Black Friday Madness & A Quick Look At My Shop

I’m not sure what it’s like in your corner of the world, but here in the good ol’ USA...this coming Friday will be a nightmare and a blessing simultaneously. Retailers large and small across the land take part in and in some cases, depend on the sales that this specific day generates. I’m talking about Black Friday.

In the states, we use the day prior in Thanksgiving to gorge ourselves beyond comprehension. It’s a great excuse for Americans to eat out of control but more importantly, do it in good company with family and friends which isn’t such a bad thing. I really enjoy the big holidays as I love an excuse to eat like an embarrassing mess and I look forward to getting together with family and friends. But this isn’t about Thanksgiving, it’s about the aftermath of it. Black Friday!!!!! Ugh...

Having my own shop, it’s become a major day for us although in recent years, big online sites such as Walmart and obviously Amazon put a hurting on the little guys like myself. So my advice this holiday season...shop local!!! Support the folks that contribute to events locally and give back to the community. You might pay a buck or two more but you have the convenience of having it right now versus waiting and you know it’s going to support a part of your community.

Ok, back to my rant. I hate Black Friday. Even though we participate in it at the shop by running a big sale, it’s just the worst. Each and every year, numerous stories come out on the news of folks getting stampeded on as they run to save $30 on that Blu-Ray player. Fights breaking out over a microwave. I find it embarassing and downright sad.

It used to be just Friday but in recent years, it’s shifted to now intersect and overlap on Thursday which is Thanksgiving. So now you have folks leaving one of the few days a year that they get together and spend time with family to go line up outside of a mall for 6 hours to buy that watch or pair of shoes as it’s a doorbuster deal!!! When that started happening, is when I truly hated the day. It’s now the friend that you tolerated, but is overstaying his welcome and intruding on personal matters.

I had people asking me all week if we were going to be open on Thanksgiving and running a sale and my answer is the same...it starts Friday morning. We run it all weekend as to give folks a chance to get around to us over the big box retailers.

I snapped a few pics of the shop last night before I left just to showcase some of the product we carry. Some of you were curious and were asking me questions at SteemFest so I figured why not show a bit off right now. I’ll probably do some more detailed pieces in the future on the specific types of product we carry as it’s so varied. Anyway, I hope you find it interesting.

This is my shop. It’s the flagship store in a shopping plaza that contains a bagel shop, a vape store, a tea place, and a carpet store. We have been in business here for 10 & 1/2 years....way too long. Lol

We carry a ridiculous amount of high end statues from a variety of specialty manufacturers. Our selection is over 1200 pieces. Most of these are made of resin and are produced in extremely limited numbers. Some of these can fetch big bucks out of the gate, let alone secondary market prices.

More statues and busts.

Same here. These all come in nice boxes too which we have in the back. They are extremely fragile as well, hence why most are in cases except for the larger ones. Notice in th pic below, I circled a piece.

You can’t really see it from here but that is the Sideshow Doctor Doom Premium Format 1/4 Scale Statue. It’s my favorite statue that I own. It came out around 15 years ago and it’s truly badass!!! It’s so detailed and there are only 500 of this specific piece out there. It was around $325 bucks when it released and currently sells for about $4500!!! At one point I had close to 10 of these but sadly this is my last one.

More statues!!!

Yup...you bet...more statues. We are pretty proud of our selection here. I’ve traveled the world and pop into shops often. I’ve never seen a store carry even a third of the selection that we do. They take up a ton of room, they are expensive, and take some time to move...so I completely understand why.

Last statue pic...promise.

LEGO mini figures are something that we have grown to carry. We started small and customers love em so one case grew to two...two cases grew to three...

Action figures galore!!! We have over 5000 different action figures in stock. From Marvel to DC. Horror to Video Games. All the genres are covered here!!!

More tasty action figures and toys.

Our new book racks. Each and every Wednesday, the new comic titles come out. This will rotate each week to showcase those new books.

A poor shot here but our wall books are a variety of high end classics and keys, special variant covers, and or just cool books. Our wall boasts over 800 different killer comics on display. Under those are our long boxes which hold around 250 books per box. We have over 300 long boxes for folks to rummage through to keep them busy.

Try your luck on the Funko Claw Machine!! There are only 3 of these in the world. Funko owns one, the manufacturer (NEN) owns one, and we own the third. Pretty badass!!

Or maybe blow off some Steem by playing some classic arcade games. We have Arkanoid (one of my favs), Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and the 4 player X-Men side scroller.

Our bookshelves house over 10,000
graphic novels and trade paperbacks!!! On top you’ll notice a massive amount of Funko Pops in which we have just under 3000 different ones to choose from.

More Funko Pops and graphic novels. We have one of the best Pop selections on the planet and Funko fans are Fanatics so we get people traveling from hours away to hit us up. Folks from Philly, New York, Baltimore, and even as far away as Pittsburgh (about 6 1/2 hours) make the trek to us regularly.

In these cases we “Pop” in some of the more expensive Funko Pops. A few months back we sold “The Most Expensive Pop In The World”. It sat in our case....Not For Sale for almost 2 years. When we finally decided to list it, it sold within a week for $15,000!!! Nutty story. I’ll do a detailed write up on that in the near future.

That is all I took last night. I didn’t even expect to do this here. I initially took them last night to blast out on our Instagram, but figured I’d do a little showcasing here when I started writing about Black Friday. I’ll cover the different types in sections in the near future in much more detailed pieces for those interested in learning more about my weird world.

IN CLOSING

I for one will NOT be going and shopping as I will be manning my shop. As I’ve gotten older, waiting in long lines for things and battling to save a few bucks just isn’t enticing or practical. So I’m curious to those here in the states or anywhere that this is celebrated...do you go out and tough it out for some goods? Do you have any crazy stories you can share? Do you think it’s ridiculous? Let me know down below!!!

Thanks for taking a moment and I hope those of you here celebrating Thanksgiving have an amazing day with family and friends. I am thankful for all of my newfound friends here. Rereading that it makes it seem like I only want those celebrating today to have a good day and not the rest of you. Lol. Well, I hope everyone has a great day wherever you are and whoever you are with. Cheers!