And then everybody who purchases something gets a raffle ticket and gets entered into a giveaway at the end. It’s kind of like an auction, but we get closer to what something is really worth this way. I set all the prices in advance, doing research online for what items have sold for, and adjust my prices down so everyone gets a deal. I also put in graphic novels I like, pops, action figures, trading-card sets, and basically stuff people don’t get to see all that often. I like to put old rare issues that I think will appreciate in value, out-of-print sets, or collections of stories that are out of print or that I think people will enjoy reading. "We have a variety of stuff, mostly comics. “I love to pull all the items myself," he explains. We’d love to have more.”Īs good as the fandom fellowship might be, in the end, this is a hobby about cool stuff, and Winsett concentrates on always providing stuff worth seeing. "I think we had about fifty people, which is average for us, but we’ve had as many as 75 people. “That first one was pretty good," he says. ![]() “But back during the isolation of the pandemic, they were especially important, you know? It was a good reminder that there was still a world outside your four walls.” “I watch the sales just because they’re fun,” says one longtime Time Warp customer. Through livestreams on Facebook, participants could bid on awesome stuff with just a posted comment, and even just watching the two hours-plus show was entertaining. The first Time Warp Stream Sale took place on April 7, 2020, with both comics and collectibles ranging from the rare and signed to the old and classic. But they persisted and said they would bring all the equipment up to my store and do it with me.” "I thought they were too much work for too little reward. “It was something they’d been doing for many months," he says. That was when some colleagues of Winsett's from Denver’s I Want More Comics encouraged him to try something new: Stream Sales - online live auctions that are quick and fun and weird little parties of retail therapy. It became clear that, depending on what happened with COVID-19, it might not be enough to keep the closed comic-laden doors metaphorically open. "Even from far-away countries like Japan.” “A lot of people who we reached out to were amazing in responding with orders," he says. They tried everything they’d been doing all along: eBay sales, mail order, anything that they’d been doing remotely for years. “We just didn’t know for how long.”įor a time, Winsett and one employee continued to come to the store at 3105 28th Street in Boulder - but then closed during the stay-at-home-order and did what they could to keep the business alive and the bills paid. ![]() “In the beginning, as things started getting worse, we knew we were going to have to shut down,” Winsett recalls. “People got in the habit of reading at home,” Winsett says, “and are now continuing that, remembering how much fun reading really is.” And the hero? There are a lot of heroes in this pandemic era, but for comics fans - and folks who just don’t want to lose their local comic-book store - Time Warp Comics' Wayne Winsett has figured out a way to save the day.ĭuring a time when almost all of us were home and actively searching for entertaining escapism, you’d think that comic books would have done well. In this case, the villain is the depressive effect of COVID-19 on the economy across the board, from restaurants to retail. Leave it to comic-book stores to figure out a way to beat the bad guy.
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