Don't Do This!

I'm obscuring the vendor tag to protect the innocent, since I'm looking to make a general point, not single anyone out.  Check this out:

Even though I'm not showing you the tag, let me assure you that it's marked at waaaaay more than a dollar.

It's one thing to sell Dollar Tree stuff in your booth, and there's nothing wrong with that.  If people want to buy it, they will.  Kosh knows, there's plenty of it out there at yard sales and thrifts.

It's another thing to sell Dollar Tree stuff for more than the dollar it cost when new.  Again, there's nothing inherently wrong about it, depending on the item.  If people want to buy it, they will.  I even do it myself sometimes (but never for more than $1.99).

It's even another thing to sell Dollar Tree stuff for several times more than the dollar it originally cost.  There's still nothing wrong with it, or at least trying it.  Dollar Tree and the like do get some decent stuff, after all.  If someone wants to buy it at that price, they will.  Never hurts to try.  You never know what's going to happen.

However, if you are going to try that, you need to be sure to remove the Dollar Tree tag!  Seriously. Customers do notice such things.

I try not to buy a lot of Dollar Tree merch at yard sales and such, unless it's a really awesome piece.  (And there are some of those.  The one I am holding in the pic is way cool.  You'll have to take my word for that.)  The quality is just not there, and the stuff breaks and chips way too easily for my tastes.  Plus, a lot of it is really cheesy/tacky and just not what I want to sell.  I like to try and have things that are different from what other sellers are carrying.

If you feel the same was  I do about this stuff, one thing to know is what distribution companies to look for.  You can see in the tag above that it comes from Dollar Tree Distributing.  That "K's Collection" tag is a giveaway too, since that's a brand that is only sold in stores like Dollar Tree.  Other names to look for are Dolgencorp (distribution for Dollar General Stores) and Greenbrier Distributing.

You've got to make your own decisions about what to sell and how to sell it, based on what works for you and your location/venue, for sure.  But if you do try to make serious buck off of something that someone, somewhere originally purchased for a dollar, at least remove all the evidences of its past.  You'll have better luck selling it if you do.

The Price is Right Part I: Tag! You're it!

I've been cogitating some on the concept of pricing and have decided to throw some thoughts up on the blog and see what happens.  Future installments will deal with the science of finding the right price for an item, having the right rand of prices for your booth/establishment, which numbers to use when pricing, and pricing to sell.  Today, however, I want to talk about the mechanics of pricing.

If you're going to sell stuff, you have to have a way to affix something to it that lets a buyer know how much it costs. Sounds simple, right?  For the most part, it is, but it can be a little more complicated than you would think.

Consider that you want to attach something to your item that will:

a. Clearly indicate the price of the item
b. Have enough room for you to write an item description
c. Adhere/attach firmly to the item in order to prevent tag-switching
d. Be easy for the purchaser to remove without damaging the item
e. Make it easy enough for the store cashier to do what they have to do, whether that be remove the tag or enter information into a database, in order to record the sale properly
f. Not cover or obscure any important markings or labels on the item
g. Not make it too difficult to make attractive displays in your booth

That's an awful lot to demand from one price tag!

In the early days of my booth, I generated price labels from a spreadsheet that I used to track items.  It was a speedy way to create labels and also to minimize the number of times I was handling an item, but all the labels were address size, making it hard to use them for extremely small items.

Some stores, especially higher end antique markets, may have standards that your labels have to meet.  Some even require that you use the store's own custom labels, which may be an extra expense for you.  Labels in general will most likely be an extra expense, unless you have a huge stash/hoard of office supplies for some reason.

 

Even then, there are not all labels will adhere well to non-paper items.  Lots of file folder labels don't, for example.  Other things that don't adhere well include those little colored dots that everyone uses to rank ideas in focus groups and brainstorming meetings.  They're designed to be removable, so they come off easily and don't stick to some materials at all.  Post it notes are not the best idea either, for much the same reasons.

Then there are those labels, like name tags, that are super sticky and leave either residue or remnants on whatever they're stuck to.  On the one hand, they'll prevent theft by tag switch.  On the other, you'll have a frustrated customer who might not shop from you again.  Which is worse?

I'm in the kind of place where I have to really be on guard against the tag-switchers, so I will usually tape my tags on, just to be safe.  There are some things that I cannot do this with, of course, like delicately painted vintage items, but it works okay for me.  I have a case of the tear by hand kind of packing tape that I got at an auction several years ago for dirt cheap.  I'm still going through it, so my extra expense for taping is minimal.  That kind of tape is just sticky enough, without being too sticky, so it works for most things.  Using tape also lets me use some of the less adhesive kind of labels, so I buy labels by the handful at yard sales and the like, so I can get them cheaply.

When it comes to string tags, I will actually tie the string in a knot, rather than slipping it over itself into a loop, just for the extra security.  String tags minimize the risk of damaging the items, but they definitely add an expense to the item.  Buying in bulk minimizes the cost per tag.

I see a lot of newbie vendors using those labels they make for yard sales with the pre-printed price.  The problem with those is that they're easy to remove and they have no room for a description.  That description can make all the difference when it comes to making sure your items go out at the price you want for them.  I try to be as thorough as I can when I describe things for that very reason. A rage that just says "Booth 7742" on it with just a .99 price is too inviting to some people.  It might end up on another, more expensive item of yours, or even on someone else's item.  It's impossible for mall staff to keep up with every item in every vendor's booth, so we have to do our part to minimize theft.

I know I'm making it sound like most vendor malls are just crawling with rip off artists, but it's really like most things in life.  Ninety-five percent of the people you meet and know are good, decent folks just trying to make their way in life.  It's the other 5% you have to watch out for and take all these extra steps for.  Fortunately, I haven't had too much of a problem out of that 5%, in part because I work hard to prevent it.

Another option is writing on the item.  I know plenty of vendors who price things with a big ole black Sharpie.  I mean why not?  It's quick, easy, efficient, hard to switch and doesn't really add to the cost of the item.  It also involves WRITING ON THE ITEM!  I know some of the vintage lovers out there have just fainted, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad idea, as long as you're selective about it.  No paper.  Nothing delicate or antique. No fine wood furniture. But putting .25 and your booth number on the bottom of a coffee mug?  Go for it!

That does raise the issue of removal, but Sharpie isn't as permanent as people think.  A little Windex, a Mr Clean Magic Eraser, or even a little soap and water can usually take care of it.  Of course, those things can also damage certain finishes, but you shouldn't write on those finishes with Sharpies to begin with!

Speaking of writing on stuff, I am astounded at how long it too make to realize that I could lightly write the price in pencil on the inside of a book!  Seriously, it was years before I realized that!  That also works for most ephemera.  At least for me.  If an item is really delicate, I'll bag it before pricing.

So what happens if a tag comes off an item?  Well, most malls won't sell the item, since they don't know whose it is or how much it is.  What happens with it after that may vary from place to place, but should be spelled out in your contract or somewhere else.  In our Peddlers Mall, it goes to a storage room that vendors are encouraged to check as often as they like.  I try to check it at least once or twice a month.  All items placed there are dated, and after thirty days, they become the property of the mall.  Every couple of weeks or so, mall staff clean out items over thirty days old, mark them (usually really cheaply) and put them out for sale, with the money going to the store.  I make it a point to check the booth where they put things frequently, because there are a lot of bargains to be found there.  It can help make up for a weak yard sale weekend.

Again, all of this is spelled out in our contracts and vendors are frequently reminded to check the untagged room for their things.  Surprisingly, many don't.

Of course, it goes without saying that your mileage is going to vary on this topic.  How you price items depends on what you sell and where you sell them.  Your own personal aesthetic plays a part too.  I tend to view pricing as more of a practical thing I have to do to sell stuff, but I know that, for some folks, creating an attractive overall effect is important.  It's all good, if it works for you.

So what about you?  If you're selling in a mall or flea market, what do you use to price your items?  How do you prevent tag-switching and theft?  Any tips or advice to add?  How do you feel about Sharpies?  What does your store do with untagged items?  Share your thoughts, etc in the comments.

Tales from the Pavement (Addendum)

For some reason, I left off my favorite story from the last Peddlers Mall sidewalk sale in my Tales from the Pavement post.  That's what happens when you don't take notes or at least make a list before starting a blog.  Oddly enough, it just kind of occurred to me the other night, just as I was falling asleep, that I had forgotten to include that story.  Seriously.  Just like that.  Out of the blue.  Several days after the post was published.

Sometimes, I think I'm just plain weird.

Anyway, since the story really does exemplify some truths about the junking business, it really needs to be told.  Since I'm going way more low key this time around for the sidewalk sale, I may not have too many tales to share next week.  So enjoy this late addition, just in case I end up having a boring run on Saturday.

I had this really ugly, beat-up microwave cart in my stuff at the sale.  I hated the thing.  It's the kind of thing I would never buy on my own and certainly not the kind of merchandise I want to have associated with my booth.  The only reason I had it was because it was kind of forced upon me by my uncle when I was buying leftover stock from him.  He had been using it to stack stuff on and didn't need it any more.  It doesn't have to be pretty when you're just stacking stuff on it.  It just has to be sturdy, and it certainly was that.

So he starts off trying to sell it to me for 2 bucks, and I pass.  Then it becomes "free, if you want it."  Still, I pass.  Then it becomes, "Here, I'll carry this to the car for you."  What could I do?  He was determined to get rid of the thing and I was stuck with it.

I had marked it for a couple bucks and put it in the booth.  There it sat.  Out of place and in the way.  Unwanted.  Since it was still usable, I could not bring myself to throw it away.  That violates my own personal junker code.  I could have donated it, but I had kind of mixed feelings about that, since my uncle had given it to me. So I was stuck.

I hauled it down to the sidewalk sale, along with some other dud furniture, and priced it at a buck.  I didn't have high hopes, but in the middle of the afternoon, a woman looked at it and yelled at me.  She was asking if the price was correct. I told her it was and she got really excited.  I mean really excited.

Her daughter needed a TV stand, and she was trying to help her out.  She needed something cheap, but was having a hard time hitting yard sales because of her work hours.  By the time she gets off on Saturday, they're mostly over.  She carried on about that ugly microwave cart like it was some kind of antique treasure.

I was just happy the damn thing was gone.  And I even got a dollar for it.  Hell, I would have paid her the dollar to take it!

Sometimes, it really is true that one man's trash is someone else's treasure.

How to sell something

About ten years ago, I was planning a vacation to San Francisco to attend APE.  I had saved some money, done some extra house-sitting, and cashed a couple of savings bonds, all in an effort to scrape up some extra money for the trip.

A couple of weeks before leaving, I cleaned out my closets, comic book collection, CD's, and bookshelves and loaded up the car with stuff, which I took around town to sell.  This is ages before I ever even thought about having a booth, so I hit every place I knew that would buy stuff.  A few stops later, I had 500 more dollars for the trip!

I didn't sell everything, but I sold most of it.  The big money came from the comic shop, because I selected what I wanted to sell very carefully, picking things I knew they would want.  The other stuff was more of a shot in the dark.  Two bookstores bought a few things, but I learned that one of them really preferred hardcovers.  Most of the books ended up going to Half-Price Books, which doesn't pay that much, but I had enough of a quantity (along with comic books that I knew the comic store wouldn't want and leftover CD's) that I got a decent payout from them.  I would never go to HPB to make serious bank, but they're great for squeezing a few bucks out of your leftovers.

I learned a few things about selling stuff along the way, and, even though things have changed a bit since then (namely the economy), most of those lessons still hold.  When I started reselling seriously five years ago, I also started picking up more tidbits about selling that I added to the list.  When you've got a booth or do eBay or whatever, you eventually become a target from someone with a few boxes or a basement or garage full of stuff to sell.  Since I've already talked about how not sell something, I thought I would balance it out with something a bit more positive, so here are some ideas and points to help sell your stuff.

We are going to assume, for brevity's sake, that you are going to be dealing with a reasonable and fair reseller/dealer.  Most of us are.  For every asshole, there are dozens of us who treat people with respect and integrity.  If you need help finding the right people to work with, ask around.  If you do find yourself in a bad experience, walk away from it.  A better one is probably just around the corner.  You should be treated with respect and decency.  If you are working with one vendor, but you cannot seem to come to terms, ask them who else you could take your stuff to. 

You are trying to make a business transaction.  Remember that and act accordingly.  This means pushiness is OUT.  Politeness is IN.  If you want to do this kind of thing regularly, you need connections (relationships).  Someone who has already had an unpleasant encounter with you will not be so willing to deal with you again.  Even if no sale results, treat the encounter as an opportunity to build a relationship and learn about your prospective buyer and what you could do to make the transaction go better next time.

The person you are dealing with probably knows more than you.  They may or may not know more about your items, but they definitely know a lot of things you don't know:

• How well this type of item has sold for them in the past
• How many they may have in stock or in reserve at this moment
• How appropriate your item is for their venue
• What the market is for this type of item
• How much they can get for your item
• What their expenses will be in selling your item

They will use this information to make a buying decision about your stuff.  You need to listen to them and let them.  They're also going to know what they are talking about.

I once watched a guy coming back to a store at the end of the day to try and accept an offer he had rejected that morning.  He had driven his stuff all over town trying to get the better offer he knew was out there.  Turns out the one he had rejected was the best one he got all day.  The first words out of his mouth were:  "You all were right."  The next thing he said was:  "I am so sick of trying to sell these damn things."

It's not personal.  Your buyer is making a decision based on your item, not you personally.  If you take it personally or get offended, then they will most definitely make their next decision about dealing with you a negative one.

You are dealing with someone who does what they do to make money.  If you come in expecting top dollar, you're probably not going to get it.  If they pay you the top of the line price, then there is no room for them to make any money.  If they cannot see making money, then they won't buy.  We all like the things we sell, but profit is what keeps us in business.  Don't begrudge your buyer their livelihood.

Know who you are dealing with.  If you are dealing with a store, call and find out when and how they buy.  Some only see items by appointment.  Others may not be interested in certain items.  You might have to drop things off and come back for an offer.  (Be sure to keep a list of your items if you do this.) If you are consigning, know the policies, especially the timeframes for an item to sell.  Also, if you are dealing with a business, they may ask for ID or have you complete paperwork verifying that the items you are selling are yours to sell.  (I don't have the space here to tell you the stories about why this step is necessary.)

If you are selling to someone with a booth somewhere, check out their space and see what they sell.  If you are not offering the kinds of items they are selling, they're probably not going to buy from you.  Nothing annoys me more than someone wanting to sell me clothing while talking to me at my booth, where there is no clothing in sight!

Have a realistic price in mind for your items.  One of the first things I ask someone trying to sell me stuff is: "What do you want for it?"  Most, if not all, resellers do this as a way to gauge what the seller is thinking and how the deal might go.  If the response is:  "What will you give me?" then that's a sign things might not go well.  You're entering a negotiation.  Come prepared.  The person you're trying to sell to is giving you a chance to own the negotiation.  Don't blow it.  If you leave all control in their hands, then there's a higher chance you are going to feel disappointed with the deal.  Remember, you want to build a relationship here so you can do this again.  You do that by actively participating.

You need to have a realistic (more on that in a minute) opening price and a bottom line price in mind.  You may not always get your opening price, but you need to know how low you are willing to go before it becomes not worth it to you.  You're trying to make some money too. 

No one is going to reach into their pocket and give you some other seller's eBay asking price.  My response to people wanting the eBay money is to put the stuff on eBay.  Do that work.  I am not your substitute online auction.  I know what I can get for an item in my limited market, which is a flea market in Louisville, KY.  It's most likely a lot less than what someone can get in a global market like eBay.  You have to be able to see that difference.  If you can't, you're going to be frustrated and disappointed.

Do your homework, but be smart about it.  Despite what I just said, there's nothing wrong with you looking things up online to start forming your price ideas.  Just do it smart.  If you go to the first auction you find and decide that what that person is asking will be your price, you've cut a corner that will bite you in the butt.

For my money, a good online search:

• Knows the difference between a completed auction with an ending price and one that someone just put up with no bids.  (If you do not know how to look up completed/sold items on eBay, GET SOMEONE TO SHOW YOU!)
• Looks at sales over a period, rather than one or two auctions
• Looks for sales patterns
• Compares the items in the sales to the ones you have
• Checks for condition
• Looks at other sites besides eBay--especially collector's clubs, which may have information about rarity and history
• Takes sellers asking prices with a HUGE grain of salt
• Knows that you cannot find completed sales on sites like etsy and Amazon

This is where realistic pricing starts.

Examine your connection to what you are trying to sell, both current and future.  If you have any attachment to an item that is going to make you regret selling it for any price or feel guilty if you don't get top dollar for it, the DON'T SELL IT!  You're not going to be able to think clearly enough about it to negotiate.

If, on the other hand, it's some stuff you picked up at a house clean out, you also need to think about what you're going to do with it if it doesn't sell.  Do you really want to keep hauling it around or leave it sitting in the garage?  That needs to be a factor in your negotiating.

If you're dealing with a large lot of stuff you want to sell all together, the more organized you are, the better!  When a dealer looks at a room full of boxes and crap, they immediately start deducting money from their offer based on how much work they are going to have to do to get everything moved out, cleaned up, sorted through and sellable.  Lots of us run one-person shows.

If you have cleaned out the trash/broken stuff/dirty stuff/nasty stuff  and maybe arranged things in a little bit of order, you've lessened the load on your buyer and they'll see that.  If you just want to make it all go and have someone do the work, that's fine.  Just know that the offer you get will reflect all the work the buyer is going to have to do.

It's okay to stand up for yourself and negotiate.  Nothing I am saying here should be construed as you doing everything the buyer wants, taking what they offer and getting the hell out of Dodge.  I'm talking about creating a win-win for both you and the person you want to sell to.  You want stuff gone and to make a little dough.  They want to be able to make a little dough off what they buy.  You can both do this, plus have the kind of experience that guarantees repeat deals, with a little awareness and respect.

How do you make this happen?

• Respect and politeness
• Listen to each other
• Play fair
• Be reasonable
• Do your homework
• Have your shit together
• In other words, everything I've been saying this whole post!

In the end it's your call.  Final responsibility for making or breaking the deal lies with the seller.  If you cannot come to terms, it's okay to walk, but leave the door open for future dealings.  If you decide you want to try your luck with another buyer, that's okay too, but make sure that you can come back and get the same offer from your current buyer, just in case things don't work out elsewhere.  In other words, don't burn bridges.

I know people who make their reselling money by reselling solely to other resellers.  I've done my fair share of it in the past.  Even if you only have that one load of Mama's dishes to deal with at the moment, you never know what the future may hold.  What if you end up as sole inheritor of Uncle Pembert the Horder's mobile home of stuff?

Prep Time!

So this is how I spent my Friday.

The armaments:

Everything needed for an afternoon of cleaning and pricing!

The battlefield:

Patio table big enough to spread things out on!

The stronghold:

My much talked about shed, which really needs repainting!

The mission:

Get this organized into a yard sale!

YES, INDEED!  

IT'S YARD SALE PREP TIME!

(I kind of wish I had a theme song for this kind of thing.!)

Part of a successful yard sale is putting time into preparation and organization.  I had already selected the items to put in the sale, so now is the time to clean everything up and price it and organize it for easy set up.  

I decided to sort a lot of things out by table instead of pricing every individual item, since I have a lot of smalls in this sale.  I'll have a 25 cent table, a 50 cent table and a dollar table.  I wanted to sort it all into boxes for each table.  Plus, there were larger items to price.

I've come to the point in my life where I don't feel the need to have everything that I own.  I'm not changing who I am as a big old nerd dude who reads comics, loves cartoons, and likes cool toys and such.  I simply don't have the completist collector vibe any more.  The thought of moving all this stuff again makes me kind of queasy.  So much of this has not been out of the boxes in so long that I had forgotten I owned half of it.  I felt like I was discovering treasure!

What I've done is made myself pare down things to my absolute most favorite pieces.  I've set those aside (which amounted to about 1/3 of the overall lot).  My goal is to find a way to display the down-sized collection in the house once this is all over.  I'll probably end up paring it all down again before that happened.

I took a bunch of what I culled for the booth, but there was too much to funnel that way, so the rest is in my yard sale.  I figure that whatever doesn't sell can still head to the booth.  This is kind of like an overstock deal.  I'm not so much worried about the money I'll make as I am getting rid of this stuff.  If I can get a hundred bucks or so, I'll be pretty happy.

Some highlights:

Batman will always rock, as far as I'm concerned.

A lot of my anime stuff is Japanese merch.

I'm putting a lot of anime stuff in the sale, mostly Sailor Moon, which was always my favorite.  When I got into anime, I became a huge fan of shoujo stuff, especially magical girls.  I've always kind of liked the sweetness of the genre and its tendency towards campiness and kitsch.  I'm going to craft my Craiglist ad to try and draw in the nerds and hipsters who would be interested in this sort of thing.

There are a few Pokemon items.  The original series came out when I was really getting into anime, but it wasn't really a favorite of mine.  There was too much of a forced completism thing going on for my tastes.  Don't tell me I gotta catch 'em all.  I'll decide that for myself, thank you.  Still, I always thought Pikachu was really cute, and I do have some small Pika stuff, but that is the extent of my Poke-madness.  Well, except for Jigglypuff.

Pikachu, I see you!

I do have some vintage in the sale, like this snowmobile jacket. Yes, I know that spring is the wrong time to try and sell a leather jacket.  I'm an optimist.

I'm also putting this old chest in the sale, too.  I figure it will attract some interest.  We have a cedar chest that Keith's grandfather made in the bedroom, so I have no need for this one that I bought in a yard sale ages ago.  It has a loose hinge on the lid, so I'm selling it "as is."

Ooooo look!  I'm making progress!  Yay!

Organized things!

More organized things!

Priced things!

 I'm also putting a lot of books in the sale, mainly my mother's.  I was going to add some of mine as well, but I have three good sized tubs of Mom's, and I figure that's enough.  I'll save mine and have a book sale later on.  I actually figure I have enough stuff to have two more sales this season, which is the most you can have in one year in Louisville.  I've only cleaned out a third of the shed so far.  The rest of it will give me enough for two sales, a good sized Goodwill donation and enough extra stuff for the booth to keep me rolling on smalls well into fall.

With the small stuff covered like that, I'll be able to specifically hunt for furniture and vintage when I go saling and thrifting.

Finally, we're done!  I know that looks like the first pic, but trust me, it's not.  For one thing the angle is different, silly.  The real difference is on the inside of the tubs and boxes.  It's all sorted and organized, guaranteed to make set up a breeze!

Done!  Yay!

Happy by-product!

Empty boxes for recycling mean downsizing has occurred!  Yay!  It all took a lot less time that I thought.  I was even able to pull a few more items out of the shed for the sale.  By the time you read this, I'll be in throes of running the sale, so wish me luck!

I'll have pics and a report either tomorrow or (more likely) Monday!

By the way, I know those photos make it look like the shed is still packed to the gills, but it's not.  One side of it is nearly empty.  I just put everything back right inside the door to make it easier to get to in the morning,

Selling Comics

Of course, if you buy them, then you must sell them.  If you sell them, then there will be stories to share.  Don't worry, these stories are 100% annoying nerd-free!  No, the annoying bits come from customers and other vendors this time.

I've had four long boxes of comics sitting around for a bit, waiting for me to do something with them.  Letting your merch sit for too long is never a good thing, but sometimes I get a little lax.  Stuff in those boxes was mainly runs from different series that I wanted to just bag together and sell in lots.  I kind of have to be inspired to do all that prep work, and that hasn't happened lately.  In other words, I've been lazy.

Nothing worse than a lazy junker, let me tell you.

Anyway, I decided that if  I wasn't going to actually get moving on creating the lots, then I'd take a couple of boxes to the Peddlers Mall outdoor sale and see what happened.  At the spring outdoor sale at YesterNook, I had sold quite a few comics, so it seemed like it was worth a shot.

I placed my Craigslist ad for the sale, making prominent mention of the comics to draw the yard saling nerds and set off.  Now, the day before the sale, I sold a ton of comics out of the booth (all to one person they told me), so I decided to check through my boxes before the outdoor sale really got started to see if there was anything I might want to use to refill the boxes in my booth.

Talk about your luck of the draw!  The box I pulled was half full of Superman and Punisher specials and prestige one shots that I had forgotten were in there.  Those boxes were part of a larger buy that included a box that was pretty much all Superman and Punisher.  I had put most of them out, but held a batch back because I did not want to flood my comics selection with them, because how many Punisher comics does one really need in one booth?

I was able to make up a nice round of stuff to put in the booth and still leave plenty for the sale.  Which, as it turns out, I didn't really need.  I'm guessing the yard saling nerds don't come into the southwest part of the county, because none of them showed.  In fact,  I only made a couple of comic sales at all.

One of those sales, however, made my day. There was a family wandering through--grandparents, mother, and two kids.  The girl was  maybe eight and the boy was about four.  Grandpa saw the comics and pointed them out to the kids.  The kids start going through the boxes and go nuts because the rest of what I've brought is mainly Disney stuff from different eras:  Gold Key/Whitman, Gladstone, Disney's own publishing attempt from the 90's and titles that were licensed to Marvel in the 90's.

Mom tells me that the kids love Disney comics and read every one that the can get their hands on.  She helps them pick out titles.  The girl makes sure that they don't get anything they already have.  Grandpa fronts twenty bucks to buy them.  And I get so wrapped up in the whole thing that I give each of the kids a couple of freebies.  I can't resist comic-reading kids.  Especially girls.  Especially with supportive moms.  We need more of all of that these days.

Although I have to admit, unless they've got another source for back issues, I cannot imagine where these kids are finding Disney comics to read these days.  I know I'm out of touch with current comics, but I didn't think there were any being published right now.  Of course, Disney does own Marvel, so what do I know?  I can't imagine a couple of cute kids like that going into a comics shop, though.  There's only one in town that I would describe as "kid friendly."

My other recent comics selling experiences are not quite so charming.  At the same outdoor sale, a couple of loudmouths declared that the only thing worth buying was super-heroes, not because they liked them, but because "super-heroes are the only comics worth any money."  Thank you blowhards who don't know what you're talking about.

About twenty minutes later, one of them came back over to my set up and made an embarrassingly ridiculous low ball offer for all of the comics.  I totally blew him off without a second thought.  Like I didn't know he'd had just enough time to look up some of what I was selling on eBay?  I'll make four times what he was offering through booth sales.  Go away, dude.

The same kind of thing happened at the YesterNook outdoor sale the next week, where I sold exactly four comics to a couple who obviously knew nothing about them, but managed to tie up my whole table looking everything up on their smart phone.  This wasn't a case of someone confirming a hunch on an issue.  This was a case of people who didn't know how to find exact titles, didn't know how to pronounce titles and didn't know how to distinguish between various series with the same titles.  In other words, they knew jack shit about comics and were counting on their phone to tell them.

I should have tossed them out of the booth, but it was slow, I was bored, and they were amusing me.  It never occurred to them that I might actually know something about the comics they were looking at.

I did actually kind of toss a book scanner out of my booth at about the same time.  I hate book scanners.  Another vendor had already embarrassed the poor guy by shouting "Hey!  Can this guy scan your books to see which ones his phone thinks are worth buying?" to the seller beside me.  When he popped up in my booth, I told him that most of my titles were vintage, meaning that they didn't have bar codes or ISBN's for him to scan.  

He declares that "old books are worth money!"  Then, grabs a book out of a box, flips it over to the back where the bar code should be, lifts up his phone, looks at the book, then at the scanner, then at the book, then at the scanner, and slowly realizes that he doesn't know what to do if he can't scan the book!  So, he puts the book back in the box and slinks out of my area.

Seriously, don't come to a sale put on by a bunch of resellers who work at this week in and week out and make an ass out of yourself.  I'm all about the technology and its uses and benefits, but if it's your only tool, if you have no experience or knowledge base of your own to draw on, if you aren't learning things as you go along, then you're doing it all wrong.  I have a smart phone and a barcode scanner.  I use them to confirm my hunches, not make all my decisions for me.

And this has been your ponitfication moment of the post.  Personally, I'd prefer to talk about cute kids reading comics and the mothers who help them.  Hopefully, I didn't meet the only ones in town the other day.

Plain and Peanut. Ordinary and Funny.

So, I'm at the YesterNook outdoor sale this past Saturday and this kid comes into my area.  He's maybe 12 or 13 and his hair is dyed lavender.  I'm thinking either he's got a way cool mom or else she doesn't pay him any attention at all.

He heads right to the back of my sales area, and I thought he was going to the comic boxes that were set up on a table there.  Turns out he was looking at what was under the table.

About a half hour before he got there, I bought eight M&M dispensers from another vendor for a buck each.  I talked him down from 2 a piece because they were all filthy.  There are a couple of M&M collectors who roam through the Peddlers Mall, so it's another category of stuff I snag when I can get it cheaply enough.  I had put them in a box under one of my tables so I could take them home and deal with them later.

Well, this kid was totally in love with them.  He told me one of the other dealers had some, but they were too expensive.  He said he had one at home and he thought it would be cool to collect them.  He wanted to know how much mine were.

He pulled them all out of the box one at a time and carefully checked them over.  He said he didn't mind cleaning them up a bit.  He tried them all out to make sure the levers worked.  And he talked about each one of them.  "This one is a little fatter than that one," he would say.  "I bet it would hold more candy."

He talked about how the red M&M guy dispenser I had was shaped like a peanut M&M, but the red guy in the commercials is always a plain M&M.   The yellow one is the peanut M&M.  He was having the best time checking them all out.

Needless to say, I was completely charmed by the kid.  I remember being a young, budding collector and trying to find things I could afford.  I told him that he could have them for the same price I paid, a dollar each.

He got excited at that and decided that he would get four of them.  He split them into two groups:  the more ordinary ones and the ones he called the "funny" ones.  Then he looked at them all one by one and explained why he was or was not going to get that particular one.  He put all the ones he wasn't going to buy back in the box.  In the end, the four he picked were his "funny" group:  The Recliner, The Roller Coaster, The Movie Theatre, and The Golf Course (even though it was missing the club).  he really liked the scenarios and stories each represented.  He also liked the way the levers worked on each of them to dispense the candy.

He had one dollar on him and he gave it to me, then went in search of his mom to get the other three bucks.  Uh oh, the Mom Factor.  I kind of got worried the whole deal would fall through, so I decided I would offer him one for free if his mom said no to getting all four.

She came over, looked at them, and asked him what he would do with them.  He said he would clean them up and display them in his room, like a collection.  She said "okay" to that, so I decided she was one of the cool moms as she handed me three more dollars.

The guy I bought them from asked me why I didn't decide to make a little profit on them.  They did have his 2 dollar stickers on them, after all.  I thought about trying to explain "collector karma" and the whole being young and having an interest thing, but I knew he wasn't the type to get it.  When I looked at the kid I saw me at that age, hitting flea markets looking for old comics, hoping my dad would give me some extra money if I found something special.  When this other dealer looked at him, he just saw a customer.  I finally said, "It just wouldn't have been right."

The four he didn't get are cleaned up and in my booth right now, waiting for another collector to come along.  I had a few M&M things there already, but this buy gave me enough to make a proper display.

 

Don't they all look happy?  I think a candy-themed display works for this time of year, don't you?

On the run

Eddie-tor's Note:  I finished this post once, but Blogger seems to have eaten it.  Bad Blogger!  The original was witty and intelligent.  This one is going to be bare bones and frustrated.

Busy!  Busy!  Tomorrow is the Outdoor Sale at the Peddlers Mall.  It's supposed to rain, but we've got a covered parking lot. Ha!  Take that competing yard sales! I actually think tomorrow will be slow, but Saturday will be busy.  Should be a fun time.

I've already got most of my stuff to sell stashed at my booth, but I'll be bringing some boxes of comics tomorrow.  I've got my signs all printed and everything.  I'll also be doing a 20% off sale at the indoor booth.  These special days are the only time we can run sales like this, but it brings out the shoppers, because many vendors will do it.

I just have to get some change cash today and I'll be set!

I'll do a late post tomorrow with the day one deets, then finish up on Saturday or Sunday.