shadroch

I am still amazed Disney hasn't started stamping each book off the press with a serial number and charged oodles of dollars for early numbers. I imagine people would pay big bucks for low number books. $199 for book 1, $99 for 2-99, $49 for 100-250. As far as this goes, one prominent NY dealer made the same observations about UK copies years ago. As the books were being shipped by truck and then by freighter, I don't see how printing them at 8am instead of 11pm would make much difference Then again, were I sitting on numerous Australian Marvels, this would be huge.

This might be better if the OPP@ Secret handshakes decided upon at the Big Table in the back room at Comic-Con.

So what I am doing in the labyrinth will be constructing walls of cubes. Each cube is 14 inches by 14 inches. Wall units will be five high while aisle will be four. Each cube can hold at least twenty pounds, and some cubes can be converted to 14x28 or even 28x28. While I don't expect much shop lifting, this area will have large items not easily concealed. The idea is that the layout can be very easily changed. In fact, I'm playing with the idea of changing the layout quite often. It's beginning to come together. Have a working name, have layouts for four of the six areas and more. Unfortunately, the next ten days find me in Vegas. My lease here is up the end of September and I have a million loose ends to tie.

Sold it through MyComicShop, the largest dealer on the web. Well worth the money they charge, it's just I could have saved $60 by paying better attention. I was scrolling thru their consignments and found a number of books priced at $300. Once burned....

Play attention to consignment details. Recently sold an ASM 14 on MCS for $3000. I guess it was a good deal as it sold instantly. I was happy but then realized that at $3000,I paid 8% commission or $240. Not a problem but at $3001, the commission would have been 6% or $180. A lesson learned and passed along. Rates go down to 8%on $301, and 6% on $3001.

Aisles have be 44 inches wide. We laid it out with tape and unless two people are both looking at exactly opposite I don't see a problem. Between the stairs and the lack of fast food, people here are far less obese than in Vegas. I hope it rubs off on me. I decided to pause most things until I get a crew in and scrub the place down. I might just give the wood trim a new color, but it needs some eye appeal. There is a woman's shelter nearby that I'm told can coordinate such things. Strange bunch of coincidences that worked out in the end. The old name of the shop at my location was Dees Vintage. Across the street is the Department of Economic Security. I had timed it so all the gridwall and cubes would arrive Weds. They didn't. Amazon said they probably were dropped at the PO for them to deliver. Thursday nothing. Friday I go to the county ups center forty miles away and the dispatcher gets the driver on the phone. He says he went to the Department of Economic Security where they said it wasn't for them. There is a William Ryan Tire Company so he took them there, where someone told him they sometimes get mistaken delivery for a Ryan down the street. So he dumped all 27 boxes of gridwall and the like on this guy's front porch. I drive over and stuff is sitting there.

Starts here and now. One of my rooms is 14 by 31. I would like to design it as a labyrinth. So, when You enter the room you are facing showcases on either side of you for ten feet. Four feet in front of you is a wall of art. Four feet to your left is an eight foot glass display case. This herds you back towards the wall you came in from, but one aisle over. Picture a one way supermarket layout. It allows much better utilization of space as opposed to the traditional use or walls and a center aisle. I just got back from a week in Bisbee, and had the first of three truckloads delivered. A few hitches but we are doing a second-hand so the first went that well. Put an ad for for part time work for low pay and vague promises and found a very good handyman who wants to learn the collectable retail field. Might be a great fit. Met with the plumbers and contractors, started getting the work permits and gathered the documents for my Arizona, County and City licenses. Small towns are so different. Had an issue last week that took a few phone calls to resolve, and I had to fax some documents and a photo id. I walked in a week later and was greeted by name. The receptionist recognized me by the faxed photo.

Please pass the kool aid when you are done.

When I had my shop, people were willing to spend good money on Iron Man 2 but not Hulk 103. Nor Captain America 102. Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense were dead, especially the later issues. I tried explaining that Hulk 103 is the second issue of the title, just like Iron Man 2 is the second book in that title. You'd think you were breaking the HRN code from Classics or something.

Why do you think he needed a fat wallet to buy books off the newsstand?

For awhile, restored books were selling at ridiculous discounts. Even now ,some do. A beautiful Spider-Man just sold for about 15% of what its unregistered cousin did. I've gotten okay money on some FFs in the 20s, but also have a nice purple FF 25 sitting on MCS right now at a price I thought would be a hot item.

I bought a huge lot of mylars, off these boards, from a then CGC employee. As it was all very up front, I'd guess they allow whomever wants them to take them. Many of them had cgc labels and notes on them. This was around 2006so their policy might have changed.

Only antiques., although their idea of an antique is pretty flexible.

It's giving me some much needed direction. Putting the band back together, so to speak.

Just put $1,000 worth of fixtures and display items in my Amazon cart. I couldn't believe how quick it added up. $790 for utility deposits this week, plus start up expenses on the upgrades, and a $500 COD freight delivery on Wednesday. Fun, fun, fun.

Bisbee is over a mile high and supposedly much cooler than Phoenix or Las Vegas in the summer and gets a bit of snow in winter.

Yes. They have a lease thru the end of the year. Not sure what will happen after that. Three tenants ago, the place housed a day care and has a commercial kitchen the bakery is using. Before the bakery, someone rented it out mostly for workers from the nearby hospital. They only opened for lunch and were mostly takeout. The kitchen and dining room are only about 15 % of the floor space right now. I'd like to move them to a larger section in the front if they stay.

I thought he took few issues to really hit his stride but the next few years were the best since Luke Cage was hired.

Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there isn't a balrog in the woodpile Be alert. Stay vigilant. Stay pure..

Haven't seen many hipsters in town yet. I did see a kid about 12 wearing oversized parachute pants with jet black hair but he was more emo than hipster. One thing I have ran across is a whole lot of people that almost spontaneously moved here. Same story, over and over.

29 photos aren't enuff?

Vacation rentals are very popular in Bisbee, but the competition is, shall we say, fierce. Some of the rental properties are quite colorful. Bisbee is where hippies go after getting priced out elsewhere. It was named best small town in America and the cost is right. I'm going to let the market sort itself out. I just this week picked up 850 pieces of abandoned female dry cleaning for $5. At least temporarily I'm in the used clothing business. As a strange aside, several of the garments are new with tags. Evidently some people dry clean new clothes.

No. This is a Leap of Faith. No planning, no studies. Don't have a name, don't have a tax id yet. What I have is a building with spectacular bones and three notebooks and a shoebox full of fifteen years of thinking about such a situation. Two months ago, I had never been to Bisbee, let alone thinking about opening a shop. Just going to do it. I'll make mistakes and learn from them. Some of my ideas won't survive the paper, others will be stillborn, some will succeed and others I will steal. My long term goal is to fix the back up enough for a couple to really enjoy living in, get the front up and running successfully and sell the whole thing to a nice couple who are retiring to the magical town of Bisbee. Either that, or have a full time live in manager run the shop. If you build it, they will come.

It does, to a degree. I'd much rather be in Old Bisbee, but the spaces I looked at were too much to rent or buy or needed hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work. Some weekends, Bisbee gets 15,000 visitors. I need to get them another three miles. If anyone is interested in helping establish a social media presence in return for low wages and vague promises, PM me.

Bisbee is a big " antiquing " town, and there are four vintage shops within two blocks so I'm hoping we develop a " Vintage Shopping" District to attract some of the thousands of tourists who end up about three miles away in Old Bisbee. I'd like about 2/3rd of the space to be vintage consignment. Mostly stuff that doesn't break or walk out the door. One thing I'm going to get right is it is going to be comfortable. Have a couple nice chairs and a big screen for someone to watch while their partner shops. Someone already asked about gaming but I think that's not going to happen unless the request are overwhelming. Same thing with new comics. If a dozen or so ask about subscriptions, I'll figure something out. I'd thought that I'd try living pretty spartan the first few months in the former storage area, but life is too short. After careful consideration, I budgeted $15,000 to put the place to my liking and it looks like I'm going to finish under budget. My formula is budget plus 10% overage plus 30% just because. So far I've been able to avoid the " just because" money.