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What would you do with 12,000 comics?
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52 posts in this topic

Looks like we (like every other shop) are going to get stuck with the FCBD books we ordered this year and no event to give them away. Until sporting events are hosting crowds of 25,000 people again, I’m not hosting a party the equivalent of putting 1500 folks through your house’s front door in a day. (It’s actually worse than that since our attendance was higher than our square footage last year). 

I’m not about to risk being on the news in a story about 3 people who died after they attended an ill-advised FCBD. 

But the books are still coming. I’m still gonna be on the hook for the $4,000 cost associated with them. And they’re not going to bring the $5/sf in sales they normally bring on event day. So what to do with them?

We already give away comics year round. Several times a week we hand out dollar reprints to youngsters who are being more rambunctious than their parents feel like monitoring. Never fault the kids. Comics are exciting. But rather than tear up that Immortal Hulk that your parents wont be buying anyway (because they only care about the Funko Pops), here’s a free Spider-Man comic that’s all yours. No charge... And we already donate to local doctor and dentist waiting rooms. 

So we will bag sampler packs for subs. We will make up donation packs of the all-ages titles for waiting rooms. We will make up donation packs of middle graders that will go to local teachers we work with. We will keep a few back to give away to the occasional family.

But there’s still gonna be at least 6,000 after all that. 

We already dumpster around 20,000 comics a year. Last year was close to 30,000. But most of those are comics that have been owned by half a dozen different people in their lives and it’s just their time. If 6,000 of these are headed to the landfill, so be it. But it’s a little sad.

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9 minutes ago, comicginger1789 said:

You throw away comics!?!?!?!

Why? Why not donate them somewhere? 

You say you dumpster 20 000 comics a year? Why not host a day where you give stuff away (or maybe you do/did before this craziness)? Gets people to the store.

I get throwing or tossing comics that are beat beyond collectibility...I recycle stuff.  Not sure why you would huck em in a dumpster to be landfill destined when the least you can do is recycle. 

The donation issue is a tricky one.  Believe it or not, there are many libraries, schools. and other institutions that simply do not want them.  Schools do not want the 90's bad girls drek for their middle schoolers.  Libraries are not going to stock 90's drek and early 2000's commons.  It's not just a content issue but the durability of the comic.  Shelf space, even at a library and school are very valuable.  So they really don't seem to want them.  Now they do seem to take TPBs. 

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20 minutes ago, lighthouse said:

Looks like we (like every other shop) are going to get stuck with the FCBD books we ordered this year and no event to give them away. Until sporting events are hosting crowds of 25,000 people again, I’m not hosting a party the equivalent of putting 1500 folks through your house’s front door in a day. (It’s actually worse than that since our attendance was higher than our square footage last year). 

I’m not about to risk being on the news in a story about 3 people who died after they attended an ill-advised FCBD. 

But the books are still coming. I’m still gonna be on the hook for the $4,000 cost associated with them. And they’re not going to bring the $5/sf in sales they normally bring on event day. So what to do with them?

We already give away comics year round. Several times a week we hand out dollar reprints to youngsters who are being more rambunctious than their parents feel like monitoring. Never fault the kids. Comics are exciting. But rather than tear up that Immortal Hulk that your parents wont be buying anyway (because they only care about the Funko Pops), here’s a free Spider-Man comic that’s all yours. No charge... And we already donate to local doctor and dentist waiting rooms. 

So we will bag sampler packs for subs. We will make up donation packs of the all-ages titles for waiting rooms. We will make up donation packs of middle graders that will go to local teachers we work with. We will keep a few back to give away to the occasional family.

But there’s still gonna be at least 6,000 after all that. 

We already dumpster around 20,000 comics a year. Last year was close to 30,000. But most of those are comics that have been owned by half a dozen different people in their lives and it’s just their time. If 6,000 of these are headed to the landfill, so be it. But it’s a little sad.

I think you should hold onto to them.

FCBD will probably still happen but maybe it will be moved to July or August of this year.

Or if FCBD does not happen this year, when your state loosens up guideines, have a big sale & give away the FCBD books! 

 

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17 minutes ago, comicginger1789 said:

You throw away comics!?!?!?!

Why? Why not donate them somewhere? 

You say you dumpster 20 000 comics a year? Why not host a day where you give stuff away (or maybe you do/did before this craziness)? Gets people to the store.

I get throwing or tossing comics that are beat beyond collectibility...I recycle stuff.  Not sure why you would huck em in a dumpster to be landfill destined when the least you can do is recycle. 

We buy around 100,000 comics in collections each year. Roughly 20-30% of them have no value whatsoever, are questionable content, have potential mold issues, etc. 

We already donate over 10,000 comics a year (separate from those we give away for FCBD and HCF). We donate graphic novels to libraries and schools (and sell them at nearly cost when they buy from us).

A run of 1988-1990 Action Comics in bags that have been left in a garage or shed for twenty years, covered in dust and smelling of chemicals and rodents, is not something that is easily donated. The labor just isn’t justified to prepare them for donation. 

Most donated clothing is ultimately destroyed by the charities it’s donated to. Only the best quality stuff moves that charity’s goal forward. Comics are no different. If we donate nice clean bagged and boarded copies of family friendly titles, the charity can sell them to help their mission. If we donate dust-covered early 90s bad girl soft-porn, all we’ve done is waste that charity’s labor in throwing them away themselves.

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9 minutes ago, comics4all said:

I think you should hold onto to them.

FCBD will probably still happen but maybe it will be moved to July or August of this year.

Or if FCBD does not happen this year, when your state loosens up guideines, have a big sale & give away the FCBD books! 

 

California’s Governor, now the most popular in America, has already said that he doesn’t expect fans in stands at sporting events in his state before 2021. 

It’s one thing to reopen a store to 10-20 customers at a time. It’s quite another to pack a thousand people in the space of an apartment or two thousand in the space of a house. 

We will still find a way to slowly give away several thousand of these. But heck, we have over 8,000 leftovers from previous FCBD and HCF events in storage already. Around 30 long boxes worth. I can’t see keeping 6,000 from this one event. Storage and handling aren’t free. 

I expect there will be a million plus of these “leftover” books around the country. It’s just a shame Diamond couldn’t stop the printers in time.

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1 hour ago, lighthouse said:

We buy around 100,000 comics in collections each year. Roughly 20-30% of them have no value whatsoever, are questionable content, have potential mold issues, etc. 

We already donate over 10,000 comics a year (separate from those we give away for FCBD and HCF). We donate graphic novels to libraries and schools (and sell them at nearly cost when they buy from us).

A run of 1988-1990 Action Comics in bags that have been left in a garage or shed for twenty years, covered in dust and smelling of chemicals and rodents, is not something that is easily donated. The labor just isn’t justified to prepare them for donation. 

Most donated clothing is ultimately destroyed by the charities it’s donated to. Only the best quality stuff moves that charity’s goal forward. Comics are no different. If we donate nice clean bagged and boarded copies of family friendly titles, the charity can sell them to help their mission. If we donate dust-covered early 90s bad girl soft-porn, all we’ve done is waste that charity’s labor in throwing them away themselves.

Okay apologies, so you are doing the right things!

The junk comics have to go then. No shame there. But these new ones you are saying you will have, I would hang on to and not just trash. Plus, if and when ya can, recycle! Obviously moldy nasty stuff hits the landfill but the rest can be reused.

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40 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

I get what you say about having to trash (or better yet, recycle) books that are unsuitable for various reasons. There are other places to donate suitable books. Children’s Hospitals, YMCA, youth groups, troubled children’s homes ect. A minor amount of work but if you are currently shut down do a little research and a few phone calls. There are a lot of kids with real problems now who could use the diversion.

I just donated a couple large boxes of unwanted books to a local children’s hospital. They were very happy to receive them. 

I was once the facilitator of both giving and receiving a donation of comics.

Many of them are unsuitable and many were passed along to Staten Island and New Jersey.  (NY'rs will get that.)

There was no way anyone was handing out Areala, Warrior Nun to kids in a hospital.  But hey, that's what was donated...  The libraries do not want it.  The YMCA does not want it, Youth Groups do not want it.  In fact I can tell you that due to the suggestive content in many books that many of these organizations do not want to deal with potential liability or social repercussions or any bad press.   

 

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2 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

I was once the facilitator of both giving and receiving a donation of comics.

Many of them are unsuitable and many were passed along to Staten Island and New Jersey.  (NY'rs will get that.)

There was no way anyone was handing out Areala, Warrior Nun to kids in a hospital.  But hey, that's what was donated...  The libraries do not want it.  The YMCA does not want it, Youth Groups do not want it.  In fact I can tell you that due to the suggestive content in many books that many of these organizations do not want to deal with potential liability or social repercussions or any bad press.   

 

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How many copies did you have of this book?

It is worth some bucks right now! 

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2 minutes ago, comics4all said:

How many copies did you have of this book?

It is worth some bucks right now! 

It's on eBay for $5 if anyone wants one.   I just looked it up.  

All of that bad girl stuff from the 90's was trashed at the time.  You cannot give that stuff away and expect them to give it to kids.   I spoke to the comics shop the next time and he gave me a few boxes of things that were more kid friendly. 

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1 minute ago, Buzzetta said:

It's on eBay for $5 if anyone wants one.   I just looked it up.  

All of that bad girl stuff from the 90's was trashed at the time.  You cannot give that stuff away and expect them to give it to kids.   I spoke to the comics shop the next time and he gave me a few boxes of things that were more kid friendly. 

Sorry, I didn't mean exactly that particular issue of Warrior Nun was worth $$! I assumed that was her first appearance....

I think they are making a movie about her, that's why it's outta the drek bin 

What I meant to say was her first appearance & certain other WN appearances are going from $30-200 on ebay!  

In other words, sometimes these obscure 90s dollar bin books suddenly shoot up in value! 

I agree you cannot give books like Hellina & Lady Death  to kids

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33 minutes ago, comicginger1789 said:

Okay apologies, so you are doing the right things!

The junk comics have to go then. No shame there. But these new ones you are saying you will have, I would hang on to and not just trash. Plus, if and when ya can, recycle! Obviously moldy nasty stuff hits the landfill but the rest can be reused.

Currently there’s no market for mixed-paper bales. So if we tried to “recycle” them they’d wind up in a landfill or incinerator anyway after tying up valuable labor at the recycling facility. Better to landfill them ourselves so the recycling centers can devote energy to aluminum and glass where they have a chance to cover their costs. Back when China was buying mixed paper, it was a different story. But now municipalities not only can’t sell the bales, they have to pay more to recycle them than dispose of them.

We still do what we can. I rip up unsold copies of Previews to use as packing paper all the time. But slick paper comics aren’t suitable for that.

In order to store these 6,000 books, I have to spend $80 on boxes for them, around $110 on labor to pack the boxes, load the boxes for transport, transport them to storage, and unload and stack them at storage. Then pay ongoing costs of 3.5 cents per book per year for random access storage in racks or 2.5 cents per book per year for sequential access storage in piles of boxes. That’s the sort of math you have to do with hundreds of thousands of comics that never comes up if you own 8 long boxes. (And that’s with storage unit costs of $8.25/ft/yr, some markets are much higher). Leftover full case titles would be cheaper since there’s no reboxing needed. But the titles we order full cases of are the ones easiest to give away. So even the leftovers of those will be partials.

We’ll give away as many as we can. Store a few. The rest? Sigh.

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Wow, I didn't know that the publishers (or distributors or whoever) charge the shops for the "free" books.  That's where I'd start.  That's a crock of ****.  Those books are ads for the publishers.  The publisher should be paying me to read them.  I can't believe they have been charging the shops to carry them. 

That changes my whole outlook on FCBD.  I won't go anymore.  I'd prefer to support my LCS more directly without them paying someone else for me to put my eyeballs on someone else's ads.  Wow, FCBD is a scam.

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2 minutes ago, Turnando said:

Wow, I didn't know that the publishers (or distributors or whoever) charge the shops for the "free" books.  That's where I'd start.  That's a crock of ****.  Those books are ads for the publishers.  The publisher should be paying me to read them.  I can't believe they have been charging the shops to carry them. 

That changes my whole outlook on FCBD.  I won't go anymore.  I'd prefer to support my LCS more directly without them paying someone else for me to put my eyeballs on someone else's ads.  Wow, FCBD is a scam.

Not exactly the case.

The publishers get no money. The distributors get no money. The shops get no money.

The only people who get paid as part of FCBD are the printers who print the comics, which makes complete sense to me. My costs on the books range from 25-30 cents per book which is the cost of printing and nothing more.

The publishers are still taking a big loss (paying the creators to produce the work without getting paid in return). Diamond takes a big loss (paying all its employees to handle the shipments without getting paid). And comic shops take a loss on paying the printing costs plus the subsized-by-Diamond freight costs to receive the books.

But the event DOES promote the hobby. It DOES get folks in the door. It DOES expose new folks to comics for the first time every year. And for half the shops in the country it's still their busiest sales day of the entire year, so even though you get folks who show up once a year for free books and never come back, most do support the stores. Publishers, Diamond, and shops all chip in... and they all benefit in the long run.

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55 minutes ago, Big.Daddy said:

Craigslist:idea:

I think you can sell these out on

Craigslist.

I think some people just want a

Deal there.

 

 

My experience is people will line up down the block to take your free stuff, but getting paid on craiglist kinda rough

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4 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

I was once the facilitator of both giving and receiving a donation of comics.

Many of them are unsuitable and many were passed along to Staten Island and New Jersey.  (NY'rs will get that.)

There was no way anyone was handing out Areala, Warrior Nun to kids in a hospital.  But hey, that's what was donated...  The libraries do not want it.  The YMCA does not want it, Youth Groups do not want it.  In fact I can tell you that due to the suggestive content in many books that many of these organizations do not want to deal with potential liability or social repercussions or any bad press.   

 

image.png.75ba61e9d922ab728503520a80c5a87c.png

Let you know Areala or Warrior Nun will be on Netflix soon - https://www.netflix.com/title/80242724

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