My Life With Comic Books: Part 19

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 19

In 1980 I began searching for a location to open my new comic book store. I lived in a small town and I was smart enough to know that I’d need a large customer base to make my store profitable so I started my search in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester is the second largest city in all of New England and more importantly, there are ten colleges located there. There was already a comic book store in Worcester but I knew I could offer better customer service than he could.

I contacted a real estate agent and explained what I wanted. I would need at least 1000 square feet of retail space on a major road and it had to be cheap! He showed me around Worcester and the only location that I was interested in was at the edge of a “tough” neighborhood. The rent was only $350.00 a month but the realtor warned me not to rent this building. I liked the location. The store was on the third busiest road in the city and it was on a corner next to a traffic light. Every day, thousands of cars would be traveling past my store and many of them would be stopped at the traffic light looking into the side window of the store. The store didn’t have a parking lot nearby but it did have some parking spaces in the front on the street. At the time, I didn’t know how important adequate parking would be.

I offered to rent this storefront on a month-to-month basis. I didn’t want to sign a lease because I really wasn’t sure that this comic book store could be profitable. I knew that I had run out of space for our inventory in my small house. I could have rented some warehouse space in which to store the collectibles but this storefront was actually cheaper and I was hoping to recover most of the monthly expenses with some retail sales. The owner of the building agreed with my request and rented the storefront to me at the end of March of 1980.

Now that I was paying rent, I rushed to get the store ready to open. Many people would have moved slowly, planning carefully to do things right. Not me. I obtained the proper business licenses the day after I signed my rental agreement. I quickly put in an order for a huge shipment of new comic books and comic related books from Phil Seuling’s Seagate Distributors. I asked them to send me one copy of everything they had in stock. I knew it would be important to look as though the store was well stocked. I really didn’t need to have multiple copies of books--just lots of different books. I had the electricity, gas heat, and telephone turned on within two days. I made signs out of poster board. I bought a bunch of used banquet tables on which to put most of my inventory. I bought two used comic book “spinner” racks from an old drugstore. No fancy displays. No cash register. We decided to call the store “That’s Entertainment”. I ran a small classified advertisement in a local “penny saver” magazine that cost me one dollar. I was open for business on April 15th, 1980.

Because I still planned to set up at local baseball card shows, and they were usually held on Sundays, I decided to be open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00AM to 6:00PM. This would allow me time to sell our baseball cards on Sundays and have every Monday off. I spent most of the first day moving stock from place to place trying to make this store look organized.

My first customer came in around 2:00PM. He was on his way to my competitor’s store and he was surprised to stumble across my new store. He told me how much he disliked shopping at the other store, but until today, he had no choice. He spent about an hour looking around my store and spent a little bit of money. He promised to help spread the word about “That’s Entertainment”. By the end of our second day we had made enough money to pay all of our first month’s expenses!

I knew it would be important to quickly establish “repeat” customers so I offered a subscription service. I printed a list of every comic book that was being published and asked each new customer to check off the comic books they’d like me to save for them each month. We got new shipments of comic books each week and by using this free service the customers would be certain to get every comic book they enjoyed. It also helped me because I knew in advance how many copies of each comic book to order so that I wouldn’t get stuck with unwanted inventory. My customers were assured that they wouldn’t miss an issue of their favorite comics.

By word of mouth, it became known throughout the small comic book collector “world” that shopping in my store was more pleasant. Each day, new customers would find us. Sales rose almost every week. My partner, Jay, convinced me that I was needed at the big summer Creation Comic Book Convention in New York City. I decided to combine this trip with a big family camping trip and closed the store for five days. My parents and siblings, Mal, Adam and I went to a campground in Rhode Island for a few days before the comic book show.

I then met Jay in New York while Mal and Adam drove home without me. When Mal arrived at home she discovered that someone had broken into our house. The thief stole money, jewelry, our stereo, and more. Mal quickly called my sister, Sharon, and her husband, Greg, to come to be with her until I could get there from New York. When I got the phone call from Mal about the break-in, she did not yet know what had been stolen. She just needed me to be there with her so I jumped on a bus and rode for five hours to get home.

During this long ride, I’d imagined that the thief could have stolen the thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards that I had stored in my home office. The crook could have still been in the area. Even though my relatives were there with them, I was concerned about the safety of my family. This was many years before there were cell phones and I really just wanted to be able to talk with my wife to assure her that things would be okay. But I couldn’t. This was the last comic book show that I’d ever go to without my family!

Next chapter: I catch the crook.

Picture: Our run-down home in Sterling, Massachusetts AFTER we fixed it up!

My Life With Comic Books: Part 17

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 17

Our baby wasn’t actually due for another seven weeks but we were now on the way to the hospital. The hospital we chose was 45 minutes away from where we lived. Mal was in labor throughout the night and on October 10, 1979, our son Adam Dean Howley was born. The day he was born there was a huge snowstorm. There hadn’t been snow this early in Massachusetts for over forty years.

Being born so prematurely, Adam was very small. He only weighed a little more than four pounds. His tiny lungs were not fully developed and he was jaundiced, but other than that he seemed okay. On the third day Adam stopped breathing. The doctors kept him alive somehow and put him on a medication to keep him breathing. It was very difficult for us to leave Adam in the hospital when Mal was discharged but we had no choice. We had figured that Mal and the baby would be in and out of the hospital within three days or so, so the long distance wouldn’t be a problem. As it turned out, we were mistaken. We had to make the long trip to the hospital every day to feed Adam. At first, because Adam was so weak, the nurses had to feed him with a tube down his throat. After a couple of weeks he was strong enough to eat without the tube. We would stay in the hospital for hours each day for the chance to hold him when the nurses took him out of his incubator. It was sad for us to see him with all of the wires attached.

After two weeks in the intensive care unit of Framingham Union Hospital, Adam continued to lose weight. He just couldn’t keep his food down. He now weighed only three pounds, eight ounces. The medicine that the doctors were giving him to keep him breathing was causing him to reject his food. The hospital policy was to keep the infants until they weighed at least five pounds. The decision was made to take Adam off of the medicine. Luckily, his breathing improved and he began gaining some weight and after three weeks in the hospital, Adam was allowed to come home with us.

Even though Adam was still very weak and tiny, I was committed to working at the biggest comic book convention of the year…the Thanksgiving Creation Show in New York City. This show drew the largest crowds in the country and they were big spenders. I hated leaving Mal at home with Adam, but I had no choice. We had appointments with our largest customers including the president of The Superglue Company, two major retailers from England, and a president of a regional Pepsi Bottling Company. I called Mal from New York as often as I could.

Shortly after the Thanksgiving convention, Jay came up with an interesting idea. He would rent space in shopping malls around the country. He wasn’t interested in selling product at these malls. He only wanted to buy collectibles there. He would put up a nice display of the types of collectibles we were willing to buy. He spent thousands of dollars on advertisements in local newspapers and local radio spots to inform people that he would be in the mall for one week to pay cash for their unwanted collectibles. People lined up with boxes and bags full of comic books, old toys, and baseball cards. Jay would buy almost every collection that he was shown. He would load the new purchases in his van and eventually ship everything up to Massachusetts where I’d get it all ready to sell.

The baseball card market was just starting to catch on and we soon had one of the best inventories of old cards in the area. Jay was able to buy so many cards at reasonable prices that we eventually began to “wholesale” many of the 1950’s and 1960’s cards to other dealers. I set up a display at a few of the early baseball card conventions in New England and we did quite well.

My youngest brother, Rick, was my best worker at these shows. He was only thirteen years old but he really learned quickly. He could assist the customers with their purchases and he was good with money. He would also basically run our booth while I was busy selling large groups of vintage cards to other dealers. Instead of payment for his work, he preferred to take baseball and basketball cards. At the end of one show he decided he’d take a gorgeous 1957 Willie Mays card as part of his payment. As he was slipping it into the protective plastic sheet he pushed a little too hard and folded the card in half! We still laugh about that today. Unfortunately, Rick outgrew his interest in sports cards and traded his cards to someone. If he had kept them all they’d be worth thousands of dollars now.

Jay’s buying trips were so successful that I no longer had space in my small house to store them. I knew that soon I’d need to rent some extra storage space. I had gone to the nearby city of Worcester, Massachusetts to see a comic book store called “Fabulous Fiction Bookstore”. When I was looking around in it one day, I overheard a customer say to the owner, “You’ve got a nice inventory here, but isn’t this comic book a little overpriced?” The owner of the store gruffly replied, “I’m the only store in town, so if you don’t like my prices you can get out!” I decided that if I were ever to open a retail comic book store, then this would be a good city to open in.

Next chapter: The traveling became too much to bear.

Picture: Our son, Adam Dean Howley is born!

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 14

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 14

In 1978, while I was working for Jay Maybruck at Sparkle City Comics, I learned quite a bit about business. I learned how important it is to be able to make quick decisions. If you are faster at making decisions than your competition, you’ll frequently be the winner of collections of old and valuable comic books. If you respond to your customer’s needs faster than your competition, you’ll also sell more old comic books. At Sparkle City Comics we did both.

I also learned that it was important to have a lot of available money to buy collections of old comic books because you never knew when a great collection would become available. There were many times that we ended up buying massive collections simply because we were the only dealers who had the cash necessary to complete the purchase.

I remember one day, while we were at our Ohio office, we received a phone call from a man in Kansas City. He explained that he had a huge collection of comic books from the 1950’s and early 1960’s he wanted to sell. Jay and I immediately made arrangements to meet with this man at his home to evaluate his collection. We asked him to describe the condition of the comics and to give us a list of some of the more valuable books he had. We determined, based on his descriptions, that we were very interested in buying the entire collection, jumped into Jay’s car and drove twelve hours to see it. It turned out that this man didn’t understand how to determine the accurate condition of his comic books. Many of them were in beat-up condition. Some had the covers missing.

Jay was furious with this guy but he managed to stay composed until we got outside. Jay had quite a bad temper at times and he wanted to make this guy “pay” for wasting our time. It took a lot of effort for me to calm Jay down. We decided to stay in Kansas City overnight and we’d check out some of the local comic book stores in the area. We went to Clint’s Books and spent thousands of dollars buying up great old comics that we knew were underpriced. At least our long trip wasn’t completely wasted.

In our business relationship, I was the “good cop” and Jay was the “bad cop”. Jay was usually seen as the tough, all-business guy, while I enjoyed the role of the easy-going guy. As a team, we were very successful. At almost every comic book convention, our sales would be at least $20,000.00. Our best show was the big Chicago Comic Convention. We arrived for the three-day show with two vans and one station wagon full of comic books. We had a great first day of sales. At the end of the first day a dealer from Minneapolis offered to buy our whole display if we’d give him 65% off of the sticker price. For some reason, Jay decided to accept his offer. We ended up leaving the show with a briefcase filled with $33,000.00 in cash. Jay had sold all of the comic books that he had brought to the show but he still had a great inventory back in Ohio.

Jay surprised me with an offer to become an equal partner with him from that day on. I would inherit half of his inventory in exchange for my abilities and knowledge. This arrangement wouldn’t last much longer.

Next chapter: We miss our friends and relatives.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 13

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

In late 1978 I was working for Jay Maybruck’s comic book company, “Sparkle City Comics”. Jay was the business guy (although he wasn’t very good at managing money) and I was the comic book collector/reader. I collected almost every new comic book published and I loved to read the older comics. On the average, I’d read about 200 comic books each month. Many of these were comics from the 1940’s and 1950’s that Sparkle City Comics would get in collections.

One night, on our way home from a comic book convention, I was reading a comic book titled “ Teen-age Dope Slaves”. This was a 1952 comic book that reprinted the old newspaper strip of Rex Morgan M.D. It was an interesting anti-drug story. This comic book was worth about $150.00 . I happened to notice an interesting message on the back cover of the comic. It explained that additional copies of this comic book were available for your school or civic organization. Now I knew that most comic books were printed in Sparta, Illinois and shipped out directly to the magazine and book distributors around the country. The publishers usually didn’t get very many copies sent to their offices. But this advertisement indicated that they would have extra copies of this comic book available. Even though this offer was over 25 years old, when we got back to our Dayton, Ohio homes, Jay wrote a letter to the publisher of the comic requesting copies of “Teen-age Dope Slaves.” Imagine our surprise when we got a reply stating that the publisher was sure they had copies of “Teen-age Dope Slaves” in their warehouse and as soon as they found them they’d send them to us at a cost of 10 cents each plus postage! We quickly sent a money order to buy 100 copies.

About two weeks later we got a letter from the publisher explaining that they hadn’t found the comic books we’d asked for but they’d keep searching the warehouse. They explained that there were thousands of comic books in the warehouse and it could take a few more weeks to locate the comic book we wanted. In the meantime, they’d found a different comic book about drugs titled “Trapped”. This was a 1951 comic book “give-away” that was distributed to schools. It had a strong anti-drug message so the publisher thought we might be interested in them. This comic book was not listed in the comic book price guide so not too many collectors were even aware of its existence. They had sent us 25 copies of “Trapped.” We priced them at $6.95 each and put them into our inventory.

At the first New York convention that we attended after receiving these comics, a serious collector was astounded to find a copy of “Trapped” available at our booth. He had heard rumors this comic existed but had never actually seen it. After he bought a copy he explained that this was one of the few comic books that was favorably mentioned in “Seduction Of The Innocent”, the anti-comic book book that was written in the 1950’s by Fredric Wertham. In 1978, any comic book that was mentioned in “Seduction Of The Innocent” was in high demand. By the end of the convention, we had sold all of the copies of “Trapped” that we had. We didn’t tell anyone where these copies came from.

When we got home we ordered 100 more copies. We priced these copies at $25.00 each and sold out very quickly. We ordered 200 more copies and started selling them for $100.00 each or we would trade them for about $200.00 worth of comic books we needed for our inventory. These books were just about the fastest selling comics in the business.

Even though we were making a huge profit on these comics, we were eager to get the comic books we were really waiting for “Teen-age Dope Slaves!” When we called the publisher, they apologized for not finding them in their warehouse.

We decided that we couldn’t just sit by and wait because we were concerned that some other comic dealer would discover this treasure filled warehouse. We arranged a meeting with the owner of the comic book publisher and drove to New York to discuss purchasing everything in the warehouse. The owner seemed very pleasant. He talked about his interest in The Boy Scouts and then started rambling about his cartoon characters, community involvement, and some other things that didn’t really make much sense to us. After about 30 minutes we brought up the subject of the potential fortune sitting in his warehouse somewhere in New York. We explained that old comic books were now quite valuable and we’d be willing to pay a reasonable price for everything. We were stunned at his response. He insisted that there was no warehouse! He denied that they had any copies of the old comic books they had published. When we pointed out that we had bought some old comic books directly from his company just recently, his secretary ended our meeting.

We left the building feeling like we were part of an episode of The Twilight Zone. This ended our business dealings with this company. They stopped selling their old comic books. We later discovered that some unscrupulous warehouse employee had stolen most of the valuable comic books and artwork and sold them directly to other comic book dealers throughout the United States.

Next Chapter: The comic book business explodes and we become partners in the business.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 12

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

I was a comic book reader and collector. My boss at Sparkle City Comics, Jay Maybruck, was not. He understood the business side of selling comic books and had access to a lot of cash to buy comic book collections. Together, we were quite a team. Jay was not the kind of boss who forced the boring tasks on his employees. Jay would bag, sort, and price the comic books right along side of my wife and I. Jay had a natural ability to price his comic books at just the right price to make them irresistible for the collectors. He didn’t really believe that the pricing information in the Official Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide was accurate for most comic books. The common comics from the late 1960’s-1970’s were readily available and although the price guide listed them at $2.00-$3.00 each, Jay would price them at 75 cents. Because of this low price policy, we would sell thousands of common comics each month. Other comic book dealers would spend thousands of dollars on our inventory to fill in their stock.

The pricing inaccuracies were even more noticeable on what we called “key” issues. Collector demand was very strong for the first issue of a comic book series, or a first appearance of a major character, or issues drawn by popular comic artists of the day and because the demand was greater than the supply of these key issues, Jay believed that these comics should be priced higher than the official price guide. I remember Jay and I surprising other comic book dealers by paying 100% of the current price guide price on certain comic books. We would then price them at what we thought they should sell for and usually we’d be right.

One day, at a convention in Buffalo New York, I saw a copy of a comic book titled “An Earthman On Venus.” A talented artist named Wally Wood drew this comic. I recognized that this comic book was very scarce (mostly based on my own experience) and so I bought it at the dealers full asking price of $18.00. We put it into a clean new plastic bag and priced it at $120.00 and sold it within a week.

At another show, after we closed up our booth on the first night, I was reading an old comic from 1954. It was World’s Finest #71 and it featured Superman and Batman together in an adventure. Earlier in this series, Superman and Batman had separate stories in each issue, but I realized that this was quite possibly the beginning of their “team-up” stories that would run for many years. We had paid about $8.00 for this issue. I put a large label on the plastic bag that read “first Superman-Batman team-up” and I sold it the next morning for about $180.00. If I had this same copy today, it would sell for $1250.00.

On another night, I was reading an old Batman comic book from the 1960’s that had a reprint of a 1950’s story called “The Riddle Of The Red Hood”. I remembered reading this story when I was a kid, but something struck me as odd. At the end of this story, it’s revealed that the criminal known as the “Red Hood” was actually “The Joker” (Batman’s most famous villain). I realized that it was in this story that the origin of how “The Joker” became a green-haired, white-faced criminal was explained for the first time! I did a little research and found out that this story originally appeared in Detective Comics #168 from the early 1950’s. When the convention opened the next morning, I searched the other dealers’ inventories until I found a copy in nice condition for under $20.00. Again, I re-bagged it and labeled it as the first origin of The Joker and sold it very quickly for about $300.00. Keep in mind that this comic book had been sitting, unsold, in another dealer’s booth for the entire first day of the comic book convention! (This comic book sells today for about $4000.00 )

We became so “respected” by comic collectors and other dealers (for our pricing intuition) that we decided to cash in on our newfound reputations as experts. So, in 1978, we started publishing “The Investors Newsletter”. This 8-12 page monthly newsletter featured our opinions about the comic book market. We would list the comics that we believed were underpriced and would explain why we thought this. We would list the comics as good long or short-term investments. Most issues also had a front cover of our sheep mascots drawn by popular comic book artists of the 1960’s and 1970’s including Marshall Rogers, Howard Chaykin, Gil Kane, Walt Simonson, John Romita, and more.

These are some of the comic books that The Investors Newsletter recommended as good long-term investments:
Brave and the Bold #28 (first appearance of The Justice League) was listed in the price guide at $27.00 while we were selling them for $125.00. They now sell for $7000.00
More Fun #101 (first appearance of Superboy) was listed in the price guide at $210.00 while we were selling it for $325.00. It now sells for $10,000.00
Showcase #22 (first appearance of the modern Green Lantern) was listed in the price guide for $60.00 while we were selling it for $90.00. It now sells for $6200.00
The Incredible Hulk #181 (the first appearance of Wolverine) listed in the price guide at $1.20 but we were selling them for $2.50 each! They now sell for about $1500.00
(we did goof, however, and suggested this comic book as a good short term investment!)
Amazing Fantasy #15 (the very first appearance of Spider-Man) was listed in the price guide at $360.00 while we were selling it for $500.00. It now sells for $42,000.00

Now I’m sure that many of you are thinking, “Well, almost all comic books are more valuable now than they were in 1978!” The point is, we predicted many of the fastest rising comic book prices in the hobby. If a collector had followed our advice he could have made an average return of about 200% in a twelve-month period. Our advice was so good that it wasn’t long before the popularity of our newsletter made it difficult for Sparkle City Comics to profit on these trends. Our newsletter subscribers were now buying up the recommended comics before we could buy them. After 13 issues, we discontinued publication of The Investors Newsletter.

Next chapter: My comic reading leads us to an important discovery!

My Life With Comics: Part # 11

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

We accepted the offer of Jay Maybruck to work for him in Dayton, Ohio, and said good-bye to all of our friends in Nashville including Ray and Virginia Sawyer, Gary and Peggy Walker, Greg and Karen Walker, Cliff Furline, Bill Mullins, Lonnie Cummins, and dozens more. We sold our house, loaded up the rental truck and rented a townhouse apartment in Huber Heights, Ohio, just down the street from my new boss. Jay was a single guy about a year or two older than I was. He was formerly a schoolteacher, but the prospect of making huge money drew him into the rapidly growing comic book business.

At the time that I accepted his employment offer, Jay had one of the best inventories of valuable old comics I had encountered. I was eager to be associated with such an impressive company.

Jay taught me how important “image” is for a business. He wanted to be perceived as the biggest comic book dealer in the country. He named his business “Sparkle City Comics” and was one of the first comic book dealers to develop a recognizable character logo that would be used in all of his advertising. For some reason, Jay used sheep and a Shepherd named “Hans, The Herder” as his company’s pitchman. At comic book conventions, our large comic book display racks featured full color paintings of lots of cute sheep dancing and being silly. I know it probably sounds stupid, but this tactic really worked! We were recognized at every show we went to because of these sheep.

We were also in a position at almost every major convention that made it impossible to miss us. Jay made a deal with the owners of America’s biggest convention organizer, Creation Conventions, to buy ten full table spaces at every show they put on! The normal cost of these table spaces was about $150.00 per table, but Jay agreed to pay for a full years worth of spaces in advance at a greatly reduced cost of $50.00 per table. This helped the convention owners to have up-front working capital and it gave Jay the best location at each convention and saved him a ton of money over the year in table fees. Because we had the best display locations at these shows, the collectors would spend most of their money with us. Just as importantly, many collectors would offer us any comic books that they wanted to sell. We could pay a fair price (usually higher then any other dealer) because we were confident that we could sell the comics to other collectors very quickly. Sometimes the comic books would re-sell within minutes of our purchasing them!

At a convention in New York City, a collector sold us a complete run of Marvel Mystery Comics #1-10 (from 1939-1940) for $12,000.00. We sold the entire group to a collector from England for $19,000.00 about twenty minutes later. Our great locations, strong inventory, and available cash for purchasing comic books enabled us to dominate the national convention market. Our competition didn’t like us but the comic book collectors loved us.

When I say “us”, I really mean Sparkle City Comics. Jay was the owner and I was just an employee who was paid a weekly salary. Although Jay knew I was very good at “the comic business”, he didn’t follow through on his original promises. I did earn the base salary of $17,000.00 per year, but I never received the percentage of our growing mail order business. I was promised that I’d only have to work one weekend each month, but the schedule was actually much different. We would stock our comic book inventory on Wednesdays, load up Jay’s van on Thursday, drive Thursday night, arrive at most shows by Friday afternoon, set up our huge display on Friday and usually work until midnight buying and selling with the other dealers. The show would open on Saturday morning and we’d sell to the collectors until the show closed at around 8:00 PM. We would go back to our hotel room and “process” the comic books that we had bought during the show so they’d be ready to sell first thing in the morning on Sunday. We would sell comics all day Sunday and then take down our display at around 6:00 PM, would load the van and drive Sunday night through Monday night to get back to Ohio. Tuesday we would unload the van. Mal would do the laundry while Jay and I restocked the comics on Wednesday and then we’d start again on Thursday. We attended forty-two comic book shows that year!

Although it was hard work and very long hours, I enjoyed it for a few reasons. I got to be with my wife, Mal, almost all of the time because she always traveled with us. Jay always traveled in style. We ate at nice restaurants and stayed at decent hotels. This time in my life was also very fast paced and exciting. We became known all over the United States. We became comic book “celebrities” in a way. We also became trendsetters and market makers.

Next chapter: My knowledge and love of comic books creates hot trends in the market.