kimik

Saturday was my best day with a ton of retail sales from the tables and a few wall books. I could have brought half the amount of table/box stock that I did and generated higher sales. It was an interesting show - the focus for my sales was definitely bronze age to current, with minimal SA and older sales. Mind you, I did sell two of the four GA books I had at the show, so if I had brought more GGA they would have likely moved.

Silver age is slow, but GA, CA and MA keys/hot books are moving. Title wise, ASM and Bronze X-Men have been moving well for me. Trailer Park Boys #1 is likely the highest volume book of the show thanks to Kevin Boyd in getting the cast to the show. Overall, it has been a good show sales-wise as a lot of small stuff is moving instead of bigger books. Just to continue the age discussion from yesterday, I sold one SA slab today - an X-Men #14 CGC 4.0 - to a collector that was 19-22 years old based on his and his friends looks. He thanked me for it as it completed his X-Men run. Smart kid. I hope he nabbed is #1 in 2018 or a bit earlier.

Where are the pics of the rest of our booths that have the good comics on the wall?

In addition, some lucky fellow boardies made some nice scores on OA from the artists at the show today. $50 apiece for the pages you lucky few landed was a steal...........

Day two was a fun one. Lots of books being snapped up by other dealers as well as collectors. Two things we are really seeing this year: 1) there are a lot of new and younger collectors that have entered the hobby the past two years who are buying older run books as well as keys, and 2) there are a lot of new young female collectors. Sellers with other products said they noticed a huge uptick in young female customers at the show as well. Maybe the Alberta market will be an outlier, but the collector-base is larger and younger than I can remember selling since the late 90s when I was in university. Back then, it was almost all male and middle aged for the most part. This is a great sign for the health of the local market. We noticed this trend at the one-day shows that were held last fall and this spring, and it has carried over to the Expo now. The next two days should be busy as the crowds are back to pre-Covid levels for the show.

I can't believe that Dave found some more early Canadian Whites at the show again. Lucky SOB.

I have started a Calgary Expo 2022 thread in Comics General. Let's have some fun with it again this year.

Looking forward to a great show. We will be using this thread for updates throughout the event which kicks off today.

True enough. Hopefully construction is done next year?

Snow report is that it melted for the most part. Weather is supposed to be great this weekend.

Is there any way to do things differently so the comic guests and artist alley are back with the vendors? It used to be nice to be able to get a commission done a few tables down or have the artists come by to talk comics. Now the chances of that are limited. As a Neal Adams fan, the first time he was down his booth was slow so you had a chance to watch him do you commission. It was fun as he walked me through different art techniques to complete the piece.

If the seller pre-sold the 1:500s for enough to cover their costs, then this is pure profit. There are a few LCSs here that operate that way, and I can't believe people pay the price as they are literally out of the money from the start. That being said, the rumours I heard/saw a week or so ago point to this not really being a brand new character, but just another form of the Hulk. We will see, I guess.

Curious to see how the market reacts to Hulk #6 tomorrow based on everything that has been leaked so far.

As long as demand is high it will not matter in the end. I can remember having debates about IH 181 and other common BA keys in the early or mid 00s here on the boards. Back then, they were everywhere and just a few hundred for a raw NM copy. Right now it seems like there is enough Miles demand to cover the high supply. Will that last? Likely, but it is not a certainty.

We will still be in flip flops regardless. Your call.

How many long boxes did your source have of them?

Assimilated you mean.

Ugh. Looks like there may be snow on Wednesday and Thursday in Calgary. Perfect for loading in paper products in cardboard boxes. As long as it is not as bad as the six inches of wet snow we had a couple of shows back all will be good.

Re: UF 4, there was some excitement last Friday at a LCS. The owner has been pulling backstock from storage for a while now since everything is selling so fast. Mixed in with a bunch of nothing Marvel Now #1s (All New X-Men, Uncanny Avengers, Hulk) was a stack of 25-30 sealed UF4s. He said he likely has more someplace as he reordered 300 shortly after release on a hunch. Smart move.

The low print run is a big reason, and the cover has certain assets that attract the GGA cover collectors as well.

I think the number of collectors willing to spend $50K on a book is actually closer to the 10K mark, and may actually be higher than that based on the price gains we have seen the past two years and purchases I am aware of locally. Some are crypto multi-millionaires, and others are younger successful tech entrepreneurs that can afford bigger books now thanks to exits/IPOs/big earnings wins. I think this will become more prevalent going forward based on the number of younger collectors I see buying more expensive keys/classic covers now at shows. While most of us can remember when you could nab an AF #15 in nice shape for $2500, they will be used to having to pay $50K for the same copy now.

Thanks. That seems to be the case. Now hopefully I can get a premium for it at the Calgary Expo this week.

I just came across this while I was going to count pages to grade a copy of Gunsmoke #14. It looks like a copyright stamp? Is there any significance? I have never come across one before.

You have to contact them right away upon receiving the books back. I had a recent submission where half of the CDN newsstand variants were not labelled as such even though they were all noted on the submission form. CGC turned them around within four weeks with the proper labels. Just contact them and note the mechanical error. They were great in quickly rectifying the situation for me.

Ran to an LCS for a supply run today and checked out a new GI Joe run they put out that included this. The price was right so I could not pass it up.