jbud73

I was at Wonder Con all three days for pretty much the entire time, spent almost all of this on the show floor in the comic dealers section buying and chatting with the dealers that were there.  While by no means a con report, other than the pic I took with Steve Borock I didn't take any pictures of the various set ups, but will try and log this into 3 sections:

Overall Convention Experience

It seemed like there were a variety of events and booths (the comic dealers were pretty much all in one area which was nice) this area was at the back of the convention hall if that's any indication of the primacy they enjoy as it pertains to ComicCon as a company these days.  There were A LOT of cosplay costumes, some very cool costumes as well and this seems to be very much on the rise from say 5-10 years ago even at major conventions. 

There were food trucks outside the venue and a seating area that allowed people to have a variety of food options and not be resigned to the dreaded comic con sodium hot dog, which was nice.  It seemed like they were prepared for the crowds, in terms of getting your badge and funneling through the check points, or it could have been that attendance was down this year, I have never been to Wonder Con in Anaheim so I don't have a frame of reference. I didn't attend a panel or anything outside of the comic books, I did stroll around artists alley where there were plenty of large flashy booths. Marv Wolfman was there and I got a chance to chat with him on Friday as there was really no one around, he was great, and I just said what a fan of his work I was and thanked him for writing all of the stories he produced from my youth and before that I had read as back issues.

The Dealer Perspective

In general and across the board I think the dealer rating I was vibing was a C+ to B- most of the dealers I talked to used the work "ok" to describe their sales, some indicated that Terry O'Neil's show a few weeks earlier was far better in terms of actual people buying books.  Though as always some dealers did quite well, I observed a significant 5 figure sale were a collector bought out a large portion of pretty pricey dealer bin stock in the span of 30 mins.  There were also a few high 4 figure books moved at the show though I didnt hear of a 5 figure book being moved.  I will say that, as always, how you present your books and what you bring (you need to bring a mix and carefully consider a few clientele bases here).  For example there was a local (non-national level) dealer there with a double booth, his bin books were all in old bags and boards, many not priced and pretty tattered set up.  Even when he discounted his BIN stock by 50% on Saturday afternoon his booth was never busy as far as I could see.  If you are at a show of the level of Wonder Con, you have to realize that you are there with larger national dealers, even if you don't have a booth set up with fancy banners and visual aids, you have to have a clean booth set up OR you better be bringing solid material to sell or risk getting little to no foot traffic.  There were not as many outside the CA area collectors there and VERY FEW international collectors went to this show, whether its the timing of the show, location or the decreased value of the Euro is hard to say, but I used to dub Wonder Con in SF, the United Nations of comic shows and I heard there were far more international collectors at Emerald City in Seattle last month.  A few larger dealers said that they would not be back next year, or have to consider their options and on the fence as to whether to do the show.

The main small dealer complaint was what a single booth came with (not even a table was what I heard on Thursday) Wonder Con quickly rectified this, but singles didn't get much in terms of table space or chairs.

The Collector Perspective

I wanted to end here as there are a few observations and I'll try to sub-categorize them.

• THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT.  I will not be going back to Wonder Con in Anaheim.  For the cost of the hotel, Con passes for three days and the air fare (San Francisco to Anaheim / John Wayne Airport) there are better Cons for your money (C2E2 and Emerald City easily come to mind).  SNA Airport is not cheap, even from SF and the alternative from LAX with a Uber is not much more appealing.  I can get to Seattle and Chicago for the same price.  The Marriott again was a bit pricey and I even got a corp deal through my company.  Anaheim Convention Center is right in Disney Land are so Food options for dinner are on the expensive side, its a popular tourist destination and the businesses jack prices up accordingly.  There were also almost no art dealers (Becchara was there, thats it) and most of the larger dealers were CA based, Harley was there and Graham Crackers but I ended up buying most of the books I bought from dealers I can buy from at smaller regional shows.  I had a really nice time at the show, but for your money, unless you are in the SoCal area, there are better shows to attend.
• THE DEALER COMIC PRICES   Most of the sticker prices were Pandemic level.  It seemed to me the dealers had priced their stock at those levels and forgot (accidentally / on purpose) to adjust their prices.  The market is DOWN, its not crashing but it is down, even SA Marvel Keys are down.  If you even have minor exposure in the back issue hobby you know this, GPA for 90% of books is a 45 degree angle on the down slope.  I had to seriously flip through books with blinders on to even select some items that I'd want to 'discuss'; there were smaller dealers as usual who had either priced accordingly or hadn't super bumped their books.  All slabs were priced at 2021 levels and I didnt see very many of them moving.  I'd venture the people buying slabs were there for that book, not really in the hobby on a weekly basis buying and didnt mind the cost.  They likely did a walk around the room and bought the lowest priced copy of the book they saw, problem is that copy was still likely a GPA record. I didn't pay sticker on 1 single book I bought.  The dealers were willing to deal in order to make sales, but a few booths I didnt even get to the stage of pulling a book as there were priced 50% or more over current FMV.
• As I mentioned previously, from a comic book perspective, this was not a national level show, from a comic art perspective, this wasn't a convention. Many dealers were conspicuous by their absence, chatting with some of the out of state dealers that did attend, they said that some of their peers decided to stay home, or go to C2E2 and Mega Con which are going on a week later, or to do a smaller local show.  Harley was out of there Friday night, his booth was up but he was gone.  Some of the other large dealers did not attend themselves, they just sent their booth and staff, which to my mind says that they knew this would not be a 'buying' show.  Dealers I talked to did not do a lot of buying at this show.  For full disclosure I spent about 2.5K at the show but was really really convincing myself to have to buy books; for comparison the last Emerald City con I spent around 6K and if I'm honest, my spend at a National Level show, where I don't have too many irons in the fire is about 5-7K.  I didn't feel any urgency to buy on Friday at this show, at the prices being asked I was sure that the books would be there Sunday and for 80% of them I was right.  There was no Friday frenzy as I've observed at other comic shows of this size.  No one was there with a big / new collection that was flying off the shelves on Friday, new books that were there, were very aggressively priced, this is not to say there weren't amazing books in the room, but they were at nose bleed levels, hard to pull the trigger when the $800 sticker has sold for 400 or less multiple times in 2023, even saving the tax doesn't get you to buying it, even if the dealer takes less you are still overpaying.
• ALWAYS LEAVE ON A HIGH NOTE.  As I said, I did manage to buy some great books off of great comic dealers I just didn't feel that 'financially' it was worth it to attend the show.  What I did enjoy was the atmosphere of being around comic people. I had dinner and drinks with the guys from Comic Link and we shared a lot of great stories and laughs.  Seeing my old friend Steve Borock (who was one of the founders at CGC) and being around some other collectors and chatting about the hobby was really great.  My con highlight was on Saturday.  There was an older gentleman (in his 70s) who was looking for some Man from UNCLE books.  By that time I had been through every dealer booth and remembered that Steve Wyatt (whos a great dealer and all around good dude) had some in his Bins.  I introduced myself and asked if the gentleman would mind walking a few aisles over as I though there were some in a dealer bin that he might want to look at.  He agreed and found a few with Steve who cut him a pretty good deal.  There is no way this man at his age is going through enough dealer stock to find some Gold Keys like that on Saturday with all the foot traffic and should to shoulder people looking at books in long boxes.  Collectors helping others find books they need is one of my favorite things about the hobby.  I had a great chat with him afterward about gold key comics and things he read when he was in high school, definitely the best part of my day Saturday.