i'll go $60
Banks are open on Sunday, mrrrah ?? better deposit 2 more cents:
The days of getting an Image hot book, 500 print run, for sub $100 are gone for the foreseeable future.
if you can buy it and slab it yourself for <$150 you have a winner(to hold, not flip). $120 would be the ideal target.
There are two avenues to that, buy it in 9.8 for that price from someone else, or buy a raw 9.8 from someone you trust for that price, less the cost of slab/press double ship.($85-$110). Anything more than that, you are overpaying in my mind. Anything less than that, you are making "MONIES". Since the price will almost CERTAINLY exceed the level I am talking about, my advice given my views, is act accordingly. When everyone is buying to sell to someone else, where do you fit in?
Yes EoW might be the greatest thing since they invented the printing press, and the big 2 people just dont get it. But be realistic about where the hype and print run is coming from. The good story keeps Sauron's Gaze, but that doesn't give you grounds to forget where he is staring.
Beyond that I would say. Assume that there will be at LEAST 200 of them slabbed by this time next year, probably close to a 100/100 blue/yellow split. The actual numbers will probably be a bit less, but being conservative with estimates is good. 4-6 weeks from now there will be a lot of them on ebay. 6-8 weeks from now, is probably a good time to look to buy one, if the price exceeds the numbers i said.
These are my views, and on them I would/will act. People are welcome to disagree, and inform me and others where I am off base. But I really would hope that somehow by getting a discussion on this ahead of time, can help prevent what happened to NWM happening to EoW. Cause I think it does harm a books readership a lot more than people realize.
I was saying exactly the same re NWM and got panned by the ES lovers.
It was always going to end in tears once the integrity of the 'variants' was compromised.
Or - don't tell the people 500 copies and then print another 350 for your mates to flip on ebay.