28-year old Robert and his brother expected to go to their regular thrift store in O’Fallon, Missouri to pick up Nerf Guns for their game of Humans Vs Zombies on April 13. What happened was:
- They didn’t find Nerf Guns.
- They walked out with over 400 manga volumes instead.
The catch? “I’ve never actually read a manga before finding this lot,” Robert told me. “I’ve heard of it before but I’ve never been interested enough to look into it at all.”
So that only begs the question: why buy so much manga when you’ve never read it or learned what it is?
Buying manga will forever be a thing. More than likely though, to get a large amount of manga, you’d generally find them at conventions when you run into dealers who have those sales where the more you buy, the cheaper it’s gonna be. But if you’re space conscious, then you can’t buy too much.
It didn’t stop Robert, who owns a used bookstore.
He didn’t intend to own one. With a degree in Business, getting into the corporate field was his expectation. Then he ended up selling books that he owned over the years, and before he knew it, he got hooked. He started his own used bookstore last year, and it passed its one year anniversary today.
Despite being the owner of a used bookstore, he had only seen a few manga in his path, and only a couple he sold so far. Even growing up, only anime fans were known in his high school. “Most of the ‘anime kids’ I knew were pretty far out there,” he said, which included seeing them dress in Japanese clothing and even mimic the language. So needless to say, interacting with them didn’t seem like a goal he had in mind.
But then came the day he planned on stocking up on Nerf Guns.
It was for Humans vs Zombies, which is a semester long event at the University of Missouri, and he’s been playing for a while now. He went to Value Village — he stresses this isn’t the nationally known chain — and he and his brother were looking for Nerf Guns when they saw one of the workers there sorting out a pile of manga. And looking completely confused. “She had already cleared four shelves and was working on her second of three shopping carts full of the manga when I came over.”
That’s when he decided right then and there to try and buy them.
It’s probably a normal thing for a used bookstore owner to buy a good amount of books, but as Robert explained, he buys $200 worth of books a week at a per-pound weight, but that’s after spending weeks buying small amounts for resale. “The closest I ever came was spending $50 on a set of antiquarian books that ended up going back to the recycler.” So buying this amount of manga was very unusual for him. After asking how much they were, “she looked at one of the volumes of the book and quoted something like $5 a book — which was way out of my range,” he said, Robert then told her he would buy them all. And after negotiating with her manager, he walked out of the store with over 400 manga volumes, with nearly or slightly over 120 different titles, and only spent $120.
It took about 20 minutes to load it all up in boxes and drive it back to his store.
It’s safe to say he made a wise investment.
And he’s definitely keeping manga in his sights now. Though he’s had to learn some terms (even mentioned he had to Wiki what shoujo manga was), he’s gonna give a read to stuff like Trinity Blood, Scryed, and Takahashi’s Inuyasha. After sharing his experience on Reddit, he may continue to learn more about manga.
“I have to say that I would be a lot more open to talking with and learning about manga and the whole culture that surrounds it thanks to this.
“When I source books for my business,” he continued, “there’s just a few things on my ‘auto-buy’ list even if they aren’t priced dirt-cheap. I’ve added manga to that list, and hopefully I’ll run across more soon.”
