Free Postage Offer Continues
May 17, 2002
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Howdy!
Have you ever woken up in the dark in a strange room, and not had a clue where you were? That kind of disorientation doesn't happen to me very frequently, but this morning when I awoke I simply had no clue as to where in the heck I was. After giving myself a second, I finally remembered that I flew into Detroit yesterday with Will and Sean, and that I was now in the DoubleTree hotel in Novi, Michigan. We're here for the Motor City Comic Con, which looks to be shaping up as an excellent convention. That fact not withstanding, I think maybe it's time for me to get off the road. After 10 different hotels, in just 13 weeks, I think I need to take some time off. My body is telling me that I've pushed it to just about it's upper limit of continuous travel. I just don't know how long-haul truckers can stay on the road non-stop. It's just too wearing... When we arrived yesterday, it had just started raining. As the evening wore on, the rain got heavier, and the entire world seemed cloaked in gloom. I lived in Michigan for seven years as a child, and I'd forgotten just how much I detested being trapped in the house by rain. Isn't it funny how our moods are changed by external circumstances? If this same rain were to occur in Colorado right now, I would be ecstatic. We're in the middle of a severe drought right now, which looks like it may drastically cut short the growing season at my farm. I would love to see a steady rain at home, but here, where the tree trunks are already green and covered with moss, it's simply depressing. Well, once I opened the curtains in my room this morning, I discovered that the world had completely changed since last evening. This morning the world is intensely sunny, and green, green, green! It's quite beautiful, and I'm very excited about the prospects for the convention. The Novi Expo Center is a very big hall, and I saw more comics out for display last evening than at the last two conventions I've been at put together. Perhaps it's because they make unloading so easy (you can drive your truck right up to your booth) but the dealers at this show have brought tonnage of comics to sell. As a team, Will, Sean, and I bought about 5,000 back issues from a single dealer last evening in just over an hour! I'm thinking this show could be our biggest buying effort of the year. We're not leaving until Monday morning, so we have three full days to go through boxes. This is going to be fun, fun, fun! Meanwhile, back at the warehouse, the 14,000 back issues I shipped back from Philadelphia should be arriving today. Pam promised me that she would sort through them the minute they arrived, and grab out all the Silver Age we weren't able to bring back on the plane. That is quite a lot, actually, as I think we shipped about 4,000 different issues from Philadelphia that were published prior to 1975. Pam will try to get a bunch those on the system today, and the ones she gets done will be listed in the New-In-Stock section of the website by tomorrow morning. Have you looked at New-In-Stock lately? Thanks to all my convention travels, it's huge! Speaking of New-In-Stock, there's a new button on our Homepage for those of you who like older books. I've always enjoyed browsing through our New-In-Stock section, but sometimes it's been a bit overwhelming. It's not unusual for Pam's team to add over 20,000 individual books in a week. To simplify the process for me of seeing how we're doing on adding scarcer material into the system, I had Lynne install a button that says "New-In-Stock $50+". From this point forward, you'll be able to see on a daily basis the scarcer material we've been able to track down. This is very important, as quite a few of the older issues we find only manage to stay in stock for a day, or less. We had two rare books that we added into the system this week that lasted less than an hour each! Another reason that I decided to install this button is that I needed to be able to differentiate books scarcer books by a methodology other than just attributing them to the conventions we've just attended. I've been working with Will Moulton to revise our online buying prices (I'm up to Marvel "M"), and we're starting to get in material from private collectors and dealers that we haven't been able to find at shows. This is going to become ever more important source for us as I slow down my convention-going, to concentrate on improving our operations flow back at the warehouse. We'll still be buying like crazy, but it just won't be exclusively at comics conventions. The good news is that I'm planning to put all our newly arrived $50+ books at 40% off for the first week after they arrive. I'm not sure I can do this steep discounting with every single item (we may be eventually forced to pay too much to keep certain items in stock...), but I'm going to try. This is a program that evolving, so please bear with me as we get it into place. I know I already like it as it is (mostly just showing the better books we picked up in Philadelphia), and I'm excited about where it's going. This could be a very cool new tool to help fans keep track of newly-arrived scarcer material. We might even eventually be able to let you sign up for a daily e-mail listing of $50+ books that have arrived. Before I forget, the big special deal we have going right now is free postage, anywhere in the world, for domestic orders over $20, and International orders with a $50 minimum. This unique offer continues only for the next 14 days, so I encourage you to take advantage of it while you can. Our two big sales right now are all SPIDER-MAN issues at 40% off, and all issues we picked up in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia at 40% off. Both of those genres are huge, so there are tens of thousands of comics on sale in our Internet Store right now for 40% off. Enjoy!. My final item for today is to let you know that we've expanded some of our "First Look" sneak peeks at the new comics shipping next week from three pages (plus the cover), to four pages. I can't see us going any further than this, as we do want the comics to still be a surprise for you, but we received some requests for the fourth page, so we're going ahead. This gives you an excellent opportunity to sample the upcoming issues for next week, free of charge! Many thanks to Marvel, DC, CrossGen, and Image for providing us with books we could scan, or digital scans. We know many of you like this service very much, as it is the single most popular area of our entire website! That's it for today. I need to meet Will and Sean in a few minutes. Then we're off for the convention center to buy, buy, buy! Traveling does wear on me, but by golly, I sure do love being at comics conventions! I have to admit it: My name is Chuck, and I'm a comic book addict... Happy collecting!
PS: Just so you know, we are still including three of the comics (JLA ADVENTURES, ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN, and STAR WARS) from "Free Comic Book Day" in with all of our back issue packages. Our supplies are running low, however, so order quickly if you want these freebies included with your shipment.
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