I ordered two and bought one extra. The funny (or irritating I suppose) thing is, my shop wouldn’t have likely ordered any but they told me they keep an eye on what I order as they know I’m pretty good at “spec”.
I gave it two days after buying my initial three and they still had one on the racks…but the sales lady said I had already bought more than two and they are “cracking down” on folks buying multiple…pffft.
So I bought a few more copies of Absolute Batman #4 and #7 that I found in their back issues for $5 apiece (with a Batman Day 15% off) and called it a win.
ALSO…
I was pricing comics for the once a year con I do & I can’t believe the prices for Spears Monsters book. Sure, the #1 of course, but more importantly the #2 (that I think most of us have plenty of).
I didn’t realize how high the prices have gotten on those!!!
I went heavy on both the Creature from the Black Lagoon & the Werewolf one & those are doing insanely well.
which part? Doing their research for them, or not letting you buy a single shelf copy once it came out?
Or both?
I think how many shelf copies a patron is limited to should have nothing to do with how many were pre-ordered. Why would you hold a loyal repeated customer to a more strict standard than someone coming in off the street?
Bad for business. Plenty of other sources to order comic books pre-FOC and not give them that moneybif they’re going to play those games…
It’s every thing about how they treat a customer that would pre-order with them and then limit how many copies they can buy once a comic is released after several days. My LCS has a strict 1 copy per customer on Wednesday release day. After Wednesday it’s a free for all. If they have 100 copies on Thursday and you want to have it, go at it. Their priority is to sell books and get them off the shelf as quickly as possible. I really respect that.
Shops “cracking down” on folks that buy multiple copies to me is ridiculous. They can run their shop however they want but if they pulled that on me I would not be pre-ordering with them in the future. Lots of online places to do that and probably won’t be shopping there either.
I’m in the same boat but I"m okay with new releases being limited, perhaps a week is sufficient for me until next weeks releases hit shelves… then everything is fair game and those who couldn’t get to the shop in 7 days, that’s on them for missing out…
If I ran a shop, I wouldn’t care if you bought 39 copies of a single book on day 1. For those that missed out, I’d push leagueofcomicgeeks hard so that they get pre-orders in. I’d make sure everyone got their pre-orders that they put in, but on Wednesday, I’m there to sell books and make money! I’d also set up some sort of day of hotline (email, forum, text, FB group) for regulars so if they can’t make it in until 5pm or for a few days, I’d be sure to let them know I’ll throw books in their pull list.
I’d do everything I can to cultivate a loyal customer base, but there’s no chance in hell I’m telling someone that I don’t want their money.
I went to a 50 cent comic sale a couple years ago and filled two long boxes. The guy had like 40 copies of some comic, I forget what it was, but it was maybe a $5 book and some spec potential. I grabbed 20 of the 40, left 20 behind. He flipped through both my boxes one by one and pulled half of that issue out and said he typically doesn’t sell more than 2 copies of the same book to someone but he’ll let me buy 10. He had his going out of business sale about 9 months ago. When someone wants to give you money, take it.
So there are a couple reasons that may not help a shop in the long run.
First, many shops aren’t following every book each week, and whether one person is clearing the shelf or its organic demand. They just see 39 copies sold of one book. So some may limit the number per person to gage actual interest in the series to place orders for the next issue and not over order and get stuck with books no one wants.
Second, if someone clears the shelf of a hot book, that may discourage new readers from ordering the next issue. Thus they miss out on future sales.
Limit 1 is still pretty harsh, unless you’re a shop that only orders a few shelf copies (if that) like my shop does.
Wonder Woman #25 has a bunch of really great variants, the one above, the Putri Pumpkin Spicy, a Homare, there is a 1:25 from Tran Nguyen (the incredible colored pencil artist) and even a Cohen exclusive:
My LCS tried the email “hotline” thing. Every time a book got hot Tuesday night, if I’d shoot an email request for it, magically it would never be in my pull box when I hit the shop on Wednesday after work. And there would be no shelf copies left. They stopped doing the email request a couple of years ago.
I wish I lived by SpicyWasabi’s shop. Unless I have the clairvoyance to pre-order something, if it turns out to be hot I can count on my shop not having it. I’ve cut back drastically over the last two years because I was realizing for every winner I pre-ordered, I would end up with multiple duds. Being able to actually see what is hot and then go buy it must be awesome.
My shop puts books out Tuesday afternoons now…so I just go in Tuesday after work. If I wait until opening Wednesday (which is noon) most hot books will be gone before the door opens.
They don’t order variants. So when one of those gets hot I’m usually resorting to an online LCS to order. But now that the shop has suspended my account because of a ComicHub glitch, my options are limited as well for variants.
