Virtual ComicCon IV Chit Chat

[aardvark88]

I got the grey box using Firefox too. Was OK after I hit refresh key though.

[1Cool]

My .

 

I liked this years VCC and I want to say thanks to everyone who put together a table (I can only imagine how long it took for some of them). I like the ending/closing but the times should allow everyone a good chance at the books (international buyers). I think promotions are the key to picking up the number of sales but I also find it curious that people appeared to price items at 10-20% above "e-bay prices" and not the other way around. E-Bay charges fees, none here. I bought most of my stuff from people who had 20% below prices at the start and didn't wait to drop the price after I spent all my money.

 

I liked the 5 to 10 small pics and then descriptions below format but I hated having to hunt for Sunday deal percentages at each booth. I know it takes time but a revised price for each item made me read the post again. Too many items and tables to try to calculate the final price.

 

Where are all the Golden Age buyers at?? Golden horror issues get snatched up with hours on regular posts but dozens sat without a sale. Are the prices really high or are people just are not willing to come down a little?

[Ze-man]

Shin, I just logged on to answer a few pms and skim read the thread and noticed concern about who or who is not allowed to set up shop. This is an obvious growing pain of the VCC if it wants to be successful, that said.. Is there a registration process in place where people who want to open a booth at the VCC must first provide you or Dan with some credentials to pass muster? Sorry for not reading the rules before now but I never entertained selling here, so I never read them.

 

I think everyone here trusts you and Dan enough that if you say they are OK to sell here they are OK to buy from until proven otherwise. In which case you have whatever information required at sign up to protect the buyer and the integrity of the VCC itself.

 

Or has all this been brought up before?, in which case.. never mind.

 

Ze-

 

 

 

[sckao]

Shin, I just logged on to answer a few pms and skim read the thread and noticed concern about who or who is not allowed to set up shop. This is an obvious growing pain of the VCC if it wants to be successful, that said.. Is there a registration process where people who want to open a booth at the VCC must first provide you or Dan with some credentials to pass muster?

 

I think everyone here trusts you and Dan enough that if you say they are OK to sell here they are OK to buy from until proven otherwise. In which case you have whatever information required at sign up to protect the buyer and the integrity of the VCC itself.

 

Or has all this been brought up before?, in which case.. never mind.

 

Ze-

 

 

 

No one has perfect feedback and a 100% happy customer base. (Ok... if you do, please let us know. (thumbs u )

 

So I'm not sure if we're qualified to judge. I'd prefer not to do it anyways.

 

Everyone's welcome to participate. That was the spirit of putting this thing together initially. If we start having problems with sellers not following through, I'm sure we'll hear about it... but so far after four VCC's, I personally haven't seen too many problems.

 

Even new people need a break!

 

BTW, dkao posted here earlier about having to move and wanting to sell his collection. I was one of the first to purchase from him, and they turned out to be in awesome condition. (They were in mylars with halfbacks and ultrapros.) I ended up picking up the rest of his collection (about 4.5 long boxes) for a great price. So in this case, taking a chance on a new person turned out to be great.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheWatcher]

I think that happens if you try to scroll before the entire page loads. I got the gray box in Firefox too on my PC.

 

I ended up waiting for the pages to load entirely (which took a while.)

 

 

This happened to me. One of the pages bogged down as I scrolled before letting it load properly in Safari. Tried refreshing but not every image downloaded.

 

 

Angelo

[Ze-man]

I guess my point was not asking you to be judge and jury but rather just a shepard who has everyones contact info beforehand( simple enough to do), so if problems arise(which I really dont see happening now) but the bigger the VCC becomes it will hopefully attract more dealers if there is a buying audience worth setting up shop for.

 

And anyone selling in the VCC as it stands now would have no problem offering up an actual mailing address or valid phone # , so anyone outside the forum who might not be known here, but wants to set up shop should understand why a safeguard is in place.

 

In the end it just makes more work for you, and I understand it ain't broke yet. But if the VCC wants to possibly advertise outside the forum for buyers it should also expect people who want to sell here as well, and protect the core group from potential bad apples with some type of registration process be they buyers or sellers.

 

Just a thought Shin, carry on as you already have a full plate for little.. make that no pay..

 

 

Ze-

[CycleGirl]

 

4. After thinking about it, I'm less inclined to go to a 48 hour open sales thread. My concept was to replicate a comic book convention. Not an internet sales thread, not a marketplace thread, and not eBay. To do this, I think its almost required to have a starting time AND a stopping time, to instill a sense of urgency into buyers. If we go to a 48 hour time period, then its just another sales thread, only with more stuff in it. Is there a problem for overseas boardies? Yes. Is there a problem for people on the west coast? Yes. Can we alleviate that with different starting times? Sure. We could go 10 AM - 7 PM. We could go 1 PM - midnight. There's all sorts of things to do, but going to the 48 hour time frame takes away from what was my original intent for the event.

 

 

I agree. I enjoyed the hectic pace on Saturday evening. Interestingly, about 90% of my customers contacted me within the first two hours of the con. I really don't think extending the con would have increased the total number of transactions. It would have just dragged them out.

 

It's good that most of the books were visible hours before the convention started. I'm not really sure if we need a formal "preview night." It seems like previewing was happening naturally as sellers set up.

 

CG

 

[CycleGirl]

I think the VCC could definetly benefit from greater publicity. maybe ads in other comic forums or magazines. Scoop, etc.

 

Yes! It feels like we the VCC is mostly sellers!

[aardvark88]

Fans who wanted to preview preview night, could just go to 1, 2, 3 test thread where neophyte or organized VCC members were testing their coding skills and pics.

[followtheleader]

Just my 2 cents, but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't reserve a booth unless it was ready to be populated. That would keep "reserved" only booths from the middle of the pack and give the late starter higher visibility at the end by being a new post. It also helps the buyers as they don't need to scroll through the entire listing over & over to see if it was updated.

 

Pat

[piper]

I think the VCC could definetly benefit from greater publicity. maybe ads in other comic forums or magazines. Scoop, etc.

 

Yes! It feels like we the VCC is mostly sellers!

 

Are you sure? I definitely was looking, but didn't find anything that I desperately needed. I also felt that some of the pricing was aggressive (not yours).

[Comicdey]

Just my 2 cents, but wouldn't it be nice if we didn't reserve a booth unless it was ready to be populated. That would keep "reserved" only booths from the middle of the pack and give the late starter higher visibility at the end by being a new post. It also helps the buyers as they don't need to scroll through the entire listing over & over to see if it was updated.

 

Pat

 

good point

[innocuous]

Just getting caught up, so a few random thoughts:

 

Images/pictures with Firefox on my PC or Safari on my Mac have not worked well since the new board code went up. This is getting really tiresome, but I don't want to switch to IE.

 

Some pricing seemed high.

 

I looked at every posting...twice, to make sure I didn't miss anything.

 

I bought one comic, a semi high grade Flash from Greggy.

 

I'm on the fence about a book from Filter.

 

I think the rules work fine to vet out those who really shouldn't participate. The key rule "You can only list books here that are not for sale anywhere else."

[divad]

I found the whole thing to be a bit overwhelming.

 

I think there should be limitations as to the number of books available for sale by any given vendor at any given time. Say, perhaps 10 - 20 books.

 

I know this runs contrary to the "megathon" mentality, but it all depends what you are looking for. This last VCC lost it's "board feel" if you ask me . . .

 

But hey, I'm expected to be controversial

 

Well, I think the sales section is where you go for board flavor. Everyone interacts on a daily basis there and develops a sense of community. I think the Con is ideal for people that don't have a monthly event in their neighborhood, or for people that want to buy or sell a larger amount at one time so limiting it seems counterproductive. Unless I'm reading the intent incorrectly?

 

I don't know that there is a stated "intent" to the VCC.

 

Well, since I made the rules for the VCC, I'll be happy to tell you the intent, just so everybody knows what the show promoter wants to do with the VCC.

 

1.The intent of the VCC is to replicate an old school comic book convention, with as many sellers as possible selling as much stuff as possible that covers a wide variety of genres to willing buyers. I want a "megathon". I want the ability to purchase from hundreds of sellers, in my living room. If I wanted to have a very small selection, I'd just peruse all of the sales threads. I'd love to have 100 sellers. 200 sellers. I'd love to see MORE non-comic book things. Where are the pulps? The toys? The games? The posters? That's what makes a cool comicon - the ability to get all sorts of fun stuff, and that's what I want to see here. There are hundreds of board members who don't have VCC booths, and I think the "collecting community" would be well served by having more of them. Flaming Telepath - this means you. Foolkiller - this means you. Moondog - this means you. Klodz24seven - this means you.

 

2. To that intent, as long as I'm running this event, there will be absolutely no limit to the number of books you can put up there. I personally would like to have less big images, but that's just me in scrolling. You want to have 10,000 books for sale in your booth? Go right ahead (yes, I know, there are limits to the amount of data you can put in a post). My concept is to replicate an old school comic convention on the web.

 

3. I have no idea where you're getting the "lost its board feel" - if anything, the VCC is one of the few things here we do that gets everybody involved. I'd love to get more of the Golden Age posters (THIS MEANS YOU, BEDROCK) to put books up in the thread. I'd like to see less of the same old stuff we always see for sale in the Marketplace, and more esoteric stuff. I think, actually, that THIS VCC was more board-y then others as there wasn't much new stuff (by "new", I mean not just the same old same old books).

 

4. After thinking about it, I'm less inclined to go to a 48 hour open sales thread. My concept was to replicate a comic book convention. Not an internet sales thread, not a marketplace thread, and not eBay. To do this, I think its almost required to have a starting time AND a stopping time, to instill a sense of urgency into buyers. If we go to a 48 hour time period, then its just another sales thread, only with more stuff in it. Is there a problem for overseas boardies? Yes. Is there a problem for people on the west coast? Yes. Can we alleviate that with different starting times? Sure. We could go 10 AM - 7 PM. We could go 1 PM - midnight. There's all sorts of things to do, but going to the 48 hour time frame takes away from what was my original intent for the event.

 

5. I think we will have a "preview night". I'm not entirely sure how it will work yet, so I'll fiddle with it. 10-12 on a Friday night might work - but again, we're back to the issue of non US people, time frames, whatever.

 

I hope that clears things up as to the intent of the VCC. As always, am willing to make changes/improvements to the concept, but within the framework I've outlined above.

 

That's cool . . . like you say - It's your gig.

[sterlingcomics]

I hate to see sellers put in a lot of time into their booths and not have any VCC sales to show for it.

 

I didn't sell one book.

 

I got a rock.

[namisgr]

My preference only, mind you, but I think there are way too many thumbnails being shown, creating computer issues, seemingly endless scrolling, and an untidy look to the e-booths. This will become an even bigger issue as the VCC grows going forward. It isn't necessary to have thumbnails for every book being sold. Using the name, grade, and price of books as the links to the large scans obviates the need to have every single book thumbnailed, and makes for a much cleaner and less cluttered e-booth. It is compatible with the desire to have an unlimited number of books offered for sale.

 

Here's an example of text linking to the full scan:

Journey Into Mystery #121 cgc 9.2 ow $185

 

I'd like to see a limit placed on the number of thumbnails per booth to maybe 15 or 20, with text links to the remaining scans. This way, scans are available for every book being sold, and sellers can still use thumbnails for their biggest ticket items, or to show the types of fare being offered.

[chrisco37]

Dan,

Is there any way to get some of the bigger dealers to sell in the VCC (ie. Bob Storms,Metro, Pedigree,etc.)? What is a comic-con without any of the big dogs? Also, I wonder if it would help if we can get the sellers to "register" a week or so ahead of time and include the list of sellers in any publicity used to promote the VCC?

 

Casey

 

 

Would LOVE to have them. Where's Bob Storms? Where's Bedrock? Where's Metro? COME ON DOWN! (thumbs u

 

Why would Bob and Metro take the time to set up booths when they've already got fully functioning sales sites? Not to mention the fact that the boards are notoriously CHEAP!!!! Sorry, but that is the truth. How many people here have sold books at/near guide? It doesn't happen often. If you want to sell on here (the boards), you've got to price everything to sell (and offer free shipping if you really want to move stuff). That includes keys.

 

You're not going to get guide or even 25% off guide here on most items. I seriously doubt that Bob or Metro want to man the boards during the VCC and get PM's asking for X-amount off their list price + free shipping. Especially when Bob just mentioned he had great shows in SD and Chicago.

 

The books that seem to do best in most of the sales threads are the books that are offered for near 40-50% off guide.

 

 

 

 

[Sal]

Dan,

Is there any way to get some of the bigger dealers to sell in the VCC (ie. Bob Storms,Metro, Pedigree,etc.)? What is a comic-con without any of the big dogs? Also, I wonder if it would help if we can get the sellers to "register" a week or so ahead of time and include the list of sellers in any publicity used to promote the VCC?

 

Casey

 

 

Would LOVE to have them. Where's Bob Storms? Where's Bedrock? Where's Metro? COME ON DOWN! (thumbs u

 

Why would Bob and Metro take the time to set up booths when they've already got fully functioning sales sites? Not to mention the fact that the boards are notoriously CHEAP!!!! Sorry, but that is the truth. How many people here have sold books at/near guide? It doesn't happen often. If you want to sell on here (the boards), you've got to price everything to sell (and offer free shipping if you really want to move stuff). That includes keys.

 

You're not going to get guide or even 25% off guide here on most items. I seriously doubt that Bob or Metro want to man the boards during the VCC and get PM's asking for X-amount off their list price + free shipping. Especially when Bob just mentioned he had great shows in SD and Chicago.

 

The books that seem to do best in most of the sales threads are the books that are offered for near 40-50% off guide.

 

 

 

 

of course, not knowing the first thing about the above named dealer's inventories, take this with a grain of salt...

 

if i was a dealer, and i had inventory sitting around that hadn't sold for months, that i didn't have a lot of money in, why NOT sell in the VCC? how many views did the thread get? that's a lot of concentrated eyeballs in one slot...eyeballs that can be converted to buyers of your regular-priced inventory after the VCC.

 

it's a combination of cash flow and marketing. not offering them here because you have them on your own site is kind of to me. get the books out there, convert them to cash, then use same to turn that inventory. get some good will and marketing out of it at the same time.

 

 

 

personally, it was all a bit overwhelming for me, too. i'd love to see a more "wall book / thumbnail" and "text link / longbox" feel to it, but i won't boycott the thing if it doesn't happen.

 

oh, and OldGuy's post went on foooooreeeeeeeever. dude, leave out the carriage returns between your thumbnails, so they all go on the same line or something

[paperheart]

Dan,

Is there any way to get some of the bigger dealers to sell in the VCC (ie. Bob Storms,Metro, Pedigree,etc.)? What is a comic-con without any of the big dogs? Also, I wonder if it would help if we can get the sellers to "register" a week or so ahead of time and include the list of sellers in any publicity used to promote the VCC?

 

Casey

 

 

Would LOVE to have them. Where's Bob Storms? Where's Bedrock? Where's Metro? COME ON DOWN! (thumbs u

 

Why would Bob and Metro take the time to set up booths when they've already got fully functioning sales sites? Not to mention the fact that the boards are notoriously CHEAP!!!! Sorry, but that is the truth. How many people here have sold books at/near guide? It doesn't happen often. If you want to sell on here (the boards), you've got to price everything to sell (and offer free shipping if you really want to move stuff). That includes keys.

 

You're not going to get guide or even 25% off guide here on most items. I seriously doubt that Bob or Metro want to man the boards during the VCC and get PM's asking for X-amount off their list price + free shipping. Especially when Bob just mentioned he had great shows in SD and Chicago.

 

The books that seem to do best in most of the sales threads are the books that are offered for near 40-50% off guide.

 

 

 

 

of course, not knowing the first thing about the above named dealer's inventories, take this with a grain of salt...

 

if i was a dealer, and i had inventory sitting around that hadn't sold for months, that i didn't have a lot of money in, why NOT sell in the VCC? how many views did the thread get? that's a lot of concentrated eyeballs in one slot...eyeballs that can be converted to buyers of your regular-priced inventory after the VCC.

 

it's a combination of cash flow and marketing. not offering them here because you have them on your own site is kind of to me. get the books out there, convert them to cash, then use same to turn that inventory. get some good will and marketing out of it at the same time.

 

let's just ask bob- i'm sure he'll respond (that's why he's many boardies favorite dealer)

 

 

 

[drbanner]

Dan,

Is there any way to get some of the bigger dealers to sell in the VCC (ie. Bob Storms,Metro, Pedigree,etc.)? What is a comic-con without any of the big dogs? Also, I wonder if it would help if we can get the sellers to "register" a week or so ahead of time and include the list of sellers in any publicity used to promote the VCC?

 

Casey

 

 

Would LOVE to have them. Where's Bob Storms? Where's Bedrock? Where's Metro? COME ON DOWN! (thumbs u

 

Why would Bob and Metro take the time to set up booths when they've already got fully functioning sales sites? Not to mention the fact that the boards are notoriously CHEAP!!!! Sorry, but that is the truth. How many people here have sold books at/near guide? It doesn't happen often. If you want to sell on here (the boards), you've got to price everything to sell (and offer free shipping if you really want to move stuff). That includes keys.

 

You're not going to get guide or even 25% off guide here on most items. I seriously doubt that Bob or Metro want to man the boards during the VCC and get PM's asking for X-amount off their list price + free shipping. Especially when Bob just mentioned he had great shows in SD and Chicago.

 

The books that seem to do best in most of the sales threads are the books that are offered for near 40-50% off guide.

 

Truth! (thumbs u

 

Not to mention the VCC rules preclude them from listing anything here that's on their website...