Part 80 - 89

Part Eighty
“Brad” (not his real name) was a good customer and a good friend of mine. He had been shopping at my collectible store for quite a few years and we had spent some good times together. When the “Foxwoods” casino opened in the early 90’s Brad asked me to take him there so we could experience this exciting place together. I had no clue that this would eventually ruin his life!

Brad was in his mid-50’s and he was a responsible, hard-working guy with a really good job but he certainly couldn’t afford to risk losing money in a casino every week. But that’s what he did. There were some weeks that he went there multiple times. There were times when he’d get out of work, head for the casino, and he wouldn’t leave the casino until it was time for him to go back to work and I had no idea that this was happening.

A bunch of us, including Brad, got together and planned to meet at the casino for the day. We had fun gambling together and we all urged Brad to quit while he was slightly ahead and after a lot of coaxing he agreed to stop gambling and drive back home. We found out a few days later that he driven right back to the casino after we all separated in Worcester and he lost hundreds of dollars. Within a year all of Brad’s credit cards were completely at their maximum limit and his car had been repossessed. He now had to walk to work! He came to my store one day and he explained that he needed help. I encouraged him to seek help from “Gamblers Anonymous” and he seemed willing to try it. Brad convinced me that his gambling days were over.

I’m quite sure that Brad stayed away from gambling for the next year or so, but it wasn’t long before I began to hear rumors that he was taking trips to the casino with many of the employees at the company where he worked. Brad continued to shop for comic books and trading cards at my store but he didn’t visit my store quite as often as he used to and he certainly didn’t spend as much money on these hobbies. He never mentioned to me that he was gambling again. When I tried to call Brad to offer him some help, I found that his telephone had been disconnected. I wrote two letters urging him to call me, (collect if he had to), but he didn’t respond. I just recently heard that Brad has now lost his home because of his addiction to gambling. I no longer underestimate the clever marketing and psychology used by casinos and the potentially overwhelming possibility of addiction to gambling that affects many people. Brad’s life has been ruined and I’ve apparently lost a friend.

Next chapter: My friend Brian and I create “Classic Toys Trading Cards.”

Part Eighty One
In the early 1990’s, many collectors began to collect what were commonly called “non-sports cards.” These were trading cards that were based on movies, television shows, music, monsters, and many more subjects that had nothing to do with sports. These kinds of cards have been produced for almost one hundred years but they were not as popular as baseball, basketball, or football cards. There were exceptions of course. The Beatles cards from 1965, The Batman cards of 1966, and the Star Wars cards from the late 1970’s all sold huge quantities.

My friend Brian and I were both collecting old toys and we attended many local toy conventions together. Brian and I had successfully worked together on our book about the merchandising of the TV show of “The Man From Uncle,” titled “The Toys From Uncle” and we thought it would be both fun and profitable to create a series of trading cards based on old toys. We figured that a set of trading cards that pictured popular toys from the 1950’s through the 1970’s would appeal to both toy collectors and card collectors.

Neither of us had a computer at the time and digital photography wasn’t available yet so this whole project had to be done “the old-fashioned way.” We picked out some interesting toys out of our own collections and began snapping pictures of each item. Brian was designated as the creative member of our team because of his artistic ability and he worked on making the set-up and backgrounds look interesting. We would take multiple photographs of each toy and then we’d send the film out to be developed. There were no “One-Hour Photo” stores in those days so we would anxiously wait for three or four days to see if the pictures were actually any good. Frequently we weren’t satisfied with the photos so we had to retake the pictures. After a few weeks of trying to get decent photographs of the toys we decided to get the help of a professional photographer. There was a photographer in my hometown of Bolton who had a great reputation as a superior professional. Brian and I packed up a few boxes of rare and valuable toys and went to the photographer’s studio. Brian would select the background colored cardboard and set up each toy in an interesting position and the photographer would adjust the lighting and take the picture. I just stood around because I trusted Brian’s judgment when it came to the artistic side. After a very long day with this photographer we realized that he didn’t really care about our project enough to justify the huge additional cost for his services. We’d have to go back to taking the photos ourselves.

Brian worked full-time as a schoolteacher and I was very busy running my two collectible stores so we had to squeeze this project into our already busy schedules. We were both committed to making this set of trading cards a success so we were willing to make the time. In the middle of this project my situation changed. The real estate agent that had been trying to find me a larger store location called me with an interesting piece of property.

Next chapter: I make an offer on an interesting commercial building.

Part Eighty Two
While my friend Brian and I were working on creating a new project of a set of trading cards, I was contacted by a real estate agent who was trying to get me to buy a piece of commercial property so I could expand my comic book and collectible store in Worcester, Massachusetts. Real estate prices had fallen a little bit during the recession of the early 1990’s but the asking prices of commercial property still seemed too high to me. The realtor took me to a building that was quite interesting. It was an old three-story brick building that was used as a manufacturing facility. Each floor had about 2000 square feet of floor space. The first floor was already set up as a potential retail area and it was in nice condition. The upper two floors were unusable for retail without a lot of renovation because they had very old, oil soaked, beat-up floors. I was intrigued with this building though, because there was a nice parking lot, a loading dock, an elevator, and a nice office already constructed on the second floor. Almost all of the windows (and there were over seventy windows!) would need to be replaced. This would cost thousands of dollars so I considered this to be a big “negative.” There were some great “positives” though. This building was located on the very same major road as my current store but it was in a great area that would be much safer for my customers. The store I was using at that time was in a tough section of the city and I was eager to move out of there. This building was also located directly across the street from a very prosperous bookstore called “The Tatnuck Bookseller” and I knew they’d attract some of the same type of customers to the area that may be exposed to my store for the first time.

The owner of this building was asking $350,000 for it and I offered them $275,000. I thought that this would be a fair offer because of the amount of expensive renovations that would have to be done to make this building usable for me. Thankfully, they declined my offer.

The real estate agent called me a week or so later to tell me about another building. This one, a brick building built in the 1940’s and used as a car dealership for most of its history, was located on Park Avenue, the third busiest street in Worcester. It had almost 20,000 square feet of space including a small second level. The first level was divided exactly in half by a cement-block wall to create two almost identical commercial spaces. A small parking area would hold nearly ten cars. My current store had on-street parking for two cars so this new location would be a small improvement.

The building was being used as a “light manufacturing” facility for disabled people to assemble things for outside companies and state projects. This privately owned business was very successful until the governor of Massachusetts cut the funding for many state-sponsored programs in order to fix the huge deficit left by the former governor, Michael Dukakis. At one time, an interested buyer had approached the owner of this building, and they were offered $750,000 for the building. The owner didn’t want to sell it at the time because they were making a good profit using the building. They certainly didn’t foresee the huge state cuts coming. Once it did happen, the owners went back and offered the building to the potential buyer but he had already bought another property. They decided to put it on the market for $700,000. This property had been on the market for a couple of months by the time my real estate agent told me about it and they had only received one very low offer.

I was excited by the possibilities of this large space but I thought I’d never be able to fill it all up with merchandise. I was currently using about 2000 square feet for retail space and I did need more, but this was huge! I wanted this building but since I wasn’t in a desperate position I made a pretty low offer of $200,000. To my surprise, the seller accepted it.

I didn’t have much cash in the bank at that time so I needed to get a mortgage to purchase this property. I was still making monthly payments on the apartment building next to my store in Worcester and most banks were reluctant to loan me more money because I was now losing money each month on it. Although all of the apartments were rented, the commercial restaurant was still way behind on their rent and I wasn’t collecting enough to pay the mortgage and taxes each month. I finally found a bank that was willing to loan me the money to purchase this building but because it was a commercial loan, it would take almost six weeks for them to do a commercial appraisal of the property.

I met with the manager of the bank in my hometown and she suggested that I could refinance my home to get the cash needed to buy this building. My home was valued at about $350,000 and I had paid off the loan many years earlier so the bank was willing to give me a loan against the value of it. They gave me the money within a week and I hired a civil engineer to inspect the building before I bought it. He found some minor problems but I bought it anyway.

I hired my buddy, Jim Stoll, to quickly demolish many of the office partitions on the first floor of my new building. Jim, along with his wife Patty, worked long hours over a few weeks to clean this building out and they built a large, raised platform so we would be able to see the entire store from one spot. It was my intention to open in this new location in early 1992

Next chapter: The crazy, big move.

Part Eighty Three
We had successfully purchased a 20,000 square foot commercial building in Worcester in a great, safe area, on the third busiest street in the city. My friends, Jim Stoll and his wife, Patty, had worked hard for over three weeks to demolish the existing office partitions, clean out all of the debris, build a huge work platform (so we would have a clear sight-line of the entire retail floor from the cash register position), and painted the huge cement floor. It was now ready for us to move into.

I originally intended to move into this new location a little at a time so I wouldn’t disrupt my business at my original location and planned to start by moving in the entire inventory from my “back room.” Then the important store inventory would be moved a little at a time until everything was done. Because I needed every penny of sales in order to pay for all of the new expenses of buying this new building and getting it prepared to open, I didn’t want to lose any days of retailing at my old location. Neither did I want to inconvenience any of my loyal customers. They were all accustomed to my stable store hours of operation. The store was open seven days a week and three hundred and sixty three days each year (We were closed only on Christmas and Thanksgiving). I didn’t want to close my store.

So, one Sunday afternoon I rented a truck and many of my loyal friends came to the store and began to fill up the truck with my back-room inventory, shelves, tables, and supplies. Paul Dinsdale, Stanley Hosmer, Daryll Hunt, Chris Ball, Jose Rivera, David Hartwell, Kevin Simpson, and a few others helped me. We all took turns waiting on customers while the rest of us carried boxes to the truck. My cousin Steven and his buddy, Chris, also came to help us. Business was always good on Sundays but by about 4:00PM it had slowed down so we began to pack up all of the new comic books from the display racks and the new comic books that we were “holding” for our customers as part of our subscription service. I was nervous about doing this because I would have felt bad if a customer made a special trip to my store to pick up his weekly comic book shipment and the comics were packed away in a truck.

I wanted to be able to close my store on Sunday in my old location and be open for business the next morning in the new and improved location on Park Avenue. We had been telling our customers to expect the move soon, and we had signs prepared to alert them about the move. We certainly didn’t want anyone to think we had just gone out of business. My faithful friends worked late into the evening and got everything into the new store but I was left with the job of setting up most of the store, unpacking the boxes of product, and arranging the displays. Jim Stoll had built all new comic book display racks and he had securely fastened them to the wall. Ten new glass display showcases had been previously ordered and they were placed on the newly built platform. My cousin Steven cleaned the glass and installed the shelves. Knowing I’d have to get back to the store by 6:00 a.m. to finish up enough to open again by 10:00 a.m., I finally went home at 2:00 a.m., exhausted. The store wasn’t very well organized, but we opened up for business as scheduled. Many of our customers were shocked that we were able to completely move the whole store in one evening.

Next chapter: Our product, “Classic Toys Trading Cards” causes friction between Brian and I.

Part Eighty Four

Now that we had moved our entire store into our huge new location on Park Avenue in Worcester, we had an enormous amount of work to do to set up this store properly. In our old location, we only had about 1800 square feet of retail space so we kept a maximum of three of each back issue comic book out on display at any one time. We would keep track of every comic book we sold and then we’d pull out replacement copies from our backroom full of old issues and then we’d put these into our retail stock. This process took so much time and cost me so much in employee salaries that I decided to change this procedure at my new location. Since we now had more space in this building than we thought we’d ever be able to fill we decided to put every comic book back issue out on display in the main retail area. This system would cut labor costs for me because there would be no restocking costs. This meant that we had as many as one hundred copies of the same comic book available at any one time. This amazed a lot of collectors because they didn’t realize how big my inventory had gotten but now they could see the whole inventory at once. While this created quite an excitement with our customers, I began to notice that this new system slowed the sales of some back issues that we had dozens of copies of because the customer now perceived that there was no urgent need to buy these comic books. There seemed to be plenty of them available to buy some other day. Even though this wasn’t smart we decided to leave it this way because we needed to make it look as though we had a lot of product available in this larger store.

At the same time that my employees and I were attempting to rearrange things in the new store we also had to keep our normal business activities going. Business was great and it was increasing each week as we bought more products to offer to our customers. We also noticed that more women were coming into the new store because this new location was in a much safer neighborhood. It was nice to have entire families shopping at our store now. We continued to move stuff around to make it more appealing to non-collectors and our increases in sales indicated that we were making the right decisions.

All of this extra work left me little time to work with Brian on our ongoing project of “Classic Toys Trading Cards.” We had hoped to have this project finished by now but I just couldn’t get motivated to work on these cards and this frustrated Brian. We had been friends for years now and we had always gotten along but this situation was getting tense and it came to a “head” one day when we were attempting to photograph some collectible toys in one of the unheated storage rooms of my new store. Brian explained how much he wanted to finish these cards and he was upset that I wasn’t willing to set aside the time necessary to complete this project. He pointed out that he was also very busy with his full-time job as a teacher but he was willing to work hard to finish these cards. After a brief and angry exchange, we agreed to work together to get the cards ready to send to our printer. We were only mad for a short time once we got everything “out in the open.”

While we waited for the last batch of photographs to be developed, we began to design the layout for the cards. We wanted these to look “Classic” so we went to a wallpaper store and spent hours looking through books of wallpaper until we found one that looked like marble. This would be used as our border on all of the trading cards. We had intended to actually cut the wallpaper to the size of our trading card and we’d glue the developed photographs onto it but my old friend, Mark Marderosian, who now had access to a computer, thankfully helped us.

I had worked with Mark a few years earlier when I published his comic book, “Delta Tenn,” and he was always friendly, talented, and professional. He offered to design our clever “retro” logo for our “Classic Toys Trading Cards” and he scanned all of our photos and the wallpaper border into his computer. Mark ended up doing far more than he ever anticipated and this project would not have been as professional if he hadn’t been involved.

Brian and I photographed lots of interesting toys for this set of trading cards and most of them were from our own personal collections but we did get some help from a few other collectors who had items that we didn’t. Eventually we selected sixty-five collectible toys to feature in our set. The toys we selected included: Captain Action, Robby The Robot, The Man From Uncle Napoleon Solo Gun Set, Aurora monster model kits, Marx playsets, Barbie, Corgi cars, Star Trek action figures, The Beatle’s Remco Dolls, GI Joe, View-Master sets, Colorforms, lunchboxes, the Lost In Space game, Easy Bake Oven, the Mouse Trap Game, Star Wars toys, Major Matt Mason, Mr. Potato Head, James Bond items, Slinky, and many more!

We decided to design the backs of the cards to be an informational price guide so we researched the current values of all of the toys that we featured. We had fun writing some of these and many contain our “trademarked” sarcastic wit. All that was left to do was to get these cards manufactured.

Next chapter: The Death of Superman!

Part Eighty Five

On top of the almost overwhelming effort of moving into our huge new store location, managing two stores, finishing up our “Classic Toys Trading Cards” project, and the day-to-day operations of the comic book business, I decided to complicate my life even more. I had been married for nineteen years and my wife really hated my teeth. They were crooked and in some areas I had multiple rows of teeth. I thought it would be a nice “gift” for her if I got my teeth fixed. So at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, I got braces. This required five teeth to be pulled out and far too many inconvenient orthodontist appointments but she liked the results. Through the process I discovered some of the discomfort that my son, Adam, endured during his first experience with braces. Sore teeth, broken wires sticking into the inside of my cheek, and cleaning food stuck in the braces, were just a few of the negatives. This wasn’t fun for me but since it was only for a year and a half I knew I could handle it. After all, children do it all of the time. Eventually, Adam and Cassy both endured braces twice.

The commercial building I purchased had almost 20,000 square feet of floor space and it was divided into two almost equal spaces by a cement block wall. I planned to use one side as my retail section and eventually I’d use the other section for storage of my extra, un-needed “back-room” inventory.

Shortly after I bought my new store building a man named Gary contacted me. He had been interested in buying the building but he waited too long and I ended up with it. He asked if I’d be interested in renting part of it to him so he could relocate his business there. Gary and his wife, Janice, ran a Halloween store called “The Halloween Outlet” that sold costumes, props, wigs, makeup, and more Halloween related merchandise. I had no idea what most commercial spaces in this area were renting for but I figured out what my mortgage, interest, taxes, and insurance would cost each month and quoted Gary a little bit above that amount. Gary agreed to my asking price immediately. He knew what a bargain this was and I was thrilled to be in this new location at “no cost.” This relationship was important for both of us for many years. Some people considered this to be another one of the examples of my “luck” and they may be right.

In mid-1992 DC Comics revealed to retailers that they intended to “kill” Superman in the seventy-fifth issue of his current comic book series. This special issue was going to be sold in two versions. One would be a regular comic book and the other would be poly-bagged with a small poster and a black armband. The poly-bagged edition would have a $2.50 cover price and it would be sold exclusively at comic book stores. We ordered five hundred copies, double the number of copies we normally ordered of the ongoing “Superman” series. Since we ordered these comic books almost two months before they were released we really were just guessing at the demand for this “special” issue.

We were not prepared for the major press and media attention to this comic book. DC Comics managed to make this big news in the mainstream media by seemingly issuing press releases to everyone on the planet. I guess the gullible press really believed that when DC Comics “killed” Superman that he would stay dead! As the release date drew near, television, radio stations, and newspapers reported about Superman’s death and it began to seem as if the general public would actually be interested in buying this issue. We doubled our original order for this comic book to one thousand copies.

I don’t remember which one of my employees (it may have even been my idea) in my organization came up with the idea for our special “Death of Superman” event, but it was a great idea. We hired one of our customers to dress up in a Superman costume. Gary, the owner of The Halloween Outlet, let me borrow a prop coffin for our fake funeral for Superman. I called around to a few funeral homes to see if I could have some of their unwanted flowers that might have been leftover from recent funerals. Some of the funeral directors were insulted by my request (I guess they thought I was making a mockery of their profession) but I finally found one guy who was willing to help me. He gave me some nice looking funeral flower displays that were only slightly wilted and they would serve their purpose well.

Albert Aeed, one of my more “fun” employees, would dress up as a minister and he prepared a solemn and passionate eulogy about Superman. All of my employees had collaborated on this event in different ways. A few weeks before the funeral, they had all offered different ideas and many hours were spent discussing and planning this event. Everyone was willing to work together to make this fun for our customers and a potentially profitable event for the store. We decided to gather up a few thousand back issue comic books that featured Superman in them and planned to give them away to the people who attended the funeral. We also made up some packages of ten Superman-related comics to give away to anyone who came to the funeral dressed up as a “super-hero.” Faxes and press releases went out to radio stations, newspapers, and the cable company. We then followed up with personal phone calls to these media outlets. Surprisingly, most of them expressed interest in running some sort of story for this event. The major newspaper in the city ran a small story two days before the event and sent a reporter and a photographer to cover the funeral. The local cable-TV news channel did a nice two-minute segment the night before the funeral and followed it up with a story after the funeral too.

With all of this advanced publicity I was concerned that we wouldn’t have enough copies of the special edition Superman comic book to meet the demand. I called “Jeep,” my Diamond Comic Distributors representative, and he was able to do me a favor by getting me another seven hundred copies. We were pretty sure we were ready now.

There were already people lined up when we arrived at 9:00 a.m. at our store on that Saturday morning. By the time we opened an hour later there were a few hundred people! Our “Superman” laid perfectly still in the coffin with his eyes closed for almost six hours as almost one thousand people streamed by him to “pay their respects” to the fallen hero. Mal and our two children, Adam and Cassy, came to help out in any way they could. My mother and my Aunt Jody (Cousin Steven’s mom) even came by to be part of this event. A few dozen people came dressed as other superheroes including Sandman, Insect Man, and Batman. Albert Aeed’s eulogy was well received. We gave away thousands of the back issues of the Superman related comics and sold every copy of the special edition for $2.40 each. (It was our policy to sell all of our new comics for ten cents off of the cover price) The visitors had a great time and we were rewarded with a record-breaking day of sales.

Because of all of the publicity we received, people came in looking for a copy of the special “Death” edition of the Superman comic book for many weeks after the funeral. My pal, Jeep, managed to supply us with more copies so we were able to accommodate these potential new customers at the original cover price while most of our competitors were “gouging” people for as much as twenty dollars a copy! The goodwill we earned from this event paid off in many ways.

Next chapter: The Norman Rockwell comic book connection.

Part Eighty Six
I love collecting things. In fact, at one time or another, I’ve collected comic books, toys, trading cards, movies, TV shows, and artwork (primarily comic book art). The only non-comic book related art I wanted was an original Norman Rockwell painting. I had always admired his work but I couldn’t afford to buy one of his original oil paintings because they were usually sold for over $10,000 and I always had more “important” things to spend my money on, like food and school tuition for my children.

The comic book business was really great in the early 1990’s and by early 1993 I decided that I could finally afford to buy one. I began to mention my desire to a few of my customers and friends in the comic book business. One of my customers had a father who was an art dealer and he offered me two different Rockwell paintings but neither of them excited me. One pictured an astronaut and the other was something else I had no interest in buying. My good friend, Tom Stanford, gave me a catalog from an auction house in Michigan that was going to be selling a nice Rockwell oil painting. The catalog showcased the painting on the front cover and it was a painting I was familiar with. It was titled, “Shuffleton’s Barber Shop” and it pictured an old-fashioned barbershop that was closed, but in the background you could see that there was a light on in the back room and there were some men playing instruments there. The auction house had estimated the value at $8000-$11,000 and I was ready and willing to pay that much. When I showed the catalog to my wife she encouraged me to bid on the painting.

A little later, as I was leafing through the rest of the catalog I came across a double-page spread that showed the entire painting. (The picture on the front of the catalog was apparently cropped so it would fit the cover.) I discovered that this painting actually had a small rack filled with comic books in the foreground! This was the only Norman Rockwell painting I knew of that featured comic books in it and I was now convinced that I should own this great painting. I mailed in the bidding form with an opening bid of $11,000.

The auction was scheduled to end a few weeks later, but it turned out that my son, Adam, had a performance of his school play of “Yankee Doodle, A Musical Revue” on that same night. Adam was in the seventh grade and this was going to be his first lead role as an actor and there was no way I was going to miss this performance. I arranged to have access to the school administrator’s telephone (this was in the days before cell phones) and I sat in Joodi Ward’s office waiting for the scheduled time for the painting to be sold. My wife, Mal, came in and told me that the play was about to start. I got through to the auction house’s phone “bidder” and I could hear the auction happening. The Rockwell painting was displayed and described to the live audience of bidders. The bidding opened at my mailed in bid of $11,000 and it appeared as if I was going to be the high bidder at that price. I was thrilled! I heard the auctioneer say, “Going once. Going twice. No advance over $11,000?” Suddenly some bidder offered $13,000. I countered with $15,000. Mal came in again and said, “Come on, the play is about to start!” The auctioneer said, “I now have $18,000.” I bid more and for almost thirty seconds it seemed like I was going to end up the high bidder. But someone increased the bid again. By the next time that my wife came in she heard me bidding $32,000! She just gave me one of those “looks.” I knew I couldn’t really justify spending any more than that on this painting so I stopped bidding. It sold for $51,000. A Rockwell original oil painting now sells for over $200,000. I guess I’ll never own one.

I rushed into the theater just in time to see the play begin. Although I would liked to have been the high bidder on the painting, I would hate the constant worry that would come with the ownership and care of such a valuable item. By the way, the play was great.

Next chapter: Our “Classic Toy Trading Cards” are finally released.

Part Eighty Seven
After I finally forced myself to make the time available to help Brian finish photographing the toys that we wanted to include in our new product, “Classic Toys Trading Cards,” we worked hard to write the descriptions for the backs of the cards while our good friend, Mark Marderosian, did the finishing touches on his computer layout of the final set of sixty-six cards. Mark also designed a full-color advertising flyer that we had our old printing friends at “Associated Printers” of Grafton, North Dakota, print up for us. We sent these to “Diamond Comic Distributors” so they could include these with the next order form that would be sent to almost every comic book specialty store in the United States, Canada, and England. I found a printer in “up-state” New York who was able to print the cards in large sheets and then cut them into individual trading cards. To complete the project, they would put seven random cards into a foil package and put thirty-six of these packages into a box. The box would then be shrink-wrapped and twenty of these boxes would be put into one case. We sent the printer the computer disk with the sixty-six card fronts and backs on it so he could assemble these into the large un-cut sheet format. He produced a “proof-sheet” for Brian and I to review before the cards were to be printed.

I remember our excitement when we received this “proof-sheet!” The cards looked great. We carefully looked at each card to be sure that there were no spelling errors and to be sure that the front of the cards matched the backs of the cards. When we were satisfied that everything was correct, we called the printer and gave him the permission to print the cards. I brought the “proof-sheet” home to show my family. My fourteen-year old son, Adam, looked over the large sheet and said, “Dad, why are there two Paul McCartney cards?” ARRRGGGGH! Somehow Brian and I had both missed this error! Luckily, we were able to contact the printer just before he printed the cards and he corrected his mistake.

My agreement with Brian was that I would put up all of the money to produce these cards and he would be the main artistic guy. We’d then split any proceeds evenly. It was now time for me to send the printer the $42,000. Thirty days later we received the three hundred cases of “Classic Toys Trading Cards.”

We shipped out the cases that were pre-ordered through the comic book distributors and we began to enjoy the favorable reviews that the trading card publications wrote about our new product. Within a few months we had my original investment back and we still had about one hundred cases of cards left. Unfortunately, the trading card market was “crashing” and the interest in our product faded. Over time, we eventually made a modest profit on these cards and this remains as the product I’m most proud of. For a couple of guys with no professional experience, we produced an excellent set of cards.

Next chapter: Hey, Hey, it’s Davy Jones of The Monkees!

Part Eighty Eight

One day in 1993 I received an advertising flyer from a talent agency that represented a large number of celebrities and entertainers. My store manager, Chris, and I looked through the roster of people they were offering but most of them had no connection to our business of selling comic books, toys, and sports memorabilia. There were lots of singers and some old television stars but one name “jumped out” at me. Davy Jones of The Monkees was available through this talent agency!

The Monkees was one of my favorite bands from my childhood and I thought it would be such fun to have Davy Jones as a guest at my Worcester store. The Monkees had gotten back together for a highly successful tour from 1986-1987 and I had paid to see them five or six times during that period. Each show was extremely entertaining and the audiences seemed to love these guys. Chris and I weren’t sure that our customer base, primarily collectors of comic books and sports memorabilia, would have any interest in seeing an ex-Monkee, but if the price was reasonable enough I would book Davy Jones just for my pleasure. The Monkees were not touring as a group at this time so I thought that perhaps this could be affordable.

The talent agency asked me a bunch of questions about what I would want Davy Jones to do at my store. I explained that I wanted him to sign free autographs for my customers. I wanted Davy to be available to “meet and greet” my customers from 10:00 am to noon, and then he’d take two hours for lunch and come back to sign more autographs from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The agent thought that it sounded possible and she quoted me a price for Davy’s services. The fee was reasonable enough so I accepted the deal with the conditions that Davy Jones would be responsible for his own transportation and hotel expenses. The agent cleared the appearance with Davy Jones and she sent me a contract that I signed and returned. I now had four months to make this a successful event.

Chris and I worked on press releases to send to the newspapers and radio stations in the area and we created a flyer to be sent to the people on my huge mailing list but I wanted to let the general population know about my exciting guest. I decided to advertise his appearance with some “spots” on cable television.

A few months earlier, I had been approached by a cable-television advertising sales person (named Sue) when she was trying to sell me on the idea of actually spending some money on television commercials. I explained to her that I was not in the habit of spending any money on advertising. I had built my business over the previous thirteen years by spending about twenty dollars per year on an advertisement in the annual “Comic Book Price Guide.” I was not going to be easy to convince that I should buy television commercials. But Sue was very persistent and she presented me with a proposal for a fifty-two week advertising campaign. The cable company wanted me to run seven spots each day and pay thirty-five dollars for each of the thirty-second commercials. They also wanted me to pay for the production of the commercials. Cable companies have over a hundred channels running twenty-four hours per day for which they need to sell commercial time. If they don’t sell that space they’ll be forced to run a “PSA” (Public Service Announcement) that they won’t get paid for. So I “countered” with a quite different suggestion. I wanted them to pay for all production costs. I was only to pay thirty-five dollars for one spot each day in a pre-scheduled time-slot and I would ask them to place ten “free” bonus spots anywhere on the television schedule. I was also only willing to commit to a thirteen-week contract. Sue spoke with her boss and they agreed to my suggested terms. We filmed two different television commercials in my store to show the viewers how huge this space was and to let the public know what types of products we sold. Our first thirteen-week contract was expiring soon when we got the contract for Davy Jones’s appearance. Sue convinced the cable company to renew our contract for another thirteen weeks at the same low rate.

The cable company created a new commercial to advertise Davy Jones visit and they really did a nice job. They used a little bit of the original theme song from The Monkees television show and some photos of Davy from the mid-1960’s to let the viewer know that he was coming to our store to sign free autographs. The commercial ran for three or four weeks before Davy’s store appearance and we hoped that the local television audience would be interested in coming to see him. But as we approached the event date, I was surprised (and dismayed) to learn that my loyal customer base seemed uninterested in coming to meet Davy Jones.

Next chapter: Could this event be a disaster?!

Part Eighty Nine

We had booked Davy Jones of The Monkees to make an appearance at our store in Worcester, Massachusetts in September of 1993. Davy’s manager agreed that he would receive a “lump sum” fee and Davy would be responsible for all of his own travel expenses. Davy would also agree to sign free autographs for any visitors. We wanted to be sure that Davy was safe so we hired a Worcester police officer as security for this event. We wanted this special event to be “perfect” and we tried to anticipate every possible problem that could come up. Our store had arranged to have many guests before but this would be the highest expenditure we ever had for an in-store event so I wanted it to seem really special for my customers.

We printed thousands of “flyers” to give to everyone who visited our store in the three months prior to Davy’s visit and we encouraged all of our employees to be sure to verbally advertise this appearance. We sent out the flyers to everyone on our huge mailing list and ran our newly created television commercial on cable television channels for a thirteen-week period before the September event. I was excited about the opportunity to meet one of my favorite childhood performers. I wanted my customers (and any new visitors to my store) to have the opportunity to get a personal autograph from Davy Jones without having to pay for it. But I wouldn’t mind making a bit of money on this event if I could figure out some way to do it.

Davy’s manager would get me some copies of the two different books that Davy had written about his days as a “Monkee” that I could sell. I ordered two full cases (forty copies) of one book and twenty copies of the other at a wholesale price of fifty percent off of retail price. I had to agree to purchase these on a non-returnable basis so I wanted to be sure that I didn’t order too many copies. I also got lucky because a good customer of mine had five different vintage photographs of The Monkees from the 1960’s that he offered to allow me to copy so that I’d have something interesting for Davy to sign for my customers. I went to a local printer and they reproduced five hundred of each of the 8 by 10 photos on a glossy paper at a very low price. I certainly didn’t expect to be able to sell that many photos but since the cost was so low I knew I wasn’t risking very much money and just in case I ended up with a big crowd there would be something there for them to get signed. I also knew many people might bring items from their own collections to get autographed.

We contacted the local cable news station and they agreed to do a small news segment about Davy’s appearance. Two of the larger newspapers also expressed interest in covering the event. I was satisfied that we were “covering all of the bases” as far as publicity goes but the almost complete lack of interest on the part of my loyal customer base surprised us all. We would try to remind every customer about the upcoming appearance and most of them would just shrug and say, “Yeah, I’m not a fan of The Monkees.” We’d try to get them interested by reminding them that he is a famous celebrity and he would be signing FREE autographs but as the day got closer we all began to believe that we’d really made a mistake.

A week before the appearance Davy’s manager called to inform us that Davy had a “gig” in New York City that wouldn’t get over until almost one o’clock in the morning on the day he was supposed to be at my store. By the time his concert was over he’d be exhausted and he’d still have a five-hour drive from New York to Worcester, Massachusetts. By the time Davy and his road manager checked into the local hotel there would be less than two hours for him to get some rest before I was to pick him up to bring him to my store. I certainly wasn’t happy with this new development. I hate surprises, especially when the financial risk was so high. I enjoyed being in complete control of my situations and this was ruining our careful plans.

Next chapter: Even the weather is against us!