SALES TO ASTONISH #33 - MAY 2025
I love watching the Deal Masters TV Channel. Yes there’s a lot of old trashy programmes on there like Hard Core Pawn and The Liquidator but there’s so much interesting viewing if you are trying to understand the psychology of sales and dare I say it ‘the art of the deal’ 😆
These are all old episodes and they appear to be re-run over the space of the month so in some cases I’ve watched a few episodes twice but I came across a couple I hadn’t seen this month and there two things that happened that I could easily apply to running the Unreality Store
Firstly in Hard Core Pawn, Les Gold owner of the pawn shop in Detroit was arguing with his kids about the stuff he was buying. His point was that if someone had bought something once then there would be someone out there to buy the item again. That was music to my ears (but not my partner of 10 years in May!) although not necessarily quantified by the time it might find another buyer and also the outlay for storage etc on the item coming out of the profit margin. I’m guessing that Les’s business relies on a quick turn over of items and if he’s buying something unique or niche he will probably already have a buyer in mind. It struck a chord with me as I looked over the list of a collection I had been offered to buy. Whilst there may be another buyer somewhere at some point for most titles it would far surpass my life time to connect all the back issues on the list with new buyers and therefore this has to be taken into consideration whenever I’m buying stock in. More often than not the seller quite rightly just wants to part with their items and achieve the best price possible and in most cases a price that they feel is as close to retail value as opposed to wholesale. It’s not their problem to store, re-bag and board, grade, photograph and market the collection once it’s no longer theirs. I had mentioned in passing that someone had spoken of a collection of around 30000 comics that might possibly come to market and the response was ‘Oh that’s going to be worth a lot of money isn’t it?’ To which I said it really depends on what the titles are, the condition and all the other variables I’ve just mentioned and, like Les Gold, having buyers in mind for however much stock you need to shift as quickly as possible to cover your outlay and move into profit. I passed on the collection I was looking at as the sellers expectations were unrealistic but at the end of May I bought what is to date, the largest collection I’ve ever acquired
Five car trips back and forth to Birmingham saw me fill up all my available storage space with a mixture of comics and roleplaying games and magazines. Now the comics were 98% DC from late 90’s to present day and in a lot of cases weren’t stored particularly well. This has meant some have been a bit warped by damp, have corner curls etc but some are salvageable and the readable issues I’ll take to conventions and sell really cheaply. The roleplaying game stuff dates back to 1970’s through to present. Some of the old stuff is still in (or partially in) original shrink wrapping and the newer hardcovers look new and unread. There are some items that are damage by mildew and could probably benefit from some professional restoration or TLC given their rarity. I paid the seller over what we had originally agreed and committed to give them some more money in the future once I started to get some momentum selling some of the bigger ticket items. I genuinely believe that’s the right thing to do and hopefully I’ll be picking up another collection soon where I’ve exceeded the expectations of the seller in their own valuation of their items. Treating people fairly is just as important as making a living out of what I do.
Equally as important for me is when people are offering me something for sale and that they are transparent. For every collection I try to buy there are at least 5 others where my offer has been used as leverage against other buyers or the seller has ‘no idea’ of the value of their collection only to turn into an expert once an offer has been made. The key to all of the aforementioned programmes on Deal Masters is that everyone who goes into Les’s store, speaks to the Liquidator or has an audience with The Duke knows deep down what they want for their items. Whether they get it or not is a different matter but to claim otherwise isn’t fair to the buyer and more often than not doesn’t lead to a deal.
May was a fractious month. I never really seemed to get much momentum in terms of getting new stuff up in store and was also faced with a dwindling stock position which thankfully the aforementioned collection has in part solved. Most weeks in May were punctuated with activities that involved family and friends which were all amazing but when you are self-employed you tend to get a bit conscious that any time spent not concentrating on your business is costing you money. However that’s a sure fire way to burn out so the breaks in May were appreciated for a number of reasons.
Despite not getting as much stuff up in store, May ended up being slightly better than April in terms of sales and revenue and also in terms of website activity. The one standout metric this year continues to be an increase in website activity which is great as you can’t sell something to someone if they don’t know you exist. I’d like to say that there were a number of Key Sales in May but there weren’t. I did sell £200 of Middle Earth Roleplaying supplements to someone in Ireland and a set of Zenith graphic novels for £60 but the month seemed to be punctuated by regulars and new buyers alike picking up issues to fill gaps, complete runs or buy and try something new.
The most worrying trend however and this is one that has kind of crept up on me during 2025 in the lack of response and sales to the traditional Thursday and now Saturday product launches. I tried to experiment with something slightly different in May and look at reducing the size of the Thursday launch and put more stock up in store on other days. To be honest it didn’t really work using my emailer as a platform to advertise this but there’s a germ of an idea there which I can eventually turn into something that might get new products in front of people without clogging up an inbox.
As I sit and finish writing this I’ve just looked outside and the weather has turned. If we are in for the usually damp inglorious summer then maybe people might stay in and buy comics. If not then I’ve got mounds of RPG stuff to shift so hopefully all you gamers out there don’t tie up your dice bags for the summer and keep on slaying those demons.
See you all next month 😎
