Beastfeast

On 7/28/2023 at 2:43 PM, Dr. Love said:

If you have a FedEx account you can redirect shipments coming from the auction houses to a FedEx office and pick it up personally. Same with CGC, to some states. Not Calufornia though.

This part is very annoying.  Only thing that's worked is turning a vacation hold on with your FedEx account.  

On 7/27/2023 at 6:13 AM, MAR1979 said:

Likely a bi-product of what is being offered for sale    "Junk" drops first, falls furthest and takes huge shifts (aka insanity) in market for it to slowly rise again.  With trading cards that corresponds to "Junk Wax" with Comics the closest ballpark analog is "Glut era".

 

Oh, absolutely. I just happen to be setting GPA lows for the year, so at least I have that going for me. 

Insured Registered is also much cheaper than insured prio or ups or FedEx while being way safer in all regards.
 

Only annoying part is you have to do the transaction in person. Being in LA, that means a 45 minute wait. 

Registered all the way.  Scan the books before you pack them.  

About how long should it take to removed feedback when using the Report Buyer tool? 

On 7/22/2023 at 10:52 AM, D84 said:

Show me where baby Jesus gave a review of this movie.

Was it on a stone tablet or the Dead Sea Scrolls?

Stone tablet, for sure. 

23 modern slow 

shipped 6/29

received 7/17

GEI 7/18

shipped 7/21

On 7/18/2023 at 2:31 PM, KingOfRulers said:

I'll add that there is a "chicken and egg" dynamic as it relates to comic book buyers and comic book dealers. We'd typically get 40,000+ attendees at our flagship conventions. Curmudgeonly dealers would complain, "Nobody is buying comics." Curmudgeonly attendees would complain, "Not enough comic dealers." Some dealers would stop setting up because no buyers. Some attendees would stop attending because not enough comic dealers. How do we get more comic dealers without more comic buyers? How do we get more comic buyers without more comic dealers? One of the problems that was growing in severity as time progressed, and one of the multitude of reasons that I'm glad we sold the conventions and got out of the event business.

The comic collector attendee is a simple beast in terms of determining what they want. There's really only two "draws" for comic book collectors to attend a comic con: 1) comic dealers, 2) guest comic creators. I'd like to speak to #2.

Building a comic creator guest list is one of the single most difficult, time consuming, and expensive aspects of the entire comic convention enterprise. In my previous post I said that the comic collector attendee costs so much to acquire, are relatively few in number, complains the most, and as a result isn't logically worth the effort to cater to; guest comic creators is a major reason why.

Comic creators are difficult and time consuming to book, expensive to book, and generally very few people care about a given creator. I'll skip over the "difficulty and time aspect" of the chore for now. Generally speaking, we'd have around 25 comic creator guests per event. Some creators charge an appearance fee, but most didn't. All of them would require their airfare and hotel stay be covered. Additionally, they often had a +1 (husband/wife, helper etc), which also required airfare, and possibly an additional hotel room stay. Per diem was common, but not always required. Car service was common, but not always required. On average, I figured a comic creator would cost us $1,250 each in travel expenses. Plus whatever appearance fees some of them might charge. For 25 creators, that's $31,250 just in travel. Call it another $10,000 in various appearance fees and per diems; now we're at $41,250. And that doesn't include the amount we paid for each of their skirted tables, chairs, carpeting for the guest artist area of the convention hall, and employees we dedicated to staffing the area. Call it $50,000 in total for our 25 comic creator guest list.

Our general admission was $30-$40 per day (depending upon the day), or $60 for a 3-day pass. Assume an average ticket sale price of $40. That being the premise, our wonderful list of guest comic creators would have to pull in 1,250 attendees for us to merely break even on their appearances. And a lot of comic collector attendees would find a way to get into the convention without paying anything, so who knows what the real breakeven number was. I have no empirical evidence to say whether our investment was financially worth it or not, but if I'm speaking from my gut instinct I'd say, "No way in hell it was."

As a comic book guy, I was always hanging around the comic creators. That's what I cared about. I loved talking to them, getting sketches, etc. That was my world and I loved it. Hanging around in that area, I'd observe the area in an attempt to determine its success. No way do I think we were pulling in 1,250 attendees by way of our comic creators in attendance, that we would have otherwise not captured. In 11 years of running conventions, the only creators that generated enough interest to draw large lines that rivaled the lines (50 or more attendees at a time) we were getting in the celebrity signing area were: George Perez, Bruce Timm, and Jim Starlin. Honorable mention for Steranko. Other creators had lines sometimes, but 5, 10, or 20 people. 30 attendees at any given time would be a very strong line for a comic guest. Most of the time, it was no line, no wait. Of our bustling 40,000 attendance, I'd say maybe 500-750 cared about comic book creators. And that might be a generous estimate.

On the other hand, we could book a Dragon Ball Z voice actor for a $3,500 "guarantee" (meaning we could recoup all $3,500 of their appearance fee through autograph and photo-op sales). This is in comparison to a comic creator's "appearance fee" which was a flat fee that we could not recoup. Aforementioned Dragon Ball Z voice actor's line would be at full capacity all weekend, serving 1,250 attendees.

Absolutely great insight. Love this inside-baseball stuff. 

Last sub delivered by FedEx was left at my apartment door and they did not have anyone sign. The one before, I had them go to the sketchiest Walgreens ever but it was fine. Going to probably do the Walgreens thing again because the drivers are completely unreliable with signing for packages. 

On 7/17/2023 at 11:57 AM, sckao said:

Modern order delivered to the facility and stored on 6/29. Hasn't been opened yet (7/17), so they seem to be backlogged a bit this summer.

 

 

Same delivery and still not opened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

edit: Moved to SFG minutes after posting this. 

Ouch. 

First one I've had in a while: mj23fan2003 

TLDR: dude freaks out about book not being scanned in 4 days after shipping and leaves negative feedback and demands a cancellation.

He put two offers in for books, accepted, paid and shipped the next day.  4 Business days go buy since time of shipping and dude starts freaking out and wanting to cancel because the shipping is too slow.  I check what's going on and see the books were never scanned in.  I reply and explain that unfortunately, the books have shipped and if he wants a refund, I'll be happy to send it once the books arrive.  He LOSES IT.  Tells me I'm lying, that I never shipped, etc, etc.  And from his perspective, it looked like I HADN'T shipped the book yet.  I told him that my PO often takes a while to scan and that set him off even more.  He eventually leaves me two negative feedbacks before the book is even scheduled to be delivered.  

Just checked the tracking again about 20 minutes ago and lo and behold - it's in FL (From CA) and will be there Monday.  

The weirdest part is this person has bought from me multiple times.  Avoid this agro nightmare.  

On 7/14/2023 at 9:25 AM, I like pie said:

For the record, I think it's a great cover and acknowledge it's rarity.

If I was ridiculously rich and already had an AF15 9.6, I'd pick up a 667 as well 

Think it’s pretty clear to non-weirdos that none of you are arguing against the merits of the book. 

On 7/14/2023 at 11:49 AM, Junkdrawer said:

Mine shows up in the tracking tool. Not sure why this isn’t considered part of the TAT.

What’s the good of goal posts if they can’t be constantly moved?

Someone doesn’t suddenly become like HR’s board personality. That’s been him this whole time. Poor decisions just exacerbated existing toxicity and personality problems. 

All books getting scanned - 
The bottleneck that this will inevitably create - 

On 7/12/2023 at 10:34 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

 

A RMA sighting! 

On 7/11/2023 at 2:41 PM, Cor88b said:

Just got this reply Doesnt really seem acceptable.

"The Mechanical Error service is currently experiencing delays due to the recent overwhelming number of Mechanical Error submissions submitted that do not qualify for the service. Unfortunately, this has also delayed Mechanical Error submissions that do qualify for the service."

That’s unbelievable weasel language for a policy they recently changed the definitions of. 

I’ve had a ME sent from MCS for wrong label for over 40 days. 
 

6/29 delivered modern sub still not opened. 

Even during the crazy times of 2022, they still checked in your books quickly  - even if they sat there for 4+ months. Seems like wack-a-mole with the bottlenecks.