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By FBNews.net
"And, of course, there are a lot of people who invest in comic books strictly for profit. Comic books are a fantastic investment when youŽre talking about using it as a long-term tool. ItŽs not a tool to be used for six months or a year. They appreciate slowly, but they do appreciate. I can pull out a price guide from 1972 and one from 1990 and youŽll see a tremendous amount of difference in the prices. Many times, the increases are easily the same as what youŽd get from other types of investments."
Vincent began buying and selling comic books at 17. He continued through college to support himself, but it wasnŽt until he graduated that the business really took off. He was proud of his degree in marketing, but he knew he wouldnŽt be happy in the corporate world. So he decided to keep doing what he loved—selling comic books—and his bedroom became his first office.
"Back in the early 1990Žs, stores like Wal-Mart and Price Club were selling 3 comics in a bag for a dollar. The market was absolutely booming at the time, and there was a tremendous amount of extra comic books out in the marketplace. I was able to buy warehouses with a quarter of a million or half a million or a million comic books and move them from the seller to the buyer. I was basically a middleman at that point. I didnŽt have a lot of capital reserve, so IŽd just make buy-and-sell deals."
He sold comic books on the street in Manhattan, on Broadway between John Street and Maiden Lane—the heart of the Wall Street financial district.
"IŽd go out their and sell comics all day, IŽd hustle the Wall Street crowd, and buy and sell warehouses of books and do comic conventions, and all the while I was building my business up from there."
The comic book conventions were crucial to the growth of his business. When he started out, he attended as many as he could, sometimes more than 30 per year. In more recent years, he has become more selective, attending 15 or fewer shows per year, all of them larger shows guaranteed to attract a key audience.
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