Evan Meadow

I was wondering if they did use reprints for them to actually look through.

Evan Meadow

Right. If you looked at the prices Overstreet Price Guide prints, they'd definitely lower than what most comic store will sell the same item.

Odds are the stores average out the Overstreet price along with what the item's going for on Ebay (and when Wizard was around they used a lot of the prices they listed as well).

Michael Corvin

My point was, he missed out on a $5-$10 sale. Who cares where she gets her info, he could have sold her a guide instead of sending her on her way empty handed.

madcougar

I really hate to admit it, but this show has grown on me. Like I said in my first post in this thread, I'm a big Kevin Smith fan, and even though his recent work hasn't hit the mark with me, the guy is fun to listen to. He's just funny. My favorite bits are the phoney recording sessions with Smith, but the comic book shop stuff has been pretty OK too.

Obi-Wanma

Except the guides are so irrelevant that a lot of places don't even stock them anymore. My comics store doesn't.

Michael Corvin

Okay, that's what I was asking, and makes sense.

fujishig

The store does look surprisingly tiny, though it looks pretty much like every comic store I've ever been into, crammed to the ceiling with stuff all over the place. Are there actually comic stores in maybe more rural areas (where rent is cheaper) that don't look like this?

Shannon Nutt

All the ones I've been to are like this...tiny and stuffed. But I haven't been to a comic store in years - I get all my stuff online now, cheaper than it would cost me retail...although stores are fun to browse.

dex14

The store is tiny. I went there a while ago. I remember the DVDs were ridiculously over priced.

fumanstan

Pretty cool to see the X-Men and Wolverine stuff. I'm sold on the show just to see the things people bring in or want to buy. The interaction between the guys working is less interesting, like the commercial from the other week and the zombie stuff now. It just seems like all of those things are so half assed and thrown together just to give all the guys something to do to fill 45 minutes of show time.

bluetoast

Yeah like someone said I'd like to see them actually handle a Wednesday shipment.

madcougar

That would be great TV. I'm sure they're waiting for November sweeps to air that episode.

bluetoast

Good point. Okay then create some artificial drama where Ming accidentally re-routes the shipment to a local landfill. Then the gang has to hurry up and pick up all the comics, clean them all off and restock them before closing.

Kevin Smith will then ask them all during the podcast what their favorite "mix-up" movie is. Ming will ask if Three's Company counts as a movie. Walt will then suggest that Three's Company when himself and the other two guys kick Ming out of the store.

wmansir

That reminds me of some stories Walt told on the podcast that I doubt will ever make the air.

Walt said that when they order collectibles they have to order most of them as sets or lots, but obviously even within the same set some items are more desirable. To boost his inventory Walt would go to Toys-R-us or Walmart and buy just the more desirable units to re-sell. Then one day he noticed that the receipt would usually just say "X-Men 2099 Figure" or something similar, so he started taking the duds from the Stash's shipment and returning them to the big box store with the receipt for the more collectible items he had purchased.

I think he said that after a while he got banned from a few places so returning the items became Mike or Sunday Jeff's job. Eventually the receipts listed the specific item, not just the toy line, so they weren't able to do it any more.

bluetoast

That sounds like some folks over at the Blu-ray Bargains forum, trying to stack coupons at Target.

mhg83

I watched the Zombie episode last night. That has to be an exaggeration on Walts character. All the stuff i see him in on Smiths DVD's he came off as a nice guy.

And that Tortured Souls figures are pretty cool. is it true they had those in Toy Stores? They made it sound like they did. I can't imagine Toys R Us stocking that kind of toy

Josh-da-man

They sold them at Spencer Gifts; and possibly at Suncoast, too.

fujishig

This happened at the only comic shop in the area when I went to college (I was there one day when they brought in their haul from the local TRU), and even with the modified return policies, toy scalping runs rampant. Go to a TRU, heck, go to a Target on a weekday when they're opening, and you'll invariably have at least a few hot wheels and action figure guys looking for stuff to resell (and some collectors too).

Plus, if they don't sell while they're "hot" they can be returned for full price in 60 days or so. I have no idea how they make enough money to be going to different stores every day and using up gas, but there are a lot of people that do it.

The reason I was suprised that the store looked so tiny is that I thought, being associated with Kevin Smith, that it would have a bigger presence and maybe a bit more of a non-comic-store look to attract fans of his that weren't necessarily into the comic scene. To this day, even as a comic fan I don't know how you'd get anyone that wasn't already into comics into a store.

Josh-da-man

They sell autographed copies of Kevin Smith's movies, so that might account for higher prices.

Also, Diamond (the comic distributor) sells DVDs to comic stores, but the discounts are so slim that they end up selling them to the stores for the same price that they can be found on sale at regular retail locations. (Or so I was told a while back.)

wmansir

@fujishig

Buying stuff to resell is fine, but returning a different item to TRU is shady, even if TRU sells the item for the return price.

bluetoast

Yeah, sly but dick move on that guy's part. I had heard about ordering sets with rare objects from a comic store owner before, it sounds like a raw deal because you have to buy X sets to even get Y of something that's rare. Probably accounts for some stores selling variant covers for more than list price sometimes.

Michael Corvin

Here's one that blew my mind...I went to Target at opening about a month back looking for some Skylanders and I started talking to the clerk (I'm still not sure why this came up) but he said they have a lady come in once a week and she purchases their entire shipment of Downey (the fabric softener) Balls. That gave me a chuckle, but apparently they don't sell them overseas and this lady ebays them all and makes good money doing it.

Of course I don't see any auctions at the moment.

PhantomStranger

The Overstreet Price Guide was the bible of the industry until the Internet and Wizard magazine came around. eBay changed the entire game because the market can now determine prices so much quicker than before. Now the guide is really only marginally useful for rare items and the classic stuff that doesn't change hands frequently.

Most comic book shops today would probably not carry a copy unless they were regularly dealing in very old books.

madcougar

When variant covers were all the rage, my LCBS would basically just drop any they got randomly into subscribers' boxes. I got a very nice Gen 13 lengerie cover that way, among others.

windom

How is it possible that Bryan never saw Superman 2? I can't believe that someone his age who is into comic books would never have seen the movie.