500Club

I have clicked a couple links to that recalled comics site and while some of their estimates seem accurate, they are still just an aftermarket speculator site.

 

I respect your opinion, but it is actually a specialty site and resource tool for variant hunters and the like. And for my money I put far more weight on the educated estimates of a guy with no skin in the game, who has run a FREE site for the better part of a decade, dedicated to analyzing and calculating the exact type of data at issue here, solely for the service of other fans and out of love for the hobby, than on the carnival barks of a couple of guys with books to sell. (thumbs u

 

-J.

 

I hope that point comes across to many here because its a very important distinction.

 

Here's an even clearer distinction: rather than using the 'educated estimates' of a fan website, use the actual statements of the sites posting the data from Diamond, Comichron and IcV2, as posted by carcrawfordfan and bababooey earlier in the thread.

 

You can ONLY make educated estimates because DIAMOND DOES NOT DISCLOSE THE PRINT RUNS OF VARIANTS. Nothing you or anyone else has linked to says what you say it does. In fact, the main link your buddy who says there's only 500 copies of this thing around (300 of which have evidently been offered for sale in the last month) actually proves the OPPOSITE point.

 

And here you go again, still attempting to con the readers of these boards with your specious nonsense.

 

-J.

Diamond does disclose total sales, though. Those sales include variants.

Your repeated point that Diamond doesn't disclose the print runs of variants is correct. You don't need to repeat it; we'll take it as fact.

They do, however, give a total number that includes the various different covers.

I will contact John Jackson Miller at Comichron, and see if he will post here.

I have clicked a couple links to that recalled comics site and while some of their estimates seem accurate, they are still just an aftermarket speculator site.

 

I respect your opinion, but it is actually a specialty site and resource tool for variant hunters and the like. And for my money I put far more weight on the educated estimates of a guy with no skin in the game, who has run a FREE site for the better part of a decade, dedicated to analyzing and calculating the exact type of data at issue here, solely for the service of other fans and out of love for the hobby, than on the carnival barks of a couple of guys with books to sell. (thumbs u

 

-J.

 

I hope that point comes across to many here because its a very important distinction.

 

Here's an even clearer distinction: rather than using the 'educated estimates' of a fan website, use the actual statements of the sites posting the data from Diamond, Comichron and IcV2, as posted by carcrawfordfan and bababooey earlier in the thread.

I use common sense.

 

There is no way there are 250,000+ regular covers of #1 out there.

 

There is no doubt in my mind that number includes variants.

 

I have always been told the total numbers listed as the print run includes all covers and variants for that book, and I will continue believing that until I see hard proof it does not.

 

Cue famous Journey song.

Cue famous Pink Floyd song.

What is all this arguing really about? This seems about as significant about arguing what GM uses to stuff the cushions of their seats.

I don't know how much of it is relevant to Spider Gwen.. but I don't care about that character too much.

There was some variant/print run discussion with good info earlier...I learned something from it so I'm continuing on.

(thumbs u

In that vein, what information do we have as far as international sales go? Is there any data whatsoever to go on?

What is all this arguing really about? This seems about as significant about arguing what GM uses to stuff the cushions of their seats.

Not really.

In the age of ratio dispensed variants, it's almost certain the question of ballparking a variant's print run will come up again.

OK so, to summarize.

 

Regular cover - counts toward totals sold, counts toward incentive variants

 

Sold variants (specialty store/blank/non-incentive) - counts toward totals sold, not broken out of totals but included, doesn't count toward incentive variants

 

Incentive variants - not sold or counted in sales figures, print run not disclosed but is driven by regular cover sales x ratio threshold being met on a per store basis

 

I approve two out of three of this message.

 

-J.

So you disagree on the sold variants being included in the totals sold?

 

I do. That only applies to Loot Crate sales. This is why comichron goes out of its way to parse out Loot Crate orders from regular distribution books (which S G #1 was).

 

-J.

I think the Loot Crate thing was due to the impact of the high numbers - there's nothing that has been posted or linked anywhere that says other variants aren't reported in the numbers - you're the only one reading it that way...heck, one of the quotes from that JJM guy says "variants AND Loot Crate"

 

Also, how do you think they report market data, revenue, etc...from this same data if they aren't reporting (counting) items that are being sold?

That doesn't make any sense - a retailer buys 50 regular covers, 20 Scottie Youngs & 10 blanks - ICV/Comichon mark him down for 50?

To you with failing hands the torch is passed...

OK so, to summarize.

 

Regular cover - counts toward totals sold, counts toward incentive variants

 

Sold variants (specialty store/blank/non-incentive) - counts toward totals sold, not broken out of totals but included, doesn't count toward incentive variants

 

Incentive variants - not sold or counted in sales figures, print run not disclosed but is driven by regular cover sales x ratio threshold being met on a per store basis

 

I approve two out of three of this message.

 

-J.

So you disagree on the sold variants being included in the totals sold?

He does. With you, me, carcrawfordfan, Larry and John Jackson Miller.

 

Your horns are starting to show again....

 

-J.

OK so, to summarize.

 

Regular cover - counts toward totals sold, counts toward incentive variants

 

Sold variants (specialty store/blank/non-incentive) - counts toward totals sold, not broken out of totals but included, doesn't count toward incentive variants

 

Incentive variants - not sold or counted in sales figures, print run not disclosed but is driven by regular cover sales x ratio threshold being met on a per store basis

 

I approve two out of three of this message.

 

-J.

So you disagree on the sold variants being included in the totals sold?

He does. With you, me, carcrawfordfan, Larry and John Jackson Miller.

OK so that wasn't hard, I looked up Spidey 700 and got my answer here on ICV2

Marvel sold over $1.6 million retail worth of Amazing Spider-Man #700 to comic stores in December, the top dollar comic in recent memory. Sell-in of over 200,000 copies was supported by an extensive variant program, including numerous "exceed orders," 1:100, 1:150, 1:200 variants, and at a $7.99 retail price, the dollars piled up fast. Extensive publicity about the storyline helped make this a major event book.

 

You've come to the same conclusion as 99.9% of this thread's readers.

 

...or not. That doesn't say what you want it to either.

It says the variants helped the book to sell "over 200,000 copes".

How much "over"? We don't know. Why?

 

DIAMOND DOES NOT DISCLOSE THE PRINT RUNS OF VARIANTS.

 

And who are you kidding? Obviously- and I mean obviously- the easiest, best, and most efficient way of ballparking a variant print run is to reference comichron's domestic sales figures. Whatever shortages you would like to glean from this or that or whatever are handily off-set by the *additional* sales figures from international.

 

I'm not so sure why you get your knickers in such a twist over the 2500 estimated print run of this Hughes variant, when that is, in fact, the only *reasonable* figure that can be estimated based on the print run figures before us.

 

Frankly your insistence on trying to perpetrate this con job on these boards that the book is somehow "rare" is disconcerting, to say the least.

 

-J.

Shine on, crazy diamond!

OK so, to summarize.

 

Regular cover - counts toward totals sold, counts toward incentive variants

 

Sold variants (specialty store/blank/non-incentive) - counts toward totals sold, not broken out of totals but included, doesn't count toward incentive variants

 

Incentive variants - not sold or counted in sales figures, print run not disclosed but is driven by regular cover sales x ratio threshold being met on a per store basis

(thumbs u

OK so that wasn't hard, I looked up Spidey 700 and got my answer here on ICV2

Marvel sold over $1.6 million retail worth of Amazing Spider-Man #700 to comic stores in December, the top dollar comic in recent memory. Sell-in of over 200,000 copies was supported by an extensive variant program, including numerous "exceed orders," 1:100, 1:150, 1:200 variants, and at a $7.99 retail price, the dollars piled up fast. Extensive publicity about the storyline helped make this a major event book.

You've come to the same conclusion as 99.9% of this thread's readers.

I don't see anyone "trolling" anyone in this thread. I do see people having a discussion, even if there are 3 or so people that are having most of the discussion.

 

:shrug:

 

 

 

-slym

Sorry, I know it's boring as hell, but it'd be nice to ballpark the long ratio variants numbers a bit better.

It's all over for me. If JJ Miller says Comichron is including variants in their numbers, that's good enough for me. I think we can move on to trying to calculate the 1:100 SG population.

 

...except he didn't say that, and there is nowhere in that article where you can quote him saying that.

I CAN quote him:

'Star Wars #1 from Marvel was the chart-topper: the comic book is reported by its publisher to have sales over a million copies, helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers and boosted by special editions for Loot Crate and other channels'.

How did they get sales of over a million copies? An unprecedented number of variant covers AND the Loot Crate and other special editions.

And, yeah, SG isn't a Loot Crate book, but that's irrelevant. All we want to know is that Comichron includes 'unprecedented numbers of variant covers' and 'special editions' of 'other channels'. ( ie store variants) in their totals.

It's all over for me. If JJ Miller says Comichron is including variants in their numbers, that's good enough for me. I think we can move on to trying to calculate the 1:100 SG population.

 

And they aren't. And my reasoning behind it is clear. Diamond does not disclose print runs of variants and comichron does not report international sales. Some have been straining to rope in loot crate numbers (irrelevant since this was not a loot crate book) and/or state "well diamond doesn't report the print runs of variants but maybe they do in bulk to comichron or something.".

 

Wrong.

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

Let me say it again:

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

Variant covers have their own unique print runs and they are not reported by diamond.

 

Loot crate is its own animal. Hence why it's got an asterisk every time. That means the book was not a standard distribution book. If Spider Gwen #1 was a loot crate book you might have a point. But it wasn't. So that point is moot.

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

The Hughes variant had AT LEAST 2500 copies printed and distributed with the MASSIVE print run of 250k+ copies of the regular cover printed, plus international. It is not rare.

 

Deal with it.

 

-J.

 

Your reasoning is clear. It's also wrong.

 

You are right: no variant figures are disclosed by Diamond. But even though they don't release them individually, they release them in toto to Comichron.

 

That much is VERY CLEAR in the Comichron narrative above.

 

No it isn't. And it doesn't say that. That article is about loot crate books and it's effect on Comichron's numbers and why it gets asterisked out from the other books and sales figues Apples and oranges my friend. Apples and oranges.

 

-J.

Yes. Apples and oranges.

The original discussion was how to calculate population numbers for variants, and how to use the Comichron numbers. That's the point I'll focus on.

1)According to Comichron's sales estimates for comics ordered in February 2015. based on data Diamond released today, in February a comic book has once again topped the monthly sales charts because of vast quantities by a single retailer, the repackager Loot Crate.

 

With nearly half a million copies shipped, IDW's Orphan Black #1 would, in fact, rank as the fourth best-selling comic book of the Diamond Exclusive Era, behind January's Star Wars #1, last year's Amazing Spider-Man #1, and Amazing Spider-Man #583 from 2009. It is the third time a comic book has topped the charts likely due to the massive size of Loot Crate's order.

 

2)In the least surprising news in some time, Star Wars #1 from Marvel was the chart-topper: the comic book is reported by its publisher to have sales over a million copies, helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers and boosted by special editions for Loot Crate and other channels. Marvel's market share jumped as a consequence, accounting for 45.64% of units and 41.05% of dollars. Overall comics unit sales were up 10.27% year-over-year, but slightly off from December

 

3)Walking Dead returned to its previous sales level, following last month's Loot Crate-enhanced sales; this would seem to strengthen the case that the October Loot Crate purchase of Walking Dead #132 was likely around 256,000 copies. That's more than Loot Crate appears to have bought of the Guardians of the Galaxy spinoff Rocket Raccoon #1 earlier in the summer, so it's likely there's quite a bit of variance in its orders from set to set. Given how the "crates" can be purchased a la carte as well as by subscription, that would make sense.

 

4)Yet another group of end-users for the data is collectors who want to know how scarce a given comic book is, and the more data points for them, the better. We'd hate not to know how many total copies are out there. But there's no returning to the days of breaking out variant covers into their own entries, now that such variants are ubiquitous. I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I suspect that if other firms enter the Loot Crate space offering comics, odds are the question will be raised again. For Comichron's part, the sales are ginormous enough that we'll be including a dagger (as we're already using the asterisk) when any Loot Crate-enhanced issue appears in the rankings. Future readers won't need to wonder why sales spiked so high.

 

5)Diamond Comic Distributors releases its sales reports for April 2014 orders from comics shops in North America soon, an it is widely expected that Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1, the second relaunched version of that long-running series, will be a blockbuster. Its many variant covers — including a large number specially designed for specific individual comics stores—is likely to give it a high place on the Top Comics of the 21st Century list, which currently is topped by Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #583, the Barack Obama inauguration issue. That issue had orders of at least 530,500 copies across several printings in early 2009 — and more, if newsstand sales are included.

It's pretty clear from this that Diamond's sales figures released to Comichron include variants.

 

Are these text pieces direct from Comichron?

 

 

Yes, they are.

Game over.

 

Right from the horse's mouth, John Jackson Miller and Comichron are using Diamond totals that include variants and ordering incentive books. Therefore to calculate the population of 1:100 books, you need to ballpark the regular covers shipped. That means subtracting incentives and store/specialty variants.

 

...except that's not what is said in the article, and your interpretation is incorrect. Plus, oh yeah, Spider Gwen #1 wasn't a loot crate book.

 

-J.

Let's run through interpretation. Look above, at the bolded text after 2). Read this part: Star Wars 1 from Marvel was the chart topper... helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers...

In basic English, 'helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers', means that those unprecedented numbers were included in the sales figures.

Therefore, the glaringly obvious conclusion is that Comichron is including variants in its sales totals.

 

And they aren't. And my reasoning behind it is clear. Diamond does not disclose print runs of variants and comichron does not report international sales. Some have been straining to rope in loot crate numbers (irrelevant since this was not a loot crate book) and/or state "well diamond doesn't report the print runs of variants but maybe they do in bulk to comichron or something.".

 

Wrong.

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

Let me say it again:

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

Variant covers have their own unique print runs and they are not reported by diamond.

 

Loot crate is its own animal. Hence why it's got an asterisk every time. That means the book was not a standard distribution book. If Spider Gwen #1 was a loot crate book you might have a point. But it wasn't. So that point is moot.

 

NO VARIANT FIGURES ARE DISCLOSED BY DIAMOND.

 

The Hughes variant had AT LEAST 2500 copies printed and distributed with the MASSIVE print run of 250k+ copies of the regular cover printed, plus international. It is not rare.

 

Deal with it.

 

-J.

 

Your reasoning is clear. It's also wrong.

You are right: no variant figures are disclosed by Diamond. But even though they don't release them individually, they release them in toto to Comichron.

That much is VERY CLEAR in the Comichron narrative above.

1)According to Comichron's sales estimates for comics ordered in February 2015. based on data Diamond released today, in February a comic book has once again topped the monthly sales charts because of vast quantities by a single retailer, the repackager Loot Crate.

 

With nearly half a million copies shipped, IDW's Orphan Black #1 would, in fact, rank as the fourth best-selling comic book of the Diamond Exclusive Era, behind January's Star Wars #1, last year's Amazing Spider-Man #1, and Amazing Spider-Man #583 from 2009. It is the third time a comic book has topped the charts likely due to the massive size of Loot Crate's order.

 

2)In the least surprising news in some time, Star Wars #1 from Marvel was the chart-topper: the comic book is reported by its publisher to have sales over a million copies, helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers and boosted by special editions for Loot Crate and other channels. Marvel's market share jumped as a consequence, accounting for 45.64% of units and 41.05% of dollars. Overall comics unit sales were up 10.27% year-over-year, but slightly off from December

 

3)Walking Dead returned to its previous sales level, following last month's Loot Crate-enhanced sales; this would seem to strengthen the case that the October Loot Crate purchase of Walking Dead #132 was likely around 256,000 copies. That's more than Loot Crate appears to have bought of the Guardians of the Galaxy spinoff Rocket Raccoon #1 earlier in the summer, so it's likely there's quite a bit of variance in its orders from set to set. Given how the "crates" can be purchased a la carte as well as by subscription, that would make sense.

 

4)Yet another group of end-users for the data is collectors who want to know how scarce a given comic book is, and the more data points for them, the better. We'd hate not to know how many total copies are out there. But there's no returning to the days of breaking out variant covers into their own entries, now that such variants are ubiquitous. I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I suspect that if other firms enter the Loot Crate space offering comics, odds are the question will be raised again. For Comichron's part, the sales are ginormous enough that we'll be including a dagger (as we're already using the asterisk) when any Loot Crate-enhanced issue appears in the rankings. Future readers won't need to wonder why sales spiked so high.

 

5)Diamond Comic Distributors releases its sales reports for April 2014 orders from comics shops in North America soon, an it is widely expected that Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1, the second relaunched version of that long-running series, will be a blockbuster. Its many variant covers — including a large number specially designed for specific individual comics stores—is likely to give it a high place on the Top Comics of the 21st Century list, which currently is topped by Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #583, the Barack Obama inauguration issue. That issue had orders of at least 530,500 copies across several printings in early 2009 — and more, if newsstand sales are included.

It's pretty clear from this that Diamond's sales figures released to Comichron include variants.

 

Are these text pieces direct from Comichron?

 

 

Yes, they are.

Game over.

Right from the horse's mouth, John Jackson Miller and Comichron are using Diamond totals that include variants and ordering incentive books. Therefore to calculate the population of 1:100 books, you need to ballpark the regular covers shipped. That means subtracting incentives and store/specialty variants.

OK so going through to summarize this & try to make some sense of this and be the lone person agreeing with jaydogrules conclusion but disagreeing with what little reasoning he put forward.

 

The Diamond sales or ICV2/Comichron numbers are the total reported sales for all of NA through Diamond. These entities do not break out variants or "disclose/report" individual print runs for variants - this is the point that jaydog repeated over and over while misrepresenting it as the reasoning for them not being included.

 

Everyone agrees that blanks and other non-incentive variants ARE included in the total Diamond sales numbers.

 

The main debate hinges on incentive variants, Larry has confirmed that the incentives are supplied based only on regular covers ordered, I'd assume that includes 50/50 split cover runs but not the blank or other "order as many as you want" variants.

 

So in trying to find the reasoning behind jaydogrules' position, my question is simple. How much does the LCS pay for incentive variants?

I'm under the impression they are supplied based on quantities orders (ie- free of charge) - if that's the case then they may not be included as part of the sales total or reported numbers. They may be books created over and above the reported sales totals and if you go back to ICV2 the numbers relate to sales figures/revenue/market percentages etc...

 

The actual impact is minor, most of the time but it does probably demonstrate why 10-1 incentives are common as dirt

jaydog is saying: 100K print run (no non-incentive variants) and book has 25-1 & 100-1 - the straight up math is 4000 and 1000 respectively

everyone else is saying: 100K includes regular, 25-1 and 100-1

 

*you could probably use the store-by-store order threshold formula to reduce the presumed availability of higher ratio variants and then create some sliding scale based on total print run, the challenge in all of this is when there are non-incentive variants available for a particular issue

 

 

That's a bit off.

JayDog is saying the 254K reported sales for SG 1 is just regular covers, so use the 1:100 ratio to arrive at 2500 copies.

The overwhelming view is that the 254K includes regular covers, blanks, Young's, and shop and specialty variant covers. Thus, the 1:100 is applied to a much smaller actual number of regular covers.

YES

retail exclusives, skottie youngs, incentives ALL count towards Comichrons number...

 

ONLY regular covers count towards incentives

 

No, you are incorrect here. Diamond does not report print runs for variants.

So this is the crux of the discussion, then. Is the 254K regular covers only, or is it all copies shipped through Diamond?

 

If it's regular covers only, I suspect Jay's number is near correct, and indeed international numbers and small store orders are a wash.

 

If it's all covers, there's a huge chunk of books in the 254K that don't qualify for the 1:100s, and carcrawford's number is likely close.

 

It is the regular covers only. Diamond *does not* report print runs for variants.

You can't absolutely infer the first fact from the second, though.

 

Diamond could still include these books in the total, and yet still have a policy of not reporting individual variant print runs.

 

Except, they don't.

And you can speak to this, how? After all, 'you're not a Diamond insider'. And, if you can, why can you answer this, and not the Loot Crate question above?

1)According to Comichron's sales estimates for comics ordered in February 2015. based on data Diamond released today, in February a comic book has once again topped the monthly sales charts because of vast quantities by a single retailer, the repackager Loot Crate.

 

With nearly half a million copies shipped, IDW's Orphan Black #1 would, in fact, rank as the fourth best-selling comic book of the Diamond Exclusive Era, behind January's Star Wars #1, last year's Amazing Spider-Man #1, and Amazing Spider-Man #583 from 2009. It is the third time a comic book has topped the charts likely due to the massive size of Loot Crate's order.

 

2)In the least surprising news in some time, Star Wars #1 from Marvel was the chart-topper: the comic book is reported by its publisher to have sales over a million copies, helped by an unprecedented number of variant covers and boosted by special editions for Loot Crate and other channels. Marvel's market share jumped as a consequence, accounting for 45.64% of units and 41.05% of dollars. Overall comics unit sales were up 10.27% year-over-year, but slightly off from December

 

3)Walking Dead returned to its previous sales level, following last month's Loot Crate-enhanced sales; this would seem to strengthen the case that the October Loot Crate purchase of Walking Dead #132 was likely around 256,000 copies. That's more than Loot Crate appears to have bought of the Guardians of the Galaxy spinoff Rocket Raccoon #1 earlier in the summer, so it's likely there's quite a bit of variance in its orders from set to set. Given how the "crates" can be purchased a la carte as well as by subscription, that would make sense.

 

4)Yet another group of end-users for the data is collectors who want to know how scarce a given comic book is, and the more data points for them, the better. We'd hate not to know how many total copies are out there. But there's no returning to the days of breaking out variant covers into their own entries, now that such variants are ubiquitous. I honestly don't know what the solution is, but I suspect that if other firms enter the Loot Crate space offering comics, odds are the question will be raised again. For Comichron's part, the sales are ginormous enough that we'll be including a dagger (as we're already using the asterisk) when any Loot Crate-enhanced issue appears in the rankings. Future readers won't need to wonder why sales spiked so high.

 

5)Diamond Comic Distributors releases its sales reports for April 2014 orders from comics shops in North America soon, an it is widely expected that Marvel's Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 3 #1, the second relaunched version of that long-running series, will be a blockbuster. Its many variant covers — including a large number specially designed for specific individual comics stores—is likely to give it a high place on the Top Comics of the 21st Century list, which currently is topped by Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 1 #583, the Barack Obama inauguration issue. That issue had orders of at least 530,500 copies across several printings in early 2009 — and more, if newsstand sales are included.

It's pretty clear from this that Diamond's sales figures released to Comichron include variants.

Are these text pieces direct from Comichron?

YES

retail exclusives, skottie youngs, incentives ALL count towards Comichrons number...

 

ONLY regular covers count towards incentives

 

No, you are incorrect here. Diamond does not report print runs for variants.

So this is the crux of the discussion, then. Is the 254K regular covers only, or is it all copies shipped through Diamond?

 

If it's regular covers only, I suspect Jay's number is near correct, and indeed international numbers and small store orders are a wash.

 

If it's all covers, there's a huge chunk of books in the 254K that don't qualify for the 1:100s, and carcrawford's number is likely close.

 

It is the regular covers only. Diamond *does not* report print runs for variants.

You can't absolutely infer the first fact from the second, though.

Diamond could still include these books in the total, and yet still have a policy of not reporting individual variant print runs.

YES

retail exclusives, skottie youngs, incentives ALL count towards Comichrons number...

 

ONLY regular covers count towards incentives

 

No, you are incorrect here. Diamond does not report print runs for variants.

So this is the crux of the discussion, then. Is the 254K regular covers only, or is it all copies shipped through Diamond?

If it's regular covers only, I suspect Jay's number is near correct, and indeed international numbers and small store orders are a wash.

If it's all covers, there's a huge chunk of books in the 254K that don't qualify for the 1:100s, and carcrawford's number is likely close.

Y

 

Recalledcomics.com is a wonderful resource that explains how to ballpark the print runs on variants. The Hughes would be about 2500 based on comparable math. (And yes, some smaller shops will have ordered less than 100 and not have gotten the variant, but for every one of those, it is a safe assumption that a medium to large shop will have ordered a few hundred copies of the main cover and received more than one copy of the variant to offset such. Factor in international sales, and, yes, 2500 is a fair and reasonable ballpark.)

No, there's no offsetting. Let's look at some hypothetical math/orders:

 

Store A: 50

Store B: 160

Store C: 40

Store D: 300

Store E: 1000

Store F: 250

Store G: 70

Store H: 140

Store I: 20

 

That should capture a reasonable profile of store sizes. Total copies: 2030. Total 1:100 covers based on orders: 17.

 

You can see how the 1:100 ratio disconnects due to the smaller orders, and, no, the larger orders are not getting 3 extra copies to offset that.

 

Right. In your plausible scenario, the count would only be off by 3. That's why I stated that there are *approximately* 2500 copies of the variant, after also factoring in international orders, there are perhaps more. Also, this book was very clearly over ordered so there is a very reasonable chance that many smaller stores ordered more than their usual numbers because of the hype.

No. Not 3. Fifteen percent. So, right there, you can trim the overall number down from the 1:100 ratio by 15%.

 

And, yes, I tried to skew the numbers to larger, to account for the hype. There are many #1s where smaller operations are probably only ordering 5-20 copies. I figured 20 was probably a rock bottom guess for this book, but I'll check with my LCS, who is in fact a smaller store volume wise.

 

No you cannot necessarily do that. And even if you did, international sales would *more* than make up for the difference. Which is why I have said (and continue to say) that 2500 is a reasonable estimate for the book's print run and possibly as high as 3000 if you factored in all international sales.

You can necessarily do it. And I did.

What you can't necessarily do is say the number is exactly 15%. It may be 10%; it may be 20%. What is irrefutable is the fact that there is a significant change in the true ratio. 100K copies do not translate to 1000 copies of a 1:100 variant.

Is Diamond not involved in International orders? Are international orders not included in the 254K print number?

Larry, are you reading this? Did the Phantom program qualify for 1:100 variants? Would a store variant of 3000 books get 30 1:100s based on their variant order?

 

I can answer for Larry. No (and also thanks for looking at this with logic).

How about the incentive variants? Blanks and Young's? Do they qualify as orders that get the 1:100 variants? Say a store orders:

Regular SG 1: 100

SG 1 Young: 50

SG 1 Blank: 50

Do they get 1 1:100 copy or two?

Also, how many store variants were there? 20? And another 10 B+W?