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Things I Bought At MegaCon: Day 1
MegaCon 2013 kicked off today in Orlando and I’m definitely feeling it in my pockets. Thing is, with most conventions I have a huge problem tallying and keeping track of the cash I spend, especially now with most booths offering payments from credit/debit cards via the Square app. I’ve decided to post my spendings for each day of this weekend’s convention to help keep track of my bad spending habits and link comparative prices to Amazon to see if I really saved or not. Also, I really just wanted to post and brag about all the cool shit I bought today.
Best tip I can offer to convention-goers regarding money spending situations: visit your bank’s ATM before heading to a convention. I didn’t follow that rule before heading to the con today and I’m surely feeling that worrying feeling regarding my checking account. You can avoid simple ATM fees, credit/debit card taxes/processing fees, and you can easily haggle prices with most booths with physical cash.
Anyway, if this lot of bullshit I bought doesn’t look like much today, check out for this Sunday’s upcoming post. Should definitely be the day I spend the least amount of cash for an abundance of cheap comic books during the last hour on the final day.
Top photo, Young Avengers #1/Adventure Time #1:
You guys may be thinking, “Why the Hell would Kevin (you don’t know my name, now you do) spend money on those two comics when he can buy them at any comic book store?” Well, yes, I might be able to if I looked hard enough, but I really can’t beat the prices I bought them for. Both of these titles are relatively new, with Young Avengers being out since January and Adventure Time out since early last year, yet both of these variant covers are hard to find.
The Young Avengers cover was done by Scott Pilgrim author, Bryan Lee O’Malley. In order for my local comic shop to get a shipment of the variants in, they had to order a certain high amount of issues. Thing is, what the Hell is my local comic shop going to do with 200+ copies of the same comic book variant? Hence why I can’t find it in my city. I got the issue for $6. It’s retailing new on Amazon for $7.50 + shipping.
Now the issue of Adventure Time #1 I picked up has a variant cover drawn by my favorite comic book writer/illustrator, Jeffrey Brown. Boom Studios decided that for their first issue of the Adventure Time comic, they’d released a slew of variant covers to make the launch extra special and cool. Of course, Adventure Time is super fucking popular, so those five different variant covers of the first issue sold out pretty fast. Right now, the first issue printing on Amazon is retailing, at cheapest, for $11.98 + $3.99 shipping. But that’s not the variant cover I got. The cover I got apparently is much harder to find and Amazon doesn’t link it. The comic book site I frequently order from, Mile High Comics, has the issue listed at $128 in near mint condition. I’m assuming I have a mint condition in my possession that I need to immediately read and seal up. I got it for $10 today from Boom’s official booth!
Second row, Minecraft and Wonder Woman decals, various patches: There’s a much cooler feeling looking at patches and decal stickers on a giant wall in person, rather than being on the Internet and browsing Etsy for an hour straight to find what you want. There were several booths that sold various decals and patches. I grabbed the Minecraft and Wonder Woman decals for my girlfriend and I at $5. Etsy lists most decals of that size between $2-$5.
I mean, I guess I didn’t have to buy it in person and I could’ve save a buck or two, seeing on how Etsy folk wouldn’t have charged me shipping to send paper anyway, but…whatever, it’s done with and I’m not going to already say I have my first buyer’s regret. It’s just $5 (right? right?!!?). No big loss here.
The patches are an entirely different story. Most conventions have a booth or three with patches being a big portion of sales. I’m pretty sure they’re all the same people with the same company, but that may just be a huge assumption I’m making based off of the sole fact that they all had some really shitty quality patches of the same thing. Cheap patches of anything you want could be found on Etsy for $7 or less. Good quality patches are usually sold at $7 or more. The booth I grabbed these patches with had a mixture of both good and bad, all with the same price. The deal was: $8 for one patch, two for $15, three for $20, and 10 for $60. My buddy grabbed five Star Trek patches, I grabbed that Bart patch, and my girlfriend got the other Harry Potter, Dead Space, and Wonder Woman patches shown. I think the savings here were a no brainer.
Third row, Itchy and Scratchy Funko plush toys: These were an awesome find since I haven’t been able to find them at any store in the city. My girl got these for me at $10 each, so $20 was spent on the two. Really happy to get me hands on them. Amazon has them for cheaper though, with Itchy going for $6.50 and Scratchy for $7.41.
Forth row, Psycho and Mr. Sparkles t-shirts: So this was about the time where I was really feeling the hurt on my wallet. A t-shirt booth with loads of shit you can’t find at your local Hot Topic. I kind of have beef with a majority of the items this booth sold. Prices were $22 a shirt, but $40 for two. As you can see, I purchased two shirts which ultimately saved me only around $2 since they charged my ass for using a debit card. Amazon’s got around the same prices, with the Mr. Sparkles shirt going for $20 and Hitchock’s Psycho shirt being sold about the same.
Big thing to watch out for in t-shirt booths is to not get ripped off. Around 40% of the shirts I found around this particular booth could be found at Walmart, Target, or Hot Topic at significantly cheaper prices. I don’t think anyone can justify buying a Gumby shirt at $22 a pop when Walmart sells those bitches for $6.50. Granted, the 60% of clothing offered is stuff that’s difficult to find offline, so I do think those hefty tags are worth it.
All of Friday’s purchases are listed up top, clocking me around a very roughly added $76 spent. I’m making another list of food expenses to add to this list at the end of the weekend. We’ll see if I come up short on rent this month or not.
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