What do I do with all these comics?
Ok, so now that you have all hopefully read Part 1, let's move along. Now I have this store which was "The Oldest Used Bookstore In Las Vegas" at the time. But all I really wanted was the comics
Now I had never really been in awe of much of anything in my life, but let me tell you guys I really didn't know what to do next.
It worked out that after about 6 months I actually made enough money to totally pay myself back for the purchase price of the business.
During that year I had to ask myself, what do I do with all of these comics. Keep in mind the year is 1991 and comic values are maybe about 10% of present day prices. So I was going to be lucky go get $150 for a near mint copy of Silver Surfer #1.
My first order of business was to blowout all of my lower grade comics. So I started selling to some of the mail order dealers who were extremely excited to purchase large quantities of mid-grade 60's & 70's Marvel & DC. I would just pack a box up each month and ship them out to a couple of the ones I had built up a rapport with and they would send me a check lightning fast.
This helped free up some space and get rid of books that I really didn't need to hold onto.
Next, I decided to start selling at Los Angeles Science Fiction & Comic Book Convention. I packed up about 3000 nice books but not the best. I would start with my lowest graded books which were still nicer than a lot of the dealers in the room had access to.
My first show was a huge success! I made a ton of money before the show was even half over and I also made one of my most important contacts ever in meeting Mr. Terry O'Neill owner of Terry's Comics. Terry made me an offer for everything I had left which was very generous. Keep in mind that I would be able to replace 80-90% of the books I sold that day with better copies and sell at the next show the following month
This went on for the next 20 years believe it or not. And I still love doing that show when I have the chance, just to run into some of the guys that I have come to know and deal with over the years.
On top of all of the comics there were also a ton of magazines that covered all genre's. There were runs of Creepy, Eerie, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Savage Sword, Savage Tales and Many more including a ton of the Eerie Publications Mags. All of the mags were in beautiful condition with multiples on many issues(80% of which I still have). I always thought the pricing on Mags were way to low so I held on to most of them.
I was able to sell the FM #1 Fine condition to Steve Dolnick for what was a pretty good price back in 1991
Ok, so as the years passed and prices started to increase. I started to make more money selling fewer comics. I didn't jump in right away as I should have with having books slabbed (big mistake). By this time though I had already sold most of the key books from the store purchase. Hey, they helped pay the bills and that was more important at the time.
Think I will stop here for tonight and try and wrap this up tomorrow. I'm throwing in a few pics of a couple books I had handy and will try and load more later. Enjoy!
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