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[davemerrill]

Okay, so every year famed comic shop THE BEGUILING has a block of tables in the Anime North dealers room. This year, things have worked out that they're able to send some special agents to Tokyo a few weeks before the show to pick up cool stuff to sell at Anime North, so that in addition to their usual wide variety of NA-release manga and anime, they will have some funky, not-normally-available items from older series that aren't currently running but that people are still interested in.

And here's the question for the teeming millions - what should they buy? What anime series will fill consumers with free-spending nostalgia? Inquiring minds want to know. They always do well with Sailor Moon merchandise, so they know to be on the lookout for that, but what else from the past should they keep an eye out for? CLAMP art books? Gundam LPs? Old anime magazines with Patlabor on the cover? Tokusatsu memorabilia? What makes your wallet jump up and holler to be emptied? Let me know and I will pass this info on to the intrepid travellers. (Yes, I have already put in my two cents.)

Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

Well, Chris strikes me as a pretty business savvy guy, so he'll probably do well on his own, but.

How is the Yen doing against the CND? Because right now against the USD it's king suck. I think it's around 80 Yen to the USD. Bleah, welcome to 1993.

So, saying that, Naruto and Bleach dojinshi are the obvious quick sell items. Given how any French-Canadians go ga-ga for Grendizer and Captain Harlock that might be good stuff to look up. I can't think of any recent show that's popular, but not being part of the AmeriOtaku (tm) generation my ignorance is vast on this.

Naturally I would suggest aiming for 'bang for the buck', lots of lot cost items have a better chance over $200+ toys or figures. Does anybody import pencil boards anymore?

Personally I would say buy up UFO catcher toys. There's some neat stuff being made by Taito and Sega and Banpresto that are better value then the other 'mainstream' toys we see.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

CLAMP stuff seems to still have a following. The copy of the Rg Veda artbook I took to AWA that one time disappeared in no time flat. Generally artbooks from shoujo creators of moderate to more interest look like they still find buyers these days.

LPs are cool, but I dunno if I see them drawing that much interest. Maybe some 45 singles of old stuff? Cheaper, less bulky, still cool in a nostalgia kind of way, folks might be more willing to take a flyer on them. I used to find some really neat 45s of stuff like Lupin themes for not much money.

CDs and other more contemporary music media I reckon would be a bust, because kids just steal all their anime music off the internets now and there's nothing as inherently cool about the object itself.

I loved browsing old anime mags at Mandarake, but again, that's some pretty heavy stuff to cart back home from Japan, and I bet there's not nearly as much profit in it as, say, artbooks that would take up about as much weight and space.

They're a bit fragile, but you can get cheap cels and production sketches from some of your older shows, that might draw some interest. Likewise old promo posters. They're kinda tough to get home without denting them, but last I checked you could buy them fairly cheap over there.

Maybe old monster-movie toys and things of that nature. I went to a garage-kit/toy show the last time I was over there, and folks were selling just piles and piles of that stuff, Godzilla and Gamera and Ultraman and whatnot. Everybody digs giant monsters.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Oh, here's one more thing I recall. Doll stuff. Not necessarily the pricey Super Dollfie stuff, those people are crazy and I couldn't begin to understand how to cater to them, but cheaper/cuter/smaller sorts of things that folks might grab as impulse buys. A toy shop I visited last time carried super-cute little loli-goth doll outfits for Pinky-street figures, for instance, at about six-eight bucks apiece, and I bet those would be a big hit.

[guyhatesyou.livejournal.com]

Orguss stuff usually works for me. But then again I'm a lil atypical of the Anime con consumer. :/

Gurren Laggan stuff should do well? I dunno.

[keenmixer.livejournal.com]

Clamp stuff always seems to stay popular and I second the Bleach/Naruto stuff. Everyone goes crazy for J-pop/J-Rock stuff still, as well as anything from the store Meme de Morte.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

continuing on.

From my history of both a seller and a buyer (in 1985 I had convinced Yuji at Books Nippan to let me sell stuff on consignment, and I did GREAT) I can say this:

Anything under $20 has a good chance to sell.

Illustration books will do better than most anything else, because pictures sell.

Macross = Robotech, Grendizer = Goldrake

The power of Miyazaki. Totoro is evergreen.

Going to the Cospa store and buying up the cool chara goods such as wallets, business card cases, knit caps, book or messenger bags may do well.

http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljlist.cgi?x=50&y=17&Word=&range=nameonly&SeriTxt1=&GenreCode=All&MacroType=All&Maker1=CSP&Scale=All&Skill1=0&Skill2=5&MinP=0&MaxP=999999&Dae=All&Dis=-2&Code=

I would avoid shirts and jackets because, well, North America is fat, and even when not fat we're just bigger. :)

This is Daryl Surat's bath towel

http://www.hlj.com/product/CSP32950

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Anything under 20 bucks is a good rule, I think. Being a run-down premature burnout case I'm not your average anime con dealer's room customer, but the only stuff I pick up anymore is little impulse-buy type things. Just running off at the brain, but it seems to me that if you had, say, 20 five-dollar Totoro keychains and one gigantic 100-dollar plush Totoro, you'd probably sell all of the one before you managed to move the other.

On a related note, some of the K-Books shops (I'm thinking mainly the ones that sell girls' dojinshi) stock a lot of really cool original goods made by amateur/semi-pro artists. Cards, buttons, stickers, little things like that. Might be worth having a look at those places.

Also, in re: Cospa, their L and XL sizes will actually fit a pretty broad range of American fans these days. (I can even fit into a Cospa medium, but then I'm 125 pounds soaking wet.) And their shirts are great stuff, for the most part, if also expensive. But yeah, going for the smaller anime merch and costuming accessories they carry would probably be the wiser choice.