SALES TO ASTONISH #27 - NOVEMBER 2024
October was an outlier. An anomaly. A real oddity in comparison to all the other months of 2024.
Normal service was resumed almost as soon as Halloween ended and All Saints Day began.
November has long been a strong month (even without any Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales) and 2024 was no exception. That’s not to say it was without its challenges, every business faces them, but we’ll come on to them later. But to start with let’s concentrate on something I love doing - buying comics 😎
Even before I started The Unreality Store I loved buying comics. I had a monthly order with Ace Comics for over 20 years and regularly bought back issues at conventions and via eBay. There’s something quite exciting about finding comics you’ve never seen before, or satisfying when you fill a gap in your collection or that sense of anticipation when you start a new series. I bought a couple of collections during November and the buzz still hasn’t diminished. Yes, there’s the odd groan when you discover yet another run of Justice League Europe (the first thirty or so issue of which were not bad at all) or another 50+ issues of Cable (where there really that many Cable fans in the 90’s and where are they now??), but there’s always some treasure lurking in the boxes and I love the challenge of figuring out how to turn four colour funnies into income. It can be a dirty old business too - by the time I had gone through 9 longboxes I had accumulated a bin bag of old dusty slightly yellow comic bags that were duly despatched to the tip. If anyone can think of a way to recycle that plastic as old bags are removed from collections across the globe they could be on to a winner 😀
One of the challenges buying these collections created was storage - where do all these comics, along with all the stock that is currently available for sale on the website, the unprocessed stock and my personal collection, get stored? It’s often noted that more comics come into The Unreality Store HQ than go out 😆
Another challenge I have touched on before and but am acutely aware of, is how to get people back to the website aside from a weekly visit on a Thursday when there has historically been new product offered. To address that I’ve started to drop more comics into the store on a Saturday and do some intermittent sales posts during the week on Twitter & Instagram. Being a creature of habit and routine I would like to get into a groove of doing some themed offerings on weekdays like Magazine Monday, Tradepaperback Tuesday, White Dwarf Wednesday for example. This is definitely on the to do list for 2025
The final challenge November raised was whether to continue doing Comic Conventions in 2025 or to knock them on the head once and for all. I did two in November - Daventry and Leicester and neither were particularly good from a sales point of view. At Daventry I barely broke even and at Leicester I sold a few comics but ended up buying 6 boxes off a fellow dealer so came home with new stock but an empty wallet 😀😀 The problem I have experienced throughout 2024 with Comic Cons is twofold - the inability to take a big enough inventory to satisfy every possible request and more importantly the fact that there are very few comic buyers at these conventions. I have tried to address former by posting on the social media pages of the events that I am able to bring along any of my online stock to a convention if someone wanted something. This would help mitigate the risk every trader has turning up to an event and hoping that the attendance is huge and the attendees have money to spend in abundance. Secondly although the word ‘comic’ is in the title of the event there are very few comic collectors at these conventions and therefore sales can be thin on the ground. This often results in the perfect storm (like Nottingham and Newmarket) where I failed to cover the cost of my table let alone petrol, stock, sundries and my time. Ultimately I have made the decision that these type of events aren’t good for me both financially and mentally. Bad shows = mental doom & gloom.
Despite those challenges November saw steady online sales and by the time people were readying their advent calendars it had turned out to be a record month in terms of the number of orders placed online. There were a couple of key sales like Secret Wars #8 @ £165 and Sandman #8 @ £50 but main sale of the month came from a large sale of G.I Joe issues. I never really got into G.I Joe, or Transformers for that matter, as I reckon I probably missed their peak popularity in the 1990’s by a couple of years - I was always an Action Force man and wiser more knowledgeable heads can advise whether this was an Anglicised version of G.I Joe but clearly there is a huge following for both franchises. I was staggered by the prices commanded by the last 10-12 issues of the Marvel G.I Joe series - I sold #155 (which still had the subscription card intact) in VFN- for £100.
November seemed to put things back on an even keel following on from October. Let’s see what December brings and whether Santa decides to deliver that missing comic for your collection or whether you decide to treat yourself to a present or two 😎😎
See you next month for the double-header of the December STA and the 2024 Year in Review!
