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Tales and thoughts from the trenches - story of a rookie con seller.

Started by 1Cool,

183 posts in this topic

the blob

the blob

Posted
Posted

why did you need a van for 15 short boxes or is your usual car tiny?

 

getting in at a good show like heroes for $450 sounds pretty good, but is that one or two tables? (at $450 and only 15 short boxes i assume one?)

 

can't imagine flying solo simply because my bladder does not have an infinite ability to wait, but i guess it sounds like you had someone who would at least watch your stuff for a minute if you had to go to the bathroom.

 

 

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1Cool

1Cool

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What kind of overall margin would you guess you got on $5,000 worth of books?

You to get an exact number but my rough math is 40%. The higher prices slabs had about 15% margin but a bunch of the lower prices books had over 100% margins.

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1Cool

1Cool

Posted
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why did you need a van for 15 short boxes or is your usual car tiny?

 

getting in at a good show like heroes for $450 sounds pretty good, but is that one or two tables? (at $450 and only 15 short boxes i assume one?)

 

can't imagine flying solo simply because my bladder does not have an infinite ability to wait, but i guess it sounds like you had someone who would at least watch your stuff for a minute if you had to go to the bathroom.

 

15 short boxes would have been a squeeze into my Camery but it's old and I don't trust it all the way to Charlotte. 1 booth was plenty with my books and it definetely was nice to have a couple people available to give me a short break.

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PsylockeSmythe

PsylockeSmythe

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Andrew it was nice meeting you on Friday. It helps to put a face with a board ID. I thought you had a pretty good setup for the space with a good mix of books. You also seemed relaxed when dealing with the customers; which always helps. If I didn't have the grandson with me on Saturday I would have gone box diving to see if you had anything I needed; but there is no way my grandson will stay still long enough for me to do that and he would have attempted to get into everything or bolted towards another booth.

 

I agree that I think that Stan being there on Saturday sucked quite a bit of money out of the room and slowed things down for the dealers that were on the other side of the convention then where he was setup. Just walking the floor with the grandson; the traffic kept getting heavier the closer we got to Stan's side of the convention floor.

 

Psy

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Artboy99

Artboy99

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Enjoyed your report.

 

I just did a Sunday local show for which my comic buds and I got 6 tables. I bring some extra fold up tables as well to take full advantage of the space given. Several wall racks to display the bigger books.

 

All told I brought 12 longs of dollar books, 7 longs of sets, 7 longs of character sections, 15 short boxes of more key type books from Golden age to modern age.

 

I didn't rent a truck so I had to make 2 trips there to unload and 2 trips home so it is a must to have a partner there for me. Glad it was a local show.

 

All the preparation and planning and the show was somewhat below average. It was over all quite slow and very few big spenders. I am sure it was because the show was on Father's Day.

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gcstomp

gcstomp

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I do maybe 20 shows a year, some small, some large . The challenging parts for me are the bladder issue, mid saturday when you have a stream of customers and you really need to go.... The con bug is another challenge, next few days after a show where you have the scratchy throat and body aches. And a big one that was touched on, you will be too busy manning your booth at the show to shop all the great deals in the room.

 

Its work, but a ton of fun.

 

 

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Junkdrawer

Junkdrawer

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More importantly I think is how did you do vs how you thought you would do. Its obvious that you cant bring $1000 worth of inventory and sell $10000, but it almost seems that in order to make $1000 you'll need to bring 10k worth of books

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N/A

N/A

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Great report. It looks like you did well. To do well at the larger shows usually means you need to sell a few 4-figure comics (of which I have none), so I've never done one. That you were able to do as well as you did and not sell huge books means that you probably did well otherwise.

 

It depends on what you take. I have started doing shows without bringing any bigger books (or taking a couple and pricing them to not sell and just using them as eye candy for the racks) and just taking hot moderns and cheaper bronze/copper/modern keys and doing almost as well as I did with bigger books. It takes more time to bag/board/price them, but I prefer moving them than SA and BA keys that are harder to replace at a reasonable cost.

 

I'd happily traded a NM 98 CGC 9.8 for a bunch of mid grade keys like ASM 300, BA 12 and such. Tons of people looking for a $150 copy - not many who have $850 for a 9.8.

 

You could have mentioned that on Saturday. :taptaptap:

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N/A

N/A

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Great report. It looks like you did well. To do well at the larger shows usually means you need to sell a few 4-figure comics (of which I have none), so I've never done one. That you were able to do as well as you did and not sell huge books means that you probably did well otherwise.

 

It depends on what you take. I have started doing shows without bringing any bigger books (or taking a couple and pricing them to not sell and just using them as eye candy for the racks) and just taking hot moderns and cheaper bronze/copper/modern keys and doing almost as well as I did with bigger books. It takes more time to bag/board/price them, but I prefer moving them than SA and BA keys that are harder to replace at a reasonable cost.

 

I'd happily traded a NM 98 CGC 9.8 for a bunch of mid grade keys like ASM 300, BA 12 and such. Tons of people looking for a $150 copy - not many who have $850 for a 9.8.

 

+1

 

And yet nobody wanted to trade for my lower grade BA 12's, NM 98, ASM 300 etc. hm

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Shrevvy

Shrevvy

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You to get an exact number but my rough math is 40%. The higher prices slabs had about 15% margin but a bunch of the lower prices books had over 100% margins.

 

Unless someone paid you to take a book from them, you can't have margins above 100%. You can have a mark up above 100% , but not margin. If you mark a book up 100% above your cost, your margin is 50%. If your gross margin is 40%, your $5000 in sales would have $3000 of cost of goods sold. That would leave you $2000 before operating expenses. If your average mark up is 40% , your cost of goods sold is ~$3571 leaving you $1529 before operating expenses.

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