes have been released, with the entirety of the "New Trend" and "New Direction" planned for eventual release. These EC Archives volumes have drawn praise for their quality, and feature introductions by such notable EC fans as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante and Paul Levitz, et al. Disney comics In December 2002, it was announced that "Gemstone Publishing had signed the license to publishing Disney comics in North America," with ex-Gladstone Publishing editor-in-chief John Clark joining Gemstone in the same position over its Disney line. Launched with a title for Free Comic Book Day 2003, the line started soon after with ''Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge, both described by Clark as "monthly 64-page prestige-format books at $6.95, which is the same price they were when last produced, in 1998." Publication of the Price Guide'' was taken over by Gemstone in 1998, Gemstone took over publication, and the twenty-eighth edition to the present have been (co-)published by Geppi's Gemstone publications. The guides 39th edition was published by Gemstone Publishing in 2009. Overstreet also produced a variety of smaller publications updating his yearly guides on a to-monthly schedule. The most recent of these – ''Overstreet's Comic Price Review'' – began publication from Gemstone in July 2003, and was a monthly publication designed to update the yearly price guide more regularly, as well as provide articles, analysis and various lists of comics prices. Gemstone published more than a hundred issues of the magazine Comic Book Marketplace, a monthly magazine for comics fans focusing heavily on the Golden and Silver ages, while more popular magazines (such as Wizard) skew more recent in focus. Future In early 2009, the future of Gemstone Publishing was unclear, after reports of unpaid printing bills, particularly from the EC Archives. In April, Geppi responded to the uncertainty, noting that while there had been "a reduction in staff at Gemstone," such moves did "not [signal] the end of Gemstone Publishing." Geppi hinted at "new developments" for the Overstreet Price Guide in 2010, and stated that while "no final decision has been made regarding The EC Archives or our comic books featuring Disney's standard characters... it seems certain that both lines will continue in some form." ==Other work==

In February 1993, he was profiled for "a local business magazine," and the article ultimately caught the attention of Ernst & Young. Geppi was thus awarded the regional 'Entrepreneur of the Year' award for 1993. Celebrating his win at the Camden Club, Geppi was introduced to "prominent local attorney" Peter Angelos, who had also "[grown] up in one of Baltimore's ethnic neighborhoods," and the two had mutual friends. Baseball Having been an "avid baseball fan, who as a youngster dreamed of playing professional ball," "[d]uring Diamond’s period of early growth, Geppi... was quoted as saying he dreamed of owning his hometown Baltimore Orioles." In 1993, Angelos was "assembling a group" to do just that, and thus helped Geppi "[realize] his lifelong dream," when Geppi joined the group. The group "paid $173 million for the team," and Geppi was "the third-largest investor" behind Angelos and novelist Tom Clancy. Geppi "attends almost every Orioles' home game." Charity work As well as his business interests, Geppi holds – or has held – positions on the board of "a number of local charitable organizations." Among them are "[the] Babe Ruth Museum, Baltimore Reads, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Grant-A-Wish Foundation, House with a Heart, International Museum of Cartoon Art, National Aquarium in Baltimore, Pathfinders, Port Discovery – The Children's Museum, U.S.S. Constellation Foundation, United Way of Central Maryland and the University of Maryland, College Park Foundation." ==Personal life==

In 1998 Geppi was described in Businessweek as having been the "[c]ompanion of Mindy Stout for eight years, with [at the time] one daughter." Geppi also has a son with Mindy. In addition, Geppi has "four children from a previous marriage and [in 1998] two grandchildren." ==See also==