My Life With Comic Books: Part 18

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 18

Since I was only supposed to work with my partner, Jay, at five or six of the major comic book shows, my wife and I had lots of time to spend with our newborn son, Adam.
Jay was very busy traveling on his successful shopping mall buying trips. He would send all of the collectables up to my house so that I could “process” them and get them ready to sell.

The comic books were easy to sell because we had a great customer base at the major comic book conventions in the United States. Our new inventory of baseball cards was a little more work. The baseball card conventions were usually small, one-day shows that were less than a couple of hours away so I began to set up at some of these. I knew nothing about baseball cards when we first started selling them, so I studied as many price guides and dealers’ catalogs as I could find. Our sales of vintage baseball cards were great.

My wife, Mal, would usually stay at home with Adam while I was working at these local shows, but sometimes she’d surprise me by coming to the show to have lunch with me. When I had to be out of town at the big comic conventions it was very difficult to be away from Mal and Adam. Even though Adam was getting stronger, it was hard for Mal to be alone while I was away. I missed them too!

Jay drove up from Ohio to pick me up to go to the big Albany, New York comic book convention organized by the comic book store, “Fantaco.” Although it was only about a three-hour ride from my house to the convention, I began to realize that I wasn’t enjoying the traveling anymore. I decided that I needed to get out of the convention business. But first, I needed to focus my energy on this big show.

When we arrived at the Albany Convention Center, we were surprised at how organized this comic book show was. There were staff members hired to help all of the dealers unload their inventories. There was adequate security staff. The staff was also very friendly. As usual, we had the best location for our ten-booth display of old comic books. When the doors opened to the public, hundreds of collectors poured into the huge display room. Our booth was crowded with eager buyers for the first few hours and sales were great.

It was at this convention that I learned two important lessons about the comic book business. A very young boy, perhaps 12 years old, came up to my display and pointed to a copy of “Fantastic Four” #1 from 1961, and asked “How much is that comic book”. I didn’t take his inquiry very seriously, and I replied “ Oh, that’s a lot of money”. The young boy then said, “ Well, how much?” I said, “It’s $695.00.” He replied “Oh. Do you have a cheaper copy?” I showed him a copy that was priced at $295.00. To my surprise, he said, “I’ll take this one. Do you have issues #2 through #150?” Within ten minutes this pre-teen spent over $1200.00 and paid in cash! After he had completed this transaction I learned that he had just sold his horse and his parents allowed him to spend the proceeds on his new hobby of collecting comic books. I learned at that moment to take all customers seriously, regardless of my first impression of them.

I also learned a valuable lesson about the media at this convention. The organizer did a great job of promoting this show through the local media. There were television news programs there to do stories about this show. When they came to our booth to interview us, we were in a goofy mood and decided to have some “fun” with them. The interviewer began asking the typical questions: “Why do people collect comic books? What is the most expensive comic book you have?” We reached into a box of comic books and pulled out an “Iron Man” comic book and we made up a story about how this issue featured the first appearance of “Iron Man” wearing a yellow belt. We explained that it was very rare and it was worth over $1700.00. We figured that the news reporter would investigate to determine how accurate our information was and they’d find out that we were kidding them. Later that night we watched, along with thousands of citizens in Albany, as they ran this television interview with our completely made up nonsense! I’m sure many collectors got a laugh out of that story. This taught me not to believe much of what I read in the newspaper or see on television.

We had a very successful convention but I knew I didn’t want to continue to travel away from my wife and son. Jay and I discussed my options on the drive home from Albany. I decided that it was time to look into opening a comic book store. While Jay enjoyed the fast pace of the convention business, I was more interested in establishing relationships with “steady” customers. It was more fun for me to nurture long-term, repeat business with other collectors. I believed that the big comic book conventions would eventually be negatively affected by the opening of comic book stores all around the country. In the early days, collectors would save up money to spend at the big shows, but now stores were springing up and offering the collectors a place to spend their hobby money every day. I wanted to be a part of the more stable business of owning a comic book store. Jay and I decided that he would continue to set up at the shopping malls to buy new inventory and he would also sell at the big conventions without me. My job would be to open and run a comic book store. I remembered my experience at a “grouchy” comic shop in Worcester so I started looking for a retail store location there. I figured that I could offer better customer service than that!

Next chapter: We get robbed!

My Life With Comic Books: Part 2

A brief introduction:
My name is Paul Howley, owner of the Eisner Award winning pop culture collector's store known as " That's Entertainment " in Worcester,Massachusetts. My store has been around for over twenty years and it's been a long and interesting combination of events and people that has brought my store to its current place. It is not my intent to boast or brag about my store or my life…I just want to tell you my
story.

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

I was a lucky comic book collector. In 1966 I had found a store owner that allowed me to open the bundle of new comic books every Tuesday afternoon, pull out the comics I wanted to buy, and display the remaining comic books on his magazine rack. I had first shot at almost every comic book published…well, at least first shot of any comic book that the distributor decided to send this little store. In those days, the retailer couldn’t order individual titles. They would take whatever titles the distributor dictated. This meant that comic book readers and collectors would frequently miss issues of their favorite titles…but there was nothing we could do about it. There were no comic book specialty stores yet. I bought one copy of every Marvel and DC superhero comic. I also continued buying most of the Harvey comic books, with my favorites being Spooky, Hot Stuff, and Stumbo …and oh..those 25 cent Harvey Giants…those were the best of the lot! I ignored the Charlton comics mostly because of the frequently ragged edged cutting process they used. It was odd that it bothered me though, because in those days, condition of our comic books was not an important factor. We just wanted to have every issue we could get our hands on!

Around this time I ran out of places to put my comic books so my father installed shelves along one wall in my bedroom. He even put a lock on my bedroom door so that my four little brothers and my one sister wouldn’t be tempted to touch my collection. I carefully sorted my comics and stacked them carefully on my new shelves. In those days, there were no price guides around to use as references, but a comic book dealer named Robert Bell would send you a “checklist” of Marvel Comics and a free plastic storage bag if you sent him 25 cents. This was a great way to know which comics we were still missing.

In the 1960’s, many barber shops had comic books around to amuse the kids while we waited for our turn to get our haircut. I talked my barber into letting me trade him some comics I no longer wanted for his copy of The Fantastic Four Annual #3 featuring the wedding of Reed Richards and Sue Storm. Around this same time, a young neighbor needed treatment at a big hospital in Boston. One day while my little friend was waiting to see his doctor, he saw a large pile of early Marvel comics that someone had donated including Fantastic Four #8-12, some early Spider-Man, and lots more. Even though he was only about 6 years old, he knew that these were comic books that I’d want to have! He convinced the nurse to let him take the comics and bring double the amount of comic books back the next time he came in. The nurse figured that the hospital would end up with twice as many comic books for the kids to read so it was okay with her….and it was certainly fine with me! I supplied the comic books for my friend to trade and I turned a bunch of comic books that I had already read many times into comics I had never read. A “win-win” situation.

In 1968 I started high school. The small town we lived in could not support a high school on their own, so two other towns joined our small town to form a regional high school. This meant that the kids from our town would suddenly be in school with hundreds of “new” kids…which translated for me into new sources of comic books! I asked many of my new schoolmates if they had any old comic books. Many of them were thrilled to just give them to me! They figured they were now in high school…way too cool to be reading comic books. I gladly accepted their charity. Some of the other kids sold me their old comics…sometimes for 25-50 cents each. I didn’t get any really old comics in this way, but it helped to fill in missing issues on my “checklist”. But it wasn’t too long before my new supply of comic books was exhausted. Now what? As luck would have it, one Tuesday afternoon while I was sorting the new comics at my favorite corner store, I introduced myself to a kid who was also looking through the comics. We talked for a while about our favorite comics and favorite storylines. When I finally asked his name, he gave me some long, almost unpronounceable, foreign sounding name, but he said “you can just call me Garber”. We became good comic book friends. He introduced me to some other kids with interest in comic books and we’d occasionally get together to play spy games (we were all fascinated by James Bond and the TV show of The Man From UNCLE). By late 1968, I could tell that Garber was losing interest in comics, so I offered to buy some of his older comic books from him. He had sent away for a dealer’s list of comics for sale (it was Howard Rogofsky’s list…at that point in time…the highest priced dealer we had run across) and he decided he’d be willing to part with some of his older comic books for about half of what Rogofsky was asking. I was still only 13 years old and on a very limited budget, but I bought as much as I could afford. I bought a fair condition copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #1 for about $20.00…I bought Marvel Tales Annual #1 (a nice thick comic!) for about $4.00 and many more. But I ran out of money. That Christmas I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my Mom had found my “checklist” and had gone to visit Garber! She bought me a beautiful copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #8 for $8.00, a Strange Tales Annual #1 for $5.00 and a few others for a total of about $20.00…it may not seem like much now, but it was one of the best Christmas gifts I’d ever gotten. We were always treated to cool Christmas gifts as kids…I got lots of Man From Uncle items, Marx Playsets, Aurora monster model kits, GI Joes, and of course, Captain Action…but this gift of nice old comic books was the most personal gift of all. This took a lot of effort on my Mom’s part. You couldn’t just go to a department store and find old comic books!

Next column: Comic books versus GIRLS!