Steep Discount Comics Sale - Baltimore Con Report! Howdy! I am more than a bit blurry this morning, as Ashley and I drove from Baltimore to Wilmington, Delaware late last evening. While that distance is actually rather small (about 100 miles), we had spent nearly this entire past weekend trying to make sense out of a complete dealer's booth full of Silver Age and Bronze Age comics that I purchased at the Baltimore Comics-Con. While it had never been my intention to buy such a large collection of older comics so soon after scoring those two huge pre-1980 comics deals that I acquired last week, that huge single purchase turned out to be the very best deal that greeted us upon our arrival at the show. The seller, who is one of our most consistent suppliers of older comics, had cleared out over 10,000 pre-1980 comics from his own inventory, and offered them to me at the start of the Baltimore show at a price (w/terms) that I simply could not refuse. While it might seem that buying one big deal (as opposed to a dozen or more smaller collections) would be most advantageous for us, it actually goes against the philosophic grain of my typical purchasing at conventions. My greatest single desire at shows is to help out the cash flows of as many of my fellow comics dealers as I possibly can, so I usually spend a convention slowly working my way through the dealer's room, spending a few hundred, up to maybe a couple thousand, dollars with at least a dozen of my compatriots in the comics world. This pattern fulfills not only my altruistic desires, but also acts to increase the diversity of what I ship back to Denver. All of the above having been said, my first two deals at the show consisted of 2,000 brand new comics (published during the past six months), and a large number of 1985-2008 high grade comics from more popular genres such as HELLBOY, DEADPOOL, SIN CITY, and GREEN LANTERN. I also scored a complete run of SANDMAN in VF/NM so those early purchases filled my quota of several major genres. The deal for the entire booth consisted of a few Golden Age comics, a large number of Silver and Bronze issues, and a very nice collection of ephemera, such as rare trade paperbacks and hardbacks from the 1970's and early 1980's. There were also a few very high grade MARVEL SUPER SPECIAL #1 featuring KISS that we have not had in stock in quite some time), and over 2,000 variant and signed comics. Simply put, this one deal filled in so many gaps in our online inventory that I realized that it was imperative that I purchase it for you. Where things got a little weird with our booth purchase, however, was in the fact that there were multiple copies on a lot of the Bronze Age comics, and the rest of the deal was pretty much completely out of order. Had I been alone, I simply would have covered up the entire booth, and then just used it as a storage area. Having Ashley along made things far more complicated, however, as I am working very hard to teach her the comics business. I already have booths arranged for her to sell from at next week's Montreal convention, at East Hanover at the end of September, and at the Wizard New York show that begins October 1st. That being the case, it seemed ridiculous for us to then waste a booth in Baltimore that cost our supplier $650 to rent. What this ended up meaning is that I found myself in the weird position of putting about 5,000 high grade Bronze Age comics on sale for Ashley to retail, and then scrambling like a madman to shop my own boxes (!) to strip out the books that we needed for our website inventory before Ashley sold them out from under me. This would have been a relatively simply process under normal circumstances, but it turned out that Baltimore was the one convention where, quite literally, hundreds of readers of this newsletter came to meet me! I enjoyed the dickens out of those brief interludes of getting to meet folks, but Ashley excelled in the meantime, selling over $2,000 in comics from our booth purchase, most before I could sort through them. Suffice it to say, I was nearly frantic trying to up with Ashley's efforts, especially since very astute fans and dealers kept buying stacks of high grade Bronze issues from us at prices that I would gladly have paid other dealers. At the end of the day, however, we still came out way, way ahead on this deal, as Ashley learned a lot, and I made one great last-minute deal on Sunday afternoon that easily replaced all of the comics that Ashley sold, with even better issues. All-in-all, we had a great time at the Baltimore Comic-Con! Adrienne, Ashley, Chuck, Kiyomi, Laura (click on image for larger view) Speaking of having a great time, I would like to invite those of you living near New York City to attend a concert with us next Friday evening. There are no major conventions for us to attend over Labor Day, so Ashley and I are going to go to a club in Manhattan, The Studio at Webster Hall, on Friday evening to see the final stop of the Hunter Valentine tour. Hunter Valentine is a three-girl lesbian band from Toronto, that plays LOUD rock. Ashley brought their first CD along on our San Diego trip, and I came to really like them, so we went to their August 25th concert in Denver. In person, the women of Hunter Valentine are even more dynamic and LOUD than on their record, so we had a fantastic time at the live show! Ashley then hit it off really well with the band members, so they invited us to their New York closing date. If you would like to see and hear a sample of Hunter Valentine's music, I highly recommend that you visit YouTube and watch their Let's Not Be Typical video. It rocks! I'll close out today's newsletter by reminding everyone that our current 40% off LABORDAY codeword is now entering it's final week. We host the LABORDAY sale for you each year as a way of giving thanks for your support of our efforts here at Mile High Comics (please keep in mind the codeword does not apply to new comics, trade paperbacks, hard covers, graphic novels, statues, or supplies). Even with all of the great collections that I have been purchasing of late, however, we simply cannot afford to keep such a generous sale in effect indefinitely. That's why I have asked Will and Pam to put extra effort into making certain that as many of the great comics as possible from the two huge collections that I purchased last week are graded and entered into our online inventory for you before the sale ends. If you check out our New-In-Stock and Premium New-In-Stock listings for the past week, I think that you will easily see the extent of Will and Pam's efforts on your behalf, as they have managed to add over 26,500 more comics into our online inventory during just the past 5 Working days. With 40% off available to you via the LABORDAY codeword, and free shipping also still yours on all larger orders (no express carriers), this week is a great time to be working on filling in the holes in your collection. Please do have some fun this week, and come out to play with us on Friday night, if you can! Happy Collecting! Chuck Rozanski, President - Mile High Comics, Inc. 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