Ask a Comic Book Store Owner

[Tilter]

Sports Card wise, there are pack feelers. They can detect the hidden gems, like Jerseys, to Patches, to Autos. They do this by feel and even portable hand held electronic weighting devices.

As far as grading, this is a huge problem in the sports card industry as well. People trim cards to get a better grade, they can probably do this to comics. You may see a card get an 8.5/10 grade only to see it reslabbed with a 9.5/10 grade a couple of months later. If a comic is slabbed, you wouldn't take it out, so for all you know its a 9.8, when it could be a 9.2.

If you were to stock up on comics to sell later at a higher value (ie, like how Ultimate Spider-man blew up early on, how the #1 issues go for $100+), how would you determine which comics would be a big hit?

[ESnow]

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My grandpa was hired to work for, then became friends with a husband and wife team that owned a Cards and Comic shop. This was wayyyyyy back in the mid 80's. One of the first scams I heard about was them opening packs and then using a machine to heat and reseal them.

What are the big or little scams that are used in your industry.
(Not by you of course)

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Ooooo...a fun question! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Actually, nowadays, outside of grading, I don't know that there's much going on that I would really call an outright scam. Scammers have found much more fertile ground in things like identity theft, I think. The kind of scam you talk about is long gone, the material used to make sealed packs of product is completely unable to be resealed. Back in the years when Pokemon was super-hot and anything with foil on it was instantly sellable for big dollars, there were people who used drug scales to weigh packs and find ones with foils because the foil cards weighed a quarter of a gram more than non-foil cards. Nowadays there's no game with expensive enough cards to justify this kind of effort.

There's a lot of things going on that I would consider dishonest or poor marketing, but it is not an out an out scam. Guy who sell comics to people based on the idea that the comic might be worth a lot of money are being stupid, at least.

The biggest "scams" nowadays are the result of people at the top of the food chain knowing more than people at the bottom. When Captain America #25 came out a few months ago, and the next week was sold out everywhere, Wizard Magazine had "CAP DEAD!" on the cover of their new issue that shipped seven days after the comic shipped. Considering the lead time for a magazine, the fact that Wizard's retail arm also had graded copies of Cap #25 on ebay for $50-$80 at the same time pissed a lot of people in the business off a great deal.

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Also
What good stories do you have about finding valuable stuff at a garage sale, in an attic, etc...

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Sadly, I have none of my own. By the time I got involved in the business side, the cat was pretty much out of the bag on values of comics/cards/etc, so no one had stuff lying around that they didn't know was worth something. That stuff turns up so rarely nowadays ...well, I'll tell you a story about another retailer I know to illustrate.

This friend of mine has a store in NYC and by his register he has a $100 money order. Whenever someone comes in and claims to have Superman #1/Batman #1/Spider-Man #1/etc etc etc, and they want to know what it is worth, he tells tham that such a book is very condition sensitive and he can't quote without looking at it. He tells them that if they bring it in, and just let him look at the book and if it is an authentic book, he will give them the money order, even if he doesn't buy it.

He has had the money order by his register for eight years.

[popeye18]

How many hours a week do u work? Any plans for more stores?

[ESnow]

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If you were to stock up on comics to sell later at a higher value (ie, like how Ultimate Spider-man blew up early on, how the #1 issues go for $100+), how would you determine which comics would be a big hit?

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I would tell you that you are engaging in a fool's errand and you want an investment, you need to invest in something that is investment-worthy, like gold. Or AA over KK. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I sell comics strictly as reading material. The same way a music store sells CDs as entertainment. If you enjoy reading it, you always got your money's worth. If you're able to resell it later for a higher price, then you're out WAAAY ahead.

The truism is this: Things manufactured to BE collectible rarely actually end up being so.

The kind of thing you are talking about is akin to the stock market. The factors that made Ultimate Spider-Man #1 shoot up in value were beyond any single consumer's ability to predict or control. If the book had been a crappy read, it would be in $1 boxes. If the speculator crowd decided it wasn't the hot book, it would be in $1 boxes. If the Spider-Man movie had sucked ass at the box office, it would be in $1 boxes. And many many other things.

Now go buy copper. Or gold. Or oil.

[Pumpkin Escobar]

Do you have any employees? How much does your store gross on an average month? Any advice you would give to a new small business owner?

[ESnow]

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How many hours a week do u work? Any plans for more stores?

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Define "work" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I would say I spend on average 60 hours a week working, but they're usually at my leisure and generally very low-stress. Lots of paperwork and filing to do at the home office? Break out a beer or two, fire up a dvd commentary in the background and get to it. I get up most days at 9 or 9:30am, and sometimes I'll work from 10pm till 1am, but it is only because at 2:30 I decided I'd rather kick back and read the new issue of Batman than do the damn tax paperwork. Technically, reading the comics my customers want to talk about with me is working, too. If you include all of that, it can be as much as 70 hours a week. However, it's what I love doing, so I don't mind a bit. There's things that drive me insane, but the hours is not one of them.

As for more stores...right now, hell no. The workload would in fact crush me. Maybe someday, but my hands are plenty full with what I've got going on right now.

[MikeyPatriot]

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Sports Card wise, there are pack feelers. They can detect the hidden gems, like Jerseys, to Patches, to Autos. They do this by feel and even portable hand held electronic weighting devices.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was warned about and then saw a guy doing this at a KMart I worked at. Having been a former card collector when I was a kid (never to that extreme though), I couldn't decide if I felt pity or camaraderie with the guy.

I had to ask him to stop and leave anyway.

[ESnow]

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Do you have any employees? How much does your store gross on an average month? Any advice you would give to a new small business owner?

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I currently have three employees between the two stores.

No offense, but the gross falls into the realm of "nunya" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] Besides, it shifts from month to month a great deal depending on seasons and releases that month.

As for advice? A few things...
1. Do what you love. Or do what will make the most money. Running a small business is thankless and exhausting. If you aren't making decent money or legitimately enjoying what you're doing, you'll grow weary of it VERY VERY quickly.

2. Read Mark Cuban's blog archives at http://www.blogmaverick.com He expresses both the misery and the joys of business far better than I possibly could. His story and attitude are very inspirational. Or defeating, depending on your inclination.

3. Anything you aren't good at, pay someone to do it for you. Your time is better spent focusing on your strengths rather than trying to figure out the details of filing your 940's with the IRS. You'll make more in the long run.

[orange]

This is really great. I collected comic books for about 6 years when I was younger, totally enveloping myself in the industry/etc. I have since held off on my collecting, but have recently bought all of the 100 bullets series.

Sorry if this has been answered, but what are your favorite comics to read? Some of your favorite collections? As an adult, are you more interested in the more adult-oriented comics (vertigo/etc) or do you still have fan favorites from when you were a kid (superman, hulk, etc)?

Thoughts on the current state of comic books? I thought they would be slightly on the decline, but I really don't know. With technology and games and such, I would think that kids these days don't really care about comic books.

[ESnow]

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Sorry if this has been answered, but what are your favorite comics to read? Some of your favorite collections? As an adult, are you more interested in the more adult-oriented comics (vertigo/etc) or do you still have fan favorites from when you were a kid (superman, hulk, etc)?

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I love all sorts of comics. My personal favorites right this second include Planetary, Ex Machina, Fables, Batman, and Justice League. All-time, my favorites include Preacher, Sin City, Transmetropolitan, Animal Man (by Grant Morrison), Promethea, and 100% (by Paul Pope). There's a part of me that will always just be a big kid and dig my superheroes, but I just enjoy reading good stories.

Every human on Earth should read Maus at some point, a comic that won a Pulitzer Prize. It's brilliant work.

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Thoughts on the current state of comic books? I thought they would be slightly on the decline, but I really don't know. With technology and games and such, I would think that kids these days don't really care about comic books.

[/ QUOTE ]

Comics have been on a nice, gentle incline for the last several years, actually. There's a multitude of factors contributing to this, not the least of which is the overall quality of comics that are coming out nowadays.

I mentioned it upthread, but kids are still very interested in comics, the challenge is the kids finding a store and a staff that are able and willing to stock books that kids will enjoy. One of my best selling comics is Sonic the Hedgehog, which kids come in and buy handfuls of all the time. I sold the crap out of a Halo GN that came out last year, and it was all to younger people who spend a lot of time playing Halo. Comics have thier challenges, like ANY business, but the industry overall is far from suffering.

There's a wide variety of books available for all readers in many comic stores now, and that level of variety and quality is helping the business continue to expand.