My Life With Comic Books: Part # 38

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 38

I spent a month getting the complete Marvel Comics collection ready for sale and I sent out flyers to the customers on my mailing list alerting them to the “unveiling”. I worked late the night before the collection was to go on sale but I was too tired to finish, so I went home. I planned to come in early the next morning to finish all of the details before the customers came showed up. I got to the store at 6:30AM and worked as fast as I could to finish setting up the displays.

I arranged the hundred boxes of this collection in order on tables in a separate section of the store and put up signs indicating that these were part of this special collection. I put up an interesting assortment of the most valuable comics on the wall display including Amazing Spider-Man #1-14, Journey Into Mystery #83, The Hulk #1, The Fantastic Four #1-12, X-Men #1, Daredevil #1, The Avengers #1, The Silver Surfer #1 and #4, Conan #1, and more.

At 8:00 AM the customers began lining up outside of the store. My wife, Mal, and my son Adam, came to help out just in case we had a larger than expected crowd show up to shop. It was a good thing they came. By the time we opened the store at 10:00AM, there were almost one hundred people waiting in line!

While the customers were waiting in line many were talking about which books they were interested in purchasing and the excitement was building by the time we finally opened. I was getting excited because I could now anticipate a great day of sales. The first customer rushed directly to the big display of the more valuable comics and bought the entire eighteen-issue collection of The Silver Surfer and as I was ringing up the sale he casually said, “Oh, and I’ll also take the Tales To Astonish #27.” This issue was the first appearance of Ant Man and it was priced at $400.00. My store had been open for about three minutes and this customer spent almost one thousand dollars!

The day was filled with exciting purchases. Many customers took this opportunity to fill in large runs of inexpensive back issue comics that they had been looking for, while some other customers bought the very expensive comics. By the end of the day I had sold almost ten thousand dollars worth of comics from this great collection.

I learned that the marketing of a collection was a very important part of the process of selling my inventory. The customers were happy because they had the chance to complete their collections with very high quality merchandise and I was happy because we sold so much of this collection on the very first day it went “on sale.”

Next Chapter: Adam goes to kindergarten.