WonderCon 2023 3-24/3-26 0

[Robot Man]

Anybody else go? Would love to hear your observations…

[thecollectron]

I went on Saturday. Signs directed me to park at GardenWalk but when I walked to the convention center from there it looked like people were still able to park onsite. I was there when the doors opened and stayed late into the evening. 

I was told by someone working there that all the passes were sold but it didn't seem exceptionally crowded. It is a huge space, though, so I guess you don't get the crowd congestion that you do at SDCC. The Gold & Silver Pavilion continues to thin out. I think Terry O'Neill and Brian Peets are not coming back to WC or SDCC. It looked like Graham Crackers had set up without Jamie, Metropolis without Vinnie, and I never saw Harley either. I was able to do my box-diving in a few hours. There were comics I would like to have but not for the prices I saw. I admired the OA on the walls but didn't buy any of it.

I bought three science-fiction digests from some stacks that were $3 apiece, and the Guidebook to Comics Fandom (1965). I also picked up a couple of art books from Stuart Ng. I got to talk to a few people I hadn't seen in awhile and walked around the rest of the exhibit hall just looking at stuff but I was pretty much done shopping by mid-afternoon, so the remainder of my time I spent in panels. I attended panels on:

CGC grading

Fear The Walking Dead (final season)

Cartoon Voices (always a hoot)

the 70th anniversary of 3-D movies and comics (we were given 3-D glasses for watching the clips)

the Harvey Comics artwork of Warren Kremer

and I saw contestants #15-31 of the Masquerade (missed the first half because of the Warren Kremer panel).

Not an outstanding day for buying (for me) but I had a good time anyway.

 

[Bumble Kitty]

I went Friday and Saturday.  On Friday, I was able to park at the Convention Center at 11:15 AM.  Very easy, as the crowds were not too heavy.  The many lunch trucks are always a nice feature and again, the crowds were manageable.  I waited about 6 minutes for my food order.

The comic dealers were lighter than last year, but there seems to be multiple conventions competing against each other.  Harley left late on Friday to catch a flight to New York to attend Carbo's convention.  Just the thought of him putting in a full day at the con and then catching a coast to coast flight made me tired.  I don't know how he does it.  Maybe he's part machine.

HighGradeComics was there, in addition to Jamie Graham (although I did not see him), Metro, Red Hood (from Nevada) and a few other dealers.  Even though dealer attendance was down, there was no shortage of quality books.  I focused on nicer books priced cheaply.  If you had some patience and were thorough, they were there.  You just had to look for them.  I had to have that mentality, as my budget at the moment is tight.  I had fun looking!

On Saturday, I had the same experience with the Convention Center parking.  I was directed to GardenWalk, but it was a nice leisurely walk to the Con, so no biggie, right?  However, when I got to the Convention Center, there were letting people park at the Convention Center parking lot!  It was one of the moments were I chose to shrug my shoulders and just accept it. 

The crowds were much heavier.  I had lunch before noon, but the lunch truck area was super busy.  I heard that wait times increased to over 45 minutes at 1 PM.  Ouch.  I found a couple of nice pedigree books priced in the 500 to 600 dollar range.  But unfortunately, they were out of my price range at the moment.

I had some long conversations with several boardies.  There was one collector who I had not seen in several years.  It felt like a reunion.  I also had a long conversation with Bob Storms.  That was fun.  My wife and I also had dinner with a couple of other boardies.  It is so nice to catch up with everyone, and that is becoming the highlight of any convention I attend.  I also like hearing how a boardie bought a grail or scored an auction win.  I guess I like living vicariously through others.

WonderCon is not the back issue bonanza from several years ago, but it was fun.  I plan to attend next year.  My biggest regret is that I did not attend any panels.  I hope to rectify that at San Diego.  I also hope that conventions do not compete against each other, but that might be asking for too much.

See you guys at Torpedo Con!

Edited March 27, 2023 by Bumble Kitty

[Robot Man]

Thanks for the report. Similar to my experience. My feeling is it is a less expensive, less crowded and less hassle show than SDCC which I no longer attend.

The dealers you mentioned are fine dealers but generally don’t bring the stuff I look for especially at prices I can realistically pay. I get it. Traveling long distance can really matter what you bring. Metro (basically displaying auction books), Red Hood and Bob Storms seemed REAL slow. Torpedo, well, usually too high for me and I didn’t see John. Had an uncomfortable experience with his head guy. I hope these guys did OK. Friday is the real money maker for most dealers but most buyers were just looking for that one big book. If they didn’t find it, they spent no money. 

I spent most of my money with Steve at Big Wow, and several smaller dealers. Glad to see them still there and I tried to spread a little money around with them to encourage them to come back. Bought a few cool books from the hardest working and one of the best dealers in the business, Harley. I don’t know how he does it. Funny thing. I went to Graham Crackers to see my pal Jamie and he wasn’t there. I asked and one of the guys said he was “probably by his pool”…

Yeah, I wished I went to some panels as well. The food trucks were a great touch too. Best part was talking to other boardies, my fellow collectors and old friends. And I took my two young grandaughters on Sat. Their first con. They love the Disney stuff and the cosplay. Was fun to observe the show through the wild eyes of little kids! 

Yeah, already putting money aside for the Torpedo show. Sure hope it happens this year. 

[jbud73]

I was at Wonder Con all three days for pretty much the entire time, spent almost all of this on the show floor in the comic dealers section buying and chatting with the dealers that were there.  While by no means a con report, other than the pic I took with Steve Borock I didn't take any pictures of the various set ups, but will try and log this into 3 sections:

Overall Convention Experience

It seemed like there were a variety of events and booths (the comic dealers were pretty much all in one area which was nice) this area was at the back of the convention hall if that's any indication of the primacy they enjoy as it pertains to ComicCon as a company these days.  There were A LOT of cosplay costumes, some very cool costumes as well and this seems to be very much on the rise from say 5-10 years ago even at major conventions. 

There were food trucks outside the venue and a seating area that allowed people to have a variety of food options and not be resigned to the dreaded comic con sodium hot dog, which was nice.  It seemed like they were prepared for the crowds, in terms of getting your badge and funneling through the check points, or it could have been that attendance was down this year, I have never been to Wonder Con in Anaheim so I don't have a frame of reference. I didn't attend a panel or anything outside of the comic books, I did stroll around artists alley where there were plenty of large flashy booths. Marv Wolfman was there and I got a chance to chat with him on Friday as there was really no one around, he was great, and I just said what a fan of his work I was and thanked him for writing all of the stories he produced from my youth and before that I had read as back issues.

The Dealer Perspective

In general and across the board I think the dealer rating I was vibing was a C+ to B- most of the dealers I talked to used the work "ok" to describe their sales, some indicated that Terry O'Neil's show a few weeks earlier was far better in terms of actual people buying books.  Though as always some dealers did quite well, I observed a significant 5 figure sale were a collector bought out a large portion of pretty pricey dealer bin stock in the span of 30 mins.  There were also a few high 4 figure books moved at the show though I didnt hear of a 5 figure book being moved.  I will say that, as always, how you present your books and what you bring (you need to bring a mix and carefully consider a few clientele bases here).  For example there was a local (non-national level) dealer there with a double booth, his bin books were all in old bags and boards, many not priced and pretty tattered set up.  Even when he discounted his BIN stock by 50% on Saturday afternoon his booth was never busy as far as I could see.  If you are at a show of the level of Wonder Con, you have to realize that you are there with larger national dealers, even if you don't have a booth set up with fancy banners and visual aids, you have to have a clean booth set up OR you better be bringing solid material to sell or risk getting little to no foot traffic.  There were not as many outside the CA area collectors there and VERY FEW international collectors went to this show, whether its the timing of the show, location or the decreased value of the Euro is hard to say, but I used to dub Wonder Con in SF, the United Nations of comic shows and I heard there were far more international collectors at Emerald City in Seattle last month.  A few larger dealers said that they would not be back next year, or have to consider their options and on the fence as to whether to do the show.

The main small dealer complaint was what a single booth came with (not even a table was what I heard on Thursday) Wonder Con quickly rectified this, but singles didn't get much in terms of table space or chairs.

The Collector Perspective

I wanted to end here as there are a few observations and I'll try to sub-categorize them.

• THE BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT.  I will not be going back to Wonder Con in Anaheim.  For the cost of the hotel, Con passes for three days and the air fare (San Francisco to Anaheim / John Wayne Airport) there are better Cons for your money (C2E2 and Emerald City easily come to mind).  SNA Airport is not cheap, even from SF and the alternative from LAX with a Uber is not much more appealing.  I can get to Seattle and Chicago for the same price.  The Marriott again was a bit pricey and I even got a corp deal through my company.  Anaheim Convention Center is right in Disney Land are so Food options for dinner are on the expensive side, its a popular tourist destination and the businesses jack prices up accordingly.  There were also almost no art dealers (Becchara was there, thats it) and most of the larger dealers were CA based, Harley was there and Graham Crackers but I ended up buying most of the books I bought from dealers I can buy from at smaller regional shows.  I had a really nice time at the show, but for your money, unless you are in the SoCal area, there are better shows to attend.
• THE DEALER COMIC PRICES   Most of the sticker prices were Pandemic level.  It seemed to me the dealers had priced their stock at those levels and forgot (accidentally / on purpose) to adjust their prices.  The market is DOWN, its not crashing but it is down, even SA Marvel Keys are down.  If you even have minor exposure in the back issue hobby you know this, GPA for 90% of books is a 45 degree angle on the down slope.  I had to seriously flip through books with blinders on to even select some items that I'd want to 'discuss'; there were smaller dealers as usual who had either priced accordingly or hadn't super bumped their books.  All slabs were priced at 2021 levels and I didnt see very many of them moving.  I'd venture the people buying slabs were there for that book, not really in the hobby on a weekly basis buying and didnt mind the cost.  They likely did a walk around the room and bought the lowest priced copy of the book they saw, problem is that copy was still likely a GPA record. I didn't pay sticker on 1 single book I bought.  The dealers were willing to deal in order to make sales, but a few booths I didnt even get to the stage of pulling a book as there were priced 50% or more over current FMV.
• As I mentioned previously, from a comic book perspective, this was not a national level show, from a comic art perspective, this wasn't a convention. Many dealers were conspicuous by their absence, chatting with some of the out of state dealers that did attend, they said that some of their peers decided to stay home, or go to C2E2 and Mega Con which are going on a week later, or to do a smaller local show.  Harley was out of there Friday night, his booth was up but he was gone.  Some of the other large dealers did not attend themselves, they just sent their booth and staff, which to my mind says that they knew this would not be a 'buying' show.  Dealers I talked to did not do a lot of buying at this show.  For full disclosure I spent about 2.5K at the show but was really really convincing myself to have to buy books; for comparison the last Emerald City con I spent around 6K and if I'm honest, my spend at a National Level show, where I don't have too many irons in the fire is about 5-7K.  I didn't feel any urgency to buy on Friday at this show, at the prices being asked I was sure that the books would be there Sunday and for 80% of them I was right.  There was no Friday frenzy as I've observed at other comic shows of this size.  No one was there with a big / new collection that was flying off the shelves on Friday, new books that were there, were very aggressively priced, this is not to say there weren't amazing books in the room, but they were at nose bleed levels, hard to pull the trigger when the $800 sticker has sold for 400 or less multiple times in 2023, even saving the tax doesn't get you to buying it, even if the dealer takes less you are still overpaying.
• ALWAYS LEAVE ON A HIGH NOTE.  As I said, I did manage to buy some great books off of great comic dealers I just didn't feel that 'financially' it was worth it to attend the show.  What I did enjoy was the atmosphere of being around comic people. I had dinner and drinks with the guys from Comic Link and we shared a lot of great stories and laughs.  Seeing my old friend Steve Borock (who was one of the founders at CGC) and being around some other collectors and chatting about the hobby was really great.  My con highlight was on Saturday.  There was an older gentleman (in his 70s) who was looking for some Man from UNCLE books.  By that time I had been through every dealer booth and remembered that Steve Wyatt (whos a great dealer and all around good dude) had some in his Bins.  I introduced myself and asked if the gentleman would mind walking a few aisles over as I though there were some in a dealer bin that he might want to look at.  He agreed and found a few with Steve who cut him a pretty good deal.  There is no way this man at his age is going through enough dealer stock to find some Gold Keys like that on Saturday with all the foot traffic and should to shoulder people looking at books in long boxes.  Collectors helping others find books they need is one of my favorite things about the hobby.  I had a great chat with him afterward about gold key comics and things he read when he was in high school, definitely the best part of my day Saturday.

[alexgross.com]

@jbud73 great report, thanks for that! as you mentioned hearing, terry's show was almost 2 months prior to wonder con and it absolutely obviates the need for this show. so many good dealers were at that show. i spent 1k to come in for that one and it was basically worth it. thats the show to plan a trip around, on the west coast.

as you also mentioned, so many dealers at cons now, including some of my favorite guys, still have 2021 pricing. of course sales will be slow if you're pretending that prices are still at all time highs. i saw it at terrys show and i've seen it at many others over the years. during down markets, those dealers who are willing to adjust pricing dynamically with the market are the ones that will do some business, even when things are slow. 

[Robot Man]

Yeah, CalCon was Awsome for buying vintage books. Well worth a short winter vacation.

I can’t say much about prices as I was set up. Found a few goodies at setup.

Did you come by my table? I had about 20 boxes of GA/SA/BA. Not much in the way of big pretty, high grade keys, but a lot of affordable, unusual books. I even had a box of pulps that I sold most of and even some old girly mags and BLBs (and actually sold quite a few). Even a cool vintage spinner rack but it sold right away. One of my best shows ever.

By the way, I just viewed the dealer’s list for C2E2 and MegaCon. Real sparce as well. WonderCon looked better…

[nearmint]

Some dealers are doing brisk business through their websites.  Setting up at shows has become an unnecessary expense.