We recently connected with Shelby Ferguson and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Shelby, thanks for joining us today. Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?

I’m seeing a growing trend of comic book collectors embracing the foreign comic book community. For decades most collectors and dealers shunned these amazing and beautiful pieces of history from other countries, but people are starting to recognize just how great they are, as well as the investment potential that the foreign comic book market has that just doesn’t exist at the same level in American comics. Record sales keep happening with foreign comic books, while the American comic book market is largely down over the last year or so. The values of foreign editions still aren’t even close to where most of us believe they will wind up, and as more people enter the market more and more people are agreeing with us.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I started out in the late 1980’s as a sports card collector. When I was just 13, I was running my own table at weekend sports card shows in malls around the Flint, Michigan area. I also had a small area of my dad’s Christian bookstore to set up a couple display cases in and opened my own little store within his. I very quickly expanded into comic books as well and was going strong around the Flint area until I was 17, when the store was broken into and everything was stolen. I was insured, but I decided at the time to leave the market as this was right around the time of the over saturation of the market in sports cards and I didn’t feel it would be a good investment to get back into it at the time. Fast forward to 3 years ago when I binged the series, “Comic Book Men” from Kevin Smith and I realized how much I missed the comic books. Even though I started in sports cards, once I expanded into comic books they quickly became my favorite part of the business. After finishing the series, I started seeing collections for sale in my social media feed and decided to buy one. I made a quick profit on the collection and decided I wanted to get back into comic books, as I really enjoyed every part of it.
I started HotKey Comics with the profits from a bitcoin investment I made with a friend, and things quickly grew from there. I started specializing in foreign comic books after making a trade that involved me getting a few of them as part of a larger lot of comics, and once I had them in my hands I just fell in love with them. I started buying and selling foreign comic books and within 6 months had nearly stopped buying American comics all together. As of today I haven’t bought an American comic book for an investment or resale value in over a year.
The potential in the foreign comic book market is unmatched by anything else I’ve ever seen in the world of collectibles. There truly is potential for prices to rise significantly due to both the current undervalued state of the foreign comic market, along with the incredible scarcity of many of the more sought after issues in foreign comic books. It’s not going to take many more people entering the market to almost completely wipe out the supply that exists, and once that happens I believe the market is going to change dramatically.
I have a lot of passion and love for the foreign comic market and I believe that shows in my approach to it. I have achieved many firsts in the foreign comic community, including the first regular weekly all foreign comic sale on the internet, running for over a year now on WhatNot every Tuesday at 9pm EST, the first foreign focused comic book pressing and cleaning service, the first foreign comic panel in the state of Michigan, and, as far as I can find out from my research, the first live auction from a comic book legend selling his personal collection of foreign comics. That happened in November on WhatNot with the legendary artist Bill Morrison, who also ran Bongo Comics for a while. That was a truly amazing experience that I was very blessed to be a part of.
I continue to strive to bring awareness to this section of the comic book market and have even more planned for the next year as the market continues to grow. I have contacts now in several other countries who I buy direct from, and my first trip overseas to hunt for comics on my own is now officially in the planning stages.
My main goal is to grow the foreign comic book community to be both strong and fair. The foreign comic book market is currently a lot like the Wild West and there are a lot of unknowns in it in regards to exactly what other countries produced. There are no records that exist like there are for American comics with Marvel, DC, Image and others, there is a lot of educated guesswork involved. I am trying to remove as much of the unknowns as I can so that new people in the market don’t have as much confusion when they enter the market as I did. I believe my passion and honesty set me apart from some other people in the market who seem to only be in it to make a buck. I never want to make a sale at the expense of my integrity.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think my passion and commitment to honesty and integrity have helped me tremendously. People are able to see that over time, and when they see how I run HotKey Comics, it also makes it easier for them to see differences in other people who run their businesses other ways. The community around foreign comics really is amazing for the most part. Like any industry, there are people who are only in it for the money and don’t really care about the long term health of the market, but more people have their eyes opened to those types of people as time goes on, and as business owners like myself insist on doing things openly and honestly.
My reputation is everything to me and I will never sacrifice it for a sale or any other quick profit. All my customers know that I believe in everything I say and do, even if they may disagree with some of my opinions, they know those opinions are from an honest place and not a place of profit.

How did you build your audience on social media?

I try to post multiple times every day, even if it’s just sharing a funny post I saw somewhere else. Every post doesn’t have to be about comic books, or about a sale I’m having. My best advice is not to get bogged down watching follower counts, or likes, or interactions. My posts started out with single digit likes and views and now I’ve grown my Instagram to over 2,500 followers and one of the top 5 foreign comic book accounts on Instagram.
I’m also the most followed foreign comic book dealer on WhatNot and that has been a slow increase as well. My advice is to celebrate all your progress, don’t worry about the next big milestone, and don’t ignore others who are interacting with your posts. Comments, likes and shares can go a long way in building your social media presence, but it doesn’t happen overnight unless you get extremely lucky with something viral.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hotkeycomics/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDNN1G_srfFMP4qsVwsXh3w
• WhatNot: https://whatnot.com/invite/hotkeycomics

Image Credits
all images are my originals