Golden State Comicon in Oakland Report

[OldGuy]

Had a great time. Love SF and Oakland. Bought a CGC VF Bat #1-really sweet. Scott and the boys had a great lunch. Can't wait until next year!

Carmine Infantino on the next Comic Zone!

Peace,

VZ

 

What's a "VF"? Numbers man! We need really big numbers! Letters baaaad, numbers gooood.

 

Weren't you one of the "many dealers and collectors" that CGC consulted with when they made the change to numbers? I'm still looking for one collector or dealer that they "consulted" on this issue.......

 

Post something happy and positive today. Just for once Brian.

 

I had Apple Jacks for breakfast this morning. They were reeeaaaly gooood.

[FFB]

Had a great time. Love SF and Oakland. Bought a CGC VF Bat #1-really sweet. Scott and the boys had a great lunch. Can't wait until next year!

Carmine Infantino on the next Comic Zone!

Peace,

VZ

 

What's a "VF"? Numbers man! We need really big numbers! Letters baaaad, numbers gooood.

 

Weren't you one of the "many dealers and collectors" that CGC consulted with when they made the change to numbers? I'm still looking for one collector or dealer that they "consulted" on this issue.......

 

Post something happy and positive today. Just for once Brian.

 

I had Apple Jacks for breakfast this morning. They were reeeaaaly gooood.

 

I freakin' love Apple Jacks!!!

[paperheart]

jim,

 

who knew? i didn't. thanks for the info on the aquaman 28. i knew it was nicer than the 9.2 slabbed i own. i had seen the vf/nm on shin's database and assumed it was that book. thanks for the clarification.

[jbud73]

 

I don't know if I would call some of you pure collectors any more though... Once you cross into the dark side of being a dealer, it's hard to go back. One good thing about being a dealer though is talking to the customers... That's always interesting... even when they're trying to lowball you on a comic.

 

Selling and trading is the only way I can afford to acquire most of the books I'd like to own. Even if I'm not able to keep them in my short boxes indefinitely, it's great fun to go through the process of finding them. I usually lose a little money or break even on the books I end up selling. It's not very often that I make a profit on them. Plus, I make it a point to not lowball dealers when negotiating. In fact, there's a lot of times where I get little to no discount at all. I often don't even ask! I just try to identify good deals on comics that I'm interested in without having to grind someone for a lower price. Doing that isn't fun at all, IMO.

 

Not that it's a bad thing (it definitely isn't), but I don't really consider myself to be a flipper. I'm certainly not a very good one! FFB summed it up pretty well the other day when he compared me to a "catch and release" fisherman. Look for the book, find the book, get it, enjoy it for awhile, and move on to the next "big fish".

 

I definitely agree that talking with other people about comics is my favorite aspect of the hobby.

 

Thanks for letting us share the booth with you, Shin!

 

 

Ya if Jim's a flipper than he's the most philanthropic one ever (I call him the anti-Gman) Recently I believe he's flipped 3 books to me. The Boston Cap 105 - The Strange Tales 135 MH2 - and a copy of Sgt. Fury that escapes me. I think he made a whopping $25 on those three all of which were HG ( 1 was a Ped and the other a MH2) - I hadda practically beg him to take some books in trade on top of the cash.

 

Jim's got a keen eye for Raw books and every show I've been at he scores an awesome book an a great price. Heck at WonderCon next year I'm tempted to give him $1000 of my money and let him loose on the floor just to see what he comes back with.

 

Little Harley Yee (IE FFB) on the other hand well lets just say if that lawyer gig ever goes south, he has a future flipping. Of course even then I refer to my ASM run from 140-175 as the "Scottie Cast Off Pedigree"

[tth2]

Little Harley Yee (IE FFB)

[jbud73]

Ya Tim you shoulda seen him wheel and deal last weekend it was impressive.

[Red Hook]

 

-Shin

 

And Redhook, I didn't cut you off... I'm just too lazy to send scans or even make certificates. (I also don't have the time any more generally to sell comics by mail order.) Packaging them up, printing out invoices, etc. takes up way too much time that could be better used for other things.

 

 

Thank Shin. Just pm me what you have, what the price is and I'll get back to you. Since I trust your grading completely, if it's a matter of scans....just send me your grades. I don't need the certificates either. Since I'm here on the East Coast, and I can't make it out to the Bay area in person, it would be nice to hear from you.

 

Best, Red

 

[jimm94]

Hey Red,

 

Shin works about 18-20 hrs a day and doesn't spend that much time on the boards, so it might be a while before you get a response. Seriously. He puts completely insane hours into his job. His wife Lisa says they do have some down time on weekends, but I don't believe her!

 

Cheers,

 

-Jim

[Red Hook]

I don't mind waiting another year.

[sckao]

Is it Friday already? These weeks seem to go by so fast now....

 

Here's how breakdown went after the Con... break down the booth. Load the contents of the booth into our vehicles with help from Jim and Scott via some 6-7 trips up the elevators to level 4 of the parking garage. Head home stopping by the storage unit place to drop off all the boxes and wombats. (Promptly lose track of the Green River box in the process which is a common and probably disturbing practice to some of you....)

 

Forget all about comics except for the occasional board recaps. (And also realize that I've spent more time on the boards this week than I have in the last six months.)

 

Realize that in order to send Redhook a list, I have to determine what was sold, what was sent to CGC for grading and hasn't come back yet, and possibly upgrade the pricing to 2005 pricing since JeffreyKli graded according to 2004 pricing. (Unless, of course, I sell to Redhook at 2004 pricing...) This last paragraph seems particularly daunting since my storage unit closes at 7pm and I can't get there in time tonight to root through the boxes for the Green River box.

 

Jeff did a great job of grading too.. although, of course, supergraders FFB, Jimm94, and Jbud73 had differing opinions on some of them.

 

So, yeah.. it might take a while.

[Red Hook]

(cue sound of Red Hook's chain getting yanked.....)

[jbud73]

Yeah for those that don't know Shin owns his own company - for those that own their own company they will understand how much work is involved to make it successfull. It was actually nice to see ya this weekend Shin (at WonderCon he was there for all of 10 minutes I think as the company was moving to new offices).

 

My favorite Shin comment of the weekend, as Scott, Jim and I were trying to set up a Wombat, "How many combined degrees do you guys have "

 

Sorry about not being able to help with the tear down as I literally hadda jet. I paid for my little weekend whirlwind, buy getting a killer cold/flu Wednesday. After antibiotics I am just finally able to get out of bed today........

[HouseofComics.Com]

Little Harley Yee (IE FFB) on the other hand

 

How about calling him Mini-Yee from now on? I will see if I can get Beth to photoshop Harley's head onto Vern Troyer's body to make it official.

 

It was really fun for me to be set up next to Harley again. That's probably the first time since January, 1986 at a little Milwaukee con that we drove to in his station wagon. We both had a lot fewer books back then.

 

Well, back to the Harley catalog project. It's just insane--like doing a whole book but with tables instead of just plain text. If this thread stays alive over the weekend I should be able to finally add some comments about the show.

 

Marc

[tth2]

Little Harley Yee (IE FFB) on the other hand

 

How about calling him Mini-Yee from now on?

FFB=Mini-Yee? I love it!

[HouseofComics.Com]

We also talked about Vinny's ComicZone radio show and gave some feedback and talked about how much the listener base has grown over the past year (growth of something like 4,000 listeners to 7,000 listeners in the past few months).

 

 

That's very interesting to hear because I think the same thing is happening with these boards. It seems like an awful lot of people I see making posts joined in the last six months to a year. I believe the numbers of subscribers to Scoop are up huge over the past year too. What I think this means for these boards is that there is now enough critical mass that the network effect has really kicked in. The boards are going from useful to necessary, not so much for you early adopters but for the more general public.

 

Of course anyone on these boards is going to hear about the Comic Zone sooner or later and check it out so it all feeds on itself.

 

Marc

[Jeffreykli]

Ya the Aquaman was one of the Best books on that wall - Jeff is such an undergrader when it comes to OTHER PEOPLE's BOOKS.... I'm probably safe for a week with that comment - unless the French translation program kicks in at the internet cafe....

 

I'm just jealous Jeff have a great vacation

 

HEY!! Jerk. It's not like I severely undergraded the Aquaman! The difference between a 9.0 and a 9.2 is slight. Just kidding Jbud.

 

Plus, you go through the entire Green River box in one sitting, and see how you do. All of the books are super glossy, unread copies. I know, since I'm the proud owner of 2 great books.

 

After the great Con reports, I'm sorry I missed the Con. But Paris was fantastic, and hanging out with Paris_Fred was a lot of fun.

[HouseofComics.Com]

Okay, this is my pre-show report.

 

When Wondercon moved to San Francisco after a long history in Oakland, that was okay by me. However, when the show switched to February in an attempt to be THE kickoff con of the year, I felt that there was a void in the local calendar. I was thinking that someone should at least set up a small one-day show in late April or early May in Oakland or even Berkeley just to provide an outlet for all those people used to coming to a show at that time.

 

It got to the point where I was even trying to convince a guy who lives in Contra Costa and dabbles in comics to put on the show and he actually did call a few hotels in Berkeley but was put off by the high fees.

 

Then, just before Steve Wyatt's Supercon in October (Hayward, CA) he told me that he was filling the void by putting on the first annual Golden State show. That was great news--he's a veteran promoter and well-connected. He told me he had just put the deposit down and that there'd be more info soon. There was an attractive price on corner booths if paid before March 1st.

 

Well, I kept waiting for more info and it never happened until Wondercon when he had fliers, a floorplan, etc. I was becoming a little nervous about this show and had mentally adjusted my expected sales figure down almost in half. Getting myself safely prepared for a slow show, I guess. Nonetheless, I signed up and got what I thought was a good position. My whole plan about this show (besides wanting to support the show and help it succeed) was that while attendance might be a bit weak, the competition would also be weak. As of Wondercon not even the first islands had been sold out. Those of you who attended saw where we were placed. As of Wondercon the show had basically only sold up to that level.

 

So I was surprised when Harley called me a few weeks before and said he was coming to the show. I was surprised to see the notice in Scoop that Vincent Zurzolo was coming out to buy. I was shocked to walk into the room at Friday night setup and see dealers everywhere including plenty I didn't even know and others with national reputations like Beerbohm, Graham Crackers, Redbeard, etc. At this point I knew that either this was a big-deal show or we were all in some trouble ...

 

Okay, I have to go mail some orders. More of this belated report later today!

Marc

[Jokerman]

 

 

 

Joker--

[HouseofComics.Com]

Okay, now the show report where I forget a bunch of stuff and have to do a second post later.

 

First, I have to say that I fully understand that shows these days are nothing like shows in say the 80s. In the 80s you had a really hot market for comics and shows were the place to be. With cover prices at sixty cents of seventy-five cents new comics were a pretty attractive product, especially with a wave of creativity hitting artistically. It was a lot of fun and in my small way I was in the middle of it because in those days anybody with $200 a month could get comics from a sub-distributor or a sub-sub distributor at up to 50% off. It's not hard to speculate in 100 Secret Wars 1 or Crisis 1 at 37.5 cents each or 100 Web of Spider-Man 1s at 32.5 cents apiece. (Speaking of sub-sub distributors, on my trip to the Chicago Comicon in 1985 we stopped in at my new distributor's place because I probably wanted to pick up that week's comics plus buy some recent back issues at 60% off cover. Imagine my surprise to find out he was maybe 20 years old and living and running his business out of his grandmother's basement! Albeit, a nice basement with a bit of sun.)

 

So in the 1980s you had lots of shows and lots of interest. But perhaps just as important from an economics standpoint, you had Very Reasonable Table Fees. For one day shows in Royal Oak or Livonia (Detroit suburbs) or Chicago it was pretty much $30 a table. For smaller cities like Grand Rapids or South Bend? $25. You can see how you could throw 8-10 long boxes of recent comics into the giant trunk and back seat of a Cordoba and still make some decent money for a 16 or 17-year-old.

 

Incidently, this is the backdrop for Harley's initial success. He's a canny guy and he was very hard-working from the start. Meaning, he was driving from Detroit to Pittsburgh or Chicago or Milwaukee _every_ weekend and had a good local show every three weeks. Today the only way to keep aggressively turning over inventory is by doing an immense amount of ebay at a very low pct. of guide...

 

When I moved to California in 1987 I was surprised that there weren't as many shows as in the midwest. Detroit had a show every three weeks, for instance. But even here, with the hotter market of the 80s, one-day shows seemed to be $50 a table. My first Wondercon (a three-day show) was in 1989 and the tables were $150. This was the biggest show I'd ever set up at and I did great! The rule of thumb back then was that you wanted your table fees to be 10% of your sales. (The same ratio applied to CBG ads by the way.) 1990 Wondercon was also $150 a table and I was placed right up front, next to Comics & Comix and across from Lee's Comics. Compare that to Wondercon today where tables are $500 and for that you are back in the tables ghetto next to the Gothic Tour of San Francisco table and the Star Wars fan clubs. Half the serious comics buyers never even see your table.

 

The Golden State convention's fee for a corner booth (2 8-ft tables) was $350. So we were going to need some pretty nice sales to make it at all worth it even though the idea of doing 10x table fee, at least for us, went out in the 80s...

 

Marc

[HouseofComics.Com]

Okay, so I've learned from doing Bay Area shows the past few years to not expect a lot of foot traffic. However, with a $350 table fee and a two-day committment, one does hope for at least something comparable to the Supercon one-day show each day. If we could've done close to a Supercon each day of the Golden State show, that would've been nice.

 

However, every dealer and his brother is in this room! So even though attendance probably did come close to two Supercons, it doesn't matter with a couple million dollars of competing inventory in the room.

 

Saturday morning the doors opened and a few people walked in and then I was thinking, that's it? That's all the people waiting at the door? I'm not sure we had any sales the first 90 minutes, nor the last hour of the day. In-between, it wasn't completely hideous. Some nice little sales, met some new people who will probably become good mail order or by-appointment customers. Great seeing all the board members (the future subject of another post), that goes without saying. Fun being next to Harley.

 

And I begin to notice some real grumbling among the dealers about the promotion. In the old days, if a show was bad you just never went back. But in this case nearly everyone wants a strong local Oakland show. Despite a surprising turnout by some national dealers, most of the people setting up are still locals. I don't think Jamie Graham cares if this show suceeds. But Heroes, A-1, Comic Collector Shop, Dale Quick, Scott Hudlow, House of Comics, etc. all want this show to do well.

 

By first thing Sunday it is obvious that this is a show like I have never experienced. I've had a few bad shows before. But not where it is so slow that you really, really have time to talk to all your friends and meet new friends. You also have time to sit in on or eavesdrop on numerous dealer to dealer discussions about ways to help the promotion for this show so that next year is completely different. The wave of united dealer solidarity on this issue was amazing! It's probably the thing I am always going to remember about this show.

 

That, and Harley on his cell calling Jamie Graham Sunday morning to find out why he wasn't there and finding him at the airport hightailing it out of town.

 

Okay, more later.

Marc