Barry Branvold of Barry's Collectors Corner in Grand Forks, North Dakota writes in to share his first week experience with Tuesday delivery of his Diamond shipment.

On Tuesday (1/11/11),  I received my first early delivery of Diamond comics for Wednesday release.  Each box was plainly marked "For Wednesday release."  I am surprised how pleased I was that I will not need to go through all of the normal Wednesday hassles with getting out comics after inventorying and pulling holds.  It was really nice to know "Comics are in!"

Also, an interesting occurrence also happened on Tuesday.  A little after 3 pm a customer, whom I didn't recognize, asked about three comics: Amazing Spider-Man, Spawn, and Batman and Robin.  I occasionally have people looking for others, and he had a list and pictures of the 3 comics, as he was not an "Experienced" comic buyer.  I checked the New Comic Racks for him.  The numbers he asked for were not on the shelf and I soon realized they all were to release on Wednesday.  I explained to him that they would be on the shelves tomorrow.  I soon realized as he was taking notes about the store and photos of the storefront, that he must have been a "Secret Shopper" and that he was checking to see that I was in compliance with Wednesday release.  In contacting a friend at Diamond, he jokingly said: "We made sure to put all the suspicious characters at the top of the list!"--which confirms my guess.  My thanks to Diamond for the early shipping and my warnings to comics retailers to stay in compliance, as I will!

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