We don’t always buy planning on selling for double cover, it’s more of a last resort option. It’s much more exciting if I catch the sale, the minute it goes live and can fill the invoice up with 200 and 500 ratio’s around those 100’s instead of 25’s. I was late to the party on this one and missed the good stuff.
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This all doesn’t matter much for 1st prints where they have a much larger time period to pre-sell to pay for the open order cvrs. It’s an added bonus even to sell the incentives for ratio price
How often does Diamond do those blow outs?
Ratio’s fairly regularly but it may only be once a year per publisher. They’ll break them up over 2 different sales as well. This was part 2 that lasted a couple weeks. I missed part 1 entirely since I kicked the habit of following Daimond daily after Image left to avoid temptation. Other publishers may have multi price sales where there will be comics in groups like for $1, $2, $5 or $10. Dynamite falls into that category frequently and the price points will have regular covers mixed in the lower price points. The higher price points will be shorter lists but may be all 40-50 ratios. I like the IDW sales as well. Those might be something like 300 comics with ratio’s mixed in for about a buck each. That’s a great way to stock up on GI Joes and such. I assume with those titles gone, Beneath the Tree’s ratios will probably make the next one. They also have their regular sale lists that alternate every Thursday. One week is comics and trades, the next week are the toys and figures. The longer items stay on the list there the cheaper they get until they hit max discount. Zenescope usually has a big dump it sale late in the year. Hundreds of issues for as little as a quarter sometimes but I get the feeling they’re stored in the low rent area since they typically come in coated in grey/black machine dust. You slide them into a bag and then feel the need to replace the bag because everything sticks to the bag leaving the comics. Overall the longer the items stay at Diamond, the worse shape they arrive in. I’m assuming it’s part repeated handling and part environmental. Diamond also has large sales a couple times a year. Usually a big one to start the summer and another larger one for Winter in time for Black Friday store stocking deals. The winter one is usually followed immediately by an even better sale on the leftovers if you want to gamble on them not selling out of something.
The problem in the past has always been the shipping department. The more you order, the more likely the shipping department will jerk you around causing massive freight charges, some of which you may be able to appeal but still have to pay upfront first. Hopefully they stick to the new 3% of retail starting April 10th to protect us from shipping nightmares.
It may be twice a year with Marvel. They all blur together over time and it appears we got 6 issues of Venom which would probably mean it included everything leftover from the comics that released in that date range which would require two sales to move 12 issues leftovers a year. Maybe every 7 to 8 months or so. That’s part of the thrill. You don’t know when so if you catch it and are first in line ordering, you get the best stuff. If you show up even 30 minutes late most of the best is gone.
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Hey @BJ i will buy every GI Joe Ratio at whatever cheap price they sell them to you for plus shipping from diamond and to me. Don’t even need to unbox them. I sell the hell out of Joe Ratios and usually pay $5 or less for them.
I used to have this great relationship with this one LCS many years ago before it closed down because the owner’s wife no longer wanted that shop. I was a regular customer there and the LCS guy would let me know every time Diamond or the publisher’s had these giant clearance sales. He would let me sit on his chair and go through the Diamond orders during the day on the computer while they served customers lol. Some of the prices would make you scream and he would sell it to me cheap.
I had no interest in selling things at that time and didn’t even have an ebay account. I was just interested in buying omnibuses, hcs and tpbs. Couldn’t stop buying because everything was so cheap, had a great time getting back into comics and reading stuff that I missed. Then the omnibus market kind of blew up as most of the books I bought had gone OOP a few years later and was fetching upwards of $350 - $500 or more. I only paid anywhere from $10-$50 for them. I still remember dusting off an X-Men X-Tinction Agenda oversized hardcover that I was about to read because it was around that era when I got into comics. Checked ebay and it was selling for $350+ 
I believe the cost for my shop to get it was $5, sold it to me for $8-10. Off to ebay it went and sold quickly.
These days a lot of the OOP graphic novel has been reprinted by Marvel with a much higher print count, was really fun back then finding books to flip. CHU is responsible for me getting back into floppies but I was a huge omnibus collector back then. Sadly I never cared to look at the ratio variant sales they had back then, I wouldn’t have known what to look for after getting back into comics after a long absence, wished I found CHU back then. My LCS guy told me he bought all the Hip Hop variants back then for DIRT CHEAP. Good times.
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Diamonds former Marvel Book sales pretty much saved the business when it was starting. Diamond has this thing where you sign up and for 6 months you get maximum discount right out the gate. Well if you don’t know what you’re doing yet which many new people don’t or don’t have enough sales market develop yet to support those levels, you reach the 6 month point and suddenly your discount level plummets down to 35% plus insane freight charges. We went thru that, started only getting the subscriber pulls directly from Diamond and started having everything else shipped in from another guy who was giving the same discount but throwing in boards, bags and free shipping plus he dealt with all the damage headaches.
Diamond starts having ignorantly low sales on Marvel trades and hardbacks. So stupid low it would be something like $1 for a $15.99 trade and they’d throw in another trade similarly priced for free. Who can pass up a chance to build an enormous trade section at those prices so even with the insane freight charges I still spent heavy. I didn’t know it at the time but all those trades cover prices were adding up and before I knew it, I was back at 50+% discount with Marvel again. I haven’t looked back since. DC came around soon after with increased ordering of Rebirth titles.
That’s why I say all the time, there are reasons to buy things that don’t have customers waiting right now. Other reasons can include just having the qty itself jumping your order totals so you qualify for the higher discount levels at the next evaluation.
That was one of the things that bothered me when Lunar and Penguin started up. I was buying DC trades from PRH to get the free shipping. Suddenly Lunar reactivates the discount tiers and I missed qualifying for the next level which would have been an extra 3% discount on everything DC for the next 6 months by less than the total cost of what I purchased from PRH. That’s when I started a letter writing campaign to every DC rep, Lunar Rep and PRH rep I could find to get them to combine the purchases for purposes of calculating the discounts in the future. As it was originally, we were getting penalized by shopping for DC product from PRH instead of Lunar because that volume wasn’t getting added. Now a few months ago they finally did just that and passed around a form so we could voluntarily give DC access to our PRH purchase data so the numbers could be combined from now on. Hopefully this problem is now a thing of the past and I can select where to purchase something based on how fast I need it and quality of the shipping over being forced to go to one place only to have the cover prices counted.
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whoaaaaaaaaa
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It was so ugly it incentivized no one to buy it. Now it’s rare so everyone wants it.
This book will be selling for 1/4 of this price in a year.
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This is what I see every time when I clean under my bed. It reminds me that I haven’t taken it out for shopping and traveling… Damn…
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BOOM! Studios Announces
Something is Killing the Children
Secret Series Variant!
Dear Diamond Customer:This is something you really don’t want to miss … After forty issues and five years of Erica Slaughter and BOOM! Studios’ hit series Something is Killing the Children, creators James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera are releasing a special issue this September with a very special cover – one that you can only get if you qualify for the Something Is Killing the Children Secret Series Variant (FEB247574)!
Retailers who order 100 units or more of each issue of Something is Killing the Children #36-#40 any cover combination per issue based on FOC orders), may order one Series incentive variant, limited one per store, per account.
Don’t miss out on this opportunity and place qualifying orders on Something is Killing the Children #36, on FOC Monday, March 25!
This issue will tell a critical untold story of Something is Killing the Children, and have long-lasting ramifications for the series at large. Trust us, this cover and this story will have fans of the series hunting it down in your stores and across the Slaughterverse!
Another 100 ratio scattered across a number of issues to qualify I will not be qualifying for. I should be getting 3 of each of those issues with only 1 subscriber now that we’re back with Diamond.
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Yet another joyless cashgrab…
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They are taking joy in grabbing cash. But soul-less for the fans.
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I noticed that so I listed some.
How many shops will order 100 each of 5 random issues?!? This special “secret” issue might as well have a gold-plated cover, otherwise this isn’t an incentive at all. There’s gonna be 9 of these in existence. Way to help out the retailers, Boom! And, since no one will have one, it’s a nothing event for customers, too. Great idea.
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Okazaki 1:25 cover also scarce. Copies listed either have color rub, are from another country or it’s listed at $50
I have 3 copies of the Okazaki 1:25, need to check these and see how mine are.
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Just to be clear, now isn’t the time to sell the incentive. The main cvr, perhaps