Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, mile high comics
Mile High Comics To Change Their Business Practices. And Get Very Very Busy Tomorrow.
Chuck Rozanski of Mile High Comics is the comic book dealer that changed comic collecting history.
He turned making the an immensely lucky find of comics that would have been thrown away into a major comics selling and collecting business that would make many more such finds and Mile High Comics became one of the largest and longest-lived comic book retailers in the country,
Rozanski has also talked about deliberately overpricing the books he sells when he brings them onto the market, so as not to flood it.
It's something that's become a habit, but clearly it works. Because they keep books in stock, when I've really needed a comic, they'll have it more likely than not, and I've been happy to pay three times as much as I thought I would, just to get ir right there and then. And when the sales come around, I've loaded up.
One employee of Mile High Comics told me how deliberate this all is. "It has been the practice of MHC to artificially raise prices listed on our website, to about double market value, and then to have "codeword sales" that apply a fifty, sixty, or sixty-five percent discount off of those prices. The end result being that, when the discount was applied, the actual price paid by the customer ended up being close to, or just a little less, than market value."
And even so, with prices rising on all sorts of books, it's sometimes been hard for Mile High to keep ahead of the curve.
But apparently things are changing at the store, with its large web presence (and a website straight out of the nineteen nineties). Chuck is changing the business practice of Mile High Comics and all the books are to be brought down closer to standard market values, as of tomorrow.
But on the same day, Chuck will also announce a 50% codeword (SWEETHEART) sale, which will apply to these new prices, to last for three days.
I am given the example that Justice League of America (1960) #31, in VG lists on Mile High Comics for $103. Tomorrow, that price will be dropped to $58 (which is closer to where Comic Book Realm lists its value at, in that grade).
When the 50% codeword is applied to that new price, on Friday, the ending price, from Mile High, will be right around $29. And this kind of thing will be happening across the board.
Expect a spending frenzy, considering the huge amount of stock Mile High Comics has. You have been warned. I do hope that old site can cope.
And, moving forward, expect a change of how the company does business…