Boston Back Bay Event Center Con Report and discussion

[CKB]

The follow-up to the successful March 18th Boston was yesterday, October 21st. You can find my report for the March 18th show here , along with others in the thread.

 

The show added a ton of space for artists and guests, and some additional dealer space as well. Superworld set up at the show this time. Unfortunately their massive 10-foot tall by 20-foot wide display blocked my view of the rest of the room. Always good to have Ted V. at the show, though. GA Collectibles, silverandbronze and a bunch of the other local usual suspects were there as well.

 

Mike C. of NeatStuff also made an appearance. He was all over the room buying dealing wheeling and being Mike. I also saw Gary S. from Antiques roadshow there talking to the toy dealers.

 

Jim Steranko held court for the entire day and, by all accounts I have heard, had a blast interacting with his fans.

 

Attendance appeared to be up. Looked like well over 1000 to me. Busy start to finish despite distractions like the Patriots game and the Head of the Charles Regatta.

 

Mike C. started my day out by coming by and buying a bunch of low grade bronze keys from me. Hulk 180,182, IM 55, Xmen 94.

 

I had a steady stream of people buying short to medium stacks of inexpensive silver/bronze/copper. The DC boxes were hit especially hard.

 

Lots of interest in my more expensive books. I sold a couple of really nice Strange Tales in the 110's. Sold a Sgt. Fury 13. Iron Man 128. ASM 250 CGC 9.6. A couple Detectives and a nice Enemy Ace war book.

 

Much more interest in Golden Age this time. My helper was a friend who has a heavy-duty GA collection and brought a couple boxes of heavy duty stuff. He sold a nice group of HG GA DC War. His big sale was a VG Superman 4, though. What made it even sweeter was that Mike C. had been interested in the book all day long but balked at the price, and turned to claiming it might be trimmed and the usual mindgames. Mike did not look to happy when he heard it had been sold.

 

I sold a number of GA War books, a number of gold/silver Gold Keys, and a few Westerns and Archies. I also sold a couple FH Jungle books.

 

I really came loaded with Valiant books, and I wish I had taken a back-up box with duplicates of the early stuff. I have been working hard on getting high grade copies of the Nintendo books for my collection. This leaves me with copies that did not make the cut. I added a section for the Nintendo books to my Valiant box with copies of these issues - not ordinarily seen at shows. A set of one of each of everything I had were sold early to someone who had been looking for them.

 

Sold quite a bit of pre-unity throughout the day, including a bunch to local dealers. Solar 1-10, Rai 2-4, Harbingers with and without the coupons, X-O, gold books...you name it. The box was more the 1/3rd empty by the end of the day. Also sold some Valiant and Image commons. I had a new Valiant Entertainment Harbinger Hardcover on my wall. I sold one and had a number of discussions about it from people who spotted it there.

 

Iron Man seemed very hot. I could have sold a number of IM 128s. My helper's IM 1 sold and I showed a nice 2 and 3 I had on the wall to people a number of times.

 

I'm really glad I had a helper, because I was swamped all day. Great people at the show. Dads with their kids are my favorite. My best sale was to a little guy, must have been 6-7 at most, who was a big fan of Captain Marvel. I had a Whiz #43 on my wall, which he wanted to see and I let him hold it after showing him the price.. The look on his face was priceless.

 

I had a few modern "Shazam's" in my $0.50 box that he bought and went away. At the end of the show, he and his friends still had money, and were looking through my $0.50 modern boxes for books to buy. They had given up looking for Captain Marvel books. So, I pulled a Shazam 100 pager from my "expensive" boxes. It was about a VF and I had $9 on it. I went to the kid's dad and told him that the 100 pages of bronze goodness in this book were going to be worlds more interesting than anything the kids are going to pull out of the $0.50 boxes or find in any modern. He had been trying to steer the kids towards more kid-friendly looking books, and of course they were pulling all the nastiest looking stuff I had.... So I sold him the book for $3. I figured it was clearly worth about 6 modern books. It was an easy sell...

 

The promoters did an excellent job yet again. I cannot thank them enough for the effort. It's really a wonderful facility and room at the Back Bay Events Center.

 

Great CGC board dinner with the locals afterward. It's nice to talk shop in a casual envoronment. Man was I hungry - no time for lunch.

 

More discussion and thoughts about the show, good and bad, are welcome in this thread. Sorry I do not have pictures. Rich ( Pontoon) forgot his camera, too!

 

 

[Mac Man]

 

 

I had a few modern "Shazam's" in my $0.50 box that he bought and went away. At the end of the show, he and his friends still had money, and were looking through my $0.50 modern boxes for books to buy. They had given up looking for Captain Marvel books. So, I pulled a Shazam 100 pager from my "expensive" boxes. It was about a VF and I had $9 on it. I went to the kid's dad and told him that the 100 pages of bronze goodness in this book were going to be worlds more interesting than anything the kids are going to pull out of the $0.50 boxes or find in any modern. He had been trying to steer the kids towards more kid-friendly looking books, and of course they were pulling all the nastiest looking stuff I had.... So I sold him the book for $3. I figured it was clearly worth about 6 modern books. It was an easy sell...

 

And THAT is how you keep this hobby alive and going!

[CAP Freak]

[Dick Pontoon]

Yeah, I forgot a lot that day: the camera, getting some Steranko books signed, checking out the old Don Phelps posters, buying comics, etc. Looking back, it seems like I was in a fog. However, it was a really good show and pretty packed; I had to wait to squeeze in to flip though the bins everywhere I went. The room itself is terrific as well.

 

The only change I would make would be to put Superworld against a wall. Their display was indeed quite high and wide, and had the effect of acting like a room divider.

 

I give it hearty (thumbs u and look forward to the next one.