It's Andy Fish!

The boys set up at Rochester Comic Con earlier this month. They had very good things to say about the show last year and since they once again had two booths I thought it important to have the extra pair of eyes and help. I brought along my sketchbook so I could still work on layouts while I was there.

Rochester is about 5-6 hours from us, so relatively speaking, it’s close. We made the ride up Thursday, along the way we stopped at EXCELLENT ADVENTURES in the Saratoga area– about halfway– and he had quite a varied amount of stock including some original art. I think Joe is going to buy some additional stuff from him.

Back to Rochester– the con is a small venue event– which means it’s basically one or two rooms of comic dealers. These types of shows are usually held in a Hotel Ballroom or in the case of New York Comic Con for quite some time – a church basement. This was held at the Jewish Community Center which is a beautiful facility. The show was a Friday & Saturday show– which I think is smart– Sunday’s tend to be almost a waste of time for any show with a few exceptions.

For dealers there were a few of what I would call “upscale” dealers i.e. dealers who have a large inventory and include comics from the Golden Age– DitkoClub.com is one of them, they had two walls of high end books and 4-5 boxes of lesser inventory. Now don’t take those comments as derogatory– lesser inventory is simply stock that is more common but still desirable, junk inventory is stock that is very common and not desirable, usually regulated to dollar boxes.

These comic shows tend to pull either high end collectors like Heroe’s Con or Baltimore or Little Giant, or dollar diggers as this one did and a few other random shows I can think of, and then there are shows like South Carolina Comic Con which tends to attract both.

There’s a place for everyone. I managed to pick up a few high grade more common books that I’d actually been looking for quite a while– books that you’d be hard pressed to find at the show’s I usually go to because dealers tend not to bring their more common books to shows opting instead to sell them off their websites.

Overall, I’d rate Rochester as a fun growing show– I can see them following in the steps of LITTLE GIANT which is one of the best shows in the country with a solitary focus on comic books– no POP Toys, no soda vendors, no insurance companies, etc. But strategically it’s location might be a challenge, I don’t know how easy it is to fly into Rochester, and to be fair getting to Concord (where Little Giant is held) is kind of a pain in the neck too.

The promoters were enthusiastic and very helpful and they do a lot for the dealers to make their visit worthwhile.

It’s a good show and one you should consider if you’re looking to fill spots in your late Silver or Bronze era comics. You might even find some real gold. There were several extremely rare books in the room, and Robo Picto was probably the biggest dealer with the best selection even though I’m a bit biased.