Which leads me to a disturbing practice that has been evolving in recent months, which has been lack of disclosure of print runs. To me, this would indicate the run is higher than the normal 3000/1000 (trade/virgin)… otherwise they would disclose it. This trend has been happening for several months though… maybe there has been an about-turn in the last couple months? I’m not buying many retailer exclusives lately so don’t have my finger of the pulse of that.
I think there has been a growing distaste for retailer exclusives in general though. AcetateGate was the perfect storm of retailer exclusive, CGC grading, cronyism, and shady “influencers”. People had been getting fed up with all of them before the Black Flag incident and this was the perfect confluence that brought it all to a head
I also witnessed a certain store cancel I think 3 upcoming exclusives because they did not sell enough of a prior exclusive to pay for the next ones. That would indicate to me that people are pulling back on that type of luxury spending.
Personally, I find it harder and harder to justify spending money on store exclusives when I still have back issue holes in some of my older runs that I collect. Why would I spend $40 on a different cover of a book I’m already getting on Wednesday for $4.99 when I could spend that $40 to get ten books that will fill in holes in my long boxes?
The smart shops are only doing exclusives with multiple ratio variants in hopes that the ratios cover half the cost for the exclusive. But even those stores are having trouble breaking even because they are dragging down incentive prices trying to move their 30 1:100, 60 1:50, 120 1:25.
A boardie over on the CGC boards was acting real skeptical about incentive print runs as well. 1:100 means a shop gets 1 for every hundred they order. That says nothing about how many the publishers print above and beyond that.
Well they use to sell the extras at the end of the year in some blowout sale but I don’t think they have done that since switching to Penguin. All I know is I never get damage replacements from Tfaw.
I think people are just really burnt out on store exclusives and not buying as many. Feels like any book now is just gonna be loaded with exclusives that range from mediocre to downright bad, and the homages oh my god im so sick of homages, especially ones that todd did like asm 300 or hulk 340
Also why many of these folks have to resort to fake hype, rumors, and downright lies to sell these exclusives.
I’m still hung up on that We Live Whatnot exclusive where they sooo clearly initiated that false option rumor through their most watched streamers and then kept it rolling like a domino effect from the onset of the con (Megacon)
When I asked in a stream for source/proof, I was ignored and then blocked (and I was polite about it).
Their schemes are so evident… it’s why it was hilarious that it blew up in their faces on the acetate.
Store variants were kind of cool back in 2015 or so, but now everyone and their mother has a variant every month for something. I think Unknown has a variant every damn week by the number of emails I get! Just too many variants; just saturates the market. I got burnt out on them years ago and maybe buy one or two a year now if I really really really like the cover.
I feel like the true craziness began in the early of summer 2020 in terms of incredible amounts of hype and buying of variants. Retailers did very well but seem
to lack the understanding that it was a perfect storm for the buying of those variants due to Covid, lack of cons, shops closed, and stimulus money at play. It was obvious that sort of furor couldn’t be maintained, and yet they kept barreling ahead. Leading us to the current state where, lies, false pretenses, and sketchy business practices are required to sell these things.
Not to defend Whatnot, but other than shipping their sellers out to the con, they didn’t really play a role in the Acetategate scandal, other than allowing the books to be sold on their platform as they do not really have a rule against selling bootlegs.
