My Life With Comic Books: Part # 78

Cast of Characters:
Paul: age 36
Mal: my wife

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 78

Every customer is important to the profitability and survival of most small businesses and I really appreciate the people who support my two stores. We’ve always believed that it would be better to have one thousand customers who would each spend one dollar than to have just one customer spend one thousand dollars. Many comic book retailers just can’t understand this kind of thinking. We believe this because if a few of your smaller spenders decide to stop spending money at your store you can still (hopefully) count on the rest of your customers, but if you rely on just the “big spender” and he decides to leave the hobby you’re out of business.

Leonard was one of my big spenders. In the late 1980’s he collected every comic book that Marvel Comics and DC Comics published each week. I’m serious. He read and collected every single comic book! He also bought ninety percent of all of the various independent publishers’ comics. Comic books usually sold for about thirty-five cents each when I first opened my store in 1980 and at that time Leonard spent about one hundred dollars each week. At that time we had quite a few comic book fans that were considered “Marvel Zombies” who tried to keep up with everything that Marvel Comics published, but it was rare that someone bought absolutely everything. Most collectors couldn’t afford them all. Comic book prices rapidly increased throughout the 1980’s and it forced most collectors to stop reading many of Marvel’s comics just because the reader couldn’t continue to spend that much money on their hobby. The steady price increases didn’t stop Leonard though. By the very late 1980’s Leonard was spending about three hundred dollars each week. In their relentless attempt to increase their bottom line profits, Marvel Comics raised the cover price of their comic books until it was too expensive and it became close to impossible for any collector to continue to buy the entire output of Marvel Comics. Many customers began to trim the list of comics that they felt compelled to collect. Once Marvel made it too difficult for them to afford, it became a convenient “jumping off” point for collectors. Marvel Comics didn’t seem to care because hundreds of new comic book stores were opening up all around the country and they were ordering enough new comics to compensate for the collectors who were cutting down on the number of comics they used to buy. Although Leonard was a highly paid management guy for a local seafood distributor (and he almost always smelled like fish) even he couldn’t afford to keep collecting as many comic books as he wanted to. At one point, in order to help Leonard be able to afford all of his new comics, I hired him to drive into Boston each week to pick up our huge shipments of new comic books. It worked out great for both of us because after doing this pick-up each week for almost ten years I needed a break and Leonard needed the extra money.

Jim was a local healthcare worker and he was a friendly, outgoing customer. He had tried to invest some money in new comic books and he had been shopping at a competitor of mine. My competitor had given him some really bad investment advice and Jim came to me for my advice. I tried to encourage him to invest his money in “proven” collectibles like comic books from the 1940’s through the 1960’s because I knew that these comics were scarce and historically they had proven to be solid investments. I was pretty convinced that these comics would offer a reasonable return on his investment over the long-term but Jim was more excited by potential short-term gains in the new comic book market. I wasn’t convinced that investing in newly published comic books was the best investment choice because most new comics were printed in very large quantities and the vast majority of them were purchased by careful collectors who would take good care of them. These comics would be plentiful in “high-grade” condition for many years so they wouldn’t be considered scarce. Supply would exceed the demand for these comic books and the prices should remain low. It seemed as if I’d just about have Jim convinced and he’d get lucky because he’d buy fifty copies of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. These quickly rose in price from $2.50 to $10.00 within a few months because most of the country’s comic shops had underestimated the demand for this groundbreaking Batman comic book series. A few lucky purchases propelled Jim’s enthusiasm to buy more new comics.

New comic books had to be ordered from the publishers two months before they would be released and I always ordered new comic books carefully so I would sell out of each issue within a few weeks of its release. Jim wanted to buy such large quantities and I didn’t order enough to satisfy him so I worked out a good solution for him. I’d call him a day or two before we headed into Boston to pick up our weekly shipments to get a list of the comic books he wanted me to get for him. I would then call the order in to Diamond Comic Distributors and they’d have as many of the comic books Jim wanted waiting for me. Jim would come to my store and he always paid for everything he had ordered.

The first year Jim had transferred his comic book buying to my store he spent about three thousand dollars. By the second year he had spent close to twenty thousand dollars. A few times during these two years I had suggested that he should sell some of these comic books while they were in high demand but he wanted to hang on to them until they were “worth more.” As it turned out, that day didn’t come. Jim decided he suddenly “needed” to sell these comic books and when I told him that I didn’t need very many of the comics in his huge collection he said he understood and left the store. He returned in a few hours and began to question me about my thoughts on “investing” in new comic books. I went over my philosophy again in great detail, explaining that although some new comic books do increase in value, investors are better off buying vintage collectibles with many years of proven collectibility. New comics should be read and enjoyed and maybe someday in the future they’ll become sought-after collectibles. When I was finished, Jim pulled a tape recorder out of his pocket. He was trying to “catch” me saying something that might be used to force me to buy back all of his comic books! When he realized that I had been honest with him from the very first time we met, his demeanor changed and his cheerful attitude returned. Eventually, I reluctantly did buy his entire collection of comic books but Jim didn’t get the amount he was hoping to get. He understood at that point that I was paying him as much as I could.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s many comic book retailers complained about “speculators” ruining the comic book business. The dealers were buying huge quantities of new comic books to satisfy the short-lived demand of these “investors” and when these speculators realized that these comic books were overprinted and they weren’t scarce, they stopped buying these huge quantities and most retailers got stuck with tons of unsaleable comics. My store didn’t get stuck with any unsaleable comics. We ordered only what we knew our loyal and serious customers requested.

Leonard lost his job and decided to move to Florida. I haven’t heard from him in over fourteen years. Jim began to collect and invest in baseball cards after that and he’s been quite successful with those. He remains a special customer to this day.

Next chapter: Foxwoods Casino opens in nearby Connecticut and the life of a friend is ruined.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 23

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 23

One day in 1981, a customer came into my store. He was friendly and very outgoing. He looked through our stock of vintage baseball cards and spent about $200.00 on cards from the late 1960’s. We showed him our inventory of baseball “star” cards: Mickey Mantle, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, etc. He told us that he liked some of them but he didn’t want to spend any more money that day. He stayed in the store for about an hour chatting with Steve and I about his 13 years as a teacher and his love of collectibles and then he left. I put the most valuable cards behind our counter for safekeeping.

The next morning I came in about an hour after Steve had opened the store and I noticed that a large pile of the valuable baseball cards was missing. Steve told me that we had only had one customer so far that day, the teacher from the day before. He had asked about some inventory that we had in the back room of the store and while Steve went to get it we figured out that the thief must have grabbed a handful of the most valuable baseball cards.

I called dozens of other collectible stores to make them aware of this thief. A store in Boston recognized my description of the guy and told me that they had caught him stealing old comic books earlier in the year and they believed that he was a professional thief. The guy would spend some money and pretend to be very friendly to gain the store clerk’s confidence. He would later wait for an opportunity to steal. The Boston storeowner gave me the thief’s name but they didn’t know his address. I didn’t need it. He came back into the store the very next week and acted as if nothing had happened!

Steve and I didn’t let the thief know that we were “on” to him. I told Steve that I was going down to the local convenience store for a soda and I asked if he or the “customer” wanted anything. While I was out of the store I called the police and gave them the background story. The customer was still chatting with Steve when the police arrived. The police read him his rights and handcuffed him right in the store! He was arrested and brought to jail. I heard that he later lost his job as a teacher because of his life of crime.

Massachusetts had some out-dated laws known as “The Blue Laws” that attempted to control people’s lives and businesses through legislation. One of the laws prohibited stores from doing business on Sunday. There were some loopholes though. If the business was a restaurant or a store that sold newspapers or pharmaceuticals they could be open. I knew that Sunday could be a great shopping day once we could let our customers know that we’d be open for business. I decided to open our store on Sundays, so we would buy a couple of newspapers from a local store and have them available for sale at my store just to comply with the law.

I wasn’t able to work on Sunday because I wanted to be with my wife, Mal, and my son on at least one weekend day each week. Steve couldn’t work either because he still set up at a local flea market on Sundays. I began to look for another employee to mostly help out on Sundays. That’s when I hired David M. Lynch. There will be more to be said about David in later chapters of this story.

At home, even though our son, Adam, was only one year old, Mal began to think about his future. My father had been involved in a local town government as a school board member and because of his “inside” knowledge of the workings of public education he strongly urged us to consider private school for Adam. Although Mal embraced the idea, I did not. I had been “educated” in the public school system and I didn’t detect any major problems with the system. I also didn’t like the idea of tiny class sizes and limited opportunities for sports programs and the arts. I wanted my child to be able to experience all that life had to offer. I also didn’t want to incur the additional expense of a private school education. I was already paying for his education through the outrageous tax structure in Massachusetts! We began to pray for wisdom and guidance.

Next chapter: My customers become friends.

My Life With Comic Books: Part # 22

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 22

Our comic book store was open Monday through Saturday, from 10 AM to 6 PM and since I was the only employee, I was working a lot of hours. My typical workweek was at least sixty hours, sometimes as much as one hundred hours.

My wife, Mal, wanted us to be able to get together with our friends like “normal” people. I was not willing to give up working on Saturdays because it was the busiest sales day of the week but I knew I could probably give up working on Monday or Tuesday. These were the slowest days of the week because most people would have spent all of their “extra” spending money during the weekend. Many customers got paid on Thursday and they would buy all of their comic books and other collectables on Friday because that’s the day the new comic books arrived. If they couldn’t take time off of work to get to our store on Friday (because we closed at 6:00 PM), they’d be at our store first thing on Saturday morning. I had decided to close the store each day by 6:00 PM because the store was located at the edge of a potentially dangerous neighborhood. It was okay during the day but at night it could be pretty scary. I didn’t want to risk the safety of any of my customers by being open for business after dark.

I hired my first part time employee. Tim Shea wasn’t very fast at putting the comic books into plastic bags or arranging them into alphabetical order but he was very dependable and he was always on time. He lived directly across the street from the store.

I had hoped that Tim could be trained to run the store so I could occasionally take some time off to be with Mal and our son, Adam. I soon realized that Tim didn’t have the knowledge of comic books or the skill needed to be able to buy collections from customers.

I knew that I wanted my store to have a “buyer” on hand at all times so that we’d never miss out on a great collection. Luckily, it didn’t take long for me to find Steve Wentzell . Steve came into the store one day to look for old records. Steve was a large guy with a long beard. He looked threatening to some people at first, but he was actually a really nice, friendly, laid-back guy. He knew a lot about comic books and baseball cards but his passion was records. He had experience buying and selling because he set up at a local flea market on weekends. He wasn’t really looking for a regular job but I offered him a “whopping” $100.00 a week to help out and for some reason he accepted!

I bought a small collection of about 200 record albums from the 1960’s from a customer and with Steve’s help; we priced them and just placed them on a table in the store. Within a few days we sold about a dozen of them. One day the owner of a local used record store, Al Bums, came in and bought over 100 of the remaining record albums. I knew, at that point, that used record albums would be an ongoing part of our store’s inventory. We placed a few cheap advertisements in the local newspaper to let the city know that we were now buying used records. Within a few weeks we had thousands of records in stock. We now devoted almost one quarter of our store’s space to used and collectable vinyl records.

Steve had a good friend, Jim Stoll, who had some skills as a carpenter. Jim worked really cheap so I had him design and build a bunch of custom display racks for the new comic books. This allowed us to fully display 280 different comic book issues. In 1980, there were only a few significant comic book publishers. The biggest publisher, “Marvel Comics”, published only about 30 comics each month, so we had plenty of space to display the full covers of each new issue. This made it easier for our customers to choose the new comic books that caught their interest.

One day, before Steve arrived for work, two burly men came into the store. They “suggested” that it would be smart for me to allow them to put coin operated video games in the store. They would get 70% of the money and I’d get the remaining 30%. They explained how I should rearrange my inventory to give the best space in the store for their machines. I guessed that these guys were part of the local “Mob” and I didn’t think they’d take “No” for an answer. Steve walked in while I was figuring out what to say. I told them I would discuss it with my “partner” Steve, but I didn’t think he’d like the idea. As I mentioned earlier, Steve looked intimidating. The thugs left and never came back.

After a short period of training, I knew Steve was able to run the store for some short periods without me. Steve quickly learned many aspects of the comic book business. Most importantly, I learned to trust him. I started to either come in a little later in the mornings or leave a little early in the evenings so I could be home with Mal and Adam more. It wasn’t long before I felt comfortable leaving Steve by himself for whole days.

While I was working, Mal still spent a lot of time with her mother. Because her mother didn’t drive, Mal would drive thirty minutes each way, just so they could grocery shop together. “Grammy” loved to be with Mal and Adam. Family was very important to Grammy. Many weekends were spent playing cards, eating dinner, and visiting her children. When we had our small comic book store in the mid-70’s she used to help Mal pick out the new comic books each week at the big city magazine distributor. But now that we had all of the new comic books shipped directly to us from Wisconsin, there was no need for her to help us with the business.

Now that I had occasional days off, Mal wanted us to be together. This meant, of course, that she had a little less time to spend with her mother.

Mal and I would take Adam almost everywhere we went. We knew that kids are very adaptable and Adam loved the attention he got when we went to our weekly Bible study and the Sunday night meeting at The Freedom Farm. When it was time for him to sleep, we’d just spread out a blanket and he’d curl up and fall asleep, even at concerts!

We began to form a much closer relationship with my friend, Allan Traylor, and his wife Debbie. Allan had been a friend since fifth grade and Debbie was very easy to get along with. We all got along so well that we began vacationing together. We’d rent a cottage in Martha’s Vineyard or go to Disney World or stay at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire and there was never any problem. Allan had a great sense of humor and Debbie loved doing fun things. It’s difficult to find two couples that fit together, but this friendship really worked. Debbie became one of Mal’s best friends.

Next chapter: Our store is “scammed” by a professional thief.
Picture: Paul with his son Adam in 1980

My Life With Comic Books: Part 20

MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 20

When I got the phone call from my wife, telling me that our house had been robbed, I quickly got on the first bus from New York to our home in Sterling, Massachusetts. After I got home and checked on my wife and son, I went to the town center where there was always a bunch of teenagers hanging around. I convinced them that I was not someone to “mess with” and that I’d be back in fifteen minutes to find out who robbed my house. They were apparently convinced that I was serious because they gave me the name of a local creep. When I went to the police station the next morning with the information, he was brought in for questioning. The thief denied that he did it, so the police let him go.

About a week later I saw the criminal in a local store. I introduced myself and gave him a good scare. He whimpered,” I’m sorry man, I didn’t know it was your house. Please don’t have me killed!” Of course, I had no intention of hurting him, but I made it clear that if he ever even looked at my house again, he’d regret it. He lived up the street from us and for the next two years he would actually walk on the other side of the street being very careful to not even look at our house. We never got back any of the items he stole because he had already sold them. Eventually, his girlfriend stabbed him to death.

Being robbed changed the way we lived in many ways. I was fortunate that the thief didn’t steal our huge baseball card inventory that I kept in my home, but now I was always worried that he’d come back again or that he’d tell some other thieves about what he saw when he was inside my house. I had an alarm system installed in my home and in our new store. Whenever we’d return to our house after being away, even for a short time, we’d have the uneasy sense that we were going to come home to find the house broken into again. The alarm system we had installed in our store was very different than most home systems. This system had a central station that actually listened to sounds in the store after we closed each day through several microphones strategically located throughout the building. If someone broke a window or a door the company would hear the sound of glass breaking. If anyone was inside the store and made even a small sound, the company would call the police. The best part was that because there were no false alarms with this kind of set-up, the police took every alarm call seriously and they’d arrive at the store within minutes of a break-in.

It was around this time that I almost lost my enormous personal collection of comic books. I had installed shelves in the basement of my house and carefully stacked my comic book collection on them. The bottom shelf was about four inches off of the floor. When we first moved into this house I had noticed an old, burned-out sump pump in the corner of the basement. I asked the original owner if there was a problem with water in the basement and they assured me that there was no problem, but that the sump pump was installed “just in case”.

Apparently they were not telling the truth. During a very heavy rain, I just happened to go into the basement to get something and I noticed about three inches of water covering the entire basement floor! I screamed for my wife to help me get my comic books out of the basement. We carried the 30,000 comics up the stairs and within an hour the water had risen to six inches. Once the comic books were safely upstairs we tried, unsuccessfully, to rescue the dozens of other boxes of personal items. I now saw my old elementary school report cards and old photographs floating in two feet of water. We called the fire department and they came and pumped out our basement until the torrential rains stopped. Even though I’m still a collector, that day changed the way I feel about material possessions. While I still take care of the things I buy, I’m no longer obsessed about the condition of my collectables. I try to keep in mind that these collectables are just “things”. The collectables are not the center of my life. They are sort of all around my life, but no longer are they the center. Relationships with family and friends are much more valuable to me now.

Next chapter: My business partner, Jay, and I split up.