Carl Hopkins: my 60 seconds on Four Rooms, Channel 4′s new series

It started with a tweet.

An industry chum, Phil Dean, tweeted about a blog post he’d written about comics. Superhero comics, you know the sort; Marvel and DC, Spiderman and Batman. He is a fan and so I tweeted back that I was too. He came to my home and we spent a couple of hours chatting about my collection of 3,253 Marvel Comics.

This collection was built up over 17 years from 1982 – 1995 and the comics themselves span that time and back to the early sixties…and they take up a lot of room.

The same week as the comic-love-in, my 20 month old son managed to find his way into the collection and I panicked thinking that after 15 years of safe obscurity he would set himself the task of destroying the entire collection. My wife suggested I sell them or shift them.

So the following week, when we came across a Channel 4 request looking for people with unique items or strange collections to take part in a new TV show to sell the collection to four dealars, we thought, why not?

I spoke to the production company about my collection and they were interested. So over the course of a week, I kid you not, I packed, catalogued and guesstimated my entire collection. Packed them into my truck and off I drove to Shepherds Bush where filming for the new show, Four Rooms, was due to take place.

TV production, from my limited experience, is slow. Lots of waiting around and my day of filming for the show was exactly that; a whole day with a 7am start and 7 pm finish for a grand total of about six minutes of film.

The day started with being filmed entering the building and meeting with Anita Rani, the presenter (who also appears on The One Show). Anita was great at explaining what lay ahead for the day and what was required. On chatting with her she told me she was from Bradford and went to Leeds Uni. I was filmed chatting to Anita, introducing myself and my collection as well as my price for selling – the start of negotiations. This price was not passed to the four dealers.

I had a bottom figure of £3,200 (just about £1 per publication although many were worth less but lots are worth more). I joked that the cash would start my new GAP fund (Get A Porsche) as I had my eye on a £15k 1980’s 911. (I’ve had two in the past and thought it was time for a third and that this collection may be the way to getting me the wheels).

I was taken upstairs to the main studio where I stood with Anita as my comic collection revolved around in front of me – looking rather cool I have to say. And then from four rooms, the four dealers appeared.

The dealers are: Jeff Salmon (Mr Nasty?), Gordon Watson (Mr Nice?), Andrew Lamberty (Mr GQ?) and Emma Hawkins (Ms Whiplash?). They not only aim to do a deal and make a little cash but also to, no doubt, make a name for themselves. Across this first series they will build their own personal brand and hope, one assumes, to become the Duncan Bannantyne of the Antiques scene and not the David Dickinson of the car boot field.

After hearing the dealers comments about my collection, I made my unrehearsed ‘pitch’ or offer. I have no idea what I said and will no doubt cringe when I see it back when broadcast. After that the dealers asked their questions with Jeff aiming to be Mr Nasty. I was able to answer their questions and that was the end of the first ‘scene’ and the dealers retired to their four rooms.

Many hours, cups of tea and chocolate biscuits later it was my turn to visit each dealer in their own unique room. I got to choose the order in which to see them, although they never get to know the order they are being seen, so hopefully they give you their best offer.

The issue for the me, the punter, is that you cannot turn down an offer but then later go back into the room to revisit the offer. Once you have ‘no deal’, that’s it, you are done. 

I chose to visit Jeff first for no other reason than I thought he was going to be the most bullish and that would be dull so I wanted to get it out of the way. Turns out he was the most bullish but to be fair he also offered me the most money of the day at £2,400. Which, knowing he had to make some profit, I thought actually very fair – but I said no to him.

I enjoyed his opening ramble about the Golden Age of Comics (1930-50s) as it showed he had done his Google research over lunch but I did point out that, as I said in my opening remarks, the comics were Silver age (1960 onwards) and not Golden age. So I think we scored one all in being arrogant there. I liked his shoes.

The remaining visits with Gordon, Emma and Andrew all went in a similar fashion and they all pretty much said the same things. The fact that the collection needed breaking down would take up valuable time, they had to make up their margins, there were many low value items as opposed to one or two high value items etc. All very fair comments and points I was aware of. So sadly I turned down every offer, which was not my aim but the result of my negotiating position and that is the key business lesson from this show.

The point of the show is not simply to build the personal brand of the four dealers or to send us all scurrying off to find some gem of an item in our attics. No the key point I feel is tha ability to focus on negotiation – something which I found fascinating.

Now I have to say, I didn’t really negotiate too hard. Don’t get me wrong – I wanted to sell, after all what better and more efficient chance to offload the collection than with one handshake? However, I had a set of negotiation points I kept in mind all the time. These were:

1. To have a realistic bottom limit price in place.  As a marketer I am aware that people hold their possessions in overly high value. Because we own stuff we think it must be valuable to others – it isn’t. Whether it’s a family heirloom or a business for sale. It’s only worth what others will pay for it. And your senitmentallity or ownership is worthless to them.

2. To acknowledge that they were the middle men. They weren’t the end buyer. The dealers would be looking to flip the collection as quickly and profitably as possible so they would be offering a ‘trade’ price and would want a margin.

3. To be aware that although there were four potential offers to be made, ultimately there would be many more potential dealers watching who could be end users (or in this case collectors) and may make better offers.

4. To acknowledge that the collection was ecletic. It was not focussed and therefore only appealed to me as a total collection and would be worth more broken down by titles or artist etc.

And perhaps the two most important factors that I knew, but the dealers didn’t, were :

5. I was not under any time pressure to sell. One dealer said ‘you don’t have time to break the collection down to realise the value, you have a family and a job’ . Well he is half right, I have a family but no job.

6. Also I knew I did not have to sell. I was under no financial imperative to realise the value fo the collection. So therefore I never had an intention of  ‘caving’ on my price – they were not to know that. I told them of my growing family, my two young children so they probably took that as one of my motivations – it isn’t.

You have to know who you are negotiating with and you have to remember that there is always a choice and the choice is to say no and walk away and sell another day.

So, all in all, I had a great day and I know it will surprise a few people who know me when they see ‘weekend Carl’ on Four Rooms as they have me pigeon-holed in a certain category.

But in a primetime collections-based TV show, I couldn’t help but take my business head with me. The only regret I have about the show is my clothes. They told me to wear a spiderman t-shirt (sadly I have a few) but on the day they changed their mind -  image rights etc. So where I would have worn something less casual I ended up with the only non branded shirt in my overnight bag – I guess it could have been worse and I may have had to do it in my PJs!

If you are wondering what I have done with my collection as I didn’t sell it, well, you can see it – and buy it! – all here. I spent many, many hours uploading every single item into an online shop. Go on, knock yourselves out.

Tagged as: Channel 4 Four Rooms, Comics, TV