Hey all-
I’ve done a couple of these in the past but it’s been awhile. I’ll try not to be too wordy but you know me.
I rarely set up/sell (typically only once a year) but a friend decided he didn’t have it in him and offered up his booth for free for what I consider a medium sized comic con here in the Midwest. Two days (Saturday and Sunday). Figured what the heck. I made the decision to rent a Uhaul van to make things easier on myself.
I tend to have my collection very organized from prior years. I simply add to it as the year goes by. I’m retired so I had plenty of time to go through boxes and double check prices, further organize etc. I also have an “add to con” box that any duplicates, hot books, etc go into.
Zero issues setting up. I have a wall my son built. All of my books have the blindside/title labels. I had all of the regular titles set up with labels, but any keys around the $20 and up mark I had in alphabetical order in separate BCW colored plastic bins. I was pretty proud of how everything looked and received numerous compliments about how nicely organized it was. Knowing exactly what books I had, and where to find them helped to generate sales as well.
The friend of mine still came to the con and socialized with me. He is a very big time collector and he brought some beautiful old graded Sensation Comics that he also lined the top of my wall with. He didn’t care if he sold them or not but it definitely attracted folks to the books just to eyeball them.
Observations
- Things seem to be getting back on track. There were quite a few comic vendors with a fairly diverse amount of offerings and for the most part, prices were pretty fair and dealers were working with buyers (myself included). I can’t say I saw many vendors with really big books like Hulk 181 etc, but again, this was a middle sized con. Worst case scenario a book would be right about or a bit higher than ebay and the seller would take a deal lower.
- Dan Mora is definitely hot. It was crazy as just as the show opened, another dealer (but a FUNKO dealer) came to my booth & asked for Dan Mora books. Holy Hell was he in luck (thanks so much to this forum and all of you). He bought $850 worth of different Dan Mora books as well as other Nightwing books. He then asked if I had anymore I could bring the next day as well as any Zatanna books. He spent another $250 the next day on books I dug out at home. Needless to say my Mora inventory is gone lol. He bought four of those pumpkin spice covers among all the rest.
- Absolute Batman is certainly hot but I was surprised that people did more gazing then buying. I’m certainly not saying I didn’t sell any, but I had a ton and figured I’d be cleaned out. My prices were very low too. In the end I did just fine though on them (more on AB below). I actually sold more later printings at the lower cost then what I did the pricier first printings.
- I brought 12 short boxes of $1 books and it was decent stuff. I sold about two boxes the first day, and reduced them to .50 on Sunday and people bought the heck out of the. I think four boxes gone on Sunday. Good riddance to be honest.
- I sold lots and lots of good books in the range of $20-100 but very little over $100. Which is great for me because that is the type of inventory I carry.
- I can’t think of but two offers I did not accept all weekend. $100 for a AB #1 that I already priced pretty darn low at $200 imo, and a Vengeance of Bane #1 NM for $50. Other than those, if it was even in the ballpark of fair I took the money.
- I accepted cash, paypal, Cashap, and Zelle. Cash was #1, Cashap #2, Paypal #3 and no Zelle.
- A vast majority of my books are in mylite 2 and full backing boards. I think this helped sales. I also use a nice label fun and add labels with artists, first prints, notes etc. Again, I have a great deal of time and I was complimented on this practice.
- I didn’t bring a single graded book. Not worth my time imo. Maybe they would have sold, who knows, but I didn’t see all that many graded books moving. Like we’ve all seen before, I can’t believe some of the books people grade. It’s just absurd, boxes of graded books that will never sell and had no business being graded in the first place.
- It was a very diverse crowd and with that, a great number of different books sold. Folks with their lists and phones doing their thing. Quite a few buyers who bought, and came back to me for more.
- Quite a few buyers who straight up told me that they were buying inventory for their Whatnot shows and felt they could make great money off the books they were buying from me. More power to them.
- I had a fairly significant amount of “Spawn” buyers and interestingly enough many of them were to younger kids/readers. Kids with their moms saying I want a Spawn comic. Venom was also like this. More moms and dads then I recall that let their kiddos pick out a spawn or venom comic.
Books I wish I had more of/need to focus on for the future or surprises
- Hellboy (so many requests and have little to nothing).
- Young Justice (as above)
- Magik (I had quite a healthy amount but man did Magik sell, especially to females)
- Sonic (I had half a short box of these both IDW and archie and now have none lol)
- Red Hood
- Jeff the Landshark (I had enough of these but they sold really well).
- Ben 10-I mean there really isn’t much to offer yet, but it was really hot. I sold what I had. People with the “I remember that” and buying
I had an absolute blast visiting with people, asking/learning about stuff I’m clueless on from the younger generation, helping people find comics they loved. Just so much fun.
So overall on the weekend, after my expenses (which were really only gas and the U-haul) I made $3900. I think that is pretty darned outstanding.
Now the flip side, I found sooooo many darn comics I wanted. This show had a couple of dealers with comics that I just have never found before. One guy had an entire box of IDW GI JOE including Royle variants. Another had a box with a ton of Darywn Cooke & J.Scott Cambpell books. The Demon#1 is a beautiful copy and that isn’t easy to find in grade. I’ve never seen the Adventures of Sly cooper outside of online. I bought a large amount of comics but the prices were great, offers were accepted etc. I was a happy fellow.
One last point and a highlight of the show for me. So while some of the Absolute Batman books weren’t all selling as much as I wanted (again, still good enough). I had some folks asking about trade offers for them. AB was definitely super hot and quite a few fans talked about how they needed/wanted to get the run but it was too costly so they were sort of really eager to trade.
So, the picture below with the Astounding Wolfman books–I traded a AB #1 first print for that Cho Variant and a AB annual #1 for the invincible/wolf man.
That Frank Cho variant #18 book is an absolute ghost of a book. Crazy rare. To know I traded for those two books with books I bought for cover price is the best.
Ok, thanks for reading all of this.
