65%-75% Off Comics Sale Sets Record For Orders! Howdy! Chuck and Rain Gods from Tesuque Pueblo (click on image for larger view) As I had estimated last Friday, Pam's inventory team was able to grade, bag, and enter into our computer system over 62,000 (!) back issue comics and magazines last week. As a direct result, our New-In-Stock listing for this past Saturday was the largest in our entire history! That having been said, you would think that our weekend sales would have been really quite spectacular as a direct result. Nope. Not even close. With the world economy in dire straits, and more bad news seemingly coming out every day, everyone seems really spooked these days. It also did not help one bit (according to an extensive article in the New York Times) that every major department store chain in the USA (including Wal-Mart) started dumping their Christmas merchandise last Friday at discounts ranging from 40%-60% off. Steep discounting this far before the holiday season has even begun is completely unprecedented behavior on the part of the big retailers. In addition, most food and sundries retailers are also suddenly steep discounting their goods. My wife Nanette, and my eldest daughter Rowan, went on a coupon-clipping frenzy in this Sunday's newspaper, ending up finding all sorts of bargains out there for food and household items at prices ranging from 50%-80% off. Simply put, the retailing world as I have previously known it for my entire life has suddenly gone into a discounting frenzy. I started out today's newsletter by mentioning the completely abnormal behavior of my fellow retailers as a prelude to my announcing a stunning new codeword sale. Effective immediately, the SUNSHINE codeword sale will allow you to deduct 30% from your total cost for all back issue comics and magazines that we list on our website, excluding only new comics, and the Dallas Stephens consignment issues (also the codeword does not apply to trade paperbacks, hard covers, graphic novels, statues, or supplies). Where this sale becomes a truly spectacular for you is in the fact that all of our back issues are already listed at a minimum of 50% off, with a great many at 55%-80% off. When multiplied together the combined effect of the 30% SUNSHINE discount and the existing minimum 50% off website discount allow you to gather up almost any back issue that you wish to own on our website for 65%-85% off! I am also returning ALL of our trade paperbacks to a minimum of 30% off, so that reaching our free shipping minimum requirements of $50 for orders in the USA and $125 for International orders will become much easier for your to achieve (no express carriers). Please do bear in mind, however, that the 30% SUNSHINE codeword applies only to our back issues, and cannot be used on books, statues, or supplies. Those non-back issue categories are all discounted for you directly on our website. In all honesty, cutting our prices so steeply makes me more than a little uneasy. At 65%-85% off we're earning next to nothing on our gross sales, if anything at all. After all that we've achieved this year, however, I simply refuse to allow one period of economic unrest to undermine all of the great progress that we've made from January-October. Blessedly, to this point in time our sales are still up significantly for 2008, over 2007. What last weekend forced me to recognize, however, was that even though our back issue comics are already entertainment and collectibles bargains, our company is still a part of the greater economic environment. When every other major retailer in the entire US economy is discounting at levels never before seen in our lifetimes, then we have to match their efforts, even if our business has been doing quite well. So, please do enjoy this unprecedented opportunity for you to buy our comics for pennies on the dollar. If nothing else, during these otherwise gloomy days, the incredible savings of our SUNSHINE codeword sale should bring a glimmer of joy into your heart! Happy collecting! Chuck Rozanski, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. Advance Previews of next weeks comics from Archie Comics PS: Among the tens of thousands of comics that we added into our online inventory last week were over 30,000 Marvel comics that I intentionally downgraded from VF/NM into the lower grades of FAIR, GOOD, VERY GOOD, and FINE. While our weekend sales were nowhere near my expectations, I did see a number of orders where canny collectors loaded up on these high-grade issues for the ridiculously cheap prices of the lower grades. The 30% off SUNSHINE codeword also applies to these downgraded issues, which means that you can purchase huge numbers of Marvel comics from us right now for under $1 each. In the most extreme instances, where comics are priced at fifty cents in FAIR, the net price to you is only Thirty-five cents per issue. Since we had very few genuine FAIR Marvels in stock before I began downgrading, most of these FAIR issues are actually VF/NM. I've haven't offered individual Marvel comics for sale that inexpensively since about 1980... Current Newsletter