This episode of Toy Hunter centered around Jordan getting ready for the New York Comicon. Jordan wanted to get four killer pieces for the show. He visited three collectors in the Washington-Baltimore Area. The first one was Cindy who had Star Wars collectibles but no killer pieces. I felt that he paid too high on the Don Post Darth Vader Mask based on the prices on Ebay. The next party was Paula. who was selling her husband’s collection. This was a sad situation as her husband had died and he had not set up any contigences for what to do with the collection if he passed away. This leaves the survivors ripe for cherry picking as what happen here. I am not holding this against Jordan that he was buying certain items as he had a goal of getting pieces he could sell at NY Comicon. The final person was Willis,who Jordan recognized as someone knowledgeable on the collectibles. Because this Jordan slightly changed his style and was prepared for hard dealing from Willis. Jordan told Willis a price for the A-Team Van and then showed Willis that his van would be of lesser value due to condition issues.
The last part of the show was the NY Comicon which gets 100,000 people. Jordan had as his goal to sell $15,000.00, which he did. This section showed various people buying the items that Jordan had bought over the course of the previous months. The big surprise was his friend Mark popped up. This time Jordan correctly identified Mark correctly as dealer not as a collector. They negotiated the price on the three A-Team vehicles which closed the show.
The 15,000.00 that Jordan made from the NY Comicon seemed like a nice pile of money, but that is not the case. Jordan had very high overhead.The NY Comicon is one of the more if not most expensive shows to do as a dealer. Then Jordan had three people working the booth which, which he had to pay. Food at the show which is at the Javitz Center is expensive. If you can, you go out for food. Parking is expensive and if you are not going back home at night a hotel is expensive. So his expenses could have been up to $5000.00. Next you have your cost of goods. If Jordan sold $15,000.00 and his mark ups was 100% he would have netted after expenses about $2500.00. The problem is that not all of the items he had in his booth were at 100% markup. So his profit could have been lower. his profit could been higher if his overhead was lower that what mentioned earlier.This not to knock Jordan for doing the NY Comicon, I just want people to understand that it is a hard life being a collectibles dealer.
That show IS expensive, but if you have the right stuff you can do great.We paid almost $1800 each for 2 corner booths (we had 2 different locations- we sell posters and prints). Parking is $60 or more for the vans, $35 a day when we went in in cars. My partner stays in Parsippany NJ for about $60 a night, but you have the tolls, too. We needed 8 people to man both booths at all times- it NEVER slows down.
There are less and less comic dealers each year, as more of the “normal” general public comes (drawn by the media stars) as opposed to hard-core collectors. LOTS of anime fans and movie/TV buffs. It is a fantastic show- we doubled last year’s numbers; each booth easily beat Jordan’s numbers. BUT- there are NOT a lot of good old toys there, at all! My underwear is older than most of the “collectible” toys there. I set up Tuesday, spent a lot of time walking around during 2 days of set up, and found nothing I wanted, not even considering price.
Sean
Glad that you had a very successful show. I figured that the costs were up there as I know Javitz Center is expensive plus you have to pay for the tables and curtains, etc. You had the right items for that show as the crowd is changing. If we go back to the Phil Seuling cons it was collectibles dealers only. The Creation Con came and we start to see the change with media stars appearing. You still had collectible dealers but it was changing. Now most collectible dealers will pass on the big shows going to smaller shows because of the cost but more so the customers are more dedicate to their product.
When Laurie and I were at Chiller we heard the dealers grumbling about the layout5 etc. what did you hear?
Layout was terrible. Bottleneck of people in the hallway, too many different rooms, etc. I had friends who said they couldn’t find me, though we had a very good spot ion the big room. Too many autograph guests, too few serious buyers. Load-in was a hassle. Still, we had a very good show. Chiller has outgrown the hotels, but Kevin wants to keep it in the hotels so his band can play, they can have late night events, etc. It COULD fill a convention center. But I admire that Kevin wants to do it his way when he could probably make more money elsewhere. It is immediately too big for every hotel it goes to. Kevin is a good guy- I’ve known him for 25 years or so, now- and the rare type that doesn’t put money first.
We started out doing the Seuling second Sunday shows in the late 70’s ($25 a table), and his big NYC July 4th weekend convention. I recall loading in through the basement of the Statler Hilton with the rats going through the reeking garbage. Ah, memories! Back then, it was comics and that was it. We were geeks, mostly under the media radar, except for the odd “Can you believe grown men spend money on old comic books?” story that would run on the news now and then. Phil was another good guy, dying way too soon.