Thanks to BJ for the heads up on this one. Immortal Hulk #2
is going back for a fifth printing, and along with it, will get a new 1:25 Variant cover by Joe Bennett.
Marvel dropped a new group of Immortal Hulk reprints on Diamond Distributors, and a surprise, a #2 5th Print 1:25 Variant. Cover art hasn’t been released yet but here is the diamond solicitation.
There was a 25 QTY Variant for the First Printing but I can’t tell if that’s the cover being reprinted or if this will be new art for the 25 Qty. Either way I’m starting them at $70-$75 to the walk-ins since I expect no demand for the 5th Printing regular cover. Almost guaranteed heading to the cheap boxes quickly.
The 4th Print is doing well.
It’s funny because here I just had someone turn down later Printings to settle for the trade’s. I spread them all out so the reprints now take up about 8 feet of display space. I spot for each issue although I’m now forced to stack multiple printings on top of each other for people to walk by and ignore. First Printings go straight under the counter.
Same thing with the Major X reprint.
(NOTE: YOU MAY ORDER 1 VARIANT FOR EVERY 25 COPIES YOU PURCHASE OF MAJOR X #1 3RD PRINTING LIEFELD VARIANT.)
Just went back and ordered 25 copies of Major X #1 Thirds so I could get one of the Major X #1 Qty Variants. I was going to skip that one entirely until I saw the 25 qty restriction.
Evause we demanded it?
*Because*
smh
The only way this works is if the shops order them. And I suspect they order them because some Joe Schmo asks for it.
Obviously Immortal Hulk 1:25 2nd print experiment was successful. Expect more of these…maybe even 1:50s.
The regular covers for these will be part of next years FCBD handouts, I suspect. How many 2nd prints of 16 are sitting on shelves right now of the shops that ordered the 1:25?
If you go to one, check that out this week.
I ordered 50 of the IH#16 and 25 of the #2 so far along with 25 of the Major X so that’s 100 comics ordered just to get 4 ratio variants so far.
Both #16’s Presold at $60 each so I’ve already got $120 back on the 104 comics ordered so far.
No 16 Second Printings have left the building but that could be said here for most of the later Immortal Hulk printings.
Major X is a $4.99 comic so it actually costs more to buy and ship in.
I figure worst case right now is I still have 102 comics to sell to break even on the 104 purchased and shipping paid. If most stores don’t click in and read the fine print on IH#2 ration they may not even realize it’s a qty variant and end up getting the orders cancelled.
Gambling but now a huge risk long term I expect.
The one thing about reprints are people who want to read the series have a chance. I don’t know how many shops I have been in that I have asked for a book will have no issues 1-2 and a bunch of 3-4 (or fill in later issues for a story line) you can’t sell later First Print non-key issues if you have nothing to supplement the story line.
I’ll second that. Every week someone refuses to start something I don’t have a #1 or #2 for. It’s so common that for some publishers I shelf stock one Presale set of 1 thru 4 First Printing just to make sure I can start at least one subscriber off that shows up 4 or 5 months after #1 hit the shelf. If you’re taking my last #1 for those sets you’re Prepaying for 2, 3 and 4 since it’s sealed in a bag and the later issues are added to that bag as they come out.
I have 50+ left sitting in a box, still have 1 Variant left. People rather bid on my damaged one and get it cheap then spend 75$. I agree these will be freebies at some point. I might start including them with every eBay purchase just to get rid of them and maybe get people to follow me.
With that said, I will have to see how many variants of the new printings I can sell on the Bay. Will be an interesting experiment.
What a waste of paper!! Nobody (who wants to) hasn’t read this by now. For our environment’s sake, don’t support this trend.
Feeding extra dollars to the Marvel Discount Average. Even if we break even on the books, all those cover prices get averaged into the totals which determine how much discount we get off cover price for Marvel comics thru Diamond.
People wanted the ratio variants for Immortal Hulk #16, the extra books ordered to get them at least help to reduce the costs of the other Marvel books we’ll be buying in the future which those savings get passed on to subscribers who benefit as well.
All profit and incentive isn’t in up fronts cash. If we can at least break even now, long term people will want them out the cheap boxes later. People keep getting born all the time so future demand should be there for cheap at least.
I think most printing paper is out of new replacement fast growth tree sources now also if it makes a difference. I can’t see old growth oak or pine being turned into paper so it’s most likely not an environmental issue for producing them or at least a minor one.
I always appreciate having shop owners/managers chime in on these topics to give their perspective. Their insight helps me understand how the collector’s desire for these ratio variants impacts the shops behavior toward them and how they manage the excess inventory created by them having to satisfy the 1:25 quota.
All (or a significant portion) of the “financial” risk of ordering 25 copies of a comic the shop knows will be taking up valuable shelf space (and subsequently moved to some space of less exposure and remain stagnant) should be put on that person or persons requesting that particular variant.
For example….if it costs a shop $2 per copy and they have to order 25 plus the variant….then the person who wants it pays for 26 copies ($52 plus tax as applicable) and the owner gets to keep the 25 copies to try to make profit….even selling at $1-$3 each on the day of release might help compensate and move unwanted inventory.
I dunno…BJ can speak up and tell me why it can’t work that way….
The math is pretty easy. Standard Diamond discount is 35% if you’re a small shop. Take the Major X reprint for example at $4.99 each, that means buying 26 copies for a total of $84.50. Diamond charges Shipping and COD charges which depending on how many other comics ship in the same order can run 10 cent to 22 cent in some cases per comic when broken down. That could be another $5.72 added to the actual cost. That means small shops could spend up to $90 getting 1 copy for you. Bigger stores would get a bigger Diamond Discount most likely and have more traffic to try and move the excess out to. Even at 50% Diamond Discount level that’s still $65 plus shipping in cost to bring it in.
If you throw in a board and bag with each book the cost is even higher.
There’s a risk factor involved as well if the variant arrives damaged and Diamond doesn’t have any extras to ship a replacement out for. Store gets a $3.25 credit, is out the cost of shipping and stuck with 25 books they don’t expect to sell.
I’ve had it happen before which is why I don’t list Presales on E-Bay where you get penalized for canceling more than maybe 2 orders a year and now PayPal’s 7 days away from keeping the fee’s they charged even if you refund the total for damage.
Time to setup your own online store if you got enough inventory to sell to skip eBay.. 😉
I’m still considering it in the future. For the most part I limit E-bay to items $10 and up or bundles that achieve that. If I can keep my Diamond discount up and the bills paid that’d be enough to be happy and make sure the locals get a good deal. I’m debating on going to the 10,000 item size E-bay store but I need another 2,000 or so listings to justify the expense and no time now to scan that many of the 200,000 or so books from the other room not on the sales floor for walk-ins. Maybe one day. I’d also like to try and stay under the limits for Sales Tax for each State so that’s a limiting factor to future growth right now also.
I’d have to cut down on CHU reading time also and that’s definitely BAD for BIZ!!!!
CHU reading is the #1 priority… 😉
Im fairly certain that printing 5000 comic books is way way way down the list of todays consequential actions that are destroying our planet.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1006012105962
Yeah, I thought of the burden on trees from the comic book industry….if you’re really concerned about it stop buying comics altogether and switch to electronic.
Are comic books recyclable? I know certain paper stock like wrapping paper is not…or at least recycling centers cannot process them. Do shop owners who have reached their storage capacity consider or actually throw “worthless” comics in the trash/recycle bins? Or is that taboo?
My point is the vast majority of these reprints Are pretty much destined for the recycle bin anyway…
Everything is recyclable. Just some leave harmful effects that take longer for the Earth to cleanse.. 😉
Most all paper in the United States is now sustainably grown. Incentive variants for fifth prints are bad for the biz just like I said when the 2nd print one came out. I said once it works once it would be for everything and now here we go with multiple books with later printings with incentive variants, slap some foil and a die cut on that and we are back in 1995.
I’m curious what specifically is bad for the biz?
If stores had ordered enough copies of the 4th Printing, they wouldn’t have shopped for more copies buying out everything Diamond had to offer.
If it encourages stores to buy additional copies of the standard cover 5th Printing they wouldn’t normally have ordered, then maybe this time it doesn’t sell out the surplus at Diamond so fast or at all signaling no additional need for a 6th Printing. I’m pretty sure Spider-Man/Deadpool went through 7 Printings before it finally calmed down and got stores to start ordering enough copies not to need additional printings.
For every 25 copies plus variant ordered the extra 26 copies at $3.99 each add another $103.74 to the total used to determine Marvels discount qualification thru Diamond which translates into potentially higher discounts, saving the store money in the future and potentially lower prices for customers. That’s good for biz.
If the comics are sold at prices high enough to cover cost there’s no risk other than damage shipping in from Diamond to the biz.
The extra copies of the standard cover that don’t sell can be given away to encourage new readers to try out the series or at least populate the cheap boxes later to do so for years to come. That’s a benefit, not bad for biz.
The 90’s you were talking about had print runs in the millions and multi hundred thousand ranges. If these books had that type of run up front to match the demand on the back side, prices should have stayed down and encouraged less word of mouth at a fraction of what it’s been for the series. More talk is good for biz.
We’re also buying blind so if they spit out an extra hot cover for the later print that shoots up in price that’s also good for biz.
I’m failing to see a SINGLE negative here while the things that are good for biz are numerous and easy to explain.
Bad for biz as in.. collectors wanting to make books turn valuable over time. Cause more printings are good for the biz who rely on selling comics at retail price and for the publishers to sell their stories that they want people to keep reading.
We gotta remember, there are many aspects to this business. There are those who are story telling with artwork while there are shops that are selling high quantities of a product to make money and then there are collectors, the consumers who hope their precious comic book in mint condition becomes something they can pass on or retire on.
The publishers don’t care if a book becomes valuable or not, they’re first goal is to sell a product to make money now, not later.
“Bad for biz as in.. collectors wanting to make books turn valuable over time”
The later Printings should have no affect on prices of First Prints. When you talk to people day after day you’ll see there are many people who simply will not start reading a series if you have holes in it or will just wait for the trade assuming they’re still interested and remember when it comes out.
I’d argue that more Printings draw more attention and the extra attention makes prices higher on the First Printings since there are now more people wanting the series at the very least on the back end of the series and most likely through the whole series because they started what they would have put off or eventually forgotten about and not started at all.
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=35006480
Look at the numbers, they don’t lie, mycomicshop sold out of ALL later Printings and the 1st Printing is still getting $50 asking prices. #2’s sitting at $12 even with 6 Printings.
Retailers and Speculators are driving this market, not consumers. That is NEVER a good business plan. You can argue about numbers all day long, but the bottom line is the bottom line.
Consumers dont care what printing its on, nor do they care about ration variants. What they want is the story and the art. ( and they can get that anywhere for much cheaper)
As for your argument about printings dont effect value : that would be true but Marvel changed the Game with 2nd print Ration variants. These are now whats valuable. Speculators want these. They dont care about the standard print. Thats where we as retailers get stuck holding unwanted copys of the book. How many copys do you have left of immortal hulk 16 2nd print? Im sitting on 50+ …
“Thats where we as retailers get stuck holding unwanted copys of the book. How many copys do you have left of immortal hulk 16 2nd print? Im sitting on 50+ …”
That’s not true. You WANTED them or you wouldn’t have ordered them. In this case you wanted them to have the ability to sell the qty variant. That makes it a reasonable assumption that you should have charged and made enough selling the qty variants to cover the cost of getting them in the door. I’m not stuck holding 50 copies of the 2nd Printing. I chose to have them, at no cost to me since the variants paid for them with the hope that they’d eventually make a little money and with no doubt they will, just not as 50 full price fast sales.
They can do this as many times as they want. It costs me nothing, benefits the business and puts a low qty book in the hands of someone who wants it while serving as an entry point to the series for as many as 50 people down the road. That makes 53 people happy with one purchase. 2 people got variants, 50 people will get cheap reads from a great series and I just boosted my Diamond Discount which at the very least frees me from having to purchase something else to take it’s place.
The only way you’re getting stuck holding them is if you choose to try and get full price for every copy. I’m also assuming that means you will have no forseeable need to order the 3rd Printing since the 2nd is now sold out at Diamond and not available.
If you’re out of 1st Printings, put a few seconds out at full price so you have something on the shelf. Leave the rest in back stored safely. If you sell only 3 at cover price you just made another $12 profit assuming you charged enough for the Qty variants to justify bringing that many in. Even if you broke even on the Qty variants to cost of each 26 issues purchased to get them, you’re now showing a 12% or so (your Diamond discount level may vary) profit on the entire purchase selling only 3 copies and lets face it, if selling 3 is going to be that impossible of a task you have bigger problems to worry about than this topic.
Keep the shelf restocked with1 or 2 copies at a time until the series ends. I just got forced to reorder early Avengers shelf stock yesterday by a new customer making holes and needing a #3 Reprint to get started while taking the 17 assorted Printings I did have on hand.
JUL188893 AVENGERS #6 2ND PTG MCGUINNESS VAR
JUN188333 DAVENGERS #4 2ND PTG MEDINA VAR
JUN188334 DAVENGERS #5 2ND PTG MEDINA VAR
JUN188335 AVENGERS #1 4TH PTG MCGUINNESS VAR
JUN188336 AVENGERS #2 4TH PTG MCGUINNESS VAR
JUN188877 D AVENGERS #3 3RD PTG MEDINA VAR
MAY188945 D AVENGERS #3 2ND PTG MEDINA VAR
(He bought First Printings for issues when available including paying a good deal above cover for 1st Print 1 and 2 which were the only options at the time since I hadn’t brought in reprints of those two issues yet. That oversight is being fixed by yesterdays order with Diamond listed above.)
**If I’d ordered Second Printings or even more Firsts earlier I could have avoided needing 3rd’s, 4ths and 5ths. I’m thankful they were available and made a new customer happy while encouraging other purchases totaling $179 by the time he was done yesterday and he’ll be back for more, probably set up a box for future issues.
Where were we, that’s right, when the series finally ends, which they always do, at the next big event afterwards like Halloweencomicfest, get the box of leftovers out that didn’t sell at full price and give them away as a perk for an in store purchase of fill in the blank, drop them by the register with a sign, 50 cent each!!!!!! or just add them directly to the cheap boxes you must have laying around or for special occasions like conventions and street fairs, etc….
This is a total win-win situation.
Speculators get a low qty variant although not at some stupid cheap discounted price unless the store has enough traffic to sell a large number of standard cover reprints.
You just have to apply some common sense up front. If you can’t move enough standard reprints and refuse to pass on the cost to the person buying the QTY Variant reprint, DON”T ORDER!!!!! Definitely don’t complain if you do since it’s was a choice you made. You just have to have the balls to put the $$ sign where the $$ sign needs to be and in this case it should be planted firmly on the Qty Variant up front.
You just make my customers copy more valuable thru less copies being produced.
I used to wish Marvel would have just priced the 25 Qty variants at my cost $52 so I wouldn’t have to buy the 25 copies to get it. Then we’d be in the same boat trying to charge customers $75 to make anything and this time without the 25 extra books to turn into something over the next year or two.
And the whole oh we like 2nd 3rd 4th prints to get the readers who want to read the story from the beginning the books they missed out on so later printings are good. They could of bought a digital copy or gone to readcomics and read it for free. All later prints do is put money in publishers pockets while taking away sales and higher increasing value from your first prints that you were smart enough to get.
I see a number of people who do not read digitally. If you’re going to encourage people to read books for free digitally why would they ever want to buy ANY of your first prints of anything? That’s bad for biz.
If it continues to shrink sales now that they’re hooked on not having paper copies then sales continue to decrease until there’s no reason for comics to be printed at all. That’s bad for biz.
Around here we had the kids a stack of comics and send them out back or into the other room for some quiet time. Most of us don’t have hundreds of dollars of electronics to hand out to the kids and all their friends or the trust that they would not damage them and that they’d only surf where we want them to.
I don’t see them taking away sales from First Printings at higher prices. If anything they encourage people to buy more First Printings by not having holes they were unwilling to fill at higher prices before leaving all the leftover First Prints on the shelf unwanted. If they try cheap copies and really like it then they would sometimes be MORE willing to want to chase down a higher priced First Printings and even if they did find one, they’d still benefit from having the cheaper later printing for every day reading at reference since someone’s probably sealed their First Print in a plastic box they can’t open without lowering the future asking price. Even if they find a raw copy why handle it when you can handle the cheaper copy? Once again all of this is good for biz.
Read my comment above. The publishers make comics to sell their story, art and money up front. If a book becomes valuable now or later makes no difference to them.
Last I checked, publishers make comics to stay in business. If they weren’t putting money in their pockets we’d have no comics at all, physically or digitally. The higher increasing value is the secondary market collectors, you can’t say they’re stealing or taking away from anything..
If your in the business of making comics your in the business of making collectibles whether they want to admit it or not. Why else would they put 1st issue collectors item on the cover of some comics, they know they are selling collectibles. When you increase the printings you are taking away the collectibility. Why would I buy a Naomi first print for $100 when I can get the last print for cover. Now if they’re were no more printings of Naomi after the first probably be $200-$250 raw book. I’m sure most are happy that their Naomi 1st print is worth a lot and not concerned with what it could of been. But that could of been money is now in DC’s pocket for selling multiple printings not you the comic collector/speculator/flippers pocket. If Sideshow collectibles started reissuing retired statues that go for thousands in 2nd runs they wouldn’t be around much longer, because the collectibility would be gone.
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=35006480&AffID=1003187P01
I think you’re seriously overestimating where Naomi #1 would have made it to. If anything it’s some of those people who read later Printings of #1’s and #2’s buying First Printings and driving the price up now that they’ve gotten hooked.
Naomi #1 should be about a $50 book at best, whatever demand the later Printings would take off would have happened anyway when the trade paperbacks come out.
If anything DC is catering to your desire by Officially Labelling their books as FINAL PRINTING now. You get a chance to flip additional copies of EVERY issue now at higher prices to people who wouldn’t have given a second look if they hadn’t seen the discussions and advertisements of the later Printings.
They’re not making more First Printings of #1, they’re just encouraging more people to know they exist and have a desire to look for them.
IMHO Naomi #1s due for bubble burst anyway long term once she gets a shiny new costume, origin and super hero name. Are you going to be mad at #5 First Printing for driving down the price of #1 by offering something with more meat on the collectible bone?
Another comparison, has Amazing Spider-man #1, Amazing Fantasy #15, Giant-Size X-Men #1, Fantastic Four #1 or other similar books come down in price in the last 5 years?
Those and many more have $1 reprints and Facimile Editions that have come out in this time frame. If a books legitimately expensive, I don’t want to read or handle it, I demand a cheaper copy for day to day reading and reference.
They sit on the shelf affordably exposing new people to the hobby serving as affordably priced entry points for people who wouldn’t otherwise and may be shopping for your expensive First prints later.
If Amazing Fantasy #15 had 16 covers and 5 printings around the time of its initial release I wouldn’t be paying 10k for a 1.0 cgc. Later printings after 50 years do the opposite of 2nd prints that come out the following week, they bring more attention to the original printing and drive it’s value up.
But it didn’t and we can’t play the what if game either. The market has changed over the years and yes, the dozen covers is killing the buzz on some books but if the demand is there, collectors will seek them out and choose the overall winner in the end.
Amazing Fantasy also likely had a bigger print run than most modern issues now including all their variants. No one thought then these would be valuable like they are now. I bet 90% of them ended up in the landfills because publishers who print comics are in the business of selling comics, not limited valuables years from now. Publishers make their money in quantity. The more they print and sell, the more money they make.
your comparing apples to Lemon Meringue Pie.
Silver / Golden age books will hold their value far better with re printings 30 years later than whats going on today.
Actually you’ll need 40 to 60 years to be able to know that for sure. Time will tell, the only thing we can be sure of is we’re starting out the gate with less quantity of the first prints now than they did back then thru substantially smaller print runs. We can also assume the planets population will continue to increase probably doubling again or more over that time. We’re always making more consumers thereby ensuring future potential demand.
Marketing tactics at best. They still don’t care if it actually becomes a collectible or not. 😉
I’d have to disagree on that also for the same reason. It gives them a reason later to offer facimile and $1 reprints and creates additional demand for the trades, Hardbacks and other collections thru the decades to come.
Having it become “collectible” almost guarantee’s additional types of reprintings for decades to come.
That should be common knowledge as being an expected part of the biz.
Also…. Collectible doesn’t necessarily entail its valuable or will ever be “valuable” either. I can collect sea shells that will be worthless from now until eternity but that doesn’t stop the gift shops along the coast from selling sea shell collectibles in their shops…. 😉
I totally agree with that. You will NEVER get me started at a comic series that #1 is north of $50 to start but if you get me in the door with an affordably priced copy you never know when late night stupidity will strike and have me pay something ridiculous for a first.
Same thing if every #1 is sealed in a plastic box where I can’t read it.
Think of it like nickel beer night. You have to get me in the door if you hope to get me in the Champaign room later.
Alana, the publishers put ‘all new #1 collectors edition’ at the top to sell more copies. Its a sales gimmick. Nothing more, nothing less. If they were making collectibles, they would be limited in production, not made to order.
Here’s another statistic you can check.
On the E-bay page for sales of Naomi #1 prior to the Second Printing coming out Feb 27th.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=naomi+%231&_sacat=0&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc&rt=nc&rt=nc&_pgn=17&rt=nc
The average price was less than $6 for the standard cover. The Variant was actually doing better. That was 16 pages of sales ago.
It doesn’t appear the Second Printing slowed down sales. If anything it appears the extra attention has encouraged them to new unprecedented levels of stupidity now.
Hopefully my last thought on Naomi #1 so I can get back to work on todays new books.
Naomi #1 isn’t even the First Appearance of Naomi.
A week or two before it arrived they gave that title away in maybe a dozen or so DC books reprinting multiple pages of the story with her on multiple pages. If I wanted to push 1st Naomi I would do it with one of those since they actually were.
That’s the add that after reading it I went and ordered maybe 20 more copies of #1. Cheap, or in this case FREE got me to spend money. By the time the Second Printings were arriving at other stores I still hadn’t sold a shelf copy of #1 First Printing. I was about to give up on them and start dumping when the Second Printing attracted some new customers to start hitting E-Bay and driving the price up eventually to the $10 point where I finally sold my 1st copy no one wanted when it was cover price.
The top 7 highest sales of non CGC copies of Naomi #1 by itself, 6 of those happened the Day the Final printing came out or since. The 7th was on the 23rd and most of the other triple digit sales occurred in the 4 days leading up to the Final Printings arrival. Once again you could say the Final printing sparked a bit of interest.
We’ll check back when the #4 Final Printing arrives and see if a week of promo around the book creates another spike.
I may get get this but no way Will I pay over $45 for it. Have a feeling on day of release it won’t be hard to get for $40 to $45. I could be wrong of course but I will wait regardless.
This is a no from me. I pity those collectors who needs to get a couple of all comics in a run
I f it is a nice cover and limited I will pay a premium..If I really like the cover, but I won’t go overboard
Sidenote..people expect/want things quick and easy these days. Recently, Ive gotten antsy when I couldnt find affordable first prints, but just wait, sometimes with a little patience, luck and a network like CHU, things appear. Knights of the Golden Sun #1 was that way, found it at a LCS while considering a $25 feEbayt copy. If I were more tech and time savvy, I would start a Comic Coop.com and we could form a market all our own with our own Diamond account and sales/trade platform. It wouldnt take long before us collectors/flippers would say why am I paying more and getting less from the corporate crooks? Thanks for the discussion, we are fortunate to have CHU for not only spec but sharing thoughts and ideas….(if comics are anything like rock n roll they will never die.)…thanks Neil.
Looks like a Virgin for the Qty Variant.
Black and white for the 5th Printing
I think I like all the Immortal Hulk Reprint Covers they just revealed, especially 3, 13, 14 and I’m even enjoying #2’s 5th with the black and white making the Hulk in the water POP!!!!!
Hey BJ, i have a few questions about your ebay account. email me at pymc.collectibles@gmail.com – thinking of upgrading for the 250 listing to the next tier up and wondering how your seller fees are.
E-mail sent with links and instructions to the comparison charts for each size store.
Basics appear to be $59.95 a month with the yearly plan plus 10 cent for each listing over 1000 plus sales commission (I’m hovering in the 1230 listing range) The Final Value Fee appears to be the same range(commission) for all stores so it’s not a factor in choosing. You also get 500 Free auctions which I refuse to use.
Another thing that can take the sting off the fee’s is to treat the $59.95 as an advertising expense. I spend that much or more every month on newspaper ads hoping to find new faces for the walk-in store. E-Bay is more of a targeting market where you will get exposure to bring new faces in. If anything I’ve been tempted to make most listing Store Pick-up Only just to slow down sales on E-bay. A $10 sale is nice to have but if it stays here an extra week or 6 until someone walks in to get it because they saw it there and gets exposed to half a million in other inventory and impulse buys at the same time, it can end up being much better in the long run. Just like with the later printings thing, get them reading now and you have buyers for your 1st Printings next month. Drop a few bucks on E-bay and think of it as an advertising expense. The newspaper here just quoted me $60 per thousand for inserting DCYOUTV. That’s for one newspaper one time where as the E-bay listings are visible for the whole month for the same price.
MAJOR X #1 (OF 6) 3RD PTG LIEFELD RATIO VAR
Is there anywhere besides ebay to try to pre-order the 1:25 virgin? Have they announced one for # 1? I guess I would have to just bug local stores, but I don’t even know if they’re ordering 25 copies.
Sad Lemon comics has them for pre-order.
I’m sure they’d order it or just about any store would if you’d pay the cost it’d take to get it in the door which puts it in the $60 to $75 range counting shipping. If you’re looking for something cheap you need to track down a store with high traffic that can expect to move some or all of the 25 copies of the 5th printing it takes to get it for you. I’ve been advertising both 25 reprint ratio variants in the $60 to $75 range for the locals walking in. The Major X one costs more since it’s a $4.99 cover price book requiring purchasing 26 of.
The question becomes do you gamble on finding a cheaper copy at release or taking the guarantee of having it at the cost it takes to get it now locking it in for you, no bidding war needed.
Also keep in mind it’s not labelled as a “virgin” it’s just the advertising image display is virgin and since that’s the same cover art used for the standard cover it seems to imply that it’s going to be a virgin.