One of my favorite areas of my shop Conquest Comics, has got to be the back issue wall. For those of you who aren’t familiar with comics, older books are typically referred to by collectors as “back issues”. That’s what usually lines those long white boxes you’ll see in some comic shops that the nerds are rifling though.
Most shops have a dedicated wall space, where they display some of the cream of the crop. Usually this will consist of high end books that are expensive…basically something to showcase to the customers. In our shop, we take that to the extreme by housing 7 rows with 125 books per row totaling…c’mon…you can do the math…that’s right!!! 875 books!!!! I had faith in you…
The difference between our shop and most of the rest, is that we house a wide variety of books up there and created a large dedicated space for it. Not everyone has deep pockets and can afford $500 books daily. So we pack the wall with a healthy selection that we feel allows most collectors and investors an opportunity to play the game a bit.
What I mean by that, is it’s not just mega key issues that cost an arm & a leg. Don’t get me wrong, those are up there as well…but they are blended in along side affordable first appearances, cheap yet beautiful covers, variants, and more.
When I say first appearances, that’s kinda the bread and butter of the investment corner of this world. It simply means, the first time that character has ever appeared in a comic. On better & more popular characters, those are your blue chip books that can end up fetching the big bucks.
Overall, the comic wall is a pretty big deal at our shop and it gets a lot of attention from all sorts of collectors. There are books that are $10 bucks on there and some that go into the thousands. There’s something for everyone…and as you can see by the gaping hole I created in the center of each row, I have a lot of gaps to fill. Damn…the holiday season purged us of lots of goodies.
I love the idea of filling it back up as a book gets sold, but there’s a strange psychological phenomenon that comes into play with our customers. When I simply fill the gaps as a book sells, the excitement simply isn’t there. However, when I let it deplete a bit and do a massive restock…it brings the vultures out in droves as there’s now hundreds of new delicious books for them to gawk at all at once. So I stick to that formula now as it seems to work better overall.
So last week I decided it was time for some replenishment, and the first step is to organize each row and count how many books are up on each row. The top two rows are filled with independent titles. The next 3 are all Marvel, while the bottom 2 are lined with DC comics. Here is my crazy worksheet to help me on my fun journey.
My math totaled up each row to 120 books, but along the way I decided to stretch it to 125 per row to squeeze a bit more of the goods in. I worked for a couple of days to pluck and price the right amounts for each row. Below are the lucky books that will hopefully find new homes soon.
Then, it’s just a matter of plopping in the books where they belong. A little finessing…and BOOM!!! Ya got a wall!
It really pops well when you enter the isle. You can’t help but just dart your eyes everywhere to try to soak it all in. I love when it’s fresh as we usually get a bunch of compliments from customers…and I eat that shit right up!!!
Best part is that it’s only been up for a little over a day so far, and we’ve already moved a bunch of books from there ranging from a snazzy Ghost Rider book with a glow in the dark cover for like $15 bucks, up to a several hundred dollar book featuring the 1st appearance of Spider-Gwen.
The wall…is simply a big money maker, but more importantly…it’s a cornerstone of our shop. Something that our customers come to see daily as they expect to find a gem to go home with. That is ultimately, the most rewarding aspect.
Thanks for taking the time to peep this out! Onto the next project.
Blewitt
