Tuesday, July 10, 2018

GARAGE SALES UPDATE

My next Vast Accumulation of Stuff garage sales will be Friday and Saturday, July 13-14, at 840 Damon Drive in Medina, Ohio, from 9 am to 1 pm each day. If you’ve ever attended one of my sales or if you follow their progress online, you know that there will be 1000s of cool items at bargain prices.

I always plan to work on the garage sales at a leisurely pace. As with many things in life, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The “enemy” in this instance is all the other things I have to do in any given week and the relentless march of time. Once again, I find myself two days away from the garage sales with much left to do before I open the garage door on Friday morning.

I know what’s in my sale at this moment. There is a quarter corner with Beanie Babies, a couple boxes of comic books and some classic movies on VHS. However, I’m thinking I may want to take everything on that table, put it into our much-beloved mystery boxes, adding a bunch of really cool stuff to each box.

There are Superman posters, including the rare double-sided poster I helped design for the 1988 International Superman Exposition held in Cleveland. There are two different Black Lightning posters, as well as Daredevil and Luke Cage mini-posters.

There are many boxes of dollar comics. These aren’t those leftover 1990s crap so prevalent at comics conventions and flea markets. No, these are fairly recent comics from DC, Marvel, Image and others. Plus some surprising older comic books. You’ll find Star Wars, the Simpsons, Batman and many others.

I have cool collectible phones. I have DC and Marvel and Stan Lee collector boxes. I have Black Lightning: Cold Dead Hands comics and Black Lightning trade paperbacks. I have July 1963: A Pivotal Month in the Comic-Book Life of Tony Isabella Volume One. I have replica editions of the Green Books, an annual publication that, way back in the day, guided black tourists to where they could stay safely in hundreds of cities.

I have lots of hardcovers and trades, generally at 30% or less of their original prices. I’m hoping to add many more of these to the tables before Friday.

I have a fifty-cent table featuring issues of The Beano (a British comics weekly), Commando (a British war comics digest), a bunch of manga volumes and paperbacks and lots more. Some of these items are also fair game for my mystery boxes...and I have some other great surprises going into those boxes as well.

If at all possible, I hope to have at least one boxes of somewhat more expensive comic books priced to sell. I also hope to have at least one box of magazines, also priced to sell.

It’s hard for me to predict exactly what I’ll be adding to my next garage sale. Right now, I’m working my way through my son Ed’s old room and my office. That’s a bit like digging for gold in a mine. If I spend an hour in either room, I’ll excavate maybe two inches of goodies. And...

...I just remembered I also have some boxes that followed me home from my last visit to the Fortress of Storage. I definitely plan to go through those tomorrow and Thursday.

The closer I get to the garage sales, the more excited I get about  them. Writers are solitary creatures, so it’s fun to spend a little bit of time with other comics fans.

So, here I am, Tuesday night, writing this update. I’ve placed my usual ad in the local newspaper. I’ve posted an announcement about the garage sale on Craig’s List. I’ve been promoting the sales on Facebook, Twitter and elsewhere online. Now comes digging in as I try to add as much stuff as possible to the sales.

If you can’t make this weekend’s garage sales, don’t me too upset. I’m also doing them on July 20-21 and July 27-28. I am downsizing big-time with the goal of getting my office closer to renovation by the end of the year. Hoo-hah!

That’s all for now. See you tomorrow.

© 2018 Tony Isabella

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