I like their format when I found this a few weeks back myself. The current Marvel Catalog is found at New in Stores - Marvel - Penguin Random House Comics Retail
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I’m gonna tell you guys now…PRH’s shipping / packaging, worse than Diamonds. Just a heads up. They are gonna need to get their stuff together quickly before this blows up in their faces.
Lunar is the only one currently shipping with care. I guess the first order I did was pretty small, but it was sent in a small box, about 8 to 10 inches high, and about the length and width of a comic. Comics were piled in every so often reversing direction of cover. The box was standalone, not contained in another box, so every shift and drop was felt by every single comic in the box. The packing paper on top did not press the comics in hard enough to restrict shifting, and also allows for rubbing due to its abrasiveness.
I only took out the top 20 or so comics, but about ever single corner was rubbed, and some spines had enough rub to declare them ‘kindling’. So far…grass is not greener on the other side. I hope their larger orders they take more care with.
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This sounds like trouble brewing…
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Similar issue with my deliveries, but I am writing it off as part of the learning curve. I will say, shipping comics is not rocket science and it is kind of silly to do it so wrong. That being said, I think they deserve some time to get it right. They probably assumed they had this whole book shipping thing down no problem, but did not realize how different boos and comic books are.
I have to wonder if this is how they are sending comics to Diamond as well. If so, people ordering through Diamond will see even more damages now.
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Oh WOW this doesn’t sound good at all?. That is really disappointing to hear…
Hopefully as mentioned they get their stuff together and ship better after these first shipments. I hope so from the sound of it 
I wish someone would just copy Lunar’s shipping and packaging!! Don’t try to reinvent the wheel…especially when someone is doing it right, right in front of you.
I’m gonna ship a box of my damages to PRH the way Lunar ships to me, with a note, “none of these comics were FURTHER damaged in shipping” 
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Lunar is definitely the MVP of shipping, but I have to wonder if PRH can afford to ship that way considering they do free shipping (I would rather pay a small premium for the better packaging though).
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Yeah Lunars shipping charge isn’t horrible, $10-15 usually. I can live with that. Not my $180 diamond order that costs me $70 to ship….seriously!???
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Bill @ Economics In Comics made a video of PRH shipping. Looks just like what @faele and @PCKComics posted with there pre orders. Most of his books had a lot of corner blunting.
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PRH be shipping like newbie Ebay sellers…
SMH 
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I’m sure it’s gonna be okay. They’ll have a crap ton of complaints, gripes and then see the amount of returned merchandise to hopefully fix the issues…
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I’m just a process guy…If I’m taking on a new process, I need to know the key things about it. So if I’m taking on distributing comics…how to safely ship them is at the top of the list….especially if you are a ‘leader’ in the industry.
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Exactly! It should be the first thing any comic book seller should master. It boggles the mind that so many don’t figure it out first, much less ever.
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There’s a huge difference between distributor and selling comics though… I’m not giving them a full pass but they’re shipping a whole lot more. Any change could drastically cut into their own profits. Distributors make money in quantity, not quality (or secondary market spec value). To a lot of folks, this is all just reading material, not collectibles.
This is why I can’t do comic book retail like you guys do. I’d go through one week like this and I’d want to end it all and burn the whole operation to ground.
More power to the guys that do and Godspeed.
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So if all of these Marvel books from these couple of weeks are damaged to one degree or another, doesn’t that just make the market for these particular books adjust overall?
Theoretically speaking, on a normal week we know there are x damages and y number of 9.8s, 9.6s so on and so forth.
Now for these issues shipped this week (assuming all Penguin distribution was terrible), we know these issues have x times “a” damages and y minus “b” 9.8s, 9.6s etc. so if any of these books heat up, doesn’t the curve of acceptable condition just adjust down?
Assuming on a normal week for moderns a 8.5 or 9.0 is a “C” grade, has it just been adjusted down to 7.5 or so for a “C” making the whole thing a wash in the long run marketwide?
My brain just did that.
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That theory does little for retailers having to deal with customer complaints.
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I couldn’t do it because the times I get like 20 eBay orders or what not in a few days and I’m losing my mind packing up comics. I couldn’t do it, not on the level the online retailers do it.
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