A plethora of good stuff.

The nice thing about having a bookstore is that there is no shortage of good books. Every time I visit other bookstores I see titles I'd like to have in my own store. There are a huge number of sidelines that are interesting.

I remember a time in the late nineties when I was having trouble finding viable product in my chosen categories. Comics had collapsed, graphic novels were still not the big thing, sports and non-sports cards had collapsed a few years earlier, toys were impossible to get because the big toy companies had out-of-reach minimums, games sold in Big Box stores cheaper than I could buy them for, I couldn't find a reliable book distributor who would sell to us, Magic was fading.

I looked around and decided the only product that had any chance of increasing was Magic--if I lowered the price and tried to have a larger selection.

A guy came into the store that Christmas and introduced himself as the COO of Wizards of the Coast in Seattle. "Adult Supervision," he styled himself. He told me to order this thing called Pokemon. "Don't question it, just order it. Order all you can get."

Unfortunately, I'd already tried at least a dozen different card games to supplement Magic--Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. etc. All of them had more or less flopped. So I didn't take the guy's advice.

I was able to jump onboard later, and Pokemon did very well. In the interim (can't really remember the sequence) we did short spurts with Beanie Babies and Pogs.

Pokemon, though, was the last true fad we jumped onboard with.

It's interesting that there could ever have been a time when we couldn't find enough good product that we could afford to carry.

All I'm short of nowadays is space to show it all.