Nico Esq

Outrageous! Only the most thoughtful minds in comics populate FB and IG groups!! They are about as even handed and moderately tempered as the emotionally stable minds on the CGC boards.

I wonder if this is ignorance or malice?

This is me begging the group not to start a long tirade about the failures of comicchron, the inaccuracies of print run estimates and the veracity of asserted print runs from retailers regarding their "store variants" ... please don't do it.

I love stories like that. I imagine that people who had good account representatives and/or relationships with their distributor knew what was going on. I don't know if they took really good care of me at Capital City because I was a child and they thought it was a cool and wanted me to do well or what precisely, but it's really great to hear a story about a good hearted retailer. We so rarely hear them. It's much like the news, bad news sells papers - stories about the amazing retailers who are out there kicking butt and taking care of collectors and fans are few and far between on our online forums but thankfully I think that is the experience of most collectors. I had a horrible experience at a local this weekend, but that's the rare exception.

I remember that catalog Now that's a thrill from my youth. Thank you!

There was a deadline when you had to order. I think it was 2-3 months out - I'm calling that FOC. I can only speak for Capital City not Diamond too so perhaps a lot of our differing recollections have to do with that. I used to call in my orders using item numbers and used a previews catalog that was comparable to Diamonds catalog, but I think Capital City had a different previews catalog from Diamond if my memory is correct. Come to think of it, this was damn near the end, perhaps Capital City was attempting to accommodate its account holders in an effort to hold their market share? I don't know. I weathered the transition so I may be conflating some of the details. It's been 25 years. Look at us showing our age.

Good luck finding a Bone #1 first print back then (I think Hulk #181 would have been a better example), but I get the point you're trying to make. I think it's important to note that at least some of the incentive variants these days are a completely different animal because they are genuinely rare (good luck trying to get one of these Marvel Comics Presents #4 1:50 variants - for example). I think this parleys nicely into my earlier point, that more experienced collectors have a real opportunity to help younger/newer collectors avoid the mistakes that we made. I don't think we're going to see a lot of decisions made by Marvel, DC or others that are premised on short term losses to promote long term fiscal health and stability. Therefore, we are going to have to take care of one another - not bludgeon one another.

That's not my recollection of how things went down. At least from my perspective there was absolutely speculation on Superman 75 before it came out. It creeped in at the last moment before the initial order was due. I think a lot of retailers ordered tons of those books and very few made the mistake of not ordering extra heavy, I ordered tons of those books, some of the re-orders were even honored by Capital City from its warehouse in Columbus, Ohio. I think by the time FOC was about to hit almost everyone knew it was actually going on. Who didn't know about that book, the non-collecting public. Certainly there were guys working with their LCS and speculating heavy on comics hoping to hit it big. I was a teenager, but I remember the release of that book vividly. Now was there crazy speculation on that book like there was in the months and years following its release or like there was on Adventures of Superman 500, of course not. But its not fair to say that people didn't see it coming a mile away. I did and I was a VERY inexperienced collector with a Capital City account who was basically parlaying my newspaper money into comic book money.

I'm so incredibly hurt, in my soul, that you didn't count me.

I was buying comics from Capital City and then Diamond in the 90s and certainly appreciate the reality of what happened then, the similarities to the current market, etc. However, my analysis on speculation is different. I think almost all retailers are comic book speculators. Some are essentially Diamond franchisees (whether they know it or not) that basically distribute what's in the Diamond catalog and I don't know how they stay open. I assume "not so long" and that they evolve or they don't. The remainder of comic book retailers are speculators. Retailers that bad mouth "flipping" and "speculators" are Cry babies (a) because those are the customers that actually spend the most money; (b) cry babies, who are butthurt that they can't keep up with their inventory; (c) don't really want to sell comics, they want to have museums to their own collection and call it a retail store; (d) self loathing; and/or (e) jealous that consumers are doing what they do and sometimes doing it better. That being said, I think the vast, vast majority of seasoned speculators go out of there way to support their local comic shop, appreciate that the LCS is the heart of the comic book industry, would rather spend money at a LCS than get their own Diamond account, DCBS account, etc., will even sometimes over pay to help out a struggling LCS. I support two local comic shops. I have pull lists for trash books at each, I buy my supplies there, I sometimes overpay on books because I know I can move them and recoup my money to help one of the owners who who is not that good at what he does (he borders on the kind of insanity I described above about the LCS owner who hates "speculators", but he does the best he can with what he has). I think some of us are just a lot better at this (because of experience and various other factors). Again, I talked to Mel about this single idea: in the speculation community there are sheep and there are wolves and I much like Jules in Pulp Fiction - I'm trying real hard to be a shepherd. I think that is the message we should push when it comes to speculating on comics.

Rats, I was gonna ask if you would "unblock me" from the FACTS facebook pages. I feel so rejected.

Clearly, it's easier to paint with a broad brush than to challenge a specific site, group, entity, etc., it's also perceived as more polite. I don't know, I tend to think we do a disservice by not specifically explaining why certain kinds of speculation/information is ill conceived and then at other times our community embraces certain content producers that have little to no substance whatsoever. That being said, for whatever reason, there are a lot of vicious attitudes and mean spirited comments that get tossed around. Saturday night, I was talking to Mel V. from the cast of the Unpressable Defects and Comics Heating Up (I think that basically makes him the equivalent of a WWF masked villain on the CGC Boards) and remarked that "if people talked the way they talked about one another and even to one another on the boards, mewe, FB, etc. in person - they'd be lucky if they got punched in the mouth." I appreciate that the trolling and cult of negativity is an internet phenomenon generally, but I'm afraid it is particularly ugly in our collector community. I understand that when money and feelings get involved sometimes people show their a** and not their face, but I really think that the long timers on the boards should do a better job of championing civility and collegiality than we do. I remember when I started collecting again, a maybe nine months ago, there was a post on the CBSI boards that was like "what are some good speculation/investment opportunities?" And I responded and provided two books that I was buying non-stop. The first was Umbrella Academy and I'm still not done buying the second one so I'll keep that one to myself for the time being. My reason that I articulated for buying Umbrella Academy were pretty straight forward. I explained that Netflix is seasoned at making comic book related TV thanks to the marvel projects and comic book fans already go to Netflix for comic book related properties. I also liked Umbrella Academy because it had cross over appeal from mainstream fans of My Chemical Romance and thought that there was an opportunity to get in and get out and make some money and hedge the bet. I don't need to tell anyone how that spec worked out. Suffice to say, I got NOTHING but negative replies. I'm not a real sensitive cat, so it wasn't any skin off my back, but this is the kind of strange knee jerk reactions people have to a lot of the spec stuff that's out there. I'm as guilty as any one else. Don't get me wrong. I'll hear some one talking about a book or read an article and by initial reaction is generally, "that's trash." But I think it's just as important to reserve our negative judgments as it is to refrain from running and buying copies of Action 1002. I guess, my point is that perhaps the goal should be to improve the quality of dialogue about comic book speculation and if we make that our aim, we'll always be doing justice to the hobby we all love. My

You better be talking about me or my feelings are going to be hurt.

If my eyes roll back any further in my head I'm afraid I'm gonna have an orgasm

I don't think anyone "knows" the print run of any books (but that's another longer rant that I do NOT want to get people started on), BUT B covers are generally not ordered as heavily because retailers (not all but shockingly many) don't order them in equal quantity. I think some of that is convenience, some of that is because for periods of time B covers didn't count towards ratio/incentive/qualifier variants and for a couple other reasons. I think it's a safe bet that on books like TT12 and Naomi 1 there are significantly fewer copies of the B cover. That being said rarity and scarcity are not the same thing. For whatever reason the demand for these A covers is much greater than the supply even though the B cover is certainly more rare and for that reason the price of the B cover is not as much as the price of the A cover. Again, when you have newer collectors/speculators buying up these books, they are not going to be as aware as more experienced collectors/speculators of these factors. I think this is why you see people like fastballspecial (a more experienced collector who is generally aware that B covers are more rare than A covers for the reasons above) picking the wrong book. Sometimes it pays to make emotional choices in the comic game because the vast majority of collectors (myself included) are making emotional decisions even when we think we are making logical ones.

AND it is a sweet Moebius cover!

Same thing with Teen Titans 12 (1st Batman Who Laughs) ... I anticipated that the B cover was going to be the "it" book, but it sells for 1/2 what the A cover sells for. I think this demonstrates to some degree who is buying these books at these prices and their level of experience. I get that the A cover of Naomi is the better artwork and that the A cover of the TT book depicts the BWL, but historically we've seen shorter print run variants see prices that far exceeded A covers regardless of the factors that these two books have going for them. It's an interesting phenomenon and certainly something that keeps the hobby exciting for me. I kind of like it when I don't see a trend coming. It reminds me that I'm always a student of the comic game.

I read the title of this thread and all I could think was "famous last words." Welcome home.

And my final jeopardy answer is: what is worse than a mystery mailbox?

I was afraid that I wasn't going to enjoy this, but all of the confusion (at least in my mind, even if other people are crystal clear about these books) has my comic senses tingling. I think the main question for me is this: are there books (other than the Captain Marvel Artgerm hair variant) that were produced by Marvel for Walmart exclusively or is Marvel selling off its overstock of 2nd prints and other editions/formats to Walmart for them to package and sell in these bundles? If there is some level of exclusivity that's cool, but I still don't see any real monster books unless the start slipping in special editions of one or more already key books (and even then, the numbers don't add up for me). If my thinking isn't clear on this, please help. I think the guesstimate on Captain Marvel Artgerm hair variant was reasoned as follows: there's in the neighborhood of 5K stores and according to Artgerm/Walmart there's only 2 copies of the book at each regular store (but some people believe there are more for super stores). If there's no overprinting (highly doubtful) there's at least 10K copies, but probably a better guesstimate is more like 15K - 20K copies of the variant. Please correct me if you think my reasoning is wrong. Legitimately, I sort of tuned out when I was listening to someone talk about this earlier in the week after I didn't find time to go grab any copies or look at the display. I assume that there are at least as many if not many more copies of the other books in these packs. Again, I haven't seen the displays, but I imagine that there's more copies of the other bundles than two per store. Also, did anyone get any information from store employees/managers about the program, etc. Thanks!

Anyone have any opinion about what the "it" book(s) are going to be? There's a 1:25 that's been dirt cheap, phantom variant, forbidden planet, etc., but I don't remember alleged print runs or any one book being the "big book" in the past.

There's a dirty joke here that would get me my first strike if I made it.

What do you watch, who have you tried, etc?

But are you watching Gary V., Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, whomever OR comic book related media people? I also didn't ask about the dozen or so Facebook, MeWe, etc. sites, but that is also something I'm interested in hearing people talk about in a thoughtful way.

Not you - personally, maybe some of the onslaught of people in the thread, but at the very least two of my personal friends who have commented to me "I wouldn't give comicmint a dime ... [then they voiced some personal disputes which may or may not be legit]. Please don't take this as some sort of personal attack, and I am sorry if I wasn't clear about that and there was some sort of confusion. But if you are on a fact finding mission, I think it's important to talk about this My point is more like "you get what you measure" or "you'll find what you are looking for" and I think when you frame the question in the manner in which it was framed in the OP "What's wrong with this cover?" ... then you are going to get an onslaught of negative comments. It went on sale yesterday at 4:00 pm so it hasn't really been on sale for one day until 4:00 pm today. Let's be clear about that.