Opening a new brick and mortar shop 13 13

[lighthouse]

13 hours ago, mr_highgrade said:

Hey House, when are you gonna finish the rest of story? 

I'm hoping for some more free time this weekend. We had some staffing issues leading up to Halloween ComicFest and I've been out on the floor a lot more than normal the last few weeks. HCF was good for us, presumably in the top 10% of shops, giving that Diamond doesn't even offer breakdowns above 500 attendees when surveying shops and we were in that group. For perspective when they survey after FCBD there are attendee breakdowns all the way up to 2000+. The survey for HCF also asks questions like "was it better than a normal Saturday" where the FCBD survey asks questions like "is it your best sales day of the year".

All in all, HCF feels like a real missed opportunity, and I mostly put in on the publishers. Most of the material offered is reprint, and almost none of it connects with titles people could follow up with on the shelves. Marvel's choice to put out Superior Spider-Man was especially perplexing. Here's a reprint of a book from 5 years ago with the same name as a title coming out a couple months after HCF. It's like getting a gift from your nice old grandma who heard you like Transformers so here's a Go-Bot for you. FCBD at least has a mix of fresh and reprints, and most of them are geared to steer future sales. HCF is a second class citizen.

Which is a shame. Because our customers love the event. Dozens of people dressing in costume and having a good time. Just hard to get excited about the comics on the table.

[lighthouse]

Alright... I know I am long overdue for an update. And January and February are nice, slow times so I should be able to pick up the story again where I left off.

But jumping ahead to the present, I'm positively delighted that IDW is doing this Marvel Action Spider-Man series that is all-ages friendly and features Peter, Gwen, and Miles all together. It's a beautiful thing to have parents come in with kids excited about having seen this great movie and be able to put comics in their hands that are age-appropriate AND similar to what they just saw in a theater. Something that simply wasn't possible with any of the recent Marvel films.

We've been buying collections like crazy, another 40 last month and already 10 in January. The latest one is particularly odd. Was a donation to a charity and they brought it to us to purchase. It includes roughly 2200 newsstand comics from 1995-2002, including several I hadn't seen in person before like Punisher 104. It's mostly Marvel and DC but a few Image and Valiant. One that caught me off-guard was a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #400, newsstand with the gray tombstone overlay. I wasn't aware there was a newsstand version that had that. I had only seen the more common newsstand version with no overlay and the back cover ad. I don't think there is a single direct edition in the entire collection, which definitely makes it the oddest collection I have seen. I've found "all newsstand" collections of 50-100 books before. But never anything like this.

Edited January 7, 2019 by lighthouse

[the blob]

15 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Alright... I know I am long overdue for an update. And January and February are nice, slow times so I should be able to pick up the story again where I left off.

But jumping ahead to the present, I'm positively delighted that IDW is doing this Marvel Action Spider-Man series that is all-ages friendly and features Peter, Gwen, and Miles all together. It's a beautiful thing to have parents come in with kids excited about having seen this great movie and be able to put comics in their hands that are age-appropriate AND similar to what they just saw in a theater. Something that simply wasn't possible with any of the recent Marvel films.

We've been buying collections like crazy, another 40 last month and already 10 in January. The latest one is particularly odd. Was a donation to a charity and they brought it to us to purchase. It includes roughly 2200 newsstand comics from 1995-2002, including several I hadn't seen in person before like Punisher 104. It's mostly Marvel and DC but a few Image and Valiant. One that caught me off-guard was a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #400, newsstand with the gray tombstone overlay. I wasn't aware there was a newsstand version that had that. I had only seen the more common newsstand version with no overlay and the back cover ad. I don't think there is a single direct edition in the entire collection, which definitely makes it the oddest collection I have seen. I've found "all newsstand" collections of 50-100 books before. But never anything like this.

Is this niche market really meaningful to your walk in crowd and usual customers? Seems like things that sell on ebay, but not necessarily in a store.

[lighthouse]

We have several customers that drive 200+ miles specifically to shop with us, and some of them are pretty fervent about what they collect. Between those folks and the locals, we have around 25-30 regulars who actively inquire about newsstand editions. It's not a huge number, but they are there.

It's not the sort of thing that we would choose to devote active square footage to (setting up an entire section of late 90s newsstands with flashing signs and strobe lights), just like we don't keep Fury of Firestorm or Darkhawk or Gen-13 on the tables currently. We bring things like that over from the warehouse on request, and we have a few customers who will reach out 3-4 days before they plan to visit, asking us to bring this title or that one. A decent number of the books from the latest collection will just go out, newsstand or not. There's a run of 1997 Deadpool 1-17, plus the Daredevil/Deadpool Annual, and we will reach out to our "best" Deadpool customers to see if any are actively pursuing newsstands. We've never had any in stock so it hasn't come up. The Spawns (roughly issues 35-55) we have five different customers currently working on newsstand runs, so those will go quickly enough. I've only triaged half the collection so far. Once I get a handle on all of it, I'll see where we go with it. We have roughly 70-80k books offsite currently, another 2,000 won't take up much room.

[Kreton]

@lighthouseCurious as to how things are going?  Any chance of an update any time soon?

[Pirate]

He's gone, typical Lighthouse.  

[lighthouse]

Still alive. Store still open. Still waiting on Greggy to come visit and look through some sweet sweet DCs. 

 

In 2019 we bought 455 comic collections. Totaling just under 70,000 books. Largest collection was 27 long boxes. Most were typical one or two box collections. With quite a few that were just a stack of 50 or less. 

 

Out of the collections, roughly 1600 silver age. Around 4500 Bronze Age (with around 2200 of those in 9.0 or better). Around 6,000 high grade 80s and several thousand worthless 80s. Typical large quantities of early 90s drek. Typical minuscule quantities of books from 1999-2003. Roughly 8,000 total from 2007-on. There’s obviously a giant quantity of drek books that we paid a nickel a piece for. But without buying 40,000+ of those, the others don’t walk in the door.

 

A few counts of modern “keys” purchased in 2019:

 

77 - Spawn 1

26 - Infinity Gauntlet 1

26 - Lethal Protector 1

21 - Spidey 300

16 - Spidey 361

14 - Killing Joke

13 - Wolverine 1 (‘88)

11 - New Mutants 98

8 - Uncanny 266

6 - Wolverine 1 (‘82)

4 - BA 12

4 - EOSV 2

4 - Ult Fallout 4

 

There are lots of others I didn’t really track. Probably wound up with 8-10 each of the X-Factor keys. Similar counts on Batman Year One and Death in the Family issues. 

 

No heavy duplication in the Silver Age stuff. 2-3 each of most every marvel superhero from 1965-1970, heavier on avengers. 3-4 each of Superman titles from 1963-1970. 1-2 each on Batman, JLA, WF. Much lighter on Flash and GL. Virtually no Wonder Woman. I think we bought 9 silver age WW all year and maybe 20 Bronze. It just doesn’t come in. 

 

At any given time we are 2-4 copies deep on pretty much every ASM from 103-380. Rarely more than 60 issues total from 401-600. 

 

Category breakdowns for 2019 (percentage of gross sales):

 

32.5% New Books

14.0% Trades and Hardcovers

11.9% Funko

8.9% Modern Back Issues

8.8% Wall Books ($100+)

5.7% Apparel

2.7% Silver/Bronze Back Issues

2.5% Supplies

2.1% MTG Boosters

2.0% Gallery Figures

1.6% Manga

1.5% Statues

1.5% Select Figures

0.7% Pokémon Boosters

3.6% other

 

I’ll try to be back in the next few weeks to answer more questions and tell some more story. I’m just not here on a daily basis like I was in 2003 so months will go by and I won’t realize I haven’t been back. 

I’ll follow this with a recap of new book title sales.

[lighthouse]

In order of copies sold, here’s the top new books from 2019. All these were at least 150 copies sold (so at least 12 a month if monthly). Some titles came out 24 times like Batman and ASM. Some came out just 5 or 6 times like Absolute Carnage and HOX/POX. The top few titles were well over 500 total. You might notice Amazing Spider-Man is there twice. I wound up with a separate item code for issue 1 of the Spencer run. That’s around 200 copies of issue 1 sold during the year.

Some of these clock exactly with Diamond’s national reports. Some very much do not.

[lighthouse]

Last update for today (probably). 

Bought a collection this morning of 2,000 newsstands from 1997-1999. Gentleman owned a newsstand in the NYC area in the late 90s and decided to set aside copies as an investment. Pulled 3-4 copies of any book he thought looked interesting, bagged them, and kept them at home. Lots of Marvel and DC obviously but also Image, Topps, Dark Horse, etc. He never collected any other comics. Just pulled some off his own shelf and kept them. His newsstand stopped carrying comics altogether in late 99, so the collection dies at that point. 

No real keys that I saw. Multiple copies of Nightwing 1 from 1997 might be the best of the bunch. I’d say the collection averages 9.4 with some better and a decent number he dinged in moving them around for two decades. But there were things I was happy to see. Multiple sets of the DC vs Marvel miniseries (which I can’t keep in stock as direct editions). The 97 prestige sets of Batman Bane, Batman Batgirl, etc which I didn’t know even had newsstand distribution. There are a few dozen Spawn and Curse of Spawn, and some DC animated titles. But lots of stuff that would really only matter to hardcore newsstand collectors. Like Silver Surfers in the 120s-130s. That sort of thing.

It’s always fun seeing stuff I never see. Whether it’s worth a lot or not.

[Robot Man]

51 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Still alive. Store still open. Still waiting on Greggy to come visit and look through some sweet sweet DCs. 

 

In 2019 we bought 455 comic collections. Totaling just under 70,000 books. Largest collection was 27 long boxes. Most were typical one or two box collections. With quite a few that were just a stack of 50 or less. 

 

Out of the collections, roughly 1600 silver age. Around 4500 Bronze Age (with around 2200 of those in 9.0 or better). Around 6,000 high grade 80s and several thousand worthless 80s. Typical large quantities of early 90s drek. Typical minuscule quantities of books from 1999-2003. Roughly 8,000 total from 2007-on. There’s obviously a giant quantity of drek books that we paid a nickel a piece for. But without buying 40,000+ of those, the others don’t walk in the door.

 

A few counts of modern “keys” purchased in 2019:

 

77 - Spawn 1

26 - Infinity Gauntlet 1

26 - Lethal Protector 1

21 - Spidey 300

16 - Spidey 361

14 - Killing Joke

13 - Wolverine 1 (‘88)

11 - New Mutants 98

8 - Uncanny 266

6 - Wolverine 1 (‘82)

4 - BA 12

4 - EOSV 2

4 - Ult Fallout 4

 

There are lots of others I didn’t really track. Probably wound up with 8-10 each of the X-Factor keys. Similar counts on Batman Year One and Death in the Family issues. 

 

No heavy duplication in the Silver Age stuff. 2-3 each of most every marvel superhero from 1965-1970, heavier on avengers. 3-4 each of Superman titles from 1963-1970. 1-2 each on Batman, JLA, WF. Much lighter on Flash and GL. Virtually no Wonder Woman. I think we bought 9 silver age WW all year and maybe 20 Bronze. It just doesn’t come in. 

 

At any given time we are 2-4 copies deep on pretty much every ASM from 103-380. Rarely more than 60 issues total from 401-600. 

 

Category breakdowns for 2019 (percentage of gross sales):

 

32.5% New Books

14.0% Trades and Hardcovers

11.9% Funko

8.9% Modern Back Issues

8.8% Wall Books ($100+)

5.7% Apparel

2.7% Silver/Bronze Back Issues

2.5% Supplies

2.1% MTG Boosters

2.0% Gallery Figures

1.6% Manga

1.5% Statues

1.5% Select Figures

0.7% Pokémon Boosters

3.6% other

 

I’ll try to be back in the next few weeks to answer more questions and tell some more story. I’m just not here on a daily basis like I was in 2003 so months will go by and I won’t realize I haven’t been back. 

I’ll follow this with a recap of new book title sales.

Any GA books?

[lighthouse]

14 total pre-1950 superhero purchased in 2019. Though we looked at a lot more than that. 

Only one of those was on stands before the end of WWII. A high grade copy of Captain Midnight 35. 

Probably 20-30 low grade funny animal books from 1942-44. But none noteworthy in any way.

[musicmeta]

Anybody try to sell you CGC or other grading companies books in 2019 up to present? 

[lighthouse]

2 hours ago, musicmeta said:

Anybody try to sell you CGC or other grading companies books in 2019 up to present? 

We are offered slabbed books virtually every week. 60% of them are signature series with ridiculous prices requested. I bet we’ve turned down buying Stan Lee SS slabs of at least 30 different comics he had nothing to do with. I lost count of how many Stan Lee NM98s I’ve turned away. 

Most of the offered SS books are at least someone involved with the book. But it’s “here’s a $100 9.2 signed by Bendis. Would you give me $400 for it?” A signature is like a pool in a backyard. There’s a small group of buyers who will pay extra for the house, but a much larger group who wonder why you ruined a perfectly good backyard.

We purchased maybe 25-30 total slabs from customers last year. Most of those were in trade deals, where the customer could feel like they got 80-90% of value but we weren’t in the book that much. 

[Domo Arigato]

5 hours ago, lighthouse said:

Out of the collections, roughly 1600 silver age. Around 4500 Bronze Age (with around 2200 of those in 9.0 or better). Around 6,000 high grade 80s and several thousand worthless 80s. Typical large quantities of early 90s drek. Typical minuscule quantities of books from 1999-2003. Roughly 8,000 total from 2007-on. There’s obviously a giant quantity of drek books that we paid a nickel a piece for. But without buying 40,000+ of those, the others don’t walk in the door.

House has always loved his statistics. 

Have you hired a substitute Goth Princess yet?

 

[lighthouse]

7 hours ago, Domo Arigato said:

House has always loved his statistics. 

Have you hired a substitute Goth Princess yet?

 

There will never be another Goth Princess. There’s only one Hammer. There’s only one Bug. There’s only one Goth Princess.

[1Cool]

So has it been profitable - I don't need exact figures but would you say it's been worthwhile looking back?

[musicmeta]

10 hours ago, lighthouse said:

We are offered slabbed books virtually every week. 60% of them are signature series with ridiculous prices requested. I bet we’ve turned down buying Stan Lee SS slabs of at least 30 different comics he had nothing to do with. I lost count of how many Stan Lee NM98s I’ve turned away. 

Most of the offered SS books are at least someone involved with the book. But it’s “here’s a $100 9.2 signed by Bendis. Would you give me $400 for it?” A signature is like a pool in a backyard. There’s a small group of buyers who will pay extra for the house, but a much larger group who wonder why you ruined a perfectly good backyard.

We purchased maybe 25-30 total slabs from customers last year. Most of those were in trade deals, where the customer could feel like they got 80-90% of value but we weren’t in the book that much. 

Thanks for the quick response.  Yeah those are crazy asking prices.  One more and the last question....Do customers ask for CGC books and how well do the ones you get sell? ...take forever?, fly off the shelf?...just curious. 

[lighthouse]

31 minutes ago, musicmeta said:

Thanks for the quick response.  Yeah those are crazy asking prices.  One more and the last question....Do customers ask for CGC books and how well do the ones you get sell? ...take forever?, fly off the shelf?...just curious. 

We get customers who ask. And we also get customers who wonder why we don’t slab every wall book we have. But when we consistently sell raw Spidey 300s in the 9.2 to 9.4 range for $350-400, why slab them?

We also have quite a few customers who don’t want slabbed books period. Whether it’s storage issues, the desire to make their own decisions about grade, or something else entirely, it’s a common refrain. 

The slabs we don’t expect to move well in the store, we send to MYCS and move them there on consignment. But if a 9.4 Spidey 361 or 9.8 Spawn 1 comes in, I don’t expect it to stay more than two weeks. If we get in a 1.5-4.0 of most any Silver key where the appropriate price in grade is $300-600, gone within a month. 2.0 copies of Silver keys are the easiest thing in the world to sell.

[lighthouse]

3 hours ago, 1Cool said:

So has it been profitable - I don't need exact figures but would you say it's been worthwhile looking back?

Would I do it again? Absolutely. 

I had 8 healthy days off in 2019. Worked 332 hours in December and another 309 last month. But there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. 

Yes it’s been profitable. Though the ROI hasn’t nearly matched what I could still make working for other people. But there’s a point at which the value of the existing back issue inventory climbs faster (without new acquisitions) than the business’ (or my personal) expenses. And that tipping point is probably only three to five years away. 

[lighthouse]

Here’s a very small sample of the newsstand collection I referenced.