Wednesday, the best day of the week, new comic book day.
We open things up to hear from you. A free for all.
The 296th edition (and the 15th quarantine edition) of the open forum!
New comics are ramping up with even more new releases this week. Let us know what you are picking up.
Back issues and recent releases going crazy
Did you know we have the forum up and running, you can check it out at the official CHU Forum site, go over and sign up.
As always we also want to hear about your weekly pickups.
So, What were your pick ups?
I’m just happy this monster of a week occurred before my hernia surgery as once I get that the 10th (as I mentioned in the forums) I’ll be a bit out of commission for some weeks. Thankfully I can still call stores to have them hold stuff and a friend will be picking stuff up for me.
We have a little rhyme around here that goes “ sell and ship before your hospital trip” it’s one of the secondary market rules.
I am going to be sure to not have anything outstanding before I am unable to easily pack and ship, wise words.
Got 0 books because they are coming in this Friday apparently…apparently it’s late all over here (Central Valley)
Pick ups…..
3 more Legend variants since last week open forum 3 more reg covers.
2x Black Cat #13
1x Bounty Hunter 2nd print
3x Thor #6 A and B
1x Speed Metal 1:25 9.8 CGC
1x Death Metal Trinity 1:25
1x Justice League annual #1
1x Peach Death Metal #3 sold the two kept theVirgin
1x Venom #27 Johnboy Meyers variant set
1x Venom #27 1:25 2nd print
1x Venom #27 A and B
1x Venom Leathal Protector#2
1x Willow Graphic Novel
1x Willow #1
1x Metal #6 Horn set
Black Cat #12***
Also 6x Batman #99 1:25 variants I found listed at cover:
THOR 6,,,,okee dokee
yup…anything after issue 5 is overprinted post hype
Wow. Where at.
Another great week for comics and specs!
Pick Ups:
Ice Cream Man #20 (Dr. Seuss homage)
Darth Vader #2 (2nd print)
Captain Marvel #18 (Empyre variant)
Spec pick ups this week:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #105 (Cover A X 3)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #101 (Cover A)
Batman #89 1st print ($45)
Batman #89 Cover B ($30)
Coolest pick up in a while; Bloodshot #1 (2019) Carbon fiber variant for $50 (1:250). One of the stores I go to happen to get in some of these super rare Valiant books like X-O Manowar brushed metal, Quantum & Woody gold autograph, et al. I saw this book and had to get it. Super cool plastic cover that is about 1/4″ thick.
Dark Knight Legends Death Metal #2-couldn’t get any at this point which is fine with me. Generally when everyone is looking for one book that leaves other better buys laying around for me to flip.
Good hunting everyone!
Thanks to a heads up from Tony, I picked up a copy of the Albedo 2 reprint.
After 24 1/2 years of working for the same company, 35 years in the industry, my position is being “sunset,” the polite way of saying eliminated. I’m fortunate I have a small cushion saved up while I look for something else, but this will put quite a damper in buying comics for the foreseeable future.
I sold one to cover the two I got.
Sorry about the sun setting. That stinks. Let us know if we can help. Sadly it’s a tale I am hearing more and more often lately.
LAst night I visited one of my LCS. I grabbed Legends of the Dark Night regular and variant at cover price. The variant sold overnight for $198.99. I probably could have listed it higher, but I think with the amount of copies up that book is coming down today. At checkout I also noticed a Negan Lives second print bronze foil issue. I grabbed that at cover and again it’s gone for $98.99 this morning. Again, I could have priced it for $20 more, but I think there are a ton of copies on Ebay.
Headed to my second LCS at lunch to see if I can repeat the process twice in 24 hours.
No wonder so many stores go under, having no idea what the books they’re selling are supposed to go for. My shop has everything priced what it is going for, so when I see so many people buying what should be way more expensive…it isn’t good for the shops those issues came from.
The shop where a lot of my cover price and $2.00 back issue finds come from does plenty well. He’s diversified in action figures, trades, hardcovers, and collectible games like Magic, Hero Clix, etc.
Back in April, I went through my collection and sold probably a couple thousand comics on ebay. Then I bought a Peloton, an Amazing Fantasy 15, and a vacant lot by a lake. It was…..a lot.
I had a lot of comics left that were worth modest amounts, but I was done selling and also didn’t really want them around. I donated probably 2,000 comics to that LCS for them to sell during the pandemic while new comics weren’t shipping. As far as I can tell, they all sold through their doors. We have a healthy symbiotic relationship going.
I’m going to have to disagree. As a regular and a collector, if I go to pick up my weekly pulls and “comic #x” is $20 because it’s a hyped up book that week, I’m never coming back. I’m also not telling you and will give you the runaround on picking up the pulls that will pile up until you figure it out. So to make and extra $15 bucks off me from time to time, you’re going to lose thousands in annual revenue.
There is some merit to the argument that a primary market comic store should not be skipping the cover price sale and go directly to secondary market prices.
There are obvious exceptions to this rule, I think. If the store specifically ordered inflated numbers of a book to get a 1:100, etc., I think inflating the price is warranted. If the store got a 1:25 because Batman sells 100 copies an issue and they normally order that many anyway, then I think that goes for cover price.
The Negan Lives 1 per store goes for cover at first sale in my book. It was a variant that they put in the shipment as a “thank you” or bonus.
I agree Brennan. I ordered and got 4 copies of Legend in my box. And the 1:25 for $24.99.
Yup, we comic book collectors love to spend money. Losing a customer for life that could have turned out to be hundreds or thousands of dollars spent there a year all because you wanted to price a $4.99 book that was selling for $19.99 on release day at $20 to make an extra $15 profit on top of the profit you were gonna make already.
Makes total sense.. sigh!
I purchase bags, boards, pops, toys, magazines, and lots of other stuff (records for instance) at my local comic shop. Not sure why they would jack the prices up on someone who spends thousands of dollars a year in their store to make a few hundred bucks.
Yup, the purchases go beyond just new books.. you screw over one customer and lose them, you’re losing more than you’re gaining by selling them a new release book at secondary prices.
I understand that if you have a subscription. If you pre-ordered a copy months ago, you should get cover price. However if you’re calling the night before and the book is hot…well I believe stores should sell it for current value.
That’s fine for someone who never comes into the store but a regular who had no idea about the book shouldn’t have to pay jacked up prices. If you know your customer base you should have no problems differentiating the regulars from the not.
I am ok if they hold a couple of copies back but straight up charging $25 for a new book that just came out is wrong. Even more wrong if the just “gonna check eBay for prices” when you get to the counter. At that point of a book is marked at $4.99 on the shelf and the going eBay prices is .89 cents, I would ask for that book at current eBay price.
Yeah, seems the shops that play the secondary market on release day sure do live by double standards.. “Hey, this $4.99 ASM book you have in the back bin is selling for about $1 across eBay and other platforms, I’ll give you a $1 for it.” If they answer no, then don’t ever shop there again if they price new books at secondary prices by checking eBay on release day.
@Anthony. Yep. Newer place I visited by me pulled this crap. I said all the proper things and walked out the door with my finger up. Why? Charging $25 for a copy of Legends.
So you’re okay with Apple setting the price of their new phones at $599 but when you show up at the ATT store, they got them for $999? Makes perfect sense just because the retailer buying from the wholesaler is now selling for what they are selling them for on the secondary market cause.. “they need to stay in business”..
If you go into business to sell something that has a “retail” cover price and decide to mark it up on release day, that’s one of the many reasons shops are going out of business because that’s called price gouging..
Plenty of shops stick to selling new books on release day at their cover price. It’s the greedy ones who demand too much that end up losing cause they didn’t know how to properly run a business by moving inventory quickly.. and instead turned into secondary market sellers.. not retailers.
We all get to charge $25 day one and we don’t have any overhead as long as their pull list copies and FOC preorders are at cover price do what you want LCS
Nope.. if retailers want to be flippers who don’t have accounts that give them first dibs at 35-50% off the cover price.. then they can disable their accounts and stand in line with the rest of us flippers.. 😉
But yes, they can do what they want.. but that’s not a shop I’ll be shopping at and I don’t recommend anyone else shopping there either.
Retailers who worry about what people do with the product after it leaves their stores should go run an HOA or something, seems they’re focusing on the wrong things while running a business.
We don’t have overhead? While I don’t have a shop I have a mortgage that includes the space I store my comics. That take up about 1/12th of the total space. I pay for bags and boards, shipping boxes. Tape. Not to mention the costs of inventory and the boxes i store then in. There are costs of doing business no matter what.
When my overhead for spec’n gets out of hand my wife bitch slaps me and put me on the corner wearing only her g-string and a sparkly sombrero….Doesn’t make me much money but I do get the attention I crave.
Lol.
Good job friend that’s how you do it.
Amazing work getting the 1:25 legends at cover. I need to find a LCS that sells ratios at cover. Ha.
My LCS does not raise the price of any regular books on release week (legends was cover today) after the first week he raises them which I feel is fair.
Ratios he does look up on ebay before pricing them though. Prices them Wednesday before open. He will work with me a bit though as I do good business there. If it’s going $40-45, he will sell it to me at $30. Vast majority are at ratio or lower. Doesn’t update the prices though. On Thor 5 release day I got the 1:25 for $35 when it was going $70 and I got the Thor 2 1:25 for $15 when it was around $35-40 then.
I think a week at cover for non ratio variants is fair. That should be the rule from the publishers I think. The only books that my LCS charges above cover for are ratio variants and key issues they acquired through purchasing of private collections. Pretty much any new key issue is cover price indefinitely.
If y’all want to continue to have the ability to visit your LCSes, then, I imagine that this is something that you will either have to get used to, or you’ll lose your LCS. Printed media is on the decline. Newspapers and magazines, all over the world are suffering at the hands of digital media. In the Raleigh/ Wake County area, all of the shops mark up, as of now, on the day of release. Collectors aren’t the reason, though. There were one, or two, shops that didn’t mark their prices up, so other shops, that did mark up, would send employees/ whoever out to those non-mark up shops to grab their incentives/ hot issues when the doors opened. I heard this, first-hand, from a (previous)non-mark up shop owner.
They had never marked up, on the day of release, until last year. There aren’t a ton of choices, around this area, so you can play by their rules, or order online, from what I understand. In which case we probably, eventually, lose that LCS.
Not many people donate books to their shops, either, from what I understand, as well. I could be very wrong about that, though.
Very few LCSes, around this area, focus on toys and games. I can think of one shop in Chapel Hill. They do tournaments and the like.
These shops have a pretty tight margin. We are in the middle of a recession the likes of which we haven’t experienced since The Great Depression. I can’t get butt-hurt if they are hip to making money on books, like I sometimes attempt to. I don’t love it, but I can definitely understand. It’s their industry, after all.
Lastly, the best, and for me, what I have found to be the most important part of collecting comic books, is building and nurturing relationships and friendships with the people at those shops, that I wouldn’t get to see ordering online. I’m a hermit, and I generally don’t like people. I do, however, genuinely enjoy shooting the shit at every single LCS that I visit. Not every trip is perfect, but I almost always enjoy talking to comic-heads, as much as reading these books and looking at the art.
Y’all do you, though.
One.
I agree mostly with almost everything you said. Yes, nurture relationships with shops. I recently went into a shop that had 10 copies of civil war II #4 in his $3 bins. Asked him if he limited back issues, he said no buy all you want. I took 5 and took the other 5 and said these go for $10-$15 currently online. I sold my 5 copies. He sold his. He made $50 plus my $15. He more than doubled what he had them in the bins for. I go back. He said i still have no limit but do you want to pull more money makers out of my back issues please do so. He essentially said grab some hot books and let’s split them.
Anyway, I don’t think shops should sell hot books at markups you their subscribers or regulars. If they want to pull the hot books and sell them at markups to everyone else who comes into the store, fine, but take care of your regulars first. They will make more money in the long run.
It’s tough to disagree with you, on that, Anthony.
Knowledge-based markets are usually pretty cutting edge, so expect some choppy waters, imho.
@scottfree…Print industry is dying, yes, but, comic book sales increased last year, and have been fairly consistent in sales for the last 5 years. Comic book print is not dying. Shops don’t need to gouge to survive. If they do need to gouge to survive, that is because the store is poorly run, not because a lack of a market.
jcLu Nah, comic shops are going out of business left and right.
I would say a good deal of that was due to the pandemic lock downs. Those that didn’t find ways of adapting, Facebook sales, delivery, mail order, closed as a result. We have a shop not far from me that just opened in The end of February. He was open for two weeks before our state shut down and diamond stopped delivering. He hasn’t grown a loyal fanbase yet. But he is back issue heavy and has a lot of key books. He switched to Facebook live and did very well with it. Didn’t have to open the doors to survive.
Also consider this, shops who are hurting and decide to start hiking up prices to make up costs are only now hurting those people walking through the doors who might be on a limited budget themselves.
Think of it like.. shop is gasping for air now due to the current issues (because half their regulars are jobless, cutting back on stuff that isn’t a necessity, etc) and now wants to reach out to customers for help, hoping to open the airways a little more by bumping up the cost on pre-release hot books. Customers walk in, start to reach until they see the price and then are turned away.. so only a few can extend a hand while the others are like.. no way, I can’t pay $25 for a book any other day on release would be $5. No thanks, I’ll find it elsewhere.
So yes, while some are able to pay the prices and don’t care cause they “really want that book no matter the cost”.. you’re gonna lose more business by insulting your customers with jacked up prices.
The whole point of a “retailer” store is to sell retail and move as much inventory as you can for the new stuff.. Not play the spec market game and hope you squeeze out $200 extra for the hot book of the week.
So, retailers can’t blame anyone but themselves when they close up (not counting pandemic or other outside sources that is out of everyone’s power) for running their business poorly..
I was looking for some of my old online comic retailers recently with all the hot books and I did notice a few out of business shops. Comic Market Street where I won that original art of Harley by Natali Sanders based out of Utah gone no website nada. Crazy they did well on their exclusives selling most out and still went out of biz.
I liked Comic Market Street. They were always good to me.
I know this is not a good sample size, but I have seen more shops open, brick and mortar, and online, then I have seen close, in the last 12 months, locally. If a store is closing, it is because it had an unsustainable business plan, it did not go out of business due to a lack of a market to sell too. Can you, @scottfree, provide some sort of evidence, empirical or otherwise, to back up your claim?
It’d be interesting if we could actually run numbers though on how many of the prints were doubled, quadrupled or stacked by the same consumers though? Speculators love to stack books for short term and long term reasons. If we took out the speculator game and market and we only had normal collectors and readers, who buy the single copy they need or want (and we don’t have Marvel printing up 25 covers for the same book enticing collectors to buy them all), I’m pretty sure the numbers would be vastly different from what we’re seeing being reported.
So yes, while comic book sales increased, can we honestly say because there was more people interested in buying to read or collect? A part of me wants to wish that is the case but look what’s happening with say.. Venom #27. Pre-hype for new character, people admitting they’re loading up on not just a couple of issues but stacks and stacks. We got a member on the forums (sorry, don’t mean to single out someone) who has claimed he’s stacking 300+ copies of Codex first appearances across several issues..
There definitely has been a influx of new blood to the hobby. I see it every Wednesday at my shops. There are a ton of new faces at every shop now. Also, I’m getting a lot of newer eBay (under 10 feedback) members buying books. And lastly, look at the forums. There has been a bunch of people over there who are noobs, by their own self admissions. I don’t know if it will stick, but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that there has not been an influx of new blood to the comic reading/collecting community over this covid apocalypse. M2c.
Well, some shops might be seeing new blood cause they’re other shops might of closed down.
There’s new comers all the time, but with the overall fever to buy more comics could be drawing more people to eBay as well.
There’s no doubt some people are possibly seeking out comics due to lockdown, it’s entertainment while being holed up at home. But we do only have last years tallies and totals for comics, having no pandemic last year that could be changing the landscape we’re seeing this year is a completely different factor.
Also next years totals will be skewed since there was like 2 months of no new books and this recent surge of books heating up are a lot of back issues.
The new faces I’ve seen at the 5-6 shops I visit frequently are not there due to their LCS closing, as there have not been any comic shops closing in my area. They are new to the hobby, just like all the ‘noobs’ that have recently populated the Forums.
I was speaking in general terms.. We can probably sense the new influx of online buying to a lot of shops closing up here in U.S. as well and where some people normally talked comics are now doing it online (forums perhaps).
Yes, the forums are starting to gain traction (which we were hoping was sooner). Forums will always have new comers asking questions (since the long time collectors don’t necessarily ask so many questions)… To me, not necessarily a good measure on the current state though.. The data is too far and wide for such a measurement.
Gathering the statistics would be very interesting but almost near impossible to get truly accurate info..
We welcome noobs. (Auto correct wanted to say boobs but I fixed that, not that we don’t welcome them too)
Anyone else miss out on DC books? My LCS and many more on west coast did not get their DC shipment
Same here in Central Valley Cali, coming Friday apparently…1st time this happened since they got new distributors
Yeah, one of my local shops out here in OC was shorted and two others sold out within minutes and they usually get enough to last through the lunch rush at least. I didn’t ask but I have a feeling they didn’t get their full order.The person in front of me got the last copy (of course) but my Midtown order went through… still, it would have been nice to get one more of a hot book. Not all was lost, I did find a second print of Ultimates 2, #2 2nd print (first Galactus life bringer) for cover price so that was nice. Seems to be on the uptick.
I’ve never “marked up” a new release on release day. But I’m under no obligation to sell all the copies I have at cover price either. We fill every sub order at cover price and always put out at least a few shelf copies as well. But I routinely hold back books I think will have value in the future. Some never appreciate, and are eventually donated to charity. Others do very well (I preordered dozens of hold back copies of Venom 3 and didn’t sell any until they hit $100 each). After seeing what Cates did with Thanos/CGR and Venom, I started ordering 50 hold back copies of Thor with issue 1.
The extra profits from books like those allow me to do things with my shop that most shops can’t do. We 100% guarantee all pull books. Sometimes that means I am buying a $3.99 issue on the secondary market at $40 to sell it for $3.99 because I got shorted. But we never tell a customer sorry, we couldn’t get it for you. We donate to every local charity that asks. Every school sports program. Every church group. Every school library. We donate 5,000+ comics a year to various doctor and dentist office waiting rooms so that kids have comics to read while waiting. Same with homeless shelters. And we paid every part-timer their full wages to stay home the entire Covid lockdown. Every employee got their full paycheck while home safe with their families. We also pay around 5 times as much as our competitors for local collections. It’s common practice for us to buy a collection for $300 and be told they tried five other shops and no one offered more than $50.
Am I a jerk shopowner in Poyo’s eyes because we play the secondary market and attempt to leverage additional profits? I suppose. But I can sleep at night just fine knowing where the money goes.
On a totally unrelated note, did you see someone paid $37 on a BIN for the Federici cover of Death Metal 3? That’s insane to me.
I have no problems if a shop orders “extras” for themselves.
If you fulfill your pre-orders and subs, then set out X amount of copies on the shelf for the stragglers and walk-ins.. all at cover price, great. If you held a few back to sell later, honestly, that’s what you do in such cases. If you got a loyal customer come in later that week that didn’t pull or subscribe and you yank one out from your stash to give them at cover price, great. If you say well, you should have made it on Wednesday, it’s now Friday and the price is $50 for you my friend.. that’s kind of a jerk move if ya ask me..
So yeah, a lot of factors to involve. Are you a jerk for buying “extras”.. and holding back to sell well after the fact, nope, not in my opinion. Cause if you bought X amount cause you think it’s gonna be a nice seller down the road, that’s a completely different ballgame strategy.
Ordering extra is one thing. Holding back copies you ordered extra of. Making sure every subscriber gets a copy at cover, and putting some on the shelf, no one would argue that’s cool. It’s the everyone past $25 thing that we can’t stand.
I don’t see the issue with this, except for the fact that it’s blatantly obvious. Be smart about it and sell the other books on a separate platform or wait 2-3 months to put them out. LCS owners put copies back all the time on hot ticket items that they believe could go up or have staying power for a few months. That’s smart.
Instead of putting them out at an elevated price, simply put 1/3 or 1/2 of the books out at cover and list the other half on another platform. Nobody is the wiser (unless they know your eBay/Mercari user names. Those people have already bought the book though because they are aware.
LCS owners do not want to get caught holding the bag, they want copies out the door. Some owners are just smarter about it.
That’s why SOME not all people’s LCS say they didn’t get their DC books that way they don’t have to put the Death Metal legends on the shelf. They will put the rest of the DC books up a few days later and tell you someone already bought all the Legends you just missed out. So they can pass the blame to the distributor and no ones the wiser
I am not totally on board with the up charge on release day. But at the same time, if we do our homework ahead of time 3/4 of the books that spike can be ordered pre-FOC, multiple copies, from the LCS. Then on release day, they hand you a stack of them, and you’re paying the same for that stack as everyone is for one single issue.
Now for the 1/4 of things that we miss or are just totally under the radar and/or way under-ordered (batman 89 I’m looking at you), sometimes we gotta eat it. Now my LCS just started upcharging pretty much around Batman 89…. But every time they do it, they make sure they are about 1/3 lower than what it’s going for.
Update
Just went in to my lcs as DC didn’t arrive till this morning. I was five minutes late to grabbing the 1:25 Legends…. But $150.00 is not what I’m about. Can’t make much off flipping and I’m happy with the $65 i spent on a very nice Thor 337 yesterday.
In reference to upcharging, the store is quirky.
I have regular pull stuff and since the re-open, I’ve been emailing a list on weekends of other books to add for each Wed. I’ve been hit with an upcharge on certain books with that method, like strange Academy second print. But i think it’s an order # thing. If they order enough to provide for regular customers while upcharging the rest, that’s fine. Even if they under order and want to sell what few copies they have for a LITTLE more, that’s also ok.
Thirdly, putting some copies out on Wednesday, limiting to one per person at cover and thenOn Thursday putting out the rest at 3-4x cover, unlimited buys…. That’s also ok. That’s what they did with Thor 2nds and 3rds that just came out.
I am good with limiting one per customer at cover and then up charging for another or subsequent copies. But once you get into upcharging, then the customer has the right to negotiate other books cheaper if that’s what the market price is.
Whoops forgot the point. I had asked for a Legends regular cover on Monday. They held one at cover price for me today…. The ones on shelf were going for $16.
The only comic shop I’ve been to in months is my main shop, but today I went to another shop they had about 10 copies of Legends of the Dark Knights ……….for $25 each. So I just picked up a longbox and left. Like everyone else I think it is ridiculous to price new books that high on release day. Last week I called my main shop looking for some copies of Batman vs. Predator, they had the 1st series so they put them in my pullbox for me. When I picked them up the other day did they charge me current ebay prices? No it was like $20 for the set. That’s why I’m pretty much done with other stores.
My LCS didn’t receive this weeks books but they did receive next weeks…so I got 2 robin king covers, 1 regular & 1 Wally west manhattan cover for DNDM #3, picked up variant of Batman’s grave (yes the writer is fucked but I already have the other ones)…& the detective comics variant…he had the 1:25 but I’ve already bought so many recently I gotta chill…don’t really think death metal 3 is a gonna become a “key” but that robin king cover should be good