Year-End Wrap Up and Sales at CNJComics
First off, we’d like to thank everyone who helped out with the food drive this year. With your help, we were able to assist the Cleveland Food Bank in creating 14,276 meals for those in need this holiday season! This is a record for this event and gets our lifetime total up to 77,644! Whoa!
We were also able to collect 1,399 food items this year! Thanks to the Fitch family for getting the food where it needed to go after the event! This gets us up to a lifetime total of 8,347 food items!
Thanks to all the artists who dedicated their hard work and talent, the art looked great up there this year.
118 pieces, also an all-time record! (119 if you count a late submission by my daughter Zoe.) We will have an online art gallery up soon with links to all the artists URL’s and contact info!
This is an incredibly small new comic week, almost a skip week, which often happens during the holidays. Only a dozen or so new books including Marvel’s huge “Incoming” one-shot for $9.99, wrapping up some plot threads from 2019 and launching some new ones for 2020. Written primarily by Immortal Hulk’s Al Ewing.
We also have some endeavors out there to stimulate sales during this small week.
After conferring with the staff, I have decided to extend the 50% off back issue sale until the end of the year, end of day on the 31st. This is officially the last time this will happen until Wizard World hits town on March 6th-8th. You have been warned! Dig through that Marvel collection while you can.
We have also bought out the entire inventory of Imaginary Worlds on the East Side. We’d like to congratulate Josh and Eric and a great five-year run. (this is not nor will it ever be an easy business.)
This lead to us putting out ten long boxes of graphic novel stock at just $5.00 each. We also have a bizarre table of “misfit” action figures for $5 each or 3 for $10. (As of this writing, the figures have been pretty well dug through but there are still a lot of graphic novels out there.)
We also have 120 long boxes of comics to deal with, but that’s an issue for next year.
We have gotten a really great following online for our “pick your own 9.8” sales, where we get bronze age warehouse finds and make them a dollar each. We are putting our last batch of the year out……NOW. (The new comic table was empty anyway.) Here’s a glimpse at what’s out there but you’ll have to stop in to see everything.
Yes, that’s a huge pile of Dazzler #1’s ($22 book), as well as Deadpool the mini-series #1, Thor 338 and 339 (the second and third Simonson run issues) as well as Amazing Spider-Man #253, Avengers #192 and #211 and a whole lot more. All $1.00 each. People have been traveling up from southern Ohio to get these books. (I mean, Howard the Duck’s man!)
We even have the 9.2 or higher Rom #1’s back in at $5.00 each, they guide out at $75.00!
The closing of Imaginary Worlds brings us to another point for the end of the year. Get ready, it’s a drag.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
Come in and clear out your file by year-end. If you are more than a month delinquent do not be surprised if your books are put back out under my orders to the staff. It’s a bummer but it’s something we have to do to stay fluid. Just like a car dealership, we pay taxes on unsold inventory at year-end, so you are compounding the issue by not clearing it out by December 31st. We completely respect that everyone is broke after the holidays, but in the same breath, the file didn’t stack up like that overnight. You may think it’s only a small amount but everything adds up for any business our size. We cannot shoulder the burden of multiple delinquent accounts. We just can’t. It’s nothing personal if your books are put out at years end. (but we really hope they aren’t. Get in here.)
END OF DRAG MESSAGE
Lastly, thank you all for your business. We are ever grateful to still be here after 29 years in what has become a very challenging industry. We’re happy to be a part of our community and to occasionally make a difference, always with your help and support.
From both Carol and I, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year.