6/19/19: HeroesCon Highlights and Website Updates

By News

Hello All,

I trust that summer is treating you well and comics are treating you better. Here at the Reece Comics headquarters we have been busier than ever as have hit our peak season for traveling to conventions, looking at collections, and improving our online shopping experience. The show we just returned from is one of our favorites of the year and I want to give a brief overview of 2019 HeroesCon.

HeroesCon is a show held in Charlotte, North Carolina every year in June and continues to remain at the top of the charts for comic shows. HeroesCon has kept the spirit of the 70’s hotel shows and managed to merge it beautifully into a bigger convention hall with tons of space for of comic dealers, art dealers, and artists. Unlike many of the other big shows that we attend, the focus here is on comic books and comic art, and less on celebrity appearances and pop culture boutiques.

To begin our weekend, we had an easy load in on Thursday and joined the ranks of dealers setting up already. Just a quick look around showed us comic book dealers from wall to wall down a huge main aisle. We were happy to debut about 100 new slabs since we were in Florida for MegaCon and spent most of the day getting the booth prepared for a long weekend.  We were able to walk the floor a little bit to scope out some potential buys and say hello to everyone we know.

Friday came soon enough and it was not long before the show kicked off! One of the best parts of HeroesCon is that the show remains smaller in size but still remains one of the best comic shows around. Collectors came in Friday with their lists and didn’t mess around when it came to buying. In fact, nearly every dealer I spoke with at the end of the day reported a great day of selling and buying. As best I can remember, the books being asked about the most were:

  • Silver Surfer #1
  • Daredevil #1
  • X-Men #1
  • Fantastic Four #1
  • Giant-Size X-Men #1
  • Marvel Spotlight #5
  • Amazing Fantasy #15

In addition to these major keys, there were tons of people looking for high grade raw books to add to their runs while it appeared the cheaper $1 boxes didn’t fare as well. There also appeared to be plenty of people looking to sell books without having to go through the hassle of listing on eBay, paying commission, etc.  We were able to secure some nice early Amazing Spider-Man’s, Eternals, Nova, Golden Age Captain America’s, and a handful of other slabs.

Saturday was a little slower than Friday as customers seemed to have knocked out the high priority items on their lists and spent more time carefully walking the room to find the best deals. However, it was still a successful day and we were busy with 4-5 people at the booth consistently from around 11:00-3:00. The busyness of the day made the hours fly by and before we knew it, it was time to pack up and head home for the evening. We spent the night walking around downtown Charlotte exploring its many parks and public spaces and finally ended up with a few friends outside of our hotel to enjoy some cold beers and beautiful weather.

Sunday was a slow day as most of the comic shopping came to a halt around 3:00 p.m.. The show continued until 6:00 and we were able to have the booth broken down by the time we got our van in the hall for load out. A few hours later we were in Virginia to stay with anther one of our brothers to escape being in a hotel for one night.

I was terrible at taking pictures this weekend as we seemed to be busy the entire time, but here are a few of the booth!

 

And here are some books that we picked up at the show or arrived while we were away:

 

All of the graded books are available right now and can be searched for on their own or viewed on our New Arrivals page. The raws will go into processing to determine if they need to be sent to grading or listed on the website. Speaking of the website, you might have also noticed a few changes that took place!

For one, we have a new section on our home menu tabs that allows you to view books by:

  • 1st appearances
  • Pre-Code Horror
  • Pre-Hero Comics
  • Magazines
  • Treasuries
  • Signature Series
  • Price Variants

Unfortunately we are going to have to manually add all our previously added books to these pages, but going forward any new book we add will be correctly sorted into these pages. In addition to this change, we also were able to add some long awaited quality of life features!

As of last week, you are now able to search by signature series under the advanced search and also filter by price:

This allows you to refine your search even more and will save you time when looking to buy a book in various price ranges. These updates also apply to our regular series pages, meaning that when you’re viewing “Amazing Spider-Man” under the marvel tab, you will also be able to refine your search:

Again, these changes don’t apply retroactively to our previously added products, but we are doing our best to go back and edit those so that they will show up properly when conducting a search. We hope that you all enjoy these changes and provide us with any feedback you may have!

Finally, we must again offer our thanks to everyone who came out to see us in Charlotte this past weekend. We had such a good time seeing people that we have gotten to know over the years. It is with your support that we are able to do what we do.

As we enter the heart of the summer, make sure you keep checking back on the website for more books, updated blog posts, and future shows! We hope to see you out there.

-Austin