DRIVEWAY CON 2014: THE SHORT VERSION

I have a lot to tell you about my combination Driveway Con and Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sale, held this past weekend at Casa Isabella in Medina, Ohio. It may take me most of the week to post everything I want to say...for reasons you’ll understand after you read tomorrow’s bloggy thing.

Driveway Con came about in a perfect storm of events that started when I took a stand on a local political issue and continued when my friend and neighbor Tom Batiuk started talking about how much we would have liked to attend San Diego’s Comic-Con International this year. Things just grew from that. You’ll get all the fun and silly details this year.  For now, taken from a posting he made to the Timely-Atlas-Comics mailing list, I’m going to let my good friend Tim Stroup give you the bare bones.

Tim compared Driveway Con 2014 and Comic-Con:

“[Tony’s Driveway Con] had things Comic-Con has: cosplayers, trivia contests, mingling with the pros, exclusive announcements from the pros and a dealer’s room. Advantages over Comic-Con: no lines and great dealer’s room prices. And I doubt Comic-Con had that A Dare With Judy issue in any dealer’s stock. Now if only I had found that Starbuck Jones issue. Looking forward to what Tony comes up with next.”

We got seven cosplayers: Supergirl, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, No-Face from Spirited Away, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Wonder Girl from the New 52.In a spectacularly stupid move, I didn’t not arrange to have anyone taking photos of the cosplayers. I’ll try not to make this mistake again. I have an idea I’ll write about later in the week.

Picking the winner of the costume contest was much harder than I’d anticipated. It came down to Boba Fett and Wonder Girl. I took memost of yesterday to make the decision.

Boba Fett, as cosplayed by Dan Guinto, wins the grand prize of $50 in Vast Accumulation of Stuff cash. But I’m also awarding a second-  place prize of $25 in VAOS cash to Jesse Adkins for her cosplay as Wonder Girl. Dan and Jesse can pick up their prize “money” at the next garage sale.

At various times during the garage sale, I asked 22 multiple-choice trivia questions. If a customer answered correctly, he or she got $1 in Vast Accumulation of Stuff cash. All told, I handed out $33 in VAOS money over the weekend.

I promised a honest-to-Godzilla comics convention-style panel for Saturday. With the help of Mike W. Barr and Tom Batiuk, I delivered on that promise. We had a lively discussions on our favorite comic books and comic strips. Tom revealed some upcoming plot twists in Funky Winkerbean. We answered questions from the dozen or so folks who were sitting in my driveway listening to us.

Several customers asked if I could do more creator events like this one, possibly in another area venues. I think that’s a possibility and I’ll be working on it.

The garage sales were very successful for me. I hit more than 200% of my weekend goal. I sold thousands of comic books, magazines and more. I had two or three customers tell me they completed various collections at the sales.

After Friday’s sale, I had to go to the Fortress of Storage to get more stuff to sell for Saturday. I also had to go to the bank for more singles and fives, something I have never had to do with any other garage sale.

After Saturday morning, I ran out of the plastic shopping bags we use to bag up customer purchases. I had to go to my emergency stock for the Saturday evening hours.

About those Saturday evening hours...they were also a success. We got six or seven customers between 5 and 7 pm, all fans who could not make our morning hours. Because this evening session proved to be convenient for the customers and worth my time, I plan to offer Saturday evening hours at most of my future garage sales.

That’s the short version of the weekend. Tomorrow’s blog will be of a more personal nature, but that will be followed by more detailed blogs on what went into Driveway Con 2014.

Thanks for reading the bloggy thing, my friends.
   
© 2014 Tony Isabella

PHOTO BY NANCY JOHNSON/GAZETTE