MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 28
In the early 1980’s I went to a local comic book store in Auburn, Massachusetts. As I was looking around this store, I overheard the owner telling a customer to “make an offer” on anything he was interested in buying. The owner casually mentioned that he was thinking of getting out of the business. I waited until the customer made his purchase and then I made an offer on everything that was in this shop. For a couple of thousand dollars, I bought his entire inventory and all of his store fixtures! It was the first of many store buyouts.
One of the customers of the store that I bought out found out that I now owned the whole inventory and he began shopping at my store. Paul Dinsdale was only fifteen years old when he first found my store. He quickly became a store “regular”. Paul would come in almost every week to shop for comic books. We would talk about comics and we’d frequently play chess or the board game of Risk on slow days. Paul was such a serious comic book collector that he was one of the first customers to sign up for our comic book convention bus tour to Boston. My friend, Paul Weatherbee, let us use the old Gospel Bus to bring a group of our customers into Boston for a big comic book convention. It was on this bus trip that Paul Dinsdale became a family friend. He talked with my wife and young son Adam during the bus ride and took the time to get to know us. Years later, “Dins” would vacation with us to Washington and Florida. He would eventually meet and marry his wife because of our store. I’ll tell that story in a future chapter.
1983 was a busy year for us, personally, as well as business. Store sales were up significantly and there were quite a few “events” that made it an important year. Marvel Comics had been publishing a GI Joe comic book for about a year and it was one of the hottest selling comics in the business. The first issue was selling briskly at seven to ten dollars even though it was only a year old. One of my part-time employees, Elliot Weininger, happened to find a few copies of GI Joe #1 at a local department store and they were being sold for only 29 cents each. I sent him back to the department store to buy as many as he could find. Luckily, Elliot was a smart guy. He wasn’t satisfied with the few dozen copies that the store had in stock. He asked to see the manager and then he convinced him to order one thousand more copies for us. The manager made a quick phone call and within a week we had the extra one thousand copies. We were shocked that these were available through a subsidiary of Marvel Comics called Marvel Books. It showed how bad the communication could be in large companies like Marvel. Marvel could have sold hundreds of thousands of these to the comic book stores at a minimum of a dollar each, but I was able to get them for only 29 cents each! I made a few phone calls and sold most of them to a dealer in California for $2.75 each. I used all of the money to have my home driveway installed. Unfortunately, for some reason, we weren’t able to get any more copies.
My father was going to Hong Kong on a business trip in mid-1983. We figured, that if he was going to be that close, he should go to Japan to buy some inventory for my store. Japanese model kits of robots and spaceships were a popular collectable at conventions but not too many comic shops were selling them because they were not available through our distributors. I told my father to look for model kits based on the TV show of Starblazers but I really didn’t know very much about other Japanese properties. My father located an exporter and ordered thousands of model kits. We became partners that day and spent over $20,000.00 on model kits! Three months later, when the kits arrived in the United States, we couldn’t fit them in my store so we had the forty foot long tractor trailer load delivered to my home in Bolton, Massachusetts. The kits filled my entire basement and my garage. We wholesaled these model kits to eager comic book retailers all around the United States. It took us many years to sell out of these model kits but it was still a profitable venture. If we still had these model kits today we could sell them all on Ebay for twenty times the amount we sold them for in the 1980’s!
In April of 1983 we went to Disney World for the first time with our son, Adam. We also wanted to take my wife’s teen-aged sisters, Carol and Madeline, but there wasn’t enough room in my old car to comfortably make such a long trip. I called my old friend, Jay Maybruck, and he offered to let us use his station wagon. We drove the 1400 miles from Massachusetts to Florida and had a great time. Even though Adam was only three years old, he enjoyed riding in cars and was almost always well behaved.
Next chapter: I open our store in Maynard, Massachusetts and end up with one of the most exciting comic book collections of my life.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
My Life With Comic Books: Part # 27
MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 27
In 1982, my main competitor was a man who appeared to dislike dealing with the public. He was grumpy to many of his customers and he could frequently be heard saying, “This isn’t a library!” (This wasn’t my philosophy. I assumed that if you encourage the customers to look through the comic books then they’ll probably be interested in buying them.) Oddly enough, this competitor was courteous to me when I would go into his store.
One day that I went into his store he told me that my employee, Steve Wentzell, was no longer allowed to come into his shop. Steve used to play Dungeons and Dragons at this guy’s store on a regular basis but he was now banned because he worked at my store. This certainly didn’t make sense to me. I could understand it if he banned me from his store, but not a paying customer like Steve. When I informed Steve, he convinced me to start to sell role-playing games and war games so that consumers would have another place to buy the games. I called a gaming distributor and within a week I was carrying a large assortment of games and accessories. We decided to offer the local customers a discount as an incentive to begin to shop at my store for all of their gaming needs. We also began to offer a 10% discount on all new comic books purchased by our regular “subscribers”. My competitor responded by offering a 15% discount. I countered with a 25% discount. He went to 30% off. Within three months I was selling our comic books at 60% off of the retail price! I was actually losing money on every comic book I sold. I was determined to get as much of the comic book and game business as possible away from my competitor. By the summer of 1982 my store was selling more new comic books than my competition. I had over 350 regular weekly customers who were actually paying less for their new comic books than I paid. My competition only offered the huge discount to his small group of about fifty customers so it didn’t affect him as much financially as it did me. I was losing money on my new comics every week. Luckily, my store inventory was not just new comic books. I was still selling a lot of sports cards, record albums, and toys, so I could afford to pay for our expenses, but I knew that this big discount on new comics couldn’t continue. I wrote a letter to my customers and I explained that although the “price war” on new comics was over, I would continue to offer the lowest priced back issue inventory in Massachusetts. I also explained that this would enable me to have sufficient funds available to buy large collections of comic books and collectables from my loyal customer base. Most of my customers understood. Many of them thanked me for offering the discount for as long as I had. Within a week my competitor stopped discounting his new comic books as well.
In 1982, an old friend, Steve Geppi, began distributing new comic books under the name of Diamond Comic Distributors. He bought the distributor that I was using in Boston and suddenly he became my comic book source. Steve Geppi’s belief in superior customer service was evident immediately. Our weekly shipments of new comic books were more accurate and they were more carefully packed. The monthly order forms became very professional. The employees in the Boston warehouse were both professional and friendly and they seemed to really care about making it as easy as possible for us. Carol Kalish, the manager of my old distributor, went to work for Marvel Comics as the manager of the direct sales market. Her knowledge of the business and her love of comic books quickly propelled her to a position as a vice president of the company.
Business had been growing at a rate of over 25% per year for the last two years but like many small business owners, I tried to “save” money by cutting back on things like employee salaries and business insurance. Late at night on December 28, 1982 I got a call from my old employee, Tim Shea, who still lived across the street from my store. He said that the store was on fire and the fire department was on their way. I asked him to go over to the store to try to limit the amount of damage that the firemen would do with their water hoses. I jumped into my car and drove the thirty miles to my store. All of the way there I was thinking that I would be ruined financially. I had drastically under-insured my inventory just to save a few hundred dollars each year. If everything were destroyed I’d only be paid a small fraction of the actual value of my inventory. I wouldn’t be able to pay my employees. This was a horrible ride into Worcester.
When I got to the store, the fire was extinguished. The fire had mostly been contained in the store next to mine. Although I sustained no real fire or water damage, my store did fill up with smoke. The smell of the smoke made it difficult to breathe inside my store. By the time the fire department left it was 8:00 in the morning. I was determined to be open for business by 10:00AM so I called a company that specialized in fire clean up. The company sent a man with a tank of cherry smelling fog that they would spray into the store while my customers waited outside. He would spray this stuff into the store every hour and we’d have to ask all of the customers to go outside until it was safe to come back inside to continue their shopping. Surprisingly, I still had a great day of sales. I used this opportunity to call the local newspaper so they’d run another story about us. Any good free publicity was a boost to our business.
Next chapter: I open another store.
In 1982, my main competitor was a man who appeared to dislike dealing with the public. He was grumpy to many of his customers and he could frequently be heard saying, “This isn’t a library!” (This wasn’t my philosophy. I assumed that if you encourage the customers to look through the comic books then they’ll probably be interested in buying them.) Oddly enough, this competitor was courteous to me when I would go into his store.
One day that I went into his store he told me that my employee, Steve Wentzell, was no longer allowed to come into his shop. Steve used to play Dungeons and Dragons at this guy’s store on a regular basis but he was now banned because he worked at my store. This certainly didn’t make sense to me. I could understand it if he banned me from his store, but not a paying customer like Steve. When I informed Steve, he convinced me to start to sell role-playing games and war games so that consumers would have another place to buy the games. I called a gaming distributor and within a week I was carrying a large assortment of games and accessories. We decided to offer the local customers a discount as an incentive to begin to shop at my store for all of their gaming needs. We also began to offer a 10% discount on all new comic books purchased by our regular “subscribers”. My competitor responded by offering a 15% discount. I countered with a 25% discount. He went to 30% off. Within three months I was selling our comic books at 60% off of the retail price! I was actually losing money on every comic book I sold. I was determined to get as much of the comic book and game business as possible away from my competitor. By the summer of 1982 my store was selling more new comic books than my competition. I had over 350 regular weekly customers who were actually paying less for their new comic books than I paid. My competition only offered the huge discount to his small group of about fifty customers so it didn’t affect him as much financially as it did me. I was losing money on my new comics every week. Luckily, my store inventory was not just new comic books. I was still selling a lot of sports cards, record albums, and toys, so I could afford to pay for our expenses, but I knew that this big discount on new comics couldn’t continue. I wrote a letter to my customers and I explained that although the “price war” on new comics was over, I would continue to offer the lowest priced back issue inventory in Massachusetts. I also explained that this would enable me to have sufficient funds available to buy large collections of comic books and collectables from my loyal customer base. Most of my customers understood. Many of them thanked me for offering the discount for as long as I had. Within a week my competitor stopped discounting his new comic books as well.
In 1982, an old friend, Steve Geppi, began distributing new comic books under the name of Diamond Comic Distributors. He bought the distributor that I was using in Boston and suddenly he became my comic book source. Steve Geppi’s belief in superior customer service was evident immediately. Our weekly shipments of new comic books were more accurate and they were more carefully packed. The monthly order forms became very professional. The employees in the Boston warehouse were both professional and friendly and they seemed to really care about making it as easy as possible for us. Carol Kalish, the manager of my old distributor, went to work for Marvel Comics as the manager of the direct sales market. Her knowledge of the business and her love of comic books quickly propelled her to a position as a vice president of the company.
Business had been growing at a rate of over 25% per year for the last two years but like many small business owners, I tried to “save” money by cutting back on things like employee salaries and business insurance. Late at night on December 28, 1982 I got a call from my old employee, Tim Shea, who still lived across the street from my store. He said that the store was on fire and the fire department was on their way. I asked him to go over to the store to try to limit the amount of damage that the firemen would do with their water hoses. I jumped into my car and drove the thirty miles to my store. All of the way there I was thinking that I would be ruined financially. I had drastically under-insured my inventory just to save a few hundred dollars each year. If everything were destroyed I’d only be paid a small fraction of the actual value of my inventory. I wouldn’t be able to pay my employees. This was a horrible ride into Worcester.
When I got to the store, the fire was extinguished. The fire had mostly been contained in the store next to mine. Although I sustained no real fire or water damage, my store did fill up with smoke. The smell of the smoke made it difficult to breathe inside my store. By the time the fire department left it was 8:00 in the morning. I was determined to be open for business by 10:00AM so I called a company that specialized in fire clean up. The company sent a man with a tank of cherry smelling fog that they would spray into the store while my customers waited outside. He would spray this stuff into the store every hour and we’d have to ask all of the customers to go outside until it was safe to come back inside to continue their shopping. Surprisingly, I still had a great day of sales. I used this opportunity to call the local newspaper so they’d run another story about us. Any good free publicity was a boost to our business.
Next chapter: I open another store.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
My Life With Comic Books: Part # 26
MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 26
One of the most important character traits for a good employee is honesty and loyalty. I’ve been blessed over the years with some of the best friends and employees possible. But in 1981 I wasn’t so fortunate.
When the baseball card collectable market was growing so rapidly, I decided I would organize a baseball card convention of my own. I rented a function room in a hotel in Framingham, Massachusetts, about fifteen miles outside of Boston. The function room would hold forty “dealers tables.” I had been to hundreds of comic book and collectible shows over the past seven or eight years so I thought I knew what was necessary to organize a good show. I decided to run the show and donate all of the proceeds to “The Jimmy Fund”. The Jimmy Fund was a charity that I had seen in action, when my young neighbor was struggling with Leukemia and it was also the official charity of the Boston Red Sox. I sent out dozens of press releases to the local newspapers and radio stations. I knew that the local media would probably pick up on the story because of the charity connection. All I needed now was to somehow sell the forty dealer spaces. I knew lots of people in the comic book business but I didn’t know very many baseball card dealers.
I had a friend who sold baseball cards at a local flea market each weekend so I offered him a fifty percent partnership in my newly established card show business in exchange for his knowledge of baseball cards. I figured that with his expertise, he’d be able to sell the dealer spaces. I’d put up all of the money for the hotel and advertising. I sent out a press release to a large sports publication for a free listing in the national card show calendar directory. Within two or three days after that listing came out we were completely sold out of every dealer space. I could have sold out the entire function room without giving up fifty percent of my new business venture to my friend.
About two weeks before the show a few local radio stations started running free commercials about the show. The day of the show one of the radio station was urging all their listeners to attend. When we were ready to open the doors to the public we had a huge line of people eager to pay the one-dollar admission to shop for sports cards. Our future shows were not going to benefit a charity so we made sure to collect every attendee’s name and address for our mailing list. We would now have an active and valuable list to use to notify them of the place and time of future shows.
This first show was extremely successful. We had about eight hundred people attend and most of them spent money. The dealers were so happy with their sales that most of them paid us that same day for tables at our future shows even though we had no firm date for the next show!
My new partner was pretty happy with our deal. I had misjudged my own ability. I easily could have done this without his help, but I stood by our initial agreement. We would equally share the profits of all of our future baseball card shows. We ran a highly profitable show each month for the next six months.
I saw that the Framingham area was loaded with serious collectors so I decided to consider opening a collectable comic book and card store there. I found a great location in downtown Framingham but the owner was asking too much for the monthly rent. I showed it to my partner. I explained that it had been vacant for a couple of months and that I was going to wait another two months and then I’d offer the owner considerably less with the hope that he’d be more eager to rent it. My partner agreed that that was a good plan. Two days later, my partner betrayed me. He rented the store that I had showed him! He reasoned, “This isn’t personal, it’s business.”
I was very angry at what I considered a personal betrayal. I knew that I could no longer trust him. I didn’t want to continue our baseball card show partnership so I GAVE the business to him. But I couldn’t forgive him for his actions. I rented a different store in Framingham and I was determined to offer him some serious competition. I hired a friend, Jimmy Talbot, to manage this new store. Jimmy was a friendly, talented retailer and with my strong inventory and reputation for reasonable prices, it only took about a year before my former partner closed his store. I’m not particularly proud of this, but after he closed his store, I no longer felt the need to continue operating the Framingham store. I originally wanted a store there but when I felt my partner had betrayed me, I was more concerned with revenge rather than with building a long running business.
I had developed a good customer base in Framingham that I didn’t want to disappoint by closing the store, so I decided to GIVE the store to my buddy Jim Talbot. I allowed him to use my inventory and store name and he would earn a portion of whatever he sold until he could build up his own inventory. This deal wasn’t very smart of me. Jim had a different retail philosophy. He began to raise prices and it began to affect my reputation even though Framingham was about twenty miles away from my store in Worcester. After a year I insisted that Jimmy change the name of his store so that we could both have separate identities and I could rebuild my image as a low priced collectible dealer. Jimmy changed the name of his store to “Bop City Comics” and did a great job of developing into an important retail store in his area. In 1986, for reasons I still don’t understand, Jimmy opened up a store in Worcester and competed directly with me for a few years. He also tried to explain to me that this was business, not personal.
This didn’t make sense to me because I believed that personal relationships were more important than business. Two friends had now betrayed me and I was becoming cynical. I was learning not to trust people. I’d have to be more careful in the future.
My cousin, Steve Higgins, had worked at my store on Sundays for about six months and he was a great addition to the store. Customers enjoyed him and sales were increasing. Steve enjoyed the business so much that he decided he’d like to open his own store. He explained his idea to his wife and she supported him completely. They agreed to use the money they had been saving to buy their first home as start-up capital for their store. Steve found a location about fifteen miles from Boston, in Waltham, Massachusetts and he asked me my opinion of it. I liked Waltham, but I didn’t like the store location because it was on a road that wasn’t heavily traveled. I knew a man who specialized in Japanese science fiction model kits who was renting a building on the busiest street in Waltham but he was actually only using the basement of the store as his warehouse. He had no interest in selling the model kits directly to consumers through a retail storefront. He was willing to rent the retail storefront to Steve at a reasonable monthly rate. Steve liked the location better than the one he had previously picked.
I loaned Steve a beginning inventory of back issue comic books and helped him contact suppliers for new comics and toys. Steve bought a large collection of old movie posters at a convention and with a lot of fast work he was open for business in October of 1983 as “The Outer Limits.” Steven’s skill at retailing made his store an instant success. It didn’t take too long before he had earned enough money to buy his first house. With Steven being actively involved in the same business, I now had access to him as both a friend and as someone to “talk business” with. We would call each other at least five times a day to discuss ideas or the latest funny incident at our stores. Life in the comic book business wouldn’t be as much fun without my Cousin Steve!
Next chapter: Diamond Comic Distributors buys out our distributor.
One of the most important character traits for a good employee is honesty and loyalty. I’ve been blessed over the years with some of the best friends and employees possible. But in 1981 I wasn’t so fortunate.
When the baseball card collectable market was growing so rapidly, I decided I would organize a baseball card convention of my own. I rented a function room in a hotel in Framingham, Massachusetts, about fifteen miles outside of Boston. The function room would hold forty “dealers tables.” I had been to hundreds of comic book and collectible shows over the past seven or eight years so I thought I knew what was necessary to organize a good show. I decided to run the show and donate all of the proceeds to “The Jimmy Fund”. The Jimmy Fund was a charity that I had seen in action, when my young neighbor was struggling with Leukemia and it was also the official charity of the Boston Red Sox. I sent out dozens of press releases to the local newspapers and radio stations. I knew that the local media would probably pick up on the story because of the charity connection. All I needed now was to somehow sell the forty dealer spaces. I knew lots of people in the comic book business but I didn’t know very many baseball card dealers.
I had a friend who sold baseball cards at a local flea market each weekend so I offered him a fifty percent partnership in my newly established card show business in exchange for his knowledge of baseball cards. I figured that with his expertise, he’d be able to sell the dealer spaces. I’d put up all of the money for the hotel and advertising. I sent out a press release to a large sports publication for a free listing in the national card show calendar directory. Within two or three days after that listing came out we were completely sold out of every dealer space. I could have sold out the entire function room without giving up fifty percent of my new business venture to my friend.
About two weeks before the show a few local radio stations started running free commercials about the show. The day of the show one of the radio station was urging all their listeners to attend. When we were ready to open the doors to the public we had a huge line of people eager to pay the one-dollar admission to shop for sports cards. Our future shows were not going to benefit a charity so we made sure to collect every attendee’s name and address for our mailing list. We would now have an active and valuable list to use to notify them of the place and time of future shows.
This first show was extremely successful. We had about eight hundred people attend and most of them spent money. The dealers were so happy with their sales that most of them paid us that same day for tables at our future shows even though we had no firm date for the next show!
My new partner was pretty happy with our deal. I had misjudged my own ability. I easily could have done this without his help, but I stood by our initial agreement. We would equally share the profits of all of our future baseball card shows. We ran a highly profitable show each month for the next six months.
I saw that the Framingham area was loaded with serious collectors so I decided to consider opening a collectable comic book and card store there. I found a great location in downtown Framingham but the owner was asking too much for the monthly rent. I showed it to my partner. I explained that it had been vacant for a couple of months and that I was going to wait another two months and then I’d offer the owner considerably less with the hope that he’d be more eager to rent it. My partner agreed that that was a good plan. Two days later, my partner betrayed me. He rented the store that I had showed him! He reasoned, “This isn’t personal, it’s business.”
I was very angry at what I considered a personal betrayal. I knew that I could no longer trust him. I didn’t want to continue our baseball card show partnership so I GAVE the business to him. But I couldn’t forgive him for his actions. I rented a different store in Framingham and I was determined to offer him some serious competition. I hired a friend, Jimmy Talbot, to manage this new store. Jimmy was a friendly, talented retailer and with my strong inventory and reputation for reasonable prices, it only took about a year before my former partner closed his store. I’m not particularly proud of this, but after he closed his store, I no longer felt the need to continue operating the Framingham store. I originally wanted a store there but when I felt my partner had betrayed me, I was more concerned with revenge rather than with building a long running business.
I had developed a good customer base in Framingham that I didn’t want to disappoint by closing the store, so I decided to GIVE the store to my buddy Jim Talbot. I allowed him to use my inventory and store name and he would earn a portion of whatever he sold until he could build up his own inventory. This deal wasn’t very smart of me. Jim had a different retail philosophy. He began to raise prices and it began to affect my reputation even though Framingham was about twenty miles away from my store in Worcester. After a year I insisted that Jimmy change the name of his store so that we could both have separate identities and I could rebuild my image as a low priced collectible dealer. Jimmy changed the name of his store to “Bop City Comics” and did a great job of developing into an important retail store in his area. In 1986, for reasons I still don’t understand, Jimmy opened up a store in Worcester and competed directly with me for a few years. He also tried to explain to me that this was business, not personal.
This didn’t make sense to me because I believed that personal relationships were more important than business. Two friends had now betrayed me and I was becoming cynical. I was learning not to trust people. I’d have to be more careful in the future.
My cousin, Steve Higgins, had worked at my store on Sundays for about six months and he was a great addition to the store. Customers enjoyed him and sales were increasing. Steve enjoyed the business so much that he decided he’d like to open his own store. He explained his idea to his wife and she supported him completely. They agreed to use the money they had been saving to buy their first home as start-up capital for their store. Steve found a location about fifteen miles from Boston, in Waltham, Massachusetts and he asked me my opinion of it. I liked Waltham, but I didn’t like the store location because it was on a road that wasn’t heavily traveled. I knew a man who specialized in Japanese science fiction model kits who was renting a building on the busiest street in Waltham but he was actually only using the basement of the store as his warehouse. He had no interest in selling the model kits directly to consumers through a retail storefront. He was willing to rent the retail storefront to Steve at a reasonable monthly rate. Steve liked the location better than the one he had previously picked.
I loaned Steve a beginning inventory of back issue comic books and helped him contact suppliers for new comics and toys. Steve bought a large collection of old movie posters at a convention and with a lot of fast work he was open for business in October of 1983 as “The Outer Limits.” Steven’s skill at retailing made his store an instant success. It didn’t take too long before he had earned enough money to buy his first house. With Steven being actively involved in the same business, I now had access to him as both a friend and as someone to “talk business” with. We would call each other at least five times a day to discuss ideas or the latest funny incident at our stores. Life in the comic book business wouldn’t be as much fun without my Cousin Steve!
Next chapter: Diamond Comic Distributors buys out our distributor.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
My Life With Comic Books: Part # 25
MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 25
Business at our comic book store was growing quite rapidly and in late 1981 we decided to buy some land and build a house in the town of Bolton, Massachusetts. I grew up in the town and I knew that the public school system was better than many of the other local towns. My wife, Mal, was still hoping that a private school would open up so that our son, Adam, could be offered a more serious education. We bought a three-acre lot for $37,500.00 and began to build a nice four-bedroom home.
We hired a general contractor who was recommended by a friend. After a few weeks we discovered that many local carpenters refused to work with this contractor because he didn’t have a good reputation for prompt payment. He had also filed bankruptcy; so many suppliers were requiring us to pay for the materials in advance or immediately upon delivery. We began to do more and more of the contractor’s job. We had built a home back in the 1970’s but with my heavy work schedule I knew I couldn’t devote much time to this house. Mal took control of this project. She would bring Adam to the construction site each day to be sure that everything was running as smoothly as possible. She made most of the decisions by herself. My job was to pay for the project!
We listed our house in Sterling with a local realtor and we had an offer of $32,000.00 within the first week. We accepted the offer but ran into trouble when our buyers applied for a mortgage. When their bank ordered a survey of the property, it was discovered that one side of the house was on town property and a corner of the house was on our neighbor’s property. Since we had paid cash for this house, we never thought about getting the property surveyed. We assumed that the house would fit on the land!
Our neighbor offered to sell us a few feet of his land for a few dollars, but he suggested that we work on acquiring the other land from the town first. The town would have to hold a special town meeting to decide whether they would sell us the required amount of land and that could take a few months. Luckily for us, the town agreed to sell us the land for one dollar.
When we went to our neighbor to buy the few feet of land from him we found out why he really wanted us to go to the town first. He had already entered into a deal to sell his property and he knew that the boundary problem could hurt the sale of his house. We now had to deal with the new owners. They agreed to sell us the land, but they now wanted $200.00 plus the cost of the new surveying and the attorney’s fees. We thought this was reasonable so we agreed. We waited about a week for them to write up the agreement but it didn’t come. We called them and they said that they now wanted $500.00 and all of the other fees. We agreed to the new terms. A few days later they demanded $1000.00 plus all of the fees. I argued that the nonsense had to stop. We made our final offer of $750.00 plus all of the legal fees and surveying costs. They accepted our final offer and we finally completed the deal. We used the proceeds from the sale to continue the building of our new house. Our buyers were happy to get into their new home. Two years later the buyers sold the house for $125,000.00!
We knew that we didn’t want to end up with a huge mortgage payment each month so we tried to convince the suppliers and carpenters that we would pay them every Friday for the work they had done that week. I’d get home from work at about 7 PM each Friday and hand the carpenters their paychecks. We were able to pay everyone in the early stages of the building but we were quickly running out of available cash. We had spent most of our savings to buy the land. Sales from our comic book store were really good, but I still needed to keep some cash for the business.
I decided that I needed to sell some of my personal collectables to help finance my new home. I evaluated my collectables and thought that I could get a good price for my extensive trading card collection. I had most of the “non-sports” trading cards that were made from 1957 to 1977, all in excellent to mint condition and had many of the original display boxes and the wax wrappers that the cards came in! I even owned an original painting that was used to produce the rare “Mars Attacks” set. I called a few local dealers and was disappointed at the low offers I was getting from them. I sent a list of what I had to a dealer in Maryland and he offered me 35% of the retail value of the collection. My friend, Jim Stoll, and I drove to Maryland to sell my trading cards. The dealer paid me $4500.00. (About one year later, the trading card business “exploded” and my cards would have sold for at least $15,000.00 to this same dealer!)
This money got us through another week, but we knew we’d have to come up with a better solution. After a short search, a local bank offered to loan us $50,000.00 to finish the project. This loan was a great comfort to us but we still worked hard to not spend it all. By the time we completed the new house we had only used $25,000.00 of the bank’s money. In September of 1982, we moved into our new home.
We decided to have my family’s big Christmas party at our house that year. It was at this party that the lives of two families were changed forever. After we ate and had all exchanged gifts, a bunch of us decided to play cards. We played poker and blackjack for dimes and quarters. While we were playing, my cousin, Steven Higgins, explained to me that he and his wife Donna were saving money to buy a house. They had saved about $5000.00 and were actively searching for a house. When Steven and I were much younger, I would usually beat him when we played cards. Today was no exception. Even though we were only playing for dimes and quarters, Steven now owed me $35.00. I felt bad that I was taking away money that he would need to buy his house. Steven offered to work at my store for two Sundays to pay off his loss. I was thrilled because it was very difficult for me to get employees to work on Sundays.
Steven was perfect for my store. He had loved comic books since that summer of 1970 when he lived with my family for the whole summer. He had a really funny sense of humor and enjoyed “goofing around” with customers. After he worked for the two Sundays to pay his “gambling” debt he asked if I would pay him to continue to work at the store. He would save the extra money to eventually buy his house. It didn’t take long for Steven to learn the comic book business. He had a natural ability as a retailer. He learned how to buy collections of old comic books and toys. He enjoyed himself so much at my store that he wanted to become my permanent Sunday employee.
Next chapter: Cousin Steven leaves the nest!
Pictures: We build our Bolton, Massachusetts home
Monday, January 4, 2010
My Life With Comic Books: Part # 24
MY LIFE WITH COMIC BOOKS: THE HISTORY OF A COMIC SHOP - Part 24
In 1981, Richard Howell and Carol Kalish contacted me. They were working for a new comic book distributor near Boston, MA named “Solar Spice.” They guaranteed that I would be able to get the big shipment of new comic books on Friday morning each week. This would help me to compete with the other comic book store in town. Carol also offered me generous credit terms. I accepted their offer and stopped ordering the comic books from “Capital City Distribution” of Wisconsin.
I would go to their small office in Cambridge, MA at about 6 AM each Friday morning to pick up my shipment. I would then drive about an hour to get to my store in Worcester, MA by about 8 AM, unload my car, sort the comic books, and fill the customer’s “subscription list.” Each customer had filled out a list of the comic books that they wanted me to reserve for them and I saved the comic books for them on shelves behind the counter. By the time I opened the store at 10 AM, the new comic subscriptions were all done and the remaining comic books were displayed on the racks. Most Fridays, there were customers waiting outside at 10 AM to get into the store to have the first pick of the comics on the racks.
My customers were very loyal and they seemed to enjoy shopping at my store. They would come into the store, pick out the new comic books, look through the large selection of back issues, and many would hang around the store to talk about comic books with other customers and me. The store had a festive, party atmosphere on Fridays. Stanley Hosmer, David Grilla, Stan Moniak, Charlie St.Pierre, Paul Dinsdale, Bob Forte, Andy Fish and many more would form the core comic book customer base and would eventually become friends of mine, not just customers.
Michael Warshaw came into the store looking mostly for old model kits. I had recently bought a collection of old toys from the 1960’s and I sold him an Aurora model kit of “Spider-Man,” unmade in the original 1967 box, for $27.00. We’ve been friends for over twenty years now!
Kevin Simpson was on the way to my competitor’s store when he came by and discovered my store. He came in looking for the current issue of “Starlog Magazine.” While we were talking he told me that he also collected old trading cards. He mostly collected cards that were based on old TV shows like “Lost In Space,” “Batman,” and “The Green Hornet.” It quickly became apparent that Kevin and I had a lot in common. We both collected bubble-gum cards, loved to play Monopoly, and we both watched too much television.
We even videotaped lots of TV shows and we both had the exact same video tape machine. In the early 1980’s, video tape recorders cost about $1400.00 and a blank video tape cost around $20.00 so I was shocked when Kevin asked me to lend him my video tape recorder! He explained that he needed another VCR to hook up to his so he could make a copy of a tape and he didn’t want to pay the high fee to rent another one. Since I had just met him that day I politely declined. After Kevin had been shopping at my store for about a month it became clear that he was becoming a great friend. He was kind and had a good sense of humor. He didn’t seem to mind that I almost always beat him at Monopoly. He was always willing to help out his friends. It didn’t take long before I was happy to lend him my VCR.
Brian Paquette was looking for old toys from the 1960’s TV show of “The Man From Uncle.” “The Man From Uncle” was one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid. I used to pretend that I was a spy from the “Uncle” organization when I was ten years old. My parents bought me quite a few of the toys that were sold in the mid-60’s based on the show including the Napoleon Solo gun set and the “Foto-Fantastiks” coloring sets so Brian and I shared a common interest.
Mostly because of Mike Warshaw and Brian Paquette, I became interested in collecting old toys. My parents really spoiled me at Christmas time and now I decided to try to collect many of the toys I had as a kid. I put up signs in my store to let the customers know that I now wanted to buy old toys. I began going to local toy shows to try to find some of the cool toys I wanted. My first “find” was a “Steve Canyon Jet Helmet,” mint condition, still in the original box. (I still have a photo of my brother Jay and I wearing our helmets on Christmas morning!) I was now a serious collector of comic books, movie and TV-related bubblegum cards, records, old model kits, and toys! I was fortunate that the income from the store was growing so I could afford to buy a rare collectible every so often.
David Lynch was the employee who ran the store on Sunday, but he wanted to be able to set up at a local flea market to earn some extra money since I wasn’t able to pay him a decent salary. Luckily, my new friend, Michael Warshaw was willing to help out until I could find a permanent replacement.
Through a strange series of events, I’d discover my best friend in the comic book business: my cousin Steven.
Next chapter: I beat Steven again at cards and he becomes my Sunday employee.
Picture: My brother Jay and I wearing our Steve Canyon Space Helmets on Christmas morning in 1959
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.
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.
Friday, January 1, 2010
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
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