Bill Cox

Really, George? I guess you finally made that move to Florida and have been looking over my shoulder while I've worked in Quickbooks this past year? I guess we'll have to ramp up security here at CAF HQ! Glad to read that most of you had a good show. Weekend sales were indicative of collectors spending less, like we've seen from the past 18 months in our market reporting. I still enjoy hosting CALIVE, and look forward to doing it again in May 2024!

Exactly. That's why it's optional for you to enter anything to that section. For years this was the #1 requested feature to add to CAF, so it was integrated about 8 years ago.

The collection of that data was added because Collectors asked us to add it. Collectors were tired of sharing all their art on CAF, then having to store private information about the same art in a spreadsheet at home. I have no access to seeing what's entered there. Only the owner of the art can see that, and download it to import into a local program of their choice. But thanks for making it into some form of conspiracy.

No. The 52 was an error. That was MY count, and it showed on everyone's for a little while.

The old count was incorrect and was including people who were still watching you when their premium membership lapsed. The count is now correct. For those wanting to hide themselves from people they are watching, if you edit your profile on CAF there is an option labeled "Opt Out Of Showing ME Watching", and when checked it will hide you from every person you are watching.

Since DD started at the end of January, 75% of what's been shown has been new art to either guy's inventory, and the art is usually priced to sell and they are obviously willing to negotiate. That's why the show has almost a 75% sales rate, and much of the art sells in the recap for lower than their original asking price. I probably wont be back here in a while so I'll address the earlier question about why it's only been Mike and Anthony. That's by no fault of mine since I offered other dealers the chance to be on the show when it first started. I just asked for some patience while I figured out a format that worked. A couple Dealers didn't want to wait, and/or wanted to be on every week. I have a few others interested but not to the level where they are ready to be on the show. That's why we tested the waters with the collector shows which have been a lot of fun to host. It's as simple as that.

It was an intentional act on your part to postulate something that was both illogical and unreasonable and had no bearing on the thread whatsoever to that point. It was meant to create the knee jerk reaction you got from several collectors, which in turn would force me to have to rehash something publicly that I shouldn't have ever had to.

That was just something we had to roll with on the fly. I had originally set the Felix/Tradd Moore panel in one Studio, and we had a Studio set up for my Panel with Felix after Tradd's. The Tradd Moore interview was running late - right up to the start of my panel with Felix - so at about 3 min before the hour I was forced to delete the Studio for he and I, and coordinate via text that I'd let them run long for a few minutes. So I hopped into the Tradd's panel and a few minutes after the hour and Felix and I just started our Panel there. it made it easier for Felix since he didn't have to log out and back into a second panel. After the Simonson interview with Dunbier it was the second best attended panel during the show, oddly enough. I'm sorry you didn't get to watch it live. Felix and I discussed after the panel that we might do something over on one of his channels after the new year to continue the conversation.

I'm not really sure what I'll share aside from totals and general sorts of data about art types. I'm going to do a CALive Market Report and post it Thursday or Friday similar to what I do with the Dealer and Auction House reports. My guidance on bringing new art to market and art priced to sell is still the winning combination if you want to do well during the show. Leave the art you're more firm on or that demand a premium in your CAF Classifieds, and mention that in your booth description, and artwork descriptions. All Booth pages link to your CAF Classifieds if you're a Collector or Artist. I've always said the art in your booth is your back wall to get buyers to stop and look, and your Classifieds or your Dealer site are the portfolios on your table.

The Seller set the price to $0 after the sale - I have no control over what the seller does. Some claim the buyer asked them to, so other collectors don't know the sale price. Obviously something most buyers want to remain hidden from public knowledge based on KV's comments earlier, and understandable. I'm sure many people don't like my market reports since they record sale prices, either. However, we do have a snapshot of the booths and artworks at lockdown, so I'm able to run reports based on that when needed. Sorry, I don't have price range reports like that. Around 180 of the 450 sales were $250 or under.

Most purchases were in the $500 - $2,000 range. $700,000 in total sales for the weekend not counting commissions and cross selling, about a 12% to 13% sold rate for all art offered.

Agree that it's overwhelming. We are going to start a site redesign soon where I hope to fix many of the congestion issues we have. The reason we want to move CALIVE to a stand alone site is to that everything is clear to a first timer to the show. First timers see the CAF Gallery Updates in the top right, ads all over the place with auction house links leading them here and there. They don't know what the hell to do when they get there, and I bet many just give up and leave.

Hi Andy, I do my best to get the schedule posted ahead of time, at least by a few days. I'm behind at the moment thanks to CALIVE. We do a Tuesday show usually two weeks consecutive them one week off, and I try to always do an every Thursday show which is a CAF Update for popular artwork from the week previously, and I also try to work in an interview too. Both shows start at 9pm EST. We have a show tomorrow night where we'll be doing a Comic Art LIVE show recap, and taking suggestions from the chat, and I know Glen, Will and Mike have comments on things they'd like to see done differently. This Thurs along with my CAF Update I'll be chatting with Malvin V. The Tuesday after next we'll be doing another Heritage Signature Auction Review. I've not scheduled these into the system yet, but that's the upcoming schedule.

Unfortunately there was no way to do show mark downs on prices. When we built the IX-Online.com site, we did allow for artwork to be shown as on sale, ie there were two fields for price, the original asking price, and if they added a sale price we'd put a strike through the original price and also show the reduced price. We then added a search option to search only for art with reduced prices. Now, on IX I figured most people would play by the rules and use the fields honestly. Here, I thought what we'd see is people asking 20% more than normal in the asking price, and then 10% more than normal in the sale price, which would just a mess. 50% of the art being shown this way, etc. Now, I might be wrong about that, but that was my feeling. I think it would be better to have a announcement section where people can say that everything in their booth is 10% off, and honor that reduction when a request is made, without having to edit the prices of everything in the booth.

1. I saw one auction house with 3 valid marketplace pieces and 3 pieces as auctions for pieces we've all seen several times. I had been asked up front by them what to do and I told them only post fixed priced items from their marketplace, that future versions of the show would allow for a PR aspect like a regular in-person Con would provide them. They didn't follow my request. I have to pick my battles and time especially in the heat of the moment - and that was done at the last minute. Since the auction pieces were priced at $0 they were at the bottom of every default search since the default search ordered by highest price first, buried 2k deep in results, so I chose not to waste the effort. But all auction houses asked in advance of setting up and I gave them all the same request. 2. We do not want to allow anyone to delete items from their booth during the show. People would just delete them rather than marking them as sold, which wouldn't help me track the success of the show. No delete means you have to mark it sold which is the goal. I agree the delete option should be hidden once the show starts since it doesn't work after the lockdown, and we don't have a message telling you it didn't work. 3. You figure once the lights are off the hall is no longer accessible. The Saved Artworks list you created is still available and I'll leave that out there for 30 days at least. We modified the Save Artwork page just before the show ended to include a link to either the CAF gallery of the owner if it was a collector, or to the Dealer website if it was a dealer. In case you wanted to inquire after the show. The link to the detail image/page for the art was removed since that would take you into the hall which is closed. So I guess the best way forward is to Save more artworks you might be remotely interested in during the show.

I always figured one day someone who knew would feel the need to roll this out into a public forum to stir the pot or whatever, because it wasn't a secret. I've never been shy to talk about it when asked, though as many of you can imagine it was a humbling moment for me so not something I'm proud of. I had spoken to 3 or 4 people inside and outside the hobby looking for someone to help me fix my situation and Mike was the only person - while in the middle of a recession - willing to help me out. And I also knew he would be the only one I'd trust to never expect anything from it, which has been the case. That idea crossed my mind about pushing updates out on Saved items, and then I thought in under 48 hours how often would it actually mean something. We'll add it to our wish list for the May show. I'm happy to hear about any suggestions like this as it will make the next show all the better. Like a lot of the ideas we have, we get the first part right, but don't even consider taking it to a natural conclusion like you've suggested. Now that we added Views and Saves data in a Booth, so a Booth owner knows how often the art is saved by people (but not by whom) they might be inclined to lower their prices near the end of the show if they knew X number of people would get notified. You could even see the seller being able to blindly notify those following an artwork that they're willing to deal, take trade, etc.

The Save feature was at the top of our list for updates. I had told Maureen if there was only one thing we added it was that. Glad to hear that a new user had more than one good experience. I stressed in all my messages to potential sellers that the biggest complaint with the first show was slow replies.

Hey Guys, First off, I'm glad most of you had a good time with Comic Art LIVE. This show, while rushed from Maureen and my side, worked better than the first and we hit all our marks with opening the show and art drops. While my business relationships are by no means private, I have no problem giving you all you'd need to know about Collector's Network as a business. As many of you know, in 2008 I opened my mini-golf which set me back over $500k in loans and cost me my entire art collection. Easily one of the worst decisions in my life, and given the stock market crashing that October 2008, both 2009 and 2010 were very desperate times. Mike and I have been friends a long time, and he had invested a small amount in the mini golf to just to be involved with something outside the hobby while he neared retirement. By 2010 I was just about bankrupt on the golf course side and I was siphoning funds from my other businesses to keep it afloat, but I was running out of options. I turned to Mike and we talked about how he could help me out of the jam. I couldn't offer him any more of the mini-golf since it was worthless at that time (thankfully not anymore), and so I sold him a very small % of Collector's Network (not CAF) and I turned around and used that money to pay down the mini-golf loan which helped me get over the hump. Before we agreed to do it, I explained how he had to be a silent partner in that business for all the reasons you can imagine, whether it be my work with other dealers or the collecting community. He agreed, and we've never talked about Collector's Network as a business, my work with other dealers, nor what I'm doing with CAF, in 10+ years. Mike has no access to CAF data nor anyone's data I work with, not even his own. Similarly, I have no access to any personal data entered on CAF. There are no views into anyone's personal data whatsoever, and the features KV is referencing were added years ago because collectors wanted to use CAF to manage all their inventory data and it was built based on a couple collector's specs. So there is nothing nefarious here at all guys, and Mike has never profited or earned a single penny for getting me out the mess I put myself into 12 years ago. He doesn't even give me discounts when I buy art from him, which I imagine wont surprise anyone here. Regarding early access to Comic Art LIVE... Beside Maureen, I was the only one with that as you'd expect because I am doing to front end programming for Comic Art LIVE. Nelson had ONE piece of "ART" in his booth for many days, so when I'd scroll through the Hall where we showed three random images from inside a booth his nude photograph was always there - the only thing in his booth. I let it slide for a couple days until it was 3 days out and asked if he would please remove it. He didn't, and didn't reply. Then he replaced it with another excuse for humor the day before the show, which I had to ask him again if he'd remove it. Again no reply. Fortunately I didn't have to nuke his booth because when I went to check it an hour before the show opened to premium members he had taken down the image and replaced it with comic art. That's all there is to know about either of these questions.

Thanks, David!

I finally had time to put together both an Exhibitor and Attendee Survey for Comic Art LIVE. I've already emailed the survey link to all Exhibitors. If you were an attendee last weekend we'd love to hear your feedback so we can make the next show even better. Here is the link to our Attendee Survey: https://forms.gle/8P7sSa3sTxsrctNn8

Awesome! And Congrats! I should add a bit to my answer since I finally remembered glenbru's question to me before the show. I think it was if the Booth could show up in two Halls, ie Collector and Dealer. I had said that was not an option because just like a booth being one to one with a CAF account, a booth could only show in one Hall.

A Booth was associated with a CAF Account, so a CAF Account could only have one Booth. It was a 1 to 1 relationship. Most Dealers I know who are also Reps show both their repped art and their personal art for sale in their booth when at an in-person Con. I don't see why that same approach shouldn't be done with CALIVE. If you have multiple accounts with multiple booths then you're going to have to manage emails coming in from more than one source, it just wouldn't make sense to do this from your own mgmt needs. You could be set up as a Dealer in that Hall and easily share your CAF Classifieds link in your booth description to let people know where more art is available from you. As a Rep, Simon showed both Allred's work and work he owned and was selling in his 18 pieces and I think that worked well for him. The 18 piece limit wasn't prohibitive for buyers or sellers, since many sales happened in each exhibitors Classifieds and Dealer sites during the show, all a result of linking to those places from your Booth.

This is a learning process for us all. I hope to do a full review of sales so I'll be able to give exhibitors for the next show a better understanding of what to bring, at least as it relates to sales during this show. It's all guesswork at the end of the day.

Emphasis on "they sold".

Allowing for more than 2 hours will boil down to the growth of the show and the opportunities available to buyers. Because this is all done online that means sealing a deal takes more time than someone handing you cash at a con. Some Dealers who were taking commissions and trying to manage art sales struggled to keep up with the replies they needed to make. It's an area we are going to look to improve upon, for certain.