Hey, Folks!
I’d like to start this week’s EDitorial by thanking everyone who helped to make FCBD 2023 such a roaring success! I must admit that I have been disappointed by the attendance level for the event since we emerged from the 2020 Apocalypse and, less significantly, since I took over ownership of the store from Steve. 2021 & 2022 attendance were barley half of what Steve and I had achieved together during FCBD 2019, but this year the attendance went back through the roof and I couldn’t have been more thrilled! So thanks to Teresa and Card Advertising, the Monarch Avengers, Shivers Ice Cream, Kurt Nielson Photography, my employee Brian McMillin, my former sassy employee and door guard, Jake Teelander, and my beloved husband, Hillman Crawford for all of their hard work. I know you all know it already, but I would not have been able to get 6 people to show up without you!
I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately about people looking to sell their comics and believe me, we are interested, but I need to explain a bit about our current situation. Brian and I currently have a rather large collection that we are contending with as well as at least two smaller collections that are currently in waiting. Hillman and I are on the cusp of an exciting road trip to New Jersey of all places to pick another large collection of around 40 long boxes. Because of this I need to let everyone know that there is a line and it may be a couple of weeks until we have the time to sort through your collection. I mean, please remember that there are only two of us here and Brian is waaaaay better at doing it then I am, although I will be digging into the work now that FCBD is past and I have a little more time. As a result, if you are interested in putting your stuff in front of us then there is one of two ways we can go about it. If you have fewer than 50 comics then we can arrange a date and time for you to come in and we can take a quick look at your wares and let you know if we are interested or not at that time. If you have more than 50 comics then you may either drop your comics off where they will go into the queue and we can give you a call when we finish going through them or you could simply hold on to them and arrange to bring them back in when we are through the queue. Either way works for us and always remember that there are several other stores in the area to check with as well.
I’m not quite sure what I am going to do with all of these new back issues…lol. I mean, with a little rearranging I could possibly fit a few more boxes into the back issue area, but soon we are looking at a point of over saturation. Brian has already begun to weed out material from the current back issue boxes to go into he dollar boxes to start making room for possibly better selling back issue stock, but that is only going to get us so far. The 40 boxes we are procuring from the Jersey shore I suspect are going to be mostly dollar books, but who knows? I might be looking at expanding the amount of retail space we have set aside for the Dollar Boxes soon. In any case, keep your eyes focused on the Facebook page where Brian and I will be listing all of the new key back issues we put out for sale in the next month or two and we will also begin letting you know if large runs of back issue “filler” become available as well. Keep you eyes on the box or two (or three) that occasionally pops up on the showcase counters and generally represents new acquisitions that we haven’t quite gotten around to filing out on the back issue boxes. This summer is going to be a “Summer of Back Issues” for Monarch and I can’t wait to see how it goes!
I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to broadcast this week’s episode of Afternoon Delight! Brian and I had mostly gotten everything out back together after Saturday, but we were wholly surprised and delighted by the amount of foot traffic we got through the store on Tuesday and the customers that I hadn’t seen for a minute that I got to have engage in conversations. I’m also dealing with a schedule change in my life that is taking me a little longer to adjust to. Everything should be back on schedule next week!
I hope that everyone has a great weekend and wish Hill and I luck as we start our journey Saturday morning!
Eddie