SALES TO ASTONISH #29 - JANUARY 2025
New Year.
A New Hope.
Star Wars reference aside there’s always something exiting about the start of a new calendar year. Yes the resolutions might only last a couple of days or a fortnight at best but there’s a certain energy about what you feel you can do in the coming twelve months and the fact that there’s uncharted territory to be discovered.
The first week in January I took some time away for a short holiday and also an opportunity to look at future locations for The Unreality Store HQ in the North West. The break was a good time recharge batteries etc and at some point in 2025 a move to the area appears to be a distinct possibility. How that is managed in terms of logistics of stock movement and storage and being able to keep the website trading with minimal disruption will take some careful planning.
The time away did mean that on the first Thursday of January there was no new stock released onto the website. As I touched on last month I’m delighted that over the last 5 years I have built up a hardy band of back issue followers who have become accustomed to new stock dropping into the store every Thursday. Thursday’s are by far my busiest day and I would liken it to New Comic Book day in a bricks and mortar store when on a Tuesday/Wednesday people come in to collect the week’s new releases. Now my sales of back issues are nowhere near the size of revenue generated by new comic sales but having a kind of regularity of income helps. But like bricks and mortar stores if they don’t receive a weekly order their sales decline as do mine if there are no new releases in store on a Thursday. This is kind of a long winded way of putting into context that even holidays or breaks due to illness for example must be planned for. The slump in sales duly occurred but it was expected. Whether or not I can do something in future to mitigate against these slow downs such as a sale whilst I am away is something for consideration
Whilst I am on the subject of sales, I ran another Blue Monday Sale again this January. According to people in the know Blue Monday is the most depressing day in January - kind of equidistant from Christmas and January pay day or something like that. Coming up relatively hot on the heels of a Boxing Day sale my expectations were relatively modest but I did manage to sell some indies at 51% off. I was offering the same discount on books and had someone abandon their cart with a bunch of discounted books in it. Frustrating but it has led me to the decision to start to remove the books from the website and move them into Brackley Antiques Cellar where books seem to sell quite well.
On the whole January had been a pretty quiet month until I started to work through a collection of Amazing Spider-Man issues I picked up in a collection prior to Christmas. These had all pretty much been snapped up by the end of January and goes to show that demand for Spidey’s adventures from the 1980’s remains as strong as ever. Some key sales from the issues I dropped into store were
ASM #238 (with Tatooz) VFN- @£175
ASM #252 FN @£125
ASM #300 FN @£185
I think the Spidey issues were well priced and that’s why they moved so quickly. Not only do I need quick turnover, over the years I’ve come up to learn there’s no point in having fantastic stock if it’s overpriced and doesn’t sell. It may look great when someone visits the website for the first time but that doesn’t pay the bills.
On the subject of pricing there are occasions when I lose an item or I may have not graded it as strictly as I usual do so this means that I need to replace the item. I prefer to do this rather than just arbitrarily refund the purchase. This often takes me to eBay to pick up a replacement and aside from navigating the different opinions on condition between sellers the thing that amazes me most is the pricing on issues that I would consider to be run of the mill (for want of a better expression). The circulation numbers of Marvel and DC comics from the 1980’s to 2000’s were often in the tens of thousands for even the secondary and tertiary titles and in some cases the hundreds of thousands for titles like Spiderman and X-Men. Granted there are plenty of Copper/Modern Age keys in this period but for gap fillers I would tend to look at a price of £3 for an issue in NM- and then work down from there as the condition deteriorates. Looking on eBay where some of these issues are offered at £5 (and more) always amazes me and gives me encouragement that eventually someone looking for back issues is going to find the website and realise that my prices are keen and competitive and hopefully give me a go.
As January wound to a close I found myself sorting out some stock from collections I had picked up in 2024. There’s always a load of four colour paper in every collection that has a negligible value (but enjoyed by the person who originally acquired it) and this type of stock takes up a lot of space. So if your fancy a visit to Northamptonshire be sure to check out Vintage Guru in Northampton or the Antiques Cellar in Brackley where I’ve been bundling up some titles and pricing them up for some good fun cheap reading.
When the month drew to a close I was pleasantly surprised to find that January 25 was an improvement on January 24. If that’s going to be the same for the next eleven months of the year then that will be fantastic, amazing and spectacular 😎
