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Tales from the Comic shop

Started by HotJuicyBurgers,

205 posts in this topic

mikephoen

mikephoen

Posted
Posted
Ok, so I worked in a comic shop in Oklahoma City from 1991 until 1993 and because so many people talk about the *spoon* bosses they had, I've got to tell my story.

 

I graduated College in 1991 and I could not find a job to save my life due to a lousy combination of a recession and an English degree. Upon graduation, I received two job offers: one in New York City interning at a publishing company for $19,000 a year and the other as a technical writer at IBM in Austin, Texas. Between the time the offer letter was written and the time I received it, the IBM plant closed, or retooled, I forget which, and my just offered position was eliminated! Laid off before I was ever hired; has to be a record I tells ya!

 

Anyway, I move to Oklahoma City and I start visiting, weekly, the LCS I always visited through the years. The owner is still around and he offers me a part-time job while I make a half-hearted attempt at getting a Computer Science degree to make myself employable.

 

A few months go by, living with my parents again, and after one particularly frustrating day, I make the decision that I must move out or lose my sanity. I called an apartment complex across the street from the LCS, find out their mimimum income requirements, and rush to the store. Lucky for me, the owner and the manager were there.

 

After I explained my fear that my brains would melt through my ears if I had to stay with my parents any longer, the owner and the manager put their heads together and figured out a way for me to move to full-time! They put my salary at exactly the minimum to get into the apartment complex and I was on my way to the cushiest job known to man: Comic Shop employee!

 

Over the course of the next two years, I did my best to repay the owner and manager of the shop by pushing the very large back stock of great 60's and 70' material to the customers. The owner was very generous with my authority to make deals and he had the attitude, for the most part, that a dime today was better than a quarter that might never come. I was able to sell runs like X-Men #2-6 at 30% off guide to literally kids that would drive, with their parents, to the shop from surrounding commmunities. We encouraged investment in Silver Age and helped our investment customers, where we could, stay away from the trap of multiple cover 90's drek.

 

Where we could, we would turn the ravening greed of the QVC type collector into a force for good. For example, for "The Death of Superman", we announced through the newspapers and local news programs that we were going to sell the issue at cover price + 2 cans of food for the local foodbank. I don't know how many thousands of copies, over ten thousand if I had to guess, we sold on the evening of the release but the line went winding through the store, down the strip mall, and ended in front of the Pizza Hut, at its peak. We were able to fill a small Uhaul truck with canned goods. (thumbs u

 

The most amazing part of this, for me any way, came at the end of 1992 when the store manager and the owner presented me with my bonus: a VG copy of F.C. 386 with a hundred dollar bill stuffed between each page!

 

I hope Barry and Bash are reading this because I don't know if I ever said thank you for the great time I had working for them. That period is some the happiest memories of my life. I would say the name of the store but it exists under new management and is not really the same place.

 

 

Great story!

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thehumantorch

thehumantorch

Posted
Posted
Ok, so I worked in a comic shop in Oklahoma City from 1991 until 1993 and because so many people talk about the *spoon* bosses they had, I've got to tell my story.

 

I graduated College in 1991 and I could not find a job to save my life due to a lousy combination of a recession and an English degree. Upon graduation, I received two job offers: one in New York City interning at a publishing company for $19,000 a year and the other as a technical writer at IBM in Austin, Texas. Between the time the offer letter was written and the time I received it, the IBM plant closed, or retooled, I forget which, and my just offered position was eliminated! Laid off before I was ever hired; has to be a record I tells ya!

 

Anyway, I move to Oklahoma City and I start visiting, weekly, the LCS I always visited through the years. The owner is still around and he offers me a part-time job while I make a half-hearted attempt at getting a Computer Science degree to make myself employable.

 

A few months go by, living with my parents again, and after one particularly frustrating day, I make the decision that I must move out or lose my sanity. I called an apartment complex across the street from the LCS, find out their mimimum income requirements, and rush to the store. Lucky for me, the owner and the manager were there.

 

After I explained my fear that my brains would melt through my ears if I had to stay with my parents any longer, the owner and the manager put their heads together and figured out a way for me to move to full-time! They put my salary at exactly the minimum to get into the apartment complex and I was on my way to the cushiest job known to man: Comic Shop employee!

 

Over the course of the next two years, I did my best to repay the owner and manager of the shop by pushing the very large back stock of great 60's and 70' material to the customers. The owner was very generous with my authority to make deals and he had the attitude, for the most part, that a dime today was better than a quarter that might never come. I was able to sell runs like X-Men #2-6 at 30% off guide to literally kids that would drive, with their parents, to the shop from surrounding commmunities. We encouraged investment in Silver Age and helped our investment customers, where we could, stay away from the trap of multiple cover 90's drek.

 

Where we could, we would turn the ravening greed of the QVC type collector into a force for good. For example, for "The Death of Superman", we announced through the newspapers and local news programs that we were going to sell the issue at cover price + 2 cans of food for the local foodbank. I don't know how many thousands of copies, over ten thousand if I had to guess, we sold on the evening of the release but the line went winding through the store, down the strip mall, and ended in front of the Pizza Hut, at its peak. We were able to fill a small Uhaul truck with canned goods. (thumbs u

 

The most amazing part of this, for me any way, came at the end of 1992 when the store manager and the owner presented me with my bonus: a VG copy of F.C. 386 with a hundred dollar bill stuffed between each page!

 

I hope Barry and Bash are reading this because I don't know if I ever said thank you for the great time I had working for them. That period is some the happiest memories of my life. I would say the name of the store but it exists under new management and is not really the same place.

 

 

Great story!

 

Wonderful story. All LCS owners should be like this :baiting:

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thehumantorch

thehumantorch

Posted
Posted
Here's a (long) story about the best comic collection to ever come in my door.

 

It's a slow to moderately busy day and I'm working behind the counter, sometime in 2003 or 2004. A customer asks if we have any price guides. He is an average looking guy, nicely dressed, mid 30s or so. Nothing remarkable in any way about him.

 

I show him the latest Overstreet and he asks a few questions about grading and pricing. Pretty typical stuff. I pick up on the possibility that he is looking to sell. I ask him what he has and if he wants to sell. He says that he is. He says he used to be a big collector years ago. He has a lot of books, runs of most major Marvel titles. I ask what his best books are and he names some low number Amazings, 4, 7, 10, mostly complete from 20 up. He mentions that he also has lots of doubles. One book in particular that he has a lot of copies of is Iron Fist 14, and he wonders what that is worth.

 

Everything is sounding great, we keep chatting since the store isn't that busy and the other employee working can handle the people. He mentions that he didn't know he still had these, he thought his parents had junked them. It's at this point that I realize that something might be up. I gently press him a little more about when he bought these. Since he is in him mid to maybe late 30s (I'm kinda a bad judge of people's age), and he says his parents bought them for him mostly when he was a kid. Hmm.. unless his parents were very rich, these books would have been expensive even in the mid 80s. If they had spend a lot of money on these, why would he think they might have thrown them out?

 

And Iron Fist 14, that is not the kind of book you buy multiples of when you're a kid. I know the local collector who does buy multiples of that book though...

 

Flashback about 3 months. One of my best customers brings bad news. Over the Xmas holidays his house was broken into while he was on holidays. Among other things, they took the longboxes where he kept his high grade Silver Age runs. Like many collectors he had an area for his good stuff, and an area for his drek. They had scooped all his good stuff.

 

He is a super anal collector though, so he had an exact list of the books stolen, including his grades. He is a very conservative grader, and most of his books are listed 9.0 or better. Over the years he was one of the collectors who would buy the absolute best stuff from any collections that came in. None of his books were graded at that time, so no cert numbers. He also stored them in a very unusual way. All of his books had a backing board in the middle of the book, then slid into a mylite. The book then got a thicker backing board behind it, and everything slid into a 4 mil mylar.

 

I remembered enough of the list to know he had a smattering of single digit Amazings, lots of doubles of higher numbers and 4 or 5 Iron Fist 14s. I just knew this was his collection. I played it cool though, and let him know that I was very interested in buying the collection. I let him know that it would take me a few hours at least to grade and price a collection of this size. It would be best if he brought it in and dropped it off while I went through it, and then I could give him a call when it was done. He balked at bringing it all in, but agreed to bring in one box. I asked him to start with the Amazings, since those were the most valuable, but I didn't want to press him too much.

 

He said he had some classes on Friday at a nearby technical school and he could drop them off in the morning and then come back after class.

 

I call my customer and also the police to get their opinion. They say to call them if/when he brings the books by. Friday comes by and in comes the guy with a box of books! Instantly I recognize that they are my customers. Every book is bagged and boarded exactly as he did them. I play it cool though, and the guy agrees to come back in a couple hours.

 

I call the police and they send a couple officers by a few minutes later. One of the officers is actually a comic collector and is an occasional customer. He isn't a silver age guy, but he knows that the stuff is valuable and that the unusal bagging and boarding is a very good identifier. My store has multiple floors, so the officers agree to hang out upstairs and wait for the guy to come back.

 

One hour goes by, then another, then another. The officers are being good about it, and fortunately this isn't a busy day for the police force so they can stay another hour. We are a little worried that the guy has figured out what is going on and isn't coming back. The one box he brought in is good... but it is mostly bronze stuff, not the really high end stuff. About 50 minutes into the final hour, the guy comes back in.

 

I tell him the stuff is great! I really want to buy it and I've gone through all of it and priced it out. I invite him upstairs to discuss price. As we're heading up the stairs I keep up the chit-chat and when we reach the top I say 'Oh, and these guys want to talk to you about the books too.' The cops are both standing at the top of the steps, just around the corner looking super intimidating, the way only cops can.

 

The dude is just stunned. They sit him down and start talking to him. I exit to the bottom of the stairs, but I stay where I can eavesdrop. They ask him the typical stuff, where did you get them etc. He starts with the parents bought them for him as a kid story, but then quickly changes tune. He gives them a story that he bought them for $5000 from a guy in a truck parked in a trendy area of town. The comic collector officer says to the guy 'Unless you were walking down the street dressed as Green Lantern why someone offer you a comic collection on the steet? And why would you have 5K on you?'

 

I don't listen to everything, I do have other customers to serve, but they get enough out of him to arrest him and get a search warrant for his house. They tell me I can give the comics we've recovered back to my customer, which surprises me. I thought they would have to be held for evidence or something, but they say no, they won't need them. I call my customer (who has been frantically emailing me from his work all day for details on the sting operation) and give him the good news.

 

Later that night the police recover the other boxes of books and return them to my customer as well. In the end it turns out that about 17 books are missing from the collection. They are lesser graded double of Amazings (probably in the 8.0 range). No idea what happened to those books, maybe they were sold separately before bringing the stuff to me.

 

The police also let us know that 'Green Lantern' has a prior for breaking and entering from a decade before, but he has been clean since then. He has a decent job, and has been taking classes to move up in his profession (some sort of red ticket trade). They don't believe that he did the break in at my customers. The theory is that some of the guys he used to run with probably did it, but gave the books to him to sell. He definitely knew something about comics, most likely he had been a collector at one time. He refuses to flip on anyone though, so he is charged with possession of stolen goods.

 

A couple of months later, his court date comes up and I'm called in to testify. I'm there, the arresting officers are there and also my customer. They bring in the crook and he also has some people with him. I wonder if they were his 'friends' that actually did the B&E.

 

Before the trial begins, the prosecutors want to talk to me. They are unsure if they can make the charge of possession over $5000 stick, since these are 'just comic books'. I tell them that if my customer asked me to buy them for $25K I would write the check on the spot. And that I would have doubled my money by the end of the month. My best estimate at the time was that they were worth 50-75K. Looking back, and knowing more about the high grade market post CGC, I'm sure my estimate was very, very conservative.

 

Armed with this, the lawyers approach the defense and tell them that I'll testify to the value and give him my statement that I would buy the books on the spot for $25K.

 

The judge comes in, we stand etc, then the judge asks the lawyers to approach. I can't hear what they talk about, but a few minutes later it's all over. I never have to take the stand. Turns out the defense decides to take a plea bargain and he pleads guilty.

 

The sentence is very disappointing to me, and seems incredibly light considering he already had a prior. I think he got 30 days, which he could serve on weekends and 2 years probation or something like that. Might have even been less... I know I was disappointed.

 

I worried a bit about some sort of 'retribution' from his buddies, but it never came. I'm glad about that, and I'm very happy that my customer got almost all of his books back.

 

I wish someone ligit would bring me a collection like that some day though!

 

Great story Mike

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Moondog

Moondog

Posted
Posted
Ok, so I worked in a comic shop in Oklahoma City from 1991 until 1993 and because so many people talk about the *spoon* bosses they had, I've got to tell my story.

 

I graduated College in 1991 and I could not find a job to save my life due to a lousy combination of a recession and an English degree. Upon graduation, I received two job offers: one in New York City interning at a publishing company for $19,000 a year and the other as a technical writer at IBM in Austin, Texas. Between the time the offer letter was written and the time I received it, the IBM plant closed, or retooled, I forget which, and my just offered position was eliminated! Laid off before I was ever hired; has to be a record I tells ya!

 

Anyway, I move to Oklahoma City and I start visiting, weekly, the LCS I always visited through the years. The owner is still around and he offers me a part-time job while I make a half-hearted attempt at getting a Computer Science degree to make myself employable.

 

A few months go by, living with my parents again, and after one particularly frustrating day, I make the decision that I must move out or lose my sanity. I called an apartment complex across the street from the LCS, find out their mimimum income requirements, and rush to the store. Lucky for me, the owner and the manager were there.

 

After I explained my fear that my brains would melt through my ears if I had to stay with my parents any longer, the owner and the manager put their heads together and figured out a way for me to move to full-time! They put my salary at exactly the minimum to get into the apartment complex and I was on my way to the cushiest job known to man: Comic Shop employee!

 

Over the course of the next two years, I did my best to repay the owner and manager of the shop by pushing the very large back stock of great 60's and 70' material to the customers. The owner was very generous with my authority to make deals and he had the attitude, for the most part, that a dime today was better than a quarter that might never come. I was able to sell runs like X-Men #2-6 at 30% off guide to literally kids that would drive, with their parents, to the shop from surrounding commmunities. We encouraged investment in Silver Age and helped our investment customers, where we could, stay away from the trap of multiple cover 90's drek.

 

Where we could, we would turn the ravening greed of the QVC type collector into a force for good. For example, for "The Death of Superman", we announced through the newspapers and local news programs that we were going to sell the issue at cover price + 2 cans of food for the local foodbank. I don't know how many thousands of copies, over ten thousand if I had to guess, we sold on the evening of the release but the line went winding through the store, down the strip mall, and ended in front of the Pizza Hut, at its peak. We were able to fill a small Uhaul truck with canned goods. (thumbs u

 

The most amazing part of this, for me any way, came at the end of 1992 when the store manager and the owner presented me with my bonus: a VG copy of F.C. 386 with a hundred dollar bill stuffed between each page!

 

I hope Barry and Bash are reading this because I don't know if I ever said thank you for the great time I had working for them. That period is some the happiest memories of my life. I would say the name of the store but it exists under new management and is not really the same place.

 

 

(thumbs u

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999ghosts

999ghosts

Posted
Posted

....

 

The most amazing part of this, for me any way, came at the end of 1992 when the store manager and the owner presented me with my bonus: a VG copy of F.C. 386 with a hundred dollar bill stuffed between each page!

 

I hope Barry and Bash are reading this because I don't know if I ever said thank you for the great time I had working for them.

 

....

 

Great story! (thumbs u

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Bookery

Bookery

Posted
Posted
Here's a link to an old thread where we did similar stories:

 

http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=4472901

 

A fun thread... though I think slightly different from this one. The previous thread was about consumer experiences with old comic shops... if I interpret it correctly, the OP of this thread is asking for experiences from comic shop owners or employees (a la "Comic Book Men").

 

At any rate... here's one that sticks with me for some reason...

 

A long time ago, back in an old and smaller version of our shop, an older gent, maybe 75, saunters into the shop and begins going through some boxes of pulp magazines. This was a collection I'd picked up a few weeks earlier... pretty basic stuff... railroad pulps, Argosy, Blue Book... nice shape but nothing expensive... the kind of stuff you paid $2 each for, and priced, depending on condition and graphics, from $3 to $6 each back then.

 

He kind of flips through them rather dismissively, then finally turns to the counter and asks... "Would you be interested in bulking these out?"

 

"All of them?" There were maybe three long boxes worth.

 

"Yup. How much?"

 

I thought about it. I hadn't had them very long, but on the other hand, they were the kind of stuff you kind of wondered why you picked them up in the first place. I figured I'd give him a good deal, and just hope the next pulp collection was of more interest.

 

"I'll work you out a good deal... give me a few minutes to add them up." Now today I'd just do a rough issue count and figure a price... but I was young and back then I somehow felt I needed to add them up, if for no other reason than to let him know what a decent discount I was offering.

 

So he waits patiently for the few minutes it takes me to do some calculating. I don't recall the exact amount, but let's say there were 100 pulps and they priced out as stickered to $475. I had $200 in them, and bought them, again, only a month earlier. I figured it wouldn't really pay for the bagging, boarding, and pricing time, but what the heck... the week had been slow and if I make him a good deal, maybe he'll come back when I have a nicer collection in stock. So, rather proudly, I announce...

 

"Well... they price out to $475, but if you want them all, I'll do it for $250". Now I generally price things pretty conservatively, and rarely need to give a 50% discount, so I'm guessing the guy was figuring maybe a 20%-30% discount, and will be quite pleased with what I offered.

 

This little old man's eyes narrowed into slits of pure rage. He started screaming "You lousy crook! You $%*$ crook! I'm telling everybody about you! I'll never come back! I'll never come back!"

 

I'm in a state of total shock. First, I'm wondering how I can be a "crook"... I made an offer, and he's certainly free to reject it. I'm not sure how crookedness even comes into play. I ask (actually I had to scream to be heard over his shouting) "I don't understand... what's wrong?"

 

"I asked you to buck them out you lousy SOB! You're trying to swindle me!" And he started cursing again.

 

I shouted back... "I thought you said bulk them out"... a phrase dealers used all of the time. I tried to explain I had never in my life heard the phrase "buck them out" (as in $1 each), and at any rate I misunderstood what he wanted... I paid $2 for them, and in fact, if I bought them from someone at a rate where I could afford to sell them for $1 each... I indeed would be a "crook" for having ripped off the person who sold them to me.

 

He would hear none of it. He kept screaming and cursing as loud as his aged lungs could handle all of the way out the door and across the parking lot, never to be heard from again. It was my first experience with what, years later, I would come to learn was a certain class of septuagenarian/octagenarian pulp collector who definitely had a world of their own when it came to dealing with their beloved collectible of choice!

 

But those are other stories for other times...

 

 

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PovertyRow

PovertyRow

Posted
Posted
It was my first experience with what, years later, I would come to learn was a certain class of septuagenarian/octagenarian

 

 

I will be 62 this month and your tale made me look myself up. Seems I am a sexagenarian!!! Whoa! Sex-eeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!

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jimjum12

jimjum12

Posted
Posted
75 years old, you say? I wouldn't worry about it anymore. I'm sure he's dead now.

 

Doubtful. Pulp collectors don't even hit their collecting prime until about 95...

 

 

I once sold some Weird Tales to a guy who was over 140 years old.....it seems he learned some dubious secrets from those old Lovecraft tales. GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

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Bookery

Bookery

Posted
Posted

I once sold some Weird Tales to a guy who was over 140 years old.....it seems he learned some dubious secrets from those old Lovecraft tales. GOD BLESS....

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

You may not be too far off! They used to joke that there was something in pulp paper that led to longevity. Let alone the collectors, look at the lifespans of some of the writers...

 

Carl Jacobi (89), E.C. Tubb (90), Philip Jose Farmer (91), Ray Bradbury (91), Hugh B. Cave (93), Jack Vance (96), Nelson Bond (97), Jack Williamson (98), and Frederik Pohl... who is still writing at 93!

 

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Number 6

Number 6

Posted
Posted

A couple of weeks ago I made my monthly Wednesday stop to my LCS. I was in a spendy mood and bought about 4 times what I normally do. There were a couple of books I thought about picking up but didn't.

 

The next day I start kicking myself for not picking up those two books so on Saturday I popped in to buy those books and a couple more. The owner sees me and shoots me a look like a just made a pass at his teenage daughter.

 

I guess I'm not tolerated in his store more than once a month. lol

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Tuffy

Tuffy

Posted
Posted
A couple of weeks ago I made my monthly Wednesday stop to my LCS. I was in a spendy mood and bought about 4 times what I normally do. There were a couple of books I thought about picking up but didn't.

 

The next day I start kicking myself for not picking up those two books so on Saturday I popped in to buy those books and a couple more. The owner sees me and shoots me a look like a just made a pass at his teenage daughter.

 

I guess I'm not tolerated in his store more than once a month. lol

 

He was mad that you spent money?

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