On a rare chilly Friday in Southern Florida, Jake Burger and his family traveled for cruise vacation, from the frigid brin Mauer in Pennsylvania to Miami.
His family was going to have lunch and prepare for a trip, but Burger had another idea. Yelp’s search showed him that he needed to participate in Bird Road’s A & M comics and books.
The 27 -year -old burger is one of many visitors who are looking for rare collections traveling to A & M, a comic shop at My Ai Died, who has been doing business for over 50 years. The 1,000 -square -foot shop, which is said to be the oldest manga store in Florida, has a long box of vintage manga books and a stacked spider -man person piled up on the ceiling.
That is how the owner of the store, Jorge Pere, likes it. Many entertainments have shifted to digital subscription models and manga book movies are becoming more popular than source materials, so Perez maintains his shop and confirms the cultural importance of manga books he sells. I am doing it.
The 59 -year -old Perez said that at the time of junior high school -helping a friend to buy lunch at the Little Havana citrus K -8 Center -changing his life forever.
“I lent him dollar for lunch. The next day he didn’t bring my dollar back to me … he brought me five comics,” said Perez. I did it.
With the desire to build a manga collection, Perez began to visit A & M Comics, which was named after the former owner Arnold and Maxin Square.
In 1984, when Perez was 19, his father died. Perez went to A & M, canceled the subscription, and became able to concentrate on his mother’s care. Arnold Square expressed the intention of DOL and offered to run a store in Perez for five months. Square said he had to go to New York for chemotherapy, and then returned to run the shop.
However, Square died of cancer five months later, and Perez did not want to run a store … yet. Instead, Perez worked with one of Square’s business partners who bought the store. A few years later, the store changed his ownership again, and by the time Perez reached his mid -20s, he was finally ready to take over.
“I was interested and bought by September 13, 1990,” he said.
With the enthusiasm for manga books and collections, Perez began to learn more about collections such as baseball cards and science fiction paperbacks. However, he could not prepare him for “Superman’s Death” in 1992. In the story of a manga book, the “Steel Man” died at a very public event that made headlines around the world.
“It has completely revitalized the industry,” he said. “I ordered 400 problems. We had never purchased 400 problems.”
Perez said that he must hire a guard so that only five people can enter a narrow store so that they can enter a small store at once.
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Perez called the owner of another local comic shop. He said he was selling copies for $ 30. After hearing that, he sold a manga copy and sold $ 20 for $ 20 at a price of $ 2.50 from the manufacturer.
By 2000, the day I resell the manga 10 times the original price was gone. The comic shops like A & M were on the crisis of closure because the bubble of the manga book burst due to overdose production of the manga sitting on the shelves and the wholesalers to debt.
At that time, many years of customers died and Perez attended a customer funeral when approaching the customer 91 -year -old widow.
“This was my husband’s passion, not mine,” said Perez. “I enjoyed hunting your store with him, visiting you and talking to you, but I don’t have much time left. Like our family. “
Perez was on the floor. This offer was flattering, but I couldn’t afford to buy a perfect manga book collection from the 1940s to the 1960s. The widow said he wanted him to take a manga book for free.
After returning to A & M in his small car in his small car, after returning to A & M, Perez brought his vintage manga books, other books, and a large Chinese collection to his store. He sells all of it for $ 150,000 and says the collection is worth up to $ 2 million today.
Such gifts helped to maintain A & M in business, even if other manga bookstores nationwide closed the door. Perez is familiar with a collection that can be collected other than comics, sells a handful of expensive items throughout the year, and is in business. Also, since there are no large -scale staff in small stores, Perez can keep the overhead low.
Since the release of the “Iron Man” movie in 2008, A & M has sold manga books to new generations collectors who grew up watching the same superhero comic books as filling the manga. Fans of all ages, like Burger, a cruise passenger from Philadelphia, are next to a dense box of manga books looking for the next Holy Grail.
When Perez talked about his favorite Batman movie on a recent weekday, a young employee with a black converse sneakers paired on a collection of wooden shelves that have a collection of products to get manga books for customers. I climbed one.
“I’m probably a little more here, and Ruben will probably run,” Perez said about A & M’s nimble manager, Ruben Arenas.
The 25 -year -old arena was born in Zaragosa, Spain, and soon moved to Miami and lived in South Miami near the store. ARENAS visited A & M for the first time in 2019, and has been working there since then.
“At first I didn’t really like comics,” he said. “And after working here for a few years, I entered Robert Clam (an independent creator).”
He is not a big fan of a superhero movie, but Arenas understands how the shop meets customer needs and learning from Perez every day.
Even if there is no important online, the reputation of A & M as the oldest manga bookstore in Florida has attracted the attention of high -level collectors such as Star Wars Creators and George Lucas. Perez said that one of Lucas’s assistants knew the A & M customer and purchased an original art from a comic shop.
Through a few years later research, Perez said that Lucas had purchased an original art from a shop like him and was built a manga main art museum.
To sit on his computer and answered emails, Perez said he knew the changes in his industry for decades for decades. The two top -ranging manga books are absolute Batman and the ultimate Spider -Man, each of the new versions of the famous Super Hero Story.
One of the latest movies has appeared, and even if the trend appears in a manga book, he believes he remains constant.
“I know that comics are all selling as long as you have an interesting story,” he said.
