Calgary Comics & Entertainment Expo - April 27 - 30, 2023 0

[Artboy99]

Golden: we sold several Fiction House that we had that were in the under $400 category, Dave sold a golden above $1000 so they did sell. He had an inquiry from Harley Yee on his Diary Secrets but they did not agree on the selling price. Harley has a raw copy that Dave asked me to go look at to grade it and I thought it was a 2.0 maybe 2.5 that Harley has priced at $1700 usd, Dave's copy is a cgc 6.5. There is very little sales data. Ultimately Dave's copy should be priced at some multiples over the 2.0-2.5 copy

My biggest sale was my Foom 2 cgc 9.8

What was moving for us was some silver age but mostly bronze age and copper selling quite a few from our 25% off section as well as our "key books" boxes and books off the wall. We emptied 4 magazine sized shorts of "Key" books which are 1st appearances or something of note books but in the $10 - $50.00 price range.

Sold quite a few X-men books from the #150-200 range.

Kimik mentions selling 75% of his modern variant longbox: we have many of those same books that just sit for some reason. My Fantastic Four #1 facsimile is priced at $25 and I didn't sell a single copy as an example. Didn't sell a single modern Vampirella either. Dave and I are not sure why ours don't sell that well but it is a reason why we have slowed down on buying them. 

I sold a high percentage of my Faust run, which was buried in a box unlabelled so it is proof that customers definitely dig boxes for things. 

Sold several 1970's horror magazines, and my complete run of the 1970's Avengers vs. Defenders story.

Had a customer (female) browse boxes and was disappointed that we didn't have a Defenders 4. I am glad she mentioned it to her friend within earshot as I happily pointed to my box she had not looked at yet as I had a copy. Apparently I was the only vendor at the show with the book.

Dave had prepared 11 longs of $2 books that did sell but not as well as we had hoped selling approximately 2 longs worth.

The attendance for the show was "nearly 100,000" as per this news story:

https://calgary.citynews.ca/2023/05/01/record-crowds-attend-2023-calgary-expo/

One downside to the show is theft. Quite a few booths were victims, thankfully not ours. We were aware of thefts from other shows thanks to these very boards so we purposefully designed our layout to have our cheap items at the front, more valuable items at the back. The entry to our booth is single file and if we have customers in the booth I go stand in the entrance: I make a great door. As customers go to leave I scan our wall inventory and let them out when I see nothing is taken.

The vendor right across from us was heavily targeted and he reported 3 thefts (that he is aware of). He is the owner of the attempted theft of the Superman #2 mentioned above. His booth was too open, at many times he had 10+ people inside his booth browsing. He also had boxes of sets he built on the floor under his tables with high prices on many of them: $500, $600, $900, etc. I watched a guy kneel down there to ties his shoelaces, he reached into a box, pulled out one of those sets to show his friend. While that guy put it back he could have easily taken it as the vendor was oblivious.

Overall we did about the same total as the previous year, so it was a very successful show.

[thehumantorch]

On 5/6/2023 at 12:52 AM, kimik said:

Here is a short summary of the show:

Plenty of people were spending on comics. Thankfully, we did not see any signs of a recession yet as collectors and retail buyers were out in full force. I am not sure what the final attendance numbers were, but there were plenty of attendees and vendors commenting that it was back to pre-Covid levels which was good.

Golden Age: Hopefully @thehumantorch @Artboy99 @thirdgreenham can add some additional context here as I only had only a handful of raw GGA books and four slabs (2 Jumbo and 2 Jungle) with me at the show. I sold three (2 Jungles and 1 Jumbo) of the four slabs for fair market prices, and three of the raw books (3 Jungles). If I had brought more I would have sold them. Time to lock the rest away I guess.  

Silver Age: I sold a bunch of raw and slabbed ASMs, FFs, X-Men and DDs to other dealers and collectors. I moved more slabbed SA books at this show than I have since pre-Covid shows, which was nice to see. I should have brought more sub-100 ASMs, sub 50 Avengers, DD, sub-100 FFs, and sub-65 X-Men to the show. I am low on SA Batman and Tec so what I had sold. GL was another title that sold well raw and a couple of graded books I put out also. I will need to reload the boxes for the June shows.

Bronze Age: I sold all of the Neal Adams Bats/Tecs/GLs raw for close to GPA prices with no questions asked. I was expecting to get more haggling on them. BA ASMs and DDs sold well. ToD moved also, although I left the box with most of them at home by accident. I did not have as much BA as I normally do as I brought more modern stock instead. That was a mistake.

Copper Age: Late bronze and copper books were in high demand at the show, as has been reflected elsewhere. Stores do not have the books, and as modern run collectors build back this is where they go. Popular titles included the three Spidey titles (ASM, WoS, PPSM), Batman (but not really Tec), DD, FF, X-Men and TMNT (although one vendor from Manitoba in our group was undercutting the market significantly to move long boxes of them......... ). Plenty of other titles were picked away at as well. I sold multiple copies of Batman #404 and #426-428 (but no #429s) and had a run on other Batmans from #400-#442 or so at very nice prices. Common Copper ASM and DD sales were strong at or above guide (and GPA in some cases). I also moved a number of Swamp Thing #49s in VF at $20 apiece. It was fun to see people filling runs on our side of the booth.

Modern books: Here is a brief overview from my sales

Artgerm variants from Marvel, DC, and Vampirella continue to be strong sellers at $10-$20 apiece. I sold close to 75% of the long box I had. JSC variant sales were slow, but I had them priced fairly high. I had a number of requests for SW HR and HR Advs ratio variants, but I am sitting on those for the D+ and movie plays to start.

Marvel facsimiles were strong sellers with multiples of them going at $10-$50 apiece. FF #1 Facsimile at $40 sold well which was nice to see. I sold a Hulk #1 at that price level as well. The buyers noted that they were looking for the first print facsimiles, which was interesting. It looks like there may be a longer term collector market for them. 

Sonic and Spawn sold well for independents. I moved a bunch of each. I also sold the few old school Image #1s I had - Gen 13, Savage Dragon, Prophet, Shadowhawk and another one or two at $10 apiece which was nice. Everything else for me from an independent title perspective was slow.

And, as per usual, I sold half a long box or so of Batman Three Jokers 1-3 at $10 apiece. I also sold a second long box of stock to another dealer for my cost. While I know I would have sold them over time, I am well into a tidy profit on that spec play and I am sick of lugging that stock around as it is a tad heavy. A number of the 1:25 variants sold as well. 

Trailer Park Boys Get a F@@cking Comic #1 continues to sell steadily at $20 apiece as retail buyers see it, laugh, and purchase it. I should have ordered 1,000 copies instead of just 100.

Venom and Carnage issues were strong sellers on all four days. Now all I need is for Harley and Deadpool to heat up again.

There was also an uptick in Valiant sales this show. I pulled out a short box of acquisitions from the past two years and sold a number of pre-unity Magnus, Solar, Habinger and X-O at the show for strong prices. It was nice to see a bit of a resurgence as those are some of my favourite titles. Now I have to restock some of the keys.

Overall it was a solid show sales-wise. I did not do as much as last year, but that is due to my decision on what stock I brought to the show. I should have added the other six long boxes of SA and BA stock and taken less modern. Next time, I guess.

 

You sold 2 Jungles in 8.0 to Danny.  He has an original owner SA collection that's lovely and high grade.  He walked around the show and didn't see any SA he needed so I took him over to Harley.  We went through a bunch of Harley's classic pre-code horror and some of his SA keys.  I'd say every wall book of Harley's that we looked at was over-graded compared to his sticker grade and priced at about double GPA.  That's double GPA for raw, over-graded books or perhaps 3X market value.  And yes, these were some of the nicest books on Harley's wall and classic books but you'd have to want his books pretty bad to pay his price.  Danny likes high grade books so telling him a classic pre-code horror book may not exist in high grade and if it did it would be incredibly expensive didn't impress him.  He then went to your booth and bought your nicest Jungles.

Seemed like a little bit of everything sold.  Late BA and early CA were selling.  Shogun Warriors, Tomb of Dracula, pretty well any late BA book trickled out to people who had bought them off the stands and now wanted them back.  Sold a small pile of GA Disney's to several buyers.  Lots of minor CA and MA minor keys and classic issues sold.  Lots of hot modern covers and facsimiles sold.  Some pre-code horror, some SA, some sets.

[kimik]

It was good to see @greggy and @joeypost again at the show as well. They made off like bandits at the show again with stacks of potential 9.8 books.