Can’t a shop get in trouble for selling books at a higher price the day of? I thought it was a strict Diamond rule that they had to list books at the listed price the day of (except ratios of course).
I believe they own the books so can charge whatever they feel. Not a good practice as evidenced by this thread. Lying about it is even worse.
I think sticking to cover price the day of release is more an unspoken rule. Clearly, it ain’t a golden rule.
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Forget diamond on rules of sale…what does the Government/consumer rights/watchdog organisations etc say about selling a brand new product marked up at a set price …for anymore than that?
They may have purchased them and own them…but for retail purposes…is it legal for a store to mark up a product on the day of sale…? hmmm I wonder…
While I personally don’t condone the issue, it is generally fine, legally … unless it’s a National Disaster / Emergency and you’re selling bottled water at $10 a bottle …
Gasoline routinely moves up even though the gas in the storage tank sold to the Retailer was bought before a price increase … there are expensive, limited production vehicles that get marked up way above MSRP the day they come out … etc …
There are no rules published by Diamond on this topic, to my knowledge …
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The only rule I know about is that you must sell at profit apparently. This deters people setting up Diamond accounts to provide their wholesale prices to others through shared plans, etc.
Sounds like a silly rule, not sure why Diamond would care if I buy books for $2 but sell at $1… if I choose to lose money, then that’s sort of on me.
And yes, gas prices are dumb when they base them off current crude oil prices. It takes a long time for the crude oil to make it to the pumps as gas, so when crude goes up and gas prices jump the same day… that’s just classic price gouging. They didn’t buy that gas in the pumps at the new crude barrel prices… the hiked prices should come later on… weeks or months later in fact.
No, there are no rules. It’s just a horrible way to run a business based on buying and moving product based on wholesale and retail set prices.
I know I’m pretty passionate about same day of release price hikes but you know, shops are totally allowed to do this just like I’m totally allowed to call them out to warn others to not waste their time shopping there.
I would never run a shop by playing the secondary market game. Limit the walk-in copies that were intended for the shelves, buy a few for yourself to sell later. There are just so many better ways to keep customers coming back to your shop. I’d rather have 10 happy customers that are now likely to conduct future ongoing business with me than turn away 10 customers cause I wanted to make an extra $20 on a book that day…
Like I always say, I don’t condone nor do I practice this tactic …
However, it is a fine line … my experience is that a select group of folks only show up when some book is getting the Weekly Heat … they never become regular customers … they want books to flip immediately and that’s it … so, Mr Poyo, I’m sure you can understand the allure to some Retailers to cash in …
Perhaps the solution is to mark up, yet when a Regular comes in, you simply tell them "Hey Man, ignore that price … for you, it’s cover … " …
Or, use the “Hey, those books are still cheaper here than on eBay” ploy …
I’m kidding, of course … 
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Yeah, honestly if I ran a shop, when a book like Batman #89 or Batgirl #23 comes along that everyone is trying to get their hands on with a few flippers out to grab as many copies as they want, I’d probably just invoke the 1 per limit rule…
I might be in the minority with that stance but honestly, day of release up until next weeks books, I’d keep’em at cover or limited. After a week, if I still have a book on the shelf and it’s heated up, that’s when I’d think about upping the price to secondary going prices.
I honestly could care less what happens to the product after it leaves my shop. They can flip it, they can cherish it by throwing in a long box so their heirs find it after they die… they can wipe their butt on it… doesn’t matter to me.
I wouldn’t let flippers bother me as a shop owner. Could you imagine if this tactic happened in every industry? Imagine Foot Locker getting mad cause people are buying the latest new Air Jordans for $500 while they’re selling them for only $199.99, so they just up the price to $500 cause “that’s the going rate on eBay”…
As a retailer, I wouldn’t play the secondary market game… if I wanted to play the secondary market game, I’d just take my chances at standing in line to hopefully flip something I might not even obtain.
Yes, I’m the same way, it’s just irksome with “Heat of the Week” only shoppers … It’s rare that I impose a limit on any book … why … ?? Because my experience with modern books is sell them while you can and take the money … longer term, the heat will die … with, I suppose, some exception … "Bird in the Hand … " …
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Here’s an added dimension to the whole ‘mark up on release day’ debate. I just got off the phone with a very very small shop. The shop is local to me but is not run well, and the store isn’t doing that great, I think (he is an honest shop keep, and doesn’t mark up new books, he just has zero diversity in his shop and sells only new comics and has a very small Wall display and back issue section, just not innovative at all). Anyways, this particular shop uses a different distributor than Diamond, in a sense.
There is a large distributor based out of Montreal. He has a diamond account and then redistributes to some Canadian shops. The incentive for these shops to go through him secondarily is the savings in shipping new books every week. The Montreal Distributor brings in all the books from the USA for their customers, then charge a cheaper domestic Canadian shipping to each individual store. I believe the distributor also wholesales the books to the stores at the highest possible diamond discount, regardless of how much they order. So, having said that, the small shop by me said that he was shorted half of his Batman 89 order, from the Montreal Distributor. The distributor told the shop keep that Diamond screwed them, but, to me, it sounds like the distributor probably received the books from Diamond, then decided not to ship the stores orders in full, whilst keeping extra copies for themselves to sell on the secondary market.
I understand this is all speculation on my part, but I very much trust the shop keep when he says he didn’t have my reserved copy because his distributor shorted him. So, now we may have a scenario where one distributor is screwing over stores in the name of greed. The sad part being that the small shop mentioned above is run poorly, but he is an honest, naive guy and he does rely on his weekly new book sales to keep his door open. He said they shorted him on Wolverine too, and he sounded genuinely depressed that he has lost the sales of his missing books, that he was going to sell to his customers for cover price.
That is exactly the reason why I haven’t stepped foot in a comic shop besides my main shop in more than 6 months. I also cut way back on my spec’ing.
Spec’ing I still do obviously… flipping, meh, not so much these days.
I actually pre-ordered my Batman #89. One of the reasons I was going to try and snag at least one from my local shops was to actually do a CHU giveaway… so sorry, no Batman #89 giveaway…
Remember Captain Marvel #8? Sort of same scenario… I was able to nab 2 copies that day. I gave away both copies in CHU giveaway… I’ve given away more books in the past year than I’ve sold I think.
Unless they got a deal with Diamond, I believe this is against Diamond’s policy according to a retailer I know… someone correct me if I’m wrong.
There must be something in place because I know of at least two stores who use this distributor. The other guy is an Uncle Willie type, but geared more towards sports cards, who has been using this for years.
I’ll dig deeper into it the next time I visit either of the shops who I believe uses this distributor. I have never dug to deep, but more or less put those facts together using deduction, from the conversations I’ve had with either shop keep who uses the distributor. I’ll get some names and numbers. Both these shops never receive the 1 per store books either. I’m fairly confident in my statement, but as I said, I’ll dig deeper and get back to you.
I believe dcbs has policies listed on their website regarding limits that pretty much state this as the reason for the limits on ordering from them (I think they cap at 5 copies since more would make them a distributer or something like that)…mycomicshop and midtown may also have similar policies stated somewhere.
but this only applies to giving discounts along the lines of 30% or more or something like that so if the “distributer” who has the diamond account is only selling to shops at a 15% discount…it likely clears diamonds rules…but may not actually save them money. if you look at how stadium comics pre sales incentive bundles on their website it may be the reason they don’t include too many cover a’s in the bundle.
diamond is really inconsistant…difficult to figure out, and has a monopoly so who knows maybe they ok’d it (if so I think the few shops in australia/new zealand need to get together and get something similar for themselves).
I ordered from DCBS alot last year. And every time I wanted 10+ copies of a particular book, I always got it.
Hell Arisen 3 now hitting $60 raw. Unbelievable. Glad I reserved a couple copies…
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I personally know the owners of Stadium. Their shop is 25 minutes from my house. They order directly from Diamond. Rob, the main guy at Stadium, literally has a skid of diamond boxes coming into his little shop every time he does a Marvel variant store book for his store, with Marvel’s minimum 3000 order on store variants. And the skid of diamond boxes full of comics is not cheap to ship.
The reason Stadium only includes 1 cover A in their ‘bundles’ is because they make their money off of the incentive variants in those bundles, not the main cover A. Including multiple cover As in his pre sale incentive bundles would just eat into his profits.
@D-Rog Really wondering if my ebay preorder will come through lol. I ordered it for $4.99 plus shipping before the craze.
I also ordered one of each cover via TFAW so I’ll be covered.
I knew enough to order all of these, but wish I would have ordered even more now.