Wizard World Philly 2015 (my first major con - review):

[VintageComics]

Philly suburb tip...NEVER drive into the city. Septa regional rail runs on time and costs $12 round trip. There is a stop right outside the convention center.

 

I worked in Philly for 4 months and there is no truer words spoken. Traffic is so bad in Philly people go in to work 2 hours early to avoid getting stuck in all the chaos.

 

Been driving from suburban Wilmington to work in Philly for the past 17 years. From my experience, driving in Philly isn't anywhere near as bad as in New York, LA, Boston, or DC.

 

Drove from West Philly where I work to the convention in 15 minutes and parked for free on Vine Street on Friday. As easy as it was to get to, it didn't make the Wizard craptacular any better.

 

I was shocked at how quickly traffic moved in Philly during 9 AM rush hour. There wasn't any!

 

Meanwhile, NYC has a rush hour that starts around 5 AM and goes till, oh, 4 AM the next day.

[Guardian Comics]

Ill add a few things.

I set ip for philly. Got in around 10am wednesday morning. Sciatica was killing me all 6 days in philly. Was taking massive amounts of hydrocodone, ibuprophin, gabapentin. This trip was an eye opener. Im going to start a work out program and get into shape. My wife gave birth to our wonderful son bruce the 16th of april and i want to be able to play with him but being fat and having all these medical problems at an early age, cant have that. So even in pain now, ill start working out, eating healthy, and taking better care of myself.

Now onto the show.

Wednesday setup went really fast. Had help from bronzejbone during setup. Thanks again jason, that help was really appreciated. Got back to the hotel at around 3 or something, got to sleep at around 4pm and didnt wake up until the following morning at 4am. Having a baby takes away all that sleep. My wife is a gladiator.

Thursday, friday and saturday were excellent for sales. Sunday was slower but tats to be expected. All in all, great sales at this show.

Met up with some board members, jsilverjanet was a really cool cat. Want to hang out with you hector, you are good people. Also met up with bronzebruce, bird, wombat, copperagekids. I also met roy for the first time, very nice meeting you roy. Met up with dre(beachbum) again. We are in the same boat, sort of, congrats on the birth dre and congrats on everything else, house and all that. Take a break every now and then .

All in all, first philly show was a success and got to finally meet great people.

Was a nice show and good town. Ill be doing philly again next year. Stl in a few weeks. Sure ill see some of you there.

 

What types of things were 'better' sellers?

 

thanks for posting.

I had 2 nm 98's for this show and they both went. 3 hulk 377 3rd prints and 2 went before i overpriced the 3rd. Modern "keys" were flying for me. There was some theft i will say. Had someone almost walk away with an x-men 94 and someone did take a adventure time sketch, only $10 i believe. Other books from dealers left as well. Lots of people asking about civil war. But none would probably pay market.

 

Oh, so you were in the middle of the room, with a whole bunch of $2.00 books, and then about a half dozen or so short boxes of wall material?

 

Then I did meet you, and bought some stuff from you.

 

Jim

[robocard]

I think if most people at the show gave an "opinion" the atmoshere this year would have been described as "weird".

 

I personally feel that the Wizard Philly show has pissed off a lot of artists and dealers with the conflict of show dates with Heroes, intentional or not.

 

Regardless of who the promoter is lets not pine for the old days because frankly conventions have become more than just comic books. Original Art, Signature Series books, show exclusives, Movie posters, Toys, Cosplay, costumes, artists, actors who play comic characters, weapons, etc are all part of the Comic culture. Of course it would be nice if the promoters gave the dealers a pavilion of their own so the comic guys wouldn't have to be bothered by all the other distractions.

 

Anybody do the comic only Philly shows? Sorry but the sad truth is that the comic base in Philly just isn't that great for a 3-4 day comic convention. Would you rather there be no comic convention? Then I can go back to reading about how sad the local one day shows are.

 

I've read in multiple convention threads about "customer expectations" and them not being met. Besides writing in the thread are the promoters being told? Voting with your feet doesn't exactly communicate to the promoter when they do very little profiling of their customer base. That feedback comes from the dealers complaining that sales were soft. They again vote with their feet and don't show up the next year. A lot of people expect things to change using the Vulcan mind meld into the promoters head.

 

Websites do put a lot of pressure on convention inventory. I sell a LOT of books off my website. I do not bring 30K books to every convention to satisfy the guy looking for MTU #107 in NM. I communicate clearly on my website that if you want to see something then email and I will try and bring it. There are a lot of shows I don't have to do but I like to do them anyway. I do not rate a convention on just my sales. I've discussed them before. I do bring 30k of books to the local Phoenix Cons (although I sometimes regret it at load-in and load-out).

 

I do not fault the Wizard promoters from accepting product placement booths. Why not? The attendance must support the companies being there. Nobody posts about product placement booths at Reed shows because there are plenty of dealers there. Food concession stands throughout the show, liquor sales. I get the business aspect and frankly where the profit comes from. I also get the VIP packages, the hourly marketing messages which I think is "found money". Granted most of this isn't putting money into my pocket but the bottom line you do want a promoter to be successful.

 

And frankly not all of the success relies on the promoter bringing collectors to the show. That responsibility also falls on the dealers and his ability to get his customers to come to the show in that area or out of state if the convention is worth traveling to.

 

Collectors are not without blame. Those who badmouth the show out of their own personal gripe post will discourage a lot of collectors who otherwise may have had a good experience at the show. Not everyone has the "same agenda" when it comes to what they are looking for, spending limits etc. Sometimes I read some of the convention posts I was at and wonder what show they were at.

I stated to another dealer at the show that I think ALL of the promoters do not understand the trickle down financial impact National dealers bring to the show when we are spending money. We are there to BUY a lot of books. It would make a lot of sense to bring in as many local dealers/collectors with discounted booths. In addition I have spoken to Wizard more than once about giving dealers who sell tickets to the show credits toward their booth costs. The more win win relationships you create with your dealer base the better the show will be. Every promoter is guilty of ignoring the guys who pay for the celebrities who pay for nothing.

 

That being said I had a decent Philly show.

 

Well said Bob. A nice realty check to Comic Cons in today's environment.

 

I may cut and paste this post into every future Phoenix Con tread in the Events section going forward, especially the paragraph regarding Collector's badmouthing impact on other potential attendees.

[revat]

Philly suburb tip...NEVER drive into the city. Septa regional rail runs on time and costs $12 round trip. There is a stop right outside the convention center.

 

I worked in Philly for 4 months and there is no truer words spoken. Traffic is so bad in Philly people go in to work 2 hours early to avoid getting stuck in all the chaos.

 

Been driving from suburban Wilmington to work in Philly for the past 17 years. From my experience, driving in Philly isn't anywhere near as bad as in New York, LA, Boston, or DC.

 

Drove from West Philly where I work to the convention in 15 minutes and parked for free on Vine Street on Friday. As easy as it was to get to, it didn't make the Wizard craptacular any better.

 

I was shocked at how quickly traffic moved in Philly during 9 AM rush hour. There wasn't any!

 

Meanwhile, NYC has a rush hour that starts around 5 AM and goes till, oh, 4 AM the next day.

 

I agree. There's a lot of major cities around America with serious traffic. But they pale in comparison to the EPIC traffic of NYC and LA (and maybe Boston with an honorable mention to DC because of random road closures and blockages always popping up for govt officials and security concerns.).

 

Have you ever watched SNL and saw the 'Californians' sketch where a bunch of rich blonde people wear white and hang out by the beach and talk about traffic and wicker furniture? That's pretty accurate, except you can't get that many friends in one place because there's too much traffic in LA.

[Robot Man]

I agree with the "bad mouthing" part. This just discourages buyers from coming and thusly means even fewer dealers. That being said $100. A day is a lot of money just to get into the door to find no comics at a comic book show.

 

I realize the promoters are in the business to make money. They provide what most of the public wants. Unfortunately, most are not there to buy old comics. Cons have just changed with the times. Being a collector, I go to cons to dig boxes and buy old comics. I am probably in the minority.

 

The dealers have the responsibility to bring what their customers will buy. It is an expensive and challenging job. To have a good show you have to make the "dollar" guys happy as well as the deep pocket guys and the middle of the road guys happy too. VERY hard to do. I respect how hard it is and always try to spread the money around so dealers will come back. If all you bring is one or the other it will probably bee a dim show. As I have said before NO dealer is getting rich selling comic books.

 

 

[Sqeggs]

As I have said before NO dealer is getting rich selling comic books.

 

 

Metro?

[Robot Man]

I believe "the fish" has deep pocket backing. Also, when you pay what they do for big books the margins are pretty thin...

[jsilverjanet]

While I did make comments in the other thread about the other businesses being there, my comments were more surprise than anger/hate/frustration

 

I'm used to only the Chicago cons and while non comic book businesses are a part of them they are not to the extent that I saw in Philly

 

I like all comic conventions. There is always something new and different at each one. There are always deals and lately it's nice to meet some boardies and get some insight about where the business is and where it's going

 

The cosplay is always a treat

 

I hope to talk to more of you in the future at both WW Chicago and Baltimore

 

 

[Doktor]

So did anyone else get utterly destroyed by a headcold after Philly? Something kicked my hard on Monday morning & by the afternoon, I was dead to the world for almost 36 hours. I have no idea how I went to work Tuesday because I was tweeting gibberish & was bordering on peyote-level out-of-my-mind-ness.