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Eric Ladd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 August 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 4506
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 12:15pm | IP Logged | 1
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A local comic shop is closing and everything in the store is 50% off. I have forgotten to stop by and pick up some artist editions while the sale is on, but yesterday I finally remembered. The only edition I absolutely want is the Spider-Man and getting it at 50% off would be a long shot since the sale has been on for two weeks. I got to the store and from across the room I see the Spider-Man artist edition is STILL THERE! A sigh of relief as I begin heading to the back of the store to grab it off the shelf. As I approach, literally 10 feet away this guy in the store picks up the book. I wait, hoping he won't buy it. The guy thumbs through it, asks if it is also 50% off, confers with his friend and then decides to buy it. I couldn't believe it. I was angry with myself all night. So close and yet so far from an artist edition for $80 Canadian. I stayed in the store fuming and looking over other books. Eventually I put everything I had back on the shelves and just couldn't bring myself to spend money on anything but the artist edition I had come to get.
Any other stories about horrible timing? Hearing the heartache of others might help my own.
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Bill Collins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
Posts: 11249
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 1:11pm | IP Logged | 2
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In the late 80`s i visited The Virgin Megastore in Birmingham U.K. i was amazed to see that Adam West was in store signing as a promotion,as the 60`s Batman was having a renaissance due to it being on breakfast tv during a journalists strike! He was sitting at a table with no queue,probably because it was a quiet Thursday afternoon.I hot footed it to the comics concession and bought Year One tp(First Batman related item i spotted)and raced back to get it signed,to find that he`d gone! There`s me with one superfluous Batman Year One and a feeling of great disappointment!
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Wilson Mui
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4526
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 1:14pm | IP Logged | 3
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That has happened to me before. I was trying to buy artwork from Jim Warden. He posted a great page by JB from What The?!? one evening. I waited until the next day to send him an email. He replied back that someone beat me to it by five minutes. Arrgh! Happy ending to the story though. Jim had other pages left, so I bought those.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10926
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | 4
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I like a good deal just like everyone else, but consider the source of this one. The comic shop is going out of business - you are only getting this great "deal" based on someone's professional failure.
I've been very critical of the business strategy of the independent comic book shops overall practice of being the only venue for comic books. It's killed the industry. But I hold out hope that the existing stores are savvy enough to find a way to stay in business as comic books move to digital and, hopefully, get into mass market stores as a point of purchase item so parents buy them for young kids. I want comic shops to survive in some way because I love browsing them and I support my fellow fans in their business efforts.
I guess it just feels wrong to me that we would celebrate a great deal at a store closing, and the same for fuming anger over missing the chance to pick over dead bones. It just feels off to me.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132288
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | 5
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Not being born in 1970........
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Wilson Mui
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 June 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 4526
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | 6
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Why 1970?
If you were born five years later (1955) like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, maybe you would have been be a tech mogul also.
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Matt Hawes
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 16430
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 2:53pm | IP Logged | 7
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My bad timing usually involves waiting on a bus.
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Eric Ladd
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 August 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 4506
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 3:09pm | IP Logged | 8
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Tim, the shop; The Silver Snail, is closing it's Ottawa location and the people that work there have decided to open a new store; The Comic Comet, down the street. I don't see it as the store closing as much as I see it changing ownership, but I understand your point. I don't buy comics often anymore and only go when my kids want to go. I prefer commissions and artwork these days, but will buy old books for the kids out of the dollar bins.
Edited by Eric Ladd on 30 August 2015 at 3:11pm
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Aaron Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 06 September 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 10461
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | 9
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A few years ago, having just read online that the first volume of SHOWCASE PRESENTS HAWKMAN had been released (and I had to have that gorgeous Kubert art immediately), I drove to the local comic shop to get it. I ran in, said hello to Rob (the proprietor and a friend of mine) grabbed the Hawkman book, happy he had a copy on hand. The book's availability was the good news. The bad news: had I arrived half an hour earlier, I would have found not only the book, but Joe Kubert and his sons, who had been early for a showing at the movie theater across the lot and had stopped in the comic shop to waste a few minutes!
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Steven Legge
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 July 2012
Location: Canada
Posts: 866
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | 10
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I picked up the Wally Wood Artisan edition and an old Kirby Mister Miracle TPB. That was all I could afford. I saw those Artist Editions too, but I was more tempted by the Witzend box set at the time. The place is pretty bare now.
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Joe Smith
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 29 August 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 6602
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| Posted: 30 August 2015 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | 11
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I think I've told us here before..... The week that Spider-Man 252 was coming out, I had been looking forward to it for a full 30 days. I knew what the cover was going to look like, I knew who drew the cover, I knew who was going to be doing interiors, and I was super excited at the age of 15. On that super exciting Monday when I walked downtown with my friends, the three of us already telling mind blowing stories of how great this comic book is going to be, we entered the store that sold the newsstand comics, headed straight to the section, and there were no Spider-Man 252's.
A shyster businessman three or four doors down from the newsstand caught wind of the impending issue, and bought all the copies. He did the same with Thor 337. The Beta Ray Bill cover. The newstand owner sheepishly tried to hide his eyes from me, as I was literally his best comic book customer. The three of us walked out of that store empty-handed and brokenhearted. I was so pissed off. The minute my dad got home, I couldn't wait to tell him what happened. I didn't expect my father to do anything but listen, but, as soon as he got out of his work clothes, he grabbed me and my little brother and we drove downtown to that guy's store, where he brazenly put them in the window with a price tag of $25 apiece! We didn't leave with a copy, but my father, a truck driver/town worker, and a very large imposing figure, didn't necessarily threaten the store owner, more like emitted waves of future hostility towards that man and his property in town. We eventually got a copy of the comic, in a neighboring town the next day, but it just wasn't the same.
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132288
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| Posted: 31 August 2015 at 4:45am | IP Logged | 12
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Why 1970?•• Everything doesn't have to have a secret meaning, Wilson.
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