4/8/19: Emerald City, C2E2, WonderCon Show Review

As I’m sitting here in my office with the window open and the trees beginning to bloom, it is hard for me to think back on the start of our crazy March schedule. We knew that the month of March was not going to be easy, and after traveling more than 12,000 miles over the span of several weeks, I know that we were right.

We began by starting our trip early on Monday, March 11 as we took an 8:00 a.m. flight to California to pick up some inventory and begin our trip to Seattle for Emerald City Comic Con. The trips out west are very difficult to get to for a slew of reasons. In part because they are physically far away, the time changes mess with your body, and traveling on a tight schedule leaves you little margin for error. At this point we have a solid routine, but to say these shows are grueling is an understatement.

We arrived in Seattle on Wednesday morning and began to set up while also circling the floor a few times. Emerald City has grown into a massive show, taking up nearly 5 floors of the convention center, and growing every year. One of the things Emerald City does well is grouping similar vendors together. All the comic guys are in one part of the show along with comic artists and modern publishers. Toys, action figures, and Funko are all in a different area, etc. This makes for a much more convenient show for both vendor and attendee.

As far as comic shows go, Emerald City continues to impress. Seattle appears to have a very large, tight knit comic scene and nearly all of them seemed to attend the show. In addition to this, there is a large presence of Canadian collectors that come down for this show, and it makes for a great weekend of meeting new people and hanging with old friends. My only complaint about this show is that after several years in a row, we didn’t have the luxury of on-site grading. With CGC offering on-site grading the following weekend in Chicago, the logistics of offering on-site in Seattle didn’t work out this year. While selling remained strong, the lack of on-site affected most dealers ability to buy new inventory.

Here are a few pictures of our journey to California and then up to Seattle! I think we reduced the insect population by 1%. 

And of course some pictures of our display as well as some of the buys we were able to make:

And as quickly as Emerald City began, the show ended and we started our journey back home. We arrived back in Maryland a few nights later and began a “hand off” of books to Greg and Ginger over pizza and beer to celebrate the end of one show and the start of another. While Alex and I caught up on mail order and emails, Greg and Ginger drove to Chicago for one of our favorite shows of the year, C2E2. This show was an absolute blur of buying, selling, and trading and I wouldn’t be shocked if it soon expanded into a four day event. With on-site grading being present here, there was a plethora of freshly graded books walking around the room and we were lucky to be able to buy a ton of new slabs. While C2E2 continues to move earlier into the year (2020 is scheduled for February), we hope that it continues to grow as it is one of our favorite shows of year. 

While a few of these books are still being processed, we have already begun listing some on the website. You can search for specific books or browse through the first couple pages of our Recently Added pages. Over the course of the next few days we will be adding close to 200 more books so please be sure to keep checking back to see what has been added.

Here are a few pictures of our wall, as well as a few buys we were able to make in C2E2.

Only six days after Alex and I got back from Seattle and one day after Greg and Ginger were back from Chicago, we had to leave town again to head to Anaheim, California for WonderCon. Loaded with brand new books from the weekend before, we traveled across the country for the 3rd time in March and started our trek down to Anaheim. WonderCon continues to be a solid show but has room for improvements. This year they improved the layout of the room by closely grouping all of the comic dealers together and I think that helped everyone’s numbers. This show always sells a large number of tickets, but I would estimate that only 10% of those people were interested in actual vintage comic books. None the less, we had a great time meeting customers and helping some people attain some of their personal grails. 

Here were some of our shots from WonderCon:

While we always love experiencing new cities, people, and experiences, it is also always great to be home. We are incredibly thankful for everyone who came to see us in all of these great cities, and are excited for what the rest of the year holds as well. To everyone we met, and everyone who came back to say hi once again- thank you so much, you are the reason these trips are great!

Now that we are back, we have a ton of different plans in the works. We are working on getting all of the purchased inventory processed, priced, and listed on the site for you all to see. We have begun making upgrades to the website including a server move that should have improved performance across the board, and we are working on implementing a handful of features that have been highly requested since our launch that I will be able to break down in more detail later.

Again, thank you for your business and friendship over the many years. We are excited to see the rest of you as the year continues!

Best,

Austin

240-405-2751 // austin@reececomics.com

Alex 

240-405-3662 // alexgreece58@gmail.com

Greg/Ginger