Don't trust Comic tom

Maybe the rest of the shop was adjacent? :man_shrugging:

It would seem that the bottom line is that there are a LOT of people out there giving their opinion on comics.

Tom and others may have a financial arrangement with Key Collector or have their own interests in mind. I could speculate that this site has a similar arrangement with Covrprice.com, but do I KNOW that? Of course not - and frankly I would be fine if they did (probably a smart business move, actually).

All of these sources are just tools to have in your toolbelt when making your OWN decisions about what to buy/collect. As an example, I’ll freely admit I’m generally not a fan of Blind Adam’s write-ups on this site. He says “Now lets make the money with comics cause you can’t teach that.”. Yes - you literally CAN teach that. But it is OK - I can still find something to learn and use my own judgment on whether I agree or disagree with him. There are lots of other people here (Anthony, Poyo, Alana) that I thoroughly enjoy reading and learn a lot from.

Does Tom make a profit from partnerships? I absolutely believe he does. Can I learn something from he and the people he has on his show? Absolutely. Do I need to take the way he operates into consideration when deciding if his information is trustworthy or not? Absolutely.

The T-shirt thing rubbed me the wrong way too - very poor taste. Just because the glass of your door gets broken doesn’t mean you need a fundraiser.

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rumor is alot of the comic stores that do sponsorship’s give free copies of the exclusives as payment, than the youtubers and Instagramers pump the books and sell them off

I’ll speak on behalf of Covrprice posts here at CHU. We get nothing from those except spreading Covrprice’s top list each week. @Anthony approached them to ask permission if it was okay to post their weekly lists as a way of just spreading the information, I believe we were one of the firsts, now multiple sites do it. The only thing that is added is CHU’s own affiliate links within the article. Click them if you’re genuinely interested in that book or don’t click them if you’re not. We get a fraction of the pie if you click and end up buying which all goes to the cost of running CHU.

I can speak on that. No. We do not have any financial agreement. We run their top ten list in exchange for a banner ad on the side bar. That’s the extent of our exchange. No money changes hands.

I like top ten lists and do not use Key Collectors as Tom is a very prominent you tube figure doing the list. We started with Covrprice in the beginning and now they have some agreement with “Lords of the Longbox” and they do videos on the same list. If I didn’t like their list I would consider dropping doing it as someone else is now doing the same thing.

110%. i couldnt believe my ears when i heard him nonchalantly ASK HIS VIEWERS TO BUY A TSHIRT TO HELP PAY FOR BETTER SECURITY FOR HIS STORE. get the ■■■■ outta here with that shit. pardon my french but that truly was an astonishing new low for his channel. I also love how obvious he is about getting views. His buddy does a whole segment on how DC pulled another Hell Arisen 3 with the Legends #1 1:25, and he makes some really good points. That i will not deny. BUT THEN TOM POSTS THAT SAME SEGMENT AGAIN AS A SEPARATE VIDEO. for one reason and one reason alone. he knows a video dedicated to calling out DC will get clicks in the community. and PEOPLE SHOULD BE CALLING THIS SHIT OUT. but he already did it in his top ten vid. I get he wants exposure and every channel wants views. every single channel. But man my red flag alert system just starts pinging more and more with his content.

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figuratively or realistically a front :wink:

YouTube channels all the time post segments as extra videos to get more clicks.

Especially if the segment is not related to the overall subject.

This is very common. Nothing shady about that. That’s how YouTube works to get more clicks and income.

Now the t-Shirt thing is a little ehh

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and i get that. and ive seen it plenty. But it just sucks how obvious it is when its something you know will get good attention with a hot title. But your right its not shady or anything like that.

Your boy Bill did a video a few weeks ago to rip Key Collector for clicks. They all do it.

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i remember that video lol. Was that a cut video out of a longer segment though? Not that that means i wont watch you or that anyone should not follow ytubers who do this. Im just asking cuz i cant remember. Bill doesnt normally cut segments out of his content tho but i may just not be recalling accurately and he may have. Ive been wrong PLENTY about all things comics in the past so.

I remember when I only had look at total comic Mayhem,comic book scalping, and comics heating up… God I miss those days now it’s 40 websites, YouTube people, Instagram people, twitter, Patroen, imdb, 20 apps like key collector, sales data … it really sucks

LOL so true Alana. Comics are NUTS right now. absolutely nuts. its really fun and exciting because there is so much mystery and “right place right time” stuff going on but you really have to be on your game to really do it RIGHT. This website and forum has been AMAZING since i found it. I mean for the life of me i could not find a forum where people discuss modern spec/hype ahead of the game, ahead of FOC etc. I used to be on the CGC forums, but damn they did not take kind to ANYONE mentioning books like Hell Arisen 3 or Legends #1 1:25. Probably because they missed out on those modern “grails” as we call them. but i would check this website and sites like comicbookinvest religiously and once i realized there was a forum of people here, its really been the love of my internet life from that point on lol. Poyo, Anthony, Comp, you, i was lurking listening to you guys talk comic spec for some time before i finally dipped my feet into the forums myself. Its been a really fun ride and i love the community here. I only name those as those are the ones that really come to mind off the bat i know there are plenty others on here who have been mainstays so i dont mean anything by that at all.

Yeah so you get content and they get ad space. Seems like a smart arrangement to me - like I said in my original post, nothing wrong with that at all.

I also wouldn’t fault Tom for having an arrangement with Key Collector.

The things I don’t like about Tom’s model include his comic “karma” shenanigans (getting free books from subscribers and selling them via his Mystery Mail Call), which is brilliantly devious and this busted door - buy a t-shirt bit. I’m also personally not a fan of his dramatic style, but that is just my preference.

I do give him credit from a marketing perspective. He is definitely pushing his brand (along with a silhouette logo). He’s got his own variants, he builds relationships and he engages his audience. He also seems to know his comic history. If he can get away from the blatant money grabs and shady practices, he would do even better.

I just fell off of watching his content once i realized he wasnt really doing any spec he was strictly listing hot comics that were selling week by week.

Me too. That’s one of the places I started doing this a long time ago.

I will say people have sent me books, like hey I heard you missed this so I am sending you a copy. I never ask and never sell them.

We do have shops sending us stuff for giveaways. You can usually tell what giveaways we are going to run based on us doing a post saying something like “Artgerm Covers Batman 1 For Exclusive”. We always mention to keep an eye out as we will have a giveaway. But we never claim it’s the new hotness or a must buy.

Yeah, I have done 8 exclusives (maybe more need to count) Enourmous (2 covers), Teether, Niobe, Solar Flare, Atoll (2 covers), Black. I might be missing one. But anyway they are a lot of work and not always enjoyable. I haven’t done one in a while because I like doing Indy projects I am interested in. Plus so many people are doing exclusives anymore it is a big pool of covers.

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Where would I look for sales data?

Key collector or go collect have some they try and charge for more info. Go collects weekly list of top 1000 selling comics isn’t real it’s more of a pump tool for themselves. I suggest doing the research yourself with eBay searches of sold books sorted by recent end date first.

If i misread your question and you want to know where to get print run estimates that would be comichron

Thanks, i will take a look