Strangest thing. The basement at my store is full of stuff again.
A few years ago I set out to empty the basement, even if it meant giving things away. First thing I did was sell all the sports cards for fractions of a penny to someone who so loaded up a U-Haul, that it was nearly dragging on the ground. Half a million cards? Supposedly, he was going to use the cards to paper the walls of a restaurant. (Crazy idea--the thought of applying each card to the wall gave me shudders. Besides which, all those cards were "commons" which I warned him about.
Then I sold all the comics in the basement to another dealer. Tens of thousands of comics for pennies on the dollar. There was some value there, but I simply didn't have the time or space to deal with them.
Finally, I sold all the non-sports cards I had. I'm willing to bet that I probably had more of these cards than anyone in the country. Tens of thousands? Incomplete sets and boxes and boxes of individual cards.
And so, I had a basement that was cleared out. I didn't miss any of it. In all three cases, the cream had already been taken and it would have required time, space, and effort to sell any of the rest.
So I'm feeling proud of myself. But then back issues started selling again.
You see, when I started 41 years ago, back issues were a major part of my business. The crash of the comics bubble in the mid-90s pretty put an end to that. I kept the readers as customers but lost the so-called "collectors." Of course everyone buying comics were also collectors, but unless you had something truly extraordinary, they didn't want back issues.
But over the last decade, collecting has become more of a thing again. And I simply didn't have enough of the strong titles or "key" issues to do much about it.
So I saw a longterm customer who was going to sell his collection at a garage sale because he was moving. I knew what this customer had been buying, Spider-mans and X-Men and so on and knew the price he was offering was really good.
I called him up and said, "At the price you quoted, I'll buy them all."
It took me nearly a year to go through those 40 boxes. I decided I would extract the titles I knew would sell and bag and board them all. Eventually, I simply replaced the back issues I had upstairs with a fraction of the comics I'd bought.
So...sales went up. They went up enough to add a button to the register to distinguish back issues from new. Nothing spectacular, but more than enough to pay for the collection I bought and still have most of the comics leftover.
So I thought to myself, "Don't turn down offers automatically. Inquire about what the seller wants. Or even ask if they want to "contribute" comics to the general cause. So comics started coming back in, a few boxes at a time.
Then I got a call from someone who apparently had a garage full of comics and was willing to give them to me if I would haul them away.
Turns out, these were the comics I left in my mall store back in 1997, which had been stored in someone's back garage. Weird to see my own tags and prices, but there was good stuff in there. I gave the owner a bit of money because I didn't feel great about taking them for free, but the truth was, I wasn't going to be able to get to them for a long time. Another 40 boxes or more.
Then...well, after offering the boxes of used books and fixtures from Linda's bookstore, The Bookmark, someone finally took me up on it. That emptied the basement somewhat, but the comics have continued to flow in the door. We apparently have enough goodwill in the community that people want to leave their comics with us. Got another 2500 comics last week, some decent stuff in there.
Here's the problem. There is plenty of salable stuff in the basement, but it's like a reservoir of oil that can't be accessed without extreme effort. I've got enough oil flowing through the pumps that it's worthwhile, but the vast majority of salable comics are out of sight.
I know people will point out that I could sell them online, but I'm just not set up for that. Frankly, I'm not inclined. One of the reasons I quit pursuing back issues in the first place was the constant need to justify prices, the constant haggling, dealing with difficult customers. The way it's being done now is, I plunk a price on a comic, the customer can see the condition themselves, and all is well.
The other possibility is letting people down in the basement one by one to check it out, but the problem is, I'm still months if not years away from separating the wheat from the chaff. I know from past experience that people will cherry pick what's there.
Oh, well. It's a nice problem to have. We have plenty of "key" issues now to put on the wall. We have plenty of good runs on the most important characters, all the Avengers, Batmans, Supermans, Spider-mans, X-men, etc.
I've taken another step back from the store. Dylan, an employee from a few years ago has come back and I'm giving up most of my hours so he has enough. So I can amuse myself by going through all the rest of the comics, extract the good titles, bag and board and price them, and leave Sabrina with an organized...what should I say?
An organized mess.