Yeah, bring it on. You were doing all of this right about the time that I was big into comics. Marvel was the thing, back then. All those spin-offs and lame characters made entirely of muscle, like Cable. Ah, those were the days. Interestingly, I was into comics not for the stories, but for the collectable nature of them.
It’s only recently that I’ve becomee engrossed in the real deal, thanks to a certain former co-worker who turned me onto Preacher and The Watchmen.
I’m enjoying it Noun, thanks for taking the time to write it up.
Great stuff noun, thanks for the info. I keep thinking that I’m in a great location for a comic/RPG shop, but I was just visiting another shop and they basically said that RPGS are d-e-a-d dead. sigh
Hah! Reminds me of a friend of mine who worked at a porn distributor. On his first day, his boss asked him if he wanted to be paid cash or product. :-)
Damn, don’t stop now!
Hah! Reminds me of a friend of mine who worked at a porn distributor. On his first day, his boss asked him if he wanted to be paid cash or product. :-)[/quote]
I had a similar experience when I worked at a stall at a festival, only then the product was…
…said too much?
No, forget what happened next.
Part three: noun dual-classes to Card Dealer.
Something I neglected to mention before - I did a lot of market research before I got started, and kept on doing market research the entire time I was in business. Market research meaning, in this case, visiting as many stores as I could find and seeing what products they were moving, and at what prices.
I soon realized the Overstreet price guide I was initially using was all but useless in predicting current customer demand. In fact, I remember one of their issues contained a letter from the editor essentially stating they would never value issues less than a year old more than cover price, and that the whole market was being ridiculous about it. So when an upstart price guide/preview/hype magazine called Wizard burst onto the scene, and made current issue prices their focus, it soon became the magazine of choice and nearly drove Overstreet out of business. Eventually, Overstreet magazine relented and started to mirror current hot prices in their guides, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Such was the power of the speculator market.
I also learned that often price guides were of no use at all in predicting regional trends. Sure, Wizard was great at showing national averages, but a dealer still had to take into account local preferences (such as Sandman’s popularity in Seattle during the goth scene of the early '90s).
Back to the story.
Now, the non-sports card market was almost entirely foreign to me. The only cards I’ve ever purchased prior to the X-Men cards were Star Wars cards put out by Topps in the '70s. But after witnessing the success of the X-Men cards, I decided I’d better start branching out into non-sports cards, and fast. IIRC, my initial card inventory consisted of Marvel Universe 1 and 2, the X-men series I mentioned yesterday, and Star Trek 25th Anniversary. Somewhere during this period DC Cosmic Cards were released.
After seeing most people were only selling boxes and packs, I thought I’d carve a niche by actually opening the darn things and selling sets and chase cards. So I bought a glass case, bought some plastic boxes and card protectors from a sports card dealer, and set to work incorporating cards into my display.
A brief explanation for non-collectors. A “set” usually consists of the basic common card set, usually 90-100 cards, depending on the publisher and series. A typical box of non-sports cards tended to yield 1-3 sets, again, totally depending on the publisher. Occasionally, some printing snafu would make sets nigh impossible to complete, and in these cases sets would end up being worth more than chase cards. A “chase card” is usually a subseries of a higher quality card with a gimmick effect, like a hologram, that can only be completed by buying multiple card boxes or trading for them. For example, the Star Trek 25th anniversary series had a two-hologram subset, but the holograms were only available one per case. Sports card dealers generally regarded non-sports cards as a nuisance contaminating their own hobby, with the exception of the Comic Ball series, featuring Looney Tunes characters playing sports. Most would change their minds later, as I’ll explain.
Meanwhile, Capital and Diamond began offering more non-sports cards products through their catalogs. Comic Images started offering various series featuring known artists fantasy and science fiction artists. FPG also started doing the same for less obscure artists, such as Larry Elmore or Joe Jusko. My inventory was growing and pretty soon I had one of the largest non-sports card inventories at comic shows. The line was blurring.
Comics, meanwhile, were still out of control. Rob Liefeld issues of New Mutants continued to command big dollars, despite their horrible art. New Image comics were all popular and selling well, despite being complete and utter crap. (Yes, even Spawn, and I stand by that opinion.) Other independent comic publishers were really growing popular. Dark Horse, having been around for a few years publishing Cheval Noir and other arty books, started churning out multiple books based on the Terminator, Aliens, Predator and Star Wars movie licenses. Fans went nuts. Valiant started by releasing updated versions of obscure Gold Key comics like Solar and Magnus Robot Fighter (kinda like what DC did with Blue Beetle and Captain Atom from Charleton) but soon expanded their universe with their own properties. I already mentioned Harbinger. X-O Manowar, Rai and Shadowman were close behind, and just as popular. I was ignoring 90-95% of Marvel and DC’s line and just selling the hot books, and the occasional silver age book.
Valiant books were just insane. Being a brand new comic universe, new characters were introduced every issue. New comics soon doubled in price just because it had the first appearance of a minor character. Even old issues of Magnus Robot Fighter, previously ignored and looked down upon, were flying off shelves. Image comics were popular just because they were Image comics. Early image was staffed by folks who knew how to draw, but not how to run a business. Early issues were often ridiculously late and even more poorly drawn then usual. But people still bought them. I didn’t understand it, I just sold them.
I very clearly remember the beginning of the end. It was at a comic show in Portland, hosted by Dark Horse Comics. For months, collectors were trying to find a copy of Magnus Robot Fighter #12, the first appearance of Turok. The reason being, Valiant was about to launch Turok’s own comic book, and investors and speculators were looking for copies before it came out. What they didn’t know is that most dealers HAD multiple copies of it, but were hording their copies until Turok #1 came out so they could sell it for big bucks. Not me, though - it just didn’t feel like a good bet.
So anyway, this show happened to come out right after Turok #1 was released, and the joint was practically littered with copies of Magnus #12, all having magically materialized from various inventories. One dealer had rented a table just so he could sell his two long boxes full of Magnus #12. Turok was all over the damn place. And not a single dealer sold a single copy. The investors had totally vanished from the scene. The worm had turned, and comics fans were pissed off.
Comics collectors were finally mad at Marvel for churning out garbage for the past few years. They were mad at Dark Horse for never making an issue #5; all of their movie comics were four-issue miniseries, the logic being that #1 issues sell better. They were made at Image for producing comics based solely on their namesake - image. They were mad at Valiant for lying to them about their collectibility, which was untrue - Valiant never tried to do anything but make good comics. The rumor of collectibility was a misguided self-fufilling prophecy. But Valiant felt the pain just the same.
I still had plenty of comics, but I had stopped buying new books from distributors at this point. It was easier to buy new comics from dealers dumping below their cost, and used books from collectors looking for extra cash. So I had very little liability, but a lot of folks were not so fortunate. I remember one well-dressed dealer wearing a tie who was practically in tears by the end of the Dark Horse show. He didn’t sell a single comic; he had a table full of nothing but recent Valiant books, and collectors already owned multiple duplicates of each issue. There was no-one to sell them to.
I was still selling plenty of cards though, and by this time Skybox, Topps and Upper Deck started getting into the game. These three companies were staples of the sports card industry but knew money when they saw it. Impel, the company that made all the Marvel, DC and Star Trek cards I mentioned earlier, went belly-up and lost the Star Trek and Marvel licenses to Skybox, who were much more successful with it. Topps came out with quite a few movie card sets, as I later learned they had been doing so for decades.
Upper Deck, well… they tried. I’ll get into their disasters next time.
You are so right about Rob Liefeld (sp?) The man couldn’t draw a proper foot. I have the issue of X-Force with Mother on it, which was Rob’s first comic. It was worth about $40.00 back in 92, or 94…
Today, it’s worth cover price because everyone realized Rob was a sparktard with no talent. Esspecially after Young Bloods.
Keep it coming Noun!
Great stuff, noun – well-written, too. Please keep writing :)
Yeah, there’s a website, or at least was, which had compiled a huge number of examples where Rob had lifted layouts from other books by better artists. Pretty funny stuff.
Noun? You there? Keep it coming, this is great stuff…
(just in case Noun’s looking for one more positive comment before posting again).
In addition he singlehandedly killed my favorite marvel series. I think he may have also killed off my favorite character in that series. I’m currently suspecting him of being behind a rash of roadkill I remember noticing around that time too, but that might be a bit petty.
I was never much into comics but enjoyed Magnus quite a bit. Shame about Acclaim owning Valiant and all.
Good reading, noun. Thanks for posting this stuff.
Sorry guys, I wasn’t trying to be a prima donna; I got distracted by (gasp) WORK of all things. Curse you, corporate masters, for making me write that proposal when I could have been working on this! ;)
Part four: noun upgrades to third-edition dealer rules, picks a few perks at random, and becomes utterly confused by Magic.
Sometime before the collapse of the comic speculator market, Magic cards came out and were enslaving all who touched them. It was a totally novel concept at the time; a collectible card game, with a basic set consisting of several hundred cards, with the more powerful cards found at increasing levels of rarity. Add to this an expansion set released every 6 months or so, and people just couldn’t get enough of it. Dealers who got in early were making money hand over fist. This went beyond speculator mania - collectors were downright frantic for this stuff.
A dealer friend of mine convinced me to buy a couple of starter packs and Legends expansion packs from him so I could see how cool the game was for myself. To his credit, he spent at least 30 minutes trying to teach me the basics, but it just wasn’t sinking in. I could appreciate the art; Wizards of the Coast did a wonderful job soliciting paintings both from established artists and up and comers, but as a game, I didn’t get it. I also didn’t feel comfortable competing with the dealers who were far more knowledgable about this phenomenon than I was; it sounded like a sure way to lose my shirt. So other than selling my individual Legends cards for $1 each (turning $4 into $40) I stayed away from it for the time being.
Sports cards dealers, on the other hand, absolutely LOVED Magic. Their own hobby was in a bit of a slump, and their attempts at selling comics wasn’t working out, since they were all buying early '90s Marvels and Image comics by the truckload. Magic cards were THE perfect opportunity for their pump and dump schemes.
Here’s how it works. Say a new card series comes out with a wholesale cost of $30 per box for a case of 10 boxes. That’s $300. On day one, sports cards dealers would jack the price up to $75, well over the comfortable margin of $20-$30 per box. If they sell 4 boxes at $75, that nets them $300 right away. They’ve broken even. They can now drastically cut the price as low as they want and still make a profit on the case. By the second week, the price would drop from $75 to $35. Two weeks later, it would reach $20 or less. To ensure their profit margins, at least in my area, dealers would form their own little cartel and all agree to fix prices at the higher level. Smaller dealers, many of whom purchased their inventory from the larger dealers, tried to sell their boxes at a normal retail price and could not compete. They were gutting their own hobby.
Enter Magic cards. In an attempt to prolong demand and collectibility, Wizards of the Coast rationed all orders for Magic cards they received. So if a dealer ordered 100 boxes, WHAM, their order would be cut to 50 boxes. Dealers would receive maybe 10% of their order on launch date, receive their next 30% a month or so later, and so on. Needless to say, this tactic combined with sports card dealer greed and collector insanity did not result in a stable collecting environment.
Caving in at last, I finally ordered a few boxes of the Ice Age expansion from an honest distributor who had grown sick of the whole scene, who would let me have them only if I promised to get them into the hands of actual collectors and not greedy dealers. I later found out that other dealers were paying kids to buy Ice Age packs from me, since I had turned them away earlier. I had them for about an hour, tops.
Then came Fallen Empires. By now, dealers were tired of the whole rationing thing and were doubling and tripling their orders to get what they really needed to sell. At the same time, Wizards of the Coast decided that maybe the whole rationing thing wasn’t working in their favor, so they relaxed their restrictions and substantially bumped up the print run for Fallen Empires. Sports cards dealers turned a quick profit at first, until it became apparent that everyone had Fallen Empires boxes to sell. Plus, it was a particularly weak and uninteresting expansion. This killed interest in Magic cards for about a year, though there were plenty of other CCGs to fill the gap.
Meanwhile, a rather disturbing trend surfaced in the comic world - bad girl comics. Lady Death, Vampirella, and similar books were suddenly the hot comics, and were basically little more than porn for preteens. The stories all revolved around scantily-clad women with breasts the size of watermelons generally hacking and destroying their enemies. This attracted a whole new class of collector to the industry - the kind that took porno mags to the 7-11 restroom. I wanted no part of this.
I’d have to check my inventory lists to be certain, but by now I was carrying around 50-100K cards to each show. I considered how much easier it was to transport 50K cards over 50K comics, took another look at the current trends, and decided it was time to cut and run. At that show I marked all my comics to four for a dollar, regardless of age. I sold a rather ecstatic collector a complete run of Joker comics from the '70s. I kept the really valuable books, of course; if nothing else they made a great backdrop behind me. But the rest of the crap had to go. I got rid of 75% of my books at that show.
Next: noun has an epiphany
Noun, this is great stuff. With a bit of work and polish you could turn this into something worth submitting for publication.
Agreed, absolutely brilliant stuff.
BTW the OLD vampirella’s aren’t bad. Not as good as an issue of Creepy, but they aren’t bad.