Calgary comic and entertainment expo april 27 -29

[Tuff Ghost]

They expected around 35,000 but it ended up being 50,000. It was really on saturday at around 1pm it seemed like everyone came to the show at the exact same time. Fire marshall wouldn't let anyone in. Even people who had pre-paid passes couldn't get in until later on. They weren't prepared for that at all. Sunday was much better since they stopped selling day passes and only let in people who had pre-purchased tickets. Overall the show was awesome, but it sucks for people who got stuck outside on saturday.

 

This article talks a little bit about it...

 

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/entertainment/6537825/story.html

[thehumantorch]

Day 1

line up to get in was 15 minutes 25$ cost 1 day

Not a lot of CGC at the con

The best booth for Vintage comics was hosed by thehumantorch and his buddys definetly the 3 three musketeers of comic book sellers

A lot and I meen alot of booths with under 10$ boxes with member wolf_2099 looking after a area of modern books with his very very atractive GF (did I mention VERY )

Local comic book stores all had booths selling thier things same old same old

NO lines at all in custom drawing area with at least 3 names I had seen before (custom overnight orders available)

Stan Lee was a 2 hr line up but for extra cost it seems you could skip the line and pick up signed books next day (yippy)

Never got close to seeing any star trek people ?

Cgc was represented with again no line up at all to submit books

Lots and lots of costumed young people some great some not so good some to hot to post in a public forum !

It should be realy good saturday (today)

 

Sure was nice to meet you. Glad you came by and hung out with us and joined us for dinner.

 

And thanks for vintage comic complements. I think we did pretty well for 3 mom and pop type collectors.

[thehumantorch]

Unfortunately we (DWC) have been slammed at the booth this whole show. Does anyone know if any vendors are selling bags and boards at the show?

 

I had hoped to come by and say hi but we were pretty busy and the few times I ventured your way the lineups turned me away.

[wolf_2099]

Unfortunately we (DWC) have been slammed at the booth this whole show. Does anyone know if any vendors are selling bags and boards at the show?

 

I had hoped to come by and say hi but we were pretty busy and the few times I ventured your way the lineups turned me away.

 

And I meant to come see you guys, you were like 30 feet from our booth, I saw you guys all weekend. We just got so slammed.

 

I didn't even have time to really buy anything. I got sme stuff from the guys I was working for, and a george perez sketch, that is it.

 

 

As far as numbers. They were expecting 50k for the weekend. By Saturday afternoon 50k showed up. They figure another couple thousand probably showed up and left Saturday afternoon after the fire marshal shut them down. I heard that it was possibly in part due to a kid having a melt down in the media hall, due to the huge amount of people

 

At one point they stopped letting exhibitors back in.

 

The seller/artist alley floor was actually less busy Saturday afternoon, than Friday night, too.Many many angry sellers and attendees this weekend.

 

The line-up Sunday morning was to 12th avenue, and by 11 stopped selling tickets.

 

I think the lesson may be the cast of TNG and Stan Lee are too big for 1 show.

 

I'll post more later.

[wolf_2099]

Unfortunately we (DWC) have been slammed at the booth this whole show. Does anyone know if any vendors are selling bags and boards at the show?

 

I had hoped to come by and say hi but we were pretty busy and the few times I ventured your way the lineups turned me away.

 

And I meant to come see you guys, you were like 30 feet from our booth, I saw you guys all weekend. We just got so slammed.

 

I didn't even have time to really buy anything. I got sme stuff from the guys I was working for, and a george perez sketch, that is it.

 

I did however, get several books signed and personalized by Stan Lee, so that was awesome. DWC did a fantastic job at this show.

 

 

As far as numbers. They were expecting 50k for the weekend. By Saturday afternoon 50k showed up. They figure another couple thousand probably showed up and left Saturday afternoon after the fire marshal shut them down. I heard that it was possibly in part due to a kid having a melt down in the media hall, due to the huge amount of people

 

At one point they stopped letting exhibitors back in.

 

The seller/artist alley floor was actually less busy Saturday afternoon, than Friday night, too.Many many angry sellers and attendees this weekend.

 

The line-up Sunday morning was to 12th avenue, and by 11 stopped selling tickets.

 

I think the lesson may be the cast of TNG and Stan Lee are too big for 1 show.

 

I'll post more later.

[gyro-1]

Day 1

line up to get in was 15 minutes 25$ cost 1 day

Not a lot of CGC at the con

The best booth for Vintage comics was hosed by thehumantorch and his buddys definetly the 3 three musketeers of comic book sellers

A lot and I meen alot of booths with under 10$ boxes with member wolf_2099 looking after a area of modern books with his very very atractive GF (did I mention VERY )

Local comic book stores all had booths selling thier things same old same old

NO lines at all in custom drawing area with at least 3 names I had seen before (custom overnight orders available)

Stan Lee was a 2 hr line up but for extra cost it seems you could skip the line and pick up signed books next day (yippy)

Never got close to seeing any star trek people ?

Cgc was represented with again no line up at all to submit books

Lots and lots of costumed young people some great some not so good some to hot to post in a public forum !

It should be realy good saturday (today)

 

Sure was nice to meet you. Glad you came by and hung out with us and joined us for dinner.

 

And thanks for vintage comic complements. I think we did pretty well for 3 mom and pop type collectors.

Thanks so much !

Think of how much you fellows would of sold if you guys had not spent haft your time chacing after the blond in the leather Cat Woman outfit !!

[Artboy99]

I can chime in with my sidde of this experience. We were Citadel Comics at booth 306. Citadel Comics is Kimik's, but is at the moment made up of the 4 of us board members: 500club, Kimik, theHumantorch and myself Artboy99. We all met via these very CGC boards, and have been doing shows together for 4 years now.

 

Preparation for the show.

 

This does take many many hours. Grading books, bagging+boarding. Which books to bring is the biggest decision. Cost of booth? The 4 of us: 500club, Kimik, theHumantorch and myself decided on a half endcap for 775.00. This yields 2 8 foot long x 2 foot tables. Divide that space between 4 guys and basically you get 1/2 of an 8 foot table so 4 feet. That is basically 4 boxes. If you are not local you need sleeping accomodations. I bunked with TheHumantorch at a cheap place we found the year before, but it is a hundred dollars a night. As you can see the costs do add up!

 

I decided to bring what was left of my once great magic card collection, some of my comic book art and prints I had made. I spent some time doing some Walking Dead drawings that I made prints of. For comics I brought a bunch of key books for our wall display, and my bulk collection which is basically my personal collection of Gd-Vg-Fn "readers" I have always been a reader of books, and high grade books are not for reading in my opinion so I have bought low grade stuff. I believe there is a market for everything, and I have proven experience selling those type of books at all the shows I have attended. Recently though I have started to "dabble" in higher grade books, buying 6.0-9.4 type of stuff for the expressed purposes of resale.

Admittedly, I was running out of books to sell, and if I was going to continue to do this with my friends I needed to be buying. That in itself is a whole other job: it is a different thing to be buying for resale versus buying for your personal collection. I tend to be very analytical in my purchasing for resale and do a lot of research on what books sell for before buying so I know if buying a specific book gives room for profit. It also needs to allow for "give me a deal" off the price you mark it at. As Dave has said, we are very fair to deal with, and mark our books very fairly. I took great pride in hearing a customer tell another cistomer right at our booth " these guys are the best dealers here. They have the best prices, offer an excellent variety".

 

Friday

 

I left my place at 7:10 AM to get to Dave's(thehumantorch), we loaded up and headed out. We got to the show at 11:45 AM.

 

Dave is accurate in how it went down when we first arrived. Harley was lurking around at our empty booth when we arrived with our carts full and we didn't even have time to get the boxes off the carts and on the tables before the lids were off and books being pulled. It kind of stunned us and felt like we were bringing in the meat for the vultures IMHO. We stretched out the booth size by moving the tables out slightly so our tables would line up with the toy vendor who was beside us. This gave a large 4 foot wide space between the 2 tables which was filled with a 4 foot table that Harley Yee just dropped off at our booth.

 

I sold one GA horror to Harley for 300 before I had my boxes on the table, and 2-3 books to other dealers who didn't even introduce themselves so I have no idea who they were.

We also had some dealer who was French come and ask for stuff, mostly from Brian(500club) to start and i found him to be very pushy, aggressive and it turned me off. I didn't sell him anything, nor did I even go to his booth at any time during the show.

 

There was a great positive buzz in the air, a variety of costumes ( pics will be coming )of which my favorite was a guy dressed as Galactus, was an awesome job, perhaps a close second was the Dr. Fate there. Yes yes, of course there was a "flesh - fest" of gorgeous women dressed in scanty outfits, we got some pictures. I am hoping board member Piper will post the front and back view I requested ( or was that insisted he take? ) of the Wonder woman!

 

Met board member Liaton-9000 and Gyro, both great guys who later joined us for our dinner.

 

Friday was good, had very busy crowds, I sold nothing worth more than 80 dollars ( which was my ASM 122 ) and yet exceeded my expectations in how much I would sell so I was very happy!.

I Waited until the end of friday for Brian and the French guy to decide on the Walking Dead deal that fizzled ( French guy kept pushing for deals ), once it fizzled i bought his WD 9 eyeball cover that I wanted at the Edmonton Shaw show but forgot to buy.

The show went until 8pm, so we were all a bit tired by the end, but we wanted to go out for dinner. We agreed to meet at the Keg. Hooked up with Mike from Mars & Venus/Whyte Knight of Edmonton and a few others. Our car got lost somehow even with 2 GPS guys in the backseat, and we were even as far out of town as 100 st south by some golf course. We turned around and within 2 minutes I saw a sign that said "entering Calgary city limits, welcome to Calgary". Not meaning to harass Dave about it, it really was not his fault we got lost but I have not laughed that hard in a long time, all the guys making cracks. While we struggled to get to the Keg, we had a great time doing so.

Got Back to the motel at 12 midnight. Dave slept i struggled mostly due to strange room/ bed and not his snoring.

 

Saturday

 

Dave and I decided to eat at Denny's for breakfast, and we lost track of time a bit and parked in the exhibitor parking lot and ran into the show as it opened. First thing I did was rearrange how I had my stuff displayed. Friday I had my art portfolio and magic cards on the table between my comic boxes and Dave's, I was noticing some browsers would look at Brians stuff, then Dave's, then NOT turn the corner to look at mine and left our booth. I moved my comics up to be right by Dave's. This change was excellent as not only did I sell more I also sold more magic cards ( sold none Friday ).

 

Sat was busier than Friday, tons of people roaming about very crowded but at the same time it felt "dead" and we had many periods of slow where none of us made any sales and we were the information booth for people trying to find things.

 

This is a direct result of the variety of famous attendees that are booked for these shows. What happens is the big names draw crowds, people such as Stan Lee and the entire Star Trek next generation cast ( touted as their first ever entire cast reunion since the show!!! ) but the crowds can end up lined up to see those people for hours instead of buying your vg books.

 

Yet throughout it all I managed to sell even more than I did on Friday and was extremely pleased with the results. Again nothing big sold for me, I sold my Iron Man 55, but nothing else over 40 bucks. This is basically an Ideal thing for a comic seller: to sell off your lower grqade easy to find books instead of your key books. Though I bought the key books to sell specifically at the show, I am ok with having them to sell at the next show.

 

Met alot of female buyers at this show, including 2 20 somethings who were very fun to talk with, so friendly/ bubbly and always smiled.

 

Boardie Fantastic Thor showed up and we discussed my Shocksuspense 6 cgc 4.0 and arranged a Sunday trade for his Crime suspense 22 and some cash.

Went out to Chilis on Sat night, Dave was going out with some friends of his after the show, I didn't want to go so Dave dropped me at the hotel, I took a shower and watched Conan the Barb and fell asleep about 12:30 am.

 

Sunday

 

This was a repeat morning as we ate at Denny's, and drove to the show, Dave totally redeemed himself with a fast trip to the show, we were stunned by how large the lines were outside, then discovered somehow the exhibitor parking lot ( for which we had paid for a weekend parking pass ) was full and they would not let us in. Dave let me out and I took his box into the show while he went to find a stall to park. I got in at opening again, setup mine and Daves wall stuff and got the booth ready. Dave says he had to park a mile away.

 

Sunday was my busiest day I had more people looking at my stuff and did the CSS 22 deal, put that on my wall and sold it at end of day. Sold my Atomic War #1, but again the rest of my sales came from 5-40 dollar books.

 

Met yet another female buyer who was in her early 30's by my estimation, who collected Sub-mariner. I sold her several of my subby books, she took 4 of my Tales to Astonish 5.0-6.5's, my entire section of Subby's from 60-72. I started to talk to her about if she had interest in Sub-mariner's Golden age stuff of which she wasn't even aware. Showed her some Marvel Mysterys, and Daves wonderful Canadian yellow cover Golden aged book seen in his signature line up. She was a great lady, and we enjoyed "educating her" on her favorite character's history.

 

Piper spent a lot of time at our booth while waiting for his extremely well done Bob Layton Iron -Man commission. Glad he was there to talk with and to be my official photographer. I know he was uncomfortable taking some of the pics I asked for...( the perv in me HAD to have that wonder woman back view to go along with her front. She was spectacular)

 

Around noon I talked with a guy who was telling me that the show was not letting any more people in, or were restricting the number of people they were letting in. Had something to do with the fire marshall of Calgary. Lots of people were angry, and even some exhibitors were not allowed back in after they went outside for a quick smoke. ( unbelievable! )

Read more here: http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/calgary/entertainment/6537825/story.html

 

 

I didn't get to look around that much, I did buy a Hulk 180 from Harley for my Hulk collecting guy, and some trades to read I spent about 100 bucks, and then at take down decided to browse Brian's Cap box and found a very nice Cap 111 that I paid 80 dollars for.

 

I did have a theft on Sunday that soured my mood a little for awhile as someone stole the highest value card I had in my Magic binder. See you pack mint Mana Drain, I will miss you! Dave was also right about the tip I learned from our Winnipeg friends who were across from us about how people will steal your comics. They move them to the front of your box but between the outer edge and the flap. Push down and they have your book. I decided to test it on Dave and easily got it while in direct conversation with him. Is kind of scary...lesson learned! Tape the insides of your boxes.

 

Highlights for me:

-talked with Tony Moore briefly when I passed his booth

-talked to Bernie Wrightson for 5 minutes, mentioned I had a Swamp Thing I wanted to have signed but I never made it back to see him. ( My feet were hurting bad all show )

-sold more books to female buyers than male.

-noted many younger buyers than older..spells a bright future for our hobby.

 

It was a fabulous show all around, yes it was 3 gruelling long days, but I enjoyed myself. The group I do these shows with are fabulous guys, and it is great to have support when you are there.

_________________________

 

[wolf_2099]

I know the Montreal dealer you're speaking of, he is a tad pushy when it comes to buying. I'm glad you had a good show!

 

We also had a big dead spot on Saturday, due to the fire marshal and the entertainment guests. It's was unfortunate, but the rest of the weekend made up for it.