the warm weather brings everyone out (amended several hours later)
All said by the same man who had never been here before and had previously asked how much the posters on the free table were:
"Bargain books? What's that?"
"Are these cheaper? Oh wow ten dollars! Yeah these are cheaper."
"If that had been in English... Wait is that what bargain books means? That it's in Japanese?"
Then of course we have the never ending parade of people who want money for their comics.
We don't do appraisals at our store. It's too time consuming and the customer is usually angry when we tell them the truth that their comics are worthless. We have one manager who offers to do appraisals at $50 an hour, but curiously no one has really taken him up on that offer.
Man walks in today and asks if we have access to an appraisal guide or something that would tell him the price of comics. So I smile and tell him about Overstreet Price Guide which is the industry standard for such things. He asks if we have it and I explain that while we are currently sold out he would want the most recent volume which is #40 and is available in paperback for $30 and in hardcover for $35.
"Oh. You mean I have to buy it? Don't they have something on line?"
No. No they don't. And if they did, I'm pretty sure it would be a site with a subscription price for access. So then he goes into my next favorite tactic from this sort of person: wrangling a free appraisal of a book I've never seen.
First he asks if we have Batman and The Outsiders. As I'm going to show him what we have he tells me that he has #124 & #125 of the Outsiders and the comic adaptation of the first Batman film.
"Are they worth money?"
"Not really, no."
"They're not? Oh, these are new. The ones I have are the old, old ones."
"Oh so you weren't looking for Batman and The Outsiders to purchase?"
"You have older comics, right? I want to see if you have what I have and see how much they're going for."
So I showed him where our back issues are located.
Later he comes up to the counter and asks me how much the most expensive comic we have in the store is. I hate playing that game. All of our expensive back issues are located in our Manhattan shop because they never moved in the Staten Island one. People like to look at them here, but no one wanted to buy them. So we shipped them off where tourists happily purchase them. So I showed him our most expensive variant cover which, right now, is $70.
"Wow. And this hasn't been opened?"
"Nope."
"This is a new comic?"
"Yeah, it's only about a month and a half old." (It was a variant for Fear Itself Book One.)
"Would you say that comics are still a good investment?"
"No, never. Only get comics if you like them." Why? Because any comic printed by DC or Marvel in the last 20 years will never attain great value nor will it be scarce. Why? Because every comic fan has in ingrained in their brain that they must bag and board and save all their comics so that one day they will attain great value. This will not happen because every single comic fan on the face of the planet does this. Plus everything gets reprinted these days in one form or another. It's not like you're sitting on Air Pirates #1 or a complete run of Sugar and Spike (I could cry every time I think about my mom throwing those out...). Those death of Superman issues? Those Batman film comic adaptations? We can't give those away. No one wants them.
>.>
o.0
And now it's 7pm and I just had someone in looking for issue two of a five part series that came out at least 5 years ago. We didn't have it here so I called my other shop looking for it and they did have it. Fairly standard exchange really except that the customer kept referring to it as "2 of 5." That freaked me out because my brain kept going to "7 of 9" as being the only other time I've heard that phrase used. I asked for issue 2 and the customer says "2 of 5." I tell him that yes they have issue two and they're sending it over and he says, "2 of 5?"
"Yes."
Dude it's the only form this series took. There is only this one issue two. It does not exist in the multiverse where you have to distinguish between different versions of the same issue.
"Bargain books? What's that?"
"Are these cheaper? Oh wow ten dollars! Yeah these are cheaper."
"If that had been in English... Wait is that what bargain books means? That it's in Japanese?"
Then of course we have the never ending parade of people who want money for their comics.
We don't do appraisals at our store. It's too time consuming and the customer is usually angry when we tell them the truth that their comics are worthless. We have one manager who offers to do appraisals at $50 an hour, but curiously no one has really taken him up on that offer.
Man walks in today and asks if we have access to an appraisal guide or something that would tell him the price of comics. So I smile and tell him about Overstreet Price Guide which is the industry standard for such things. He asks if we have it and I explain that while we are currently sold out he would want the most recent volume which is #40 and is available in paperback for $30 and in hardcover for $35.
"Oh. You mean I have to buy it? Don't they have something on line?"
No. No they don't. And if they did, I'm pretty sure it would be a site with a subscription price for access. So then he goes into my next favorite tactic from this sort of person: wrangling a free appraisal of a book I've never seen.
First he asks if we have Batman and The Outsiders. As I'm going to show him what we have he tells me that he has #124 & #125 of the Outsiders and the comic adaptation of the first Batman film.
"Are they worth money?"
"Not really, no."
"They're not? Oh, these are new. The ones I have are the old, old ones."
"Oh so you weren't looking for Batman and The Outsiders to purchase?"
"You have older comics, right? I want to see if you have what I have and see how much they're going for."
So I showed him where our back issues are located.
Later he comes up to the counter and asks me how much the most expensive comic we have in the store is. I hate playing that game. All of our expensive back issues are located in our Manhattan shop because they never moved in the Staten Island one. People like to look at them here, but no one wanted to buy them. So we shipped them off where tourists happily purchase them. So I showed him our most expensive variant cover which, right now, is $70.
"Wow. And this hasn't been opened?"
"Nope."
"This is a new comic?"
"Yeah, it's only about a month and a half old." (It was a variant for Fear Itself Book One.)
"Would you say that comics are still a good investment?"
"No, never. Only get comics if you like them." Why? Because any comic printed by DC or Marvel in the last 20 years will never attain great value nor will it be scarce. Why? Because every comic fan has in ingrained in their brain that they must bag and board and save all their comics so that one day they will attain great value. This will not happen because every single comic fan on the face of the planet does this. Plus everything gets reprinted these days in one form or another. It's not like you're sitting on Air Pirates #1 or a complete run of Sugar and Spike (I could cry every time I think about my mom throwing those out...). Those death of Superman issues? Those Batman film comic adaptations? We can't give those away. No one wants them.
>.>
o.0
And now it's 7pm and I just had someone in looking for issue two of a five part series that came out at least 5 years ago. We didn't have it here so I called my other shop looking for it and they did have it. Fairly standard exchange really except that the customer kept referring to it as "2 of 5." That freaked me out because my brain kept going to "7 of 9" as being the only other time I've heard that phrase used. I asked for issue 2 and the customer says "2 of 5." I tell him that yes they have issue two and they're sending it over and he says, "2 of 5?"
"Yes."
Dude it's the only form this series took. There is only this one issue two. It does not exist in the multiverse where you have to distinguish between different versions of the same issue.