Oh I agree (from a collector’s perspective, a fan’s perspective and JTC’s perspective)
My perspective is, as most of us on here, a flipper.
And open order store/artist variants for a flipper just aren’t in the $$$ equation for us types.
The hype and horrors of the limits/difficulty are the attraction and result in the $$$.
Did really well with almost all and I think got almost all the hard ones in the past.
So basically if you have an account on his site and subbed to his news letter you get first dibs during the early sale but they’re only available as a bundle, and then when the public one is on they’re sold idividually and basically whats leftover?
Look at it this way, what JTC is doing by open orders is ordering based on actual demand of the product. He’s not limiting to X copies. No games saying he’s limiting to Y copies and will destroy the remaining ones. He’s doing what every store exclusive should be doing, only making enough based on actual demand at the time of offering.
This is why I’m all for this. It’s not creating an artificial demand based on keywords like “limited to” and so on. I applaud this, it’s actually good for the industry. If we can see demand and value rise on regular open order comics, then the same could happen with an exclusive cover that’s exclusive to a particular store or creator.
JTC is doing the industry a good deed and service by doing this. So he’s moved up the list of people I’ll promote and back for their hard work and making sure the consumers are taken care of by allowing those who want one can actually obtain one without being forced to pay inflated secondary aftermarket values.
The issue I’ve seen with Kirkham is that, sure, there are 100 of THIS SPECIFIC COLOR/BACKGROUND/AMOUNT OF BLOOD/ETC on this variant, but then he’ll have the whatnot variants that are on a white background, sketch version, foil version, yada yada yada. I really like this cover, but knowing that there’s about to be a flood of this art always makes his exclusive covers that much less desirable imo.