2018 Calgary Comic Expo (Fan Expo Calgary?) April 26-29, 2018 5 5

[kimik]

Funniest thing so far was watching a couple, guy and girl, spend a couple of hours flipping through all of the comic porn that Dave and Karl had in the Steranko section. They sat down on the floor in front of the table and went through every book page by page.

It was interesting to see one dealer at the show with a "new collection" of books sell so many books with restoration as unrestored. There will likely be a bunch of dissatisfied buyers if they sent the books in to CGC. It was bad. We were able to detect undisclosed color touch on all but one of the books that Dave bought, unfortunately.........

Edited April 29, 2018 by kimik

[aardvark88]

8 hours ago, kimik said:

Funniest thing so far was watching a couple, guy and girl, spend a couple of hours flipping through all of the comic porn that Dave and Karl had in the Steranko section. ..

First time I have ever seen  Steranko referred to as delicicous comic 'porn.' FOOM and Marvel mail order items sold great for Clobberin' Time but were there some alleged hot comics that sold underwhelmingly? Crowds should pick up Sunday after folks lined up for the Avengers 3 movie hopefully.

[Fan Boy]

Yeah, I thought it was funny to see kimik mention about the boy and girl. Were they preteen or teens? It bring back good memories when I used to look in these “comic porn” back in late ‘70s. 

Today should be good day to browse around. Lots of photos to come later. 

[Quicksilver Signs]

 Mr White bought a Heisenberg decal off me. Time to retire

Edited April 30, 2018 by Quicksilver Signs

[Fan Boy]

My thoughts on the weekend with Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo 2018 report...

My friend and I get into the show one hour early before the regular ticket holders. We can see how the show is like and we know that I was going to a good one. My first thing and at good timing, Tom Wilson, aka “Biff” happens to be at his table for signing first thing in the morning. I went to have him sign my book. Done and one more to get later. We walked to the show to browse around booths.

Found some nice deals and brought some books. Walked to find Human Torch and Artboy99 at their booth. Saw the 6th collection ... so that is what they were talking about. I get the sense how massive the collection as I shifted through materials. After some time and much thoughts I brought few vintage posters, few calendars and some books. Many other items went out faster than Spider-Man can squirt webs!

I went on to see what else I can find and did found some good deals at other booths. I meant to take photos but kept forget when my friend kept asking me to take photos of cosplayers with him in there. My friend is a photo junkie with cosplayers, it is his hobby!  I tell you, he drove me nuts but it is fun for me as well. So... sorry about that but hopefully someone else did? 

The books I have seen at the booths were not bad, I saw a few nice ones, beyond my budget that I can afford. But I think I did alright what I got. But what shocked me is that in the entire show the whole weekend ... I have not found a nice vintage Archie key book anywhere! I was taken back after had checked every comic book booth, every box checked and from the wall rack. Sure, there are some low grades, some 1960s/70s, but... nothing that caught my attention in interest.  

First time for me this year! What’s going on? 

Well, here are some photos that I hope you will enjoy. 

[Fan Boy]

There was a CGC booth, and somewhere the other company is in other building. My new finds and I did fill up my short box when I said I would. Ok, I kinda cheated as some books are my friend’s but hey, it counts. 

My sketch project is taking shape as it evolves. This is just the first page of a 6 pages spread. 

And to close, I give you the finale photo. 

[Fan Boy]

My sketch and then that beer girl...

Edited April 30, 2018 by Fan Boy

[kimik]

16 hours ago, aardvark88 said:

First time I have ever seen  Steranko referred to as delicicous comic 'porn.' FOOM and Marvel mail order items sold great for Clobberin' Time but were there some alleged hot comics that sold underwhelmingly? Crowds should pick up Sunday after folks lined up for the Avengers 3 movie hopefully.

There were a bunch of Eros and other porn comics in a box under the table. That couple sat there and flipped through every page of every issue.........

[thirdgreenham]

For me, the show was decent and again, worthwhile going.

 

I sold a few big big books and lots of little (high profit) things. 

Once again, another successful Calgary show.  

 

On a sour note: Not one vendor I spoke with was happy about the new changes that were implemented though. 

Moving everyone from their 5+ year locations to “wherever” seemed all to random. Comic vendors were scattered around the room like breadcrumbs. The person in charge of the floor plan is aware of this and we’ll likely see some changes for the better (for comic dealers) next year.

The Voyage Control booking system, which is supposed to make the move in process smooth, didn’t prove to be helpful to the vendors. 

Some couldn’t book at 1 PM, because the time slots were filled up, so they book when they can. They reserve a flat bed dolly for moving their stock, and find that none were set aside, so they end up waiting and waiting until they got lucky and found one. 

In fact, I think there were about 6 of those dollies to spread amongst the 300+ vendors? 

 

I never had a chance to get to the artist Big Four building, which was a shame. Perhaps the management can consider having the artists in the celebrity hall and the celebrities over to the Big Four. Then you’ll have all comic related “stuff” in adjoining buildings.  

Thanks @Kevin Boyd to come over and say hi. Good to see you. 

 

Thanks for my boardie buddies that stopped by to say hi and perhaps even shared a meal. I can’t forget the great friends from out of province/out of country. You know who you all are.

Thanks to @Quicksilver Signs for the cool books!

Cheers to my pals from Edmonton and area, @thehumantorch @Artboy99 @kimik @500Club Always fun to throw garbage at you.  

2019 is gonna rock!  

[thehumantorch]

On 4/28/2018 at 11:40 PM, kimik said:

Funniest thing so far was watching a couple, guy and girl, spend a couple of hours flipping through all of the comic porn that Dave and Karl had in the Steranko section. They sat down on the floor in front of the table and went through every book page by page.

It was interesting to see one dealer at the show with a "new collection" of books sell so many books with restoration as unrestored. There will likely be a bunch of dissatisfied buyers if they sent the books in to CGC. It was bad. We were able to detect undisclosed color touch on all but one of the books that Dave bought, unfortunately.........

I got word that 19 books were returned to this Vancouver seller because of color touch.  I actually kept 2 of the 6 I bought off him and would have kept at least 1 more if he'd given me a reasonable price -Spirit 21 - once I showed him the color touch.   I think once word got around that we'd found it everyone started looking at their books closely.  Too bad, he had some beautiful books.  

[thehumantorch]

Tired today.  Always a joy to hang out with greggy, fantasticthor, joeypost, fanboy, our crew, quicksilver, podboy, Piper, and thirdgreenham,  We had a good sized group going out for dinner every night.  Great people.

Sales were pretty good.  Helped that we had bought 6 new collections in the last 2 months. We picked up 1/3 of a large collection that was on the way, brought in what we could and tossed it on the floor under our tables, all unpriced.  We weren't sure how it would sell but it was a feeding frenzy the first couple days.   We had a constant stream of buyers digging through the boxes and even going out to my truck to search what we couldn't fit into the booth.  We had stacks of books put aside by customers to price and artboy spent most of the first 2 days trying to get it all priced.  We'll pick up the remainder of the collection next week.  We rented a 20 foot van and the seller told us to bring a bigger truck for the rest.

I'll do a sales report later today and pics of books I picked up or books I held back from our latest collection.  There's a couple goodies

[aardvark88]

38 minutes ago, thehumantorch said:

I got word that 19 books were returned to this seller because of color touch.  once I showed him the color touch.   I think once word got around that we'd found it everyone started looking at their books closely.  Too bad, he had some beautiful books.  

So what you are saying is that the AB collectors generously pre-screened this vendor's vintage comics for color touch, as collector/dealer either did not know how or had no time to pre-screen before big Calgary Expo due to his day job ?

[thehumantorch]

1 minute ago, aardvark88 said:

So what you are saying is that the AB collectors generously pre-screened this vendor's vintage comics for color touch, as collector/dealer either did not know how or had no time to pre-screen before big Calgary Expo due to his day job ?

Always nice to help. 

Seemed like a nice guy but the number of color touched books he had was concerning.  After returning books - he didn't argue about the return-  I flipped through his GA and a lot were touched, a lot.  Most of his All Stars and pretty well anything with dark cover inks.  The color touch didn't bleed through, joeypost suggested it might be crayon, but it was there.

[aardvark88]

20 minutes ago, thehumantorch said:

Seemed like a nice guy but the number of color touched books he had was concerning.  After returning books - he didn't argue about the return-  I flipped through his GA and a lot were touched, a lot.  Most of his All Stars and pretty well anything with dark cover inks.  The color touch didn't bleed through,

Realistically, he bought most of his All-Stars from SDCC and Seattle, WA cons about 28-35 years ago from Harley or whoever as  color touch back in the olden days was not the Devil it is now: PLOD.

[Artboy99]

13 minutes ago, aardvark88 said:

Realistically, he bought most of his All-Stars from SDCC and Seattle, WA cons about 28-35 years ago from Harley or whoever as  color touch back in the olden days was not the Devil it is now: PLOD.

Most of the color touch was some kind of crayon, as when you lightly rubbed it with a tissue you could take some of it off.

 

[thehumantorch]

55 minutes ago, aardvark88 said:

Realistically, he bought most of his All-Stars from SDCC and Seattle, WA cons about 28-35 years ago from Harley or whoever as  color touch back in the olden days was not the Devil it is now: PLOD.

It's too bad, I liked the books.  Not high grade but clean and flat and very nice.  I really liked the Spirit 21

[kimik]

Sales were interesting this show as there was no general pattern of what would sell from day to day unlike past shows. One day Metal was hot then cooler the next, books that sold well in the morning died mid afternoon, etc. It was a weird show.

That being said, I topped the target I had set to sell at the show without moving any higher value books other than an ASM #129 CGC 8.0. Everything else was $100 - $300 slabs, and a ton of hot moderns which was awesome!

It was interesting to see Dave and Adam's back again just to buy. I am wondering when more US buyers will start to show up. There is a ton of new great stuff every year.

[aardvark88]

25 minutes ago, kimik said:

It was interesting to see Dave and Adam's back again just to buy. I am wondering when more US buyers will start to show up. There is a ton of new great stuff every year.

Since so many fresh collections are being scooped up at reasonable prices from AB, did Mary-Ann or some other Fan Expo promoter ask vendors there to prepay for booths or support the limp Vancouver Fan Expo as a vendor ?

[aardvark88]

7 hours ago, thehumantorch said:

 I really liked the Spirit 21

Were are the embarrassing pics of forumites napping at your booth?

For comparison, Fan Expo Vancouver has minimum 1 hr queue of vans and SUVs to get in/out of loading bay (30 mins to load in/out to one's booth) with the Fan Expo online time slot scheduler. That is a long line up of vehicles idling in the drizzle.

[Fan Boy]

5 hours ago, kimik said:

Sales were interesting this show as there was no general pattern of what would sell from day to day unlike past shows. One day Metal was hot then cooler the next, books that sold well in the morning died mid afternoon, etc. It was a weird show.

That being said, I topped the target I had set to sell at the show without moving any higher value books other than an ASM #129 CGC 8.0. Everything else was $100 - $300 slabs, and a ton of hot moderns which was awesome!

It was interesting to see Dave and Adam's back again just to buy. I am wondering when more US buyers will start to show up. There is a ton of new great stuff every year.

I did had seen the booth by Dave and Adam. It took me by surprise because I’ve seen their ads in the guide for many years and always in America. To see them in Calgary? That tell me something is up in future cons in Canada.