carcrawfordfan

The vast majority of them were pretty over the top, part of a short-run title and/or seemingly non-sequitur. Venom was born in the pages of the long running ASM title, throw in the MJ and homage angle with a slightly demented, unexpected twist and there you have it. Plus seeing a "venomized" fantastic four or psylocke doesn't have the same punch as seeing Mary Jane. It seems to follow a similar paradigm of the wolverine/Deadpool mash up cover. If the "Spider-Gwenom" cover actually happens (which would essentially be an homage of an homage of the 678 VenoMJ) and is done with any kind of cleverness as well, I would expect that to be a hit too (so long as 100 copies don't immediately flood ebay the moment it comes out). -J. Spider-Gwenom (and all the Spider-Gwen variants) were pretty much an order as many as you want per account type of thing. Don't expect any price increases in these books until they thin out, but they are not seeded variants and certainly wont be rare.

The usual, order as many as you like if you order more than a previous comic. For example: To qualify for Secret Wars #5 & #6 Action Figure Variant you have to exceed your order for Thor #1 by 125%. So if you ordered 10 copies of Thor #1 you need to order 13 copies of Secret Wars #5 to get as many of the variants as you want I think he meant which characters they would feature on the variants.

I am pretty sure they were on regional backorder. It just depends where you are.

I am sure it also contributes to the USPS going in the red every single year. I know we would all be screwed if the USPS ceased to exist or didn't provide free priority packaging anymore. Just pay for the Priority Mail service or use old boxes that came to you, diamond mailers, Uline boxes/mailers or something else if you are going first class.

I had it in my cart and it wouldn't let me check out. It said limit one, but sometimes they allow you to check out with a full 25. This may have led to the quick sell-out of this. They usually last longer than that with almost any 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! +1 These are the most insane rebuttals I have ever seen. Any and all facts are just thrown out the window because of 2 talking points that have no bearing on anything: 1)recalledcomics.com---who just divides print runs/ratios of variants and provides zero insight or facts other than that really hard to come by information. 2)DIAMOND DOES NOT RELEASE PRINT RUNS OF VARIANTS--which no one has ever said they do. I do apologize to the board because I get how boring and back and forth this is.

Dude, with this post, you just lost whatever little credibility you might have had, and are getting dangerously close to "troll" territory. Just a heads up. (thumbs u -J. You are hilarious. This is the only info on that site that says anything about how they get the numbers they get: Notes: [1] Quantities of comics are estimates of what was printed and distributed world-wide; as most publishers do not disclose actual print run data these are just estimates and should be treated as such. Also the number that actually exist today will likely be smaller and, in some cases, much smaller. Feel free to point me in the direction of any facts on there or anyone who has ever used that site as a reference for anything that can't be googled in 2 seconds.

You are using a website that no one ever cites or cares about with books that don't have retailer incentives. Spider-gwen has over 20 retailer incentives and they all count toward the Comichron print run. Why is this so hard to understand?

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.

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. He is also extrapolating that 1:100 variants are printed in actual 1:100 ratios to the assumed print run, which is obviously very inaccurate because most shops/diamond accounts are not going to order like that. I gave the anecdotal evidence of the 11 shops in my area and them having only 1 total get any 1:100 variants.

This still doesn't say what you seem to think it does. No matter how many times you quote it. -J. I guess I need a stiff drink..... This article is referring to comics that are asterisked Loot crate orders. There's a reason the asterisk is there- You're intended to take it in context with all of the other, normally reported books, and understand that there is a difference. Spider Gwen #1 was not a Loot crate order, and therefore has nothing skewing its numbers. Thus no asterisk. Apples and oranges. This isn't complicated and I'm sure you know the difference. -J. And why do you think the Loot Crate variants would be included and the other shop variants wouldn't? They are not the regular cover and they were all ordered via Diamond.

#5 very clearly says it for you: 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

This still doesn't say what you seem to think it does. No matter how many times you quote it. -J. I guess I need a stiff drink.....

LMFAO...

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.

You got me...I own one copy of it.

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. I refer you back to recalledcomics.com which features multiple books with ballparked print run numbers that are premised on the regular cover orders for several dealer incentive variants (EoSV #2 being one of them as well now). -J. You, sir....are insane. I gave you links that explain it, Larry (a rather large retailer who actually produces store retailers), and other boardies have told you these numbers are included in the Comichron numbers. Your only argument is based on a random website that just divides the print run by the odds on the variant. That is some serious science involved in that. No one said anything about Diamond disclosing print runs for variants and I have no idea why that is one of your talking points. We are trying to tell you that the 20-25 retailers who ordered store exclusives/phantom variants/ghost variants/etc. are INCLUDED in the print run for that book in the month. These are accounts that are serviced by and produced by Diamond and ship to the retailers from Diamond. I am done talking about this because it is like talking to a brick wall. I would hope that you would do some more research and stop spreading misinformation.

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? International ( Diamond UK ) is NOT part of Comichrons numbers. Neither are: Overage /damage run. ( generally 3%) Comps Publisher inventory Could you please explain to Jdog that the shop/retailer exclusive variants are included in the Comichron number , but do not qualify for incentives? He refuses to accept this as a fact.

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

I said it could have a range of 500-1250 and still do. Did you read the post after? Are you just going to ignore it? EOSV 2 has nothing to do with Spider-Gwen 1. You could be 100% correct on the Land variant. The Spider-Gwen numbers are skewed because of the shop variants and because it is a 1:100 instead of a 1:25. I am presenting you facts that tell you how Diamond compiles those figure you read every month. You are ignoring them and just re-iterating your lines. Do you think that almost 500k regular issues of Orphan Black were shipped last month?

COMICHRON explaining how market irregularities exist because of LOOTCRATE Some of it in plain English: February 2015 comics sales estimates online: Of "Asterisk Eras" and sales charts March 16, 2015 by John Jackson Miller In baseball, many of the statistics of the 1990s must be viewed with caution, as they're part of the "Steroid Era." Comics had its own Steroid Era in the early 1990s, in the sense that orders were inflated by an unprecedented number of retail accounts that had been opened on easy credit terms by the many competing distributors that existed then. Many issues in that speculation-fueled time sold into the millions, but the number of actual readers was smaller. And yet the distributors' charts were accurate: they did what they were supposed to do, reporting the number of copies they shipped. Diamond Comic Distributors is doing exactly the same today with the charts it publishes: reporting what it shipped. Unlike the early 1990s, when nearly everything deserved an asterisk, we're fairly sure the number of comics sold is more representative of the number of active readers — but since the charts are "number-shipped" lists, there are occasions where what we see on them might not represent what we see happening in stores. We have another this month. 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. The rankings are, again, consistent with Diamond's practices — and a handful of books with sales supercharged by Loot Crate, Nerd Block, and similar firms do not an era make, whatever adjective we choose to label them with. But they do present irregularities for market-watchers and statisticians to cope with. Because while orders from mail-order comics retailers have always been counted in the charts — and while those retailers do work with publishers to offer their own store-specific variant copies of specific titles — the Loot Crate numbers in particular are now on a huge scale. The Orphan Black total makes it possible for Loot Crate's order to account for as many as 400,000 copies — more than double what they were a year ago. So we're encountering months in which not just some, but large majorities of the copies the bestselling titles weren't ordered by comic shops. Since the gigantic purchases are one-time, we've been using asterisks (or, rather, daggers) here at Comichron, because readers a decade hence will definitely wonder why, for example, Walking Dead #132's sales spiked so amazingly in October. But there are other statistical curiosities that come from these kinds of large purchases, which are worth noting. For example, note the Top 5, as Diamond reported it on Friday, plus Comichron's order estimates. You can see Diamond shipped nearly twice as many copies of Orphan Black #1 as its nearest competitor: Titles ranked by many copies Diamond shipped Title Issue Price Publisher Copies shipped 1 Orphan Black 1* $3.99 IDW 497,002 2 Darth Vader 1 $4.99 Marvel 264,399 3 Spider-Gwen 1 $3.99 Marvel 254,074 4 Star Wars 2 $3.99 Marvel 162,042 5 Batman 39 $3.99 DC 118,106

That would put the Hughes variant at about 2500 copies. That's a rather copious amount. -J. That is 100% wrong. I am sure you are the nicest guy in the world, but you keep giving misinformation. I gave you plenty of links and information that was correct and you just refused to read it or undertand it. I guess everyone can go back and read it if they want to. The stated print run includes the shop variants that were ordered, blanks and other various junk. None of these qualify for the 1:100 variants and would leave the actual number at somewhere less than half of the amount you stated. I am sorry, but you are wrong. Recalledcomics.com is a wonderful resource that explains how to ballpark the print runs on variants. The information that you linked to does not state what you purport or believe it to state. And yes it is based on the print run of the main cover as reported by diamond. And keep in mind that diamond is not reporting international sales figures, which would obviously bump the numbers even higher potentially. 2500 is a fair estimate for the Hughes variant. Stop trying to make people think it's rarer than it is. 2500 copies is not "rare". It's perhaps "limited", but it is by no means "rare". -J. I guess it is better to remain ignorant. Good luck with your future endeavors.

That would put the Hughes variant at about 2500 copies. That's a rather copious amount. -J. That is 100% wrong. I am sure you are the nicest guy in the world, but you keep giving misinformation. I gave you plenty of links and information that was correct and you just refused to read it or undertand it. I guess everyone can go back and read it if they want to. The stated print run includes the shop variants that were ordered, blanks and other various junk. None of these qualify for the 1:100 variants and would leave the actual number at somewhere less than half of the amount you stated.

I would guess a little more than half of this is store variants. I also forget what the final tally is on the amount of variants.

I guess we are just going to agree to disagree with this guy. He refuses/ignores facts, articles from Comichron that explain it very clearly, statements from larger retailers and people in the know. We are all insufficiently_thoughtful_persons and Jaydog is the only one that can figure this out. Ok, going forward, I'll just let you tell me what the print run is on any particular book. And I shall take every word as gospel. I 100% agree with you. I wasn't clear in my prior post that you and I would have to disagree with Jaydog. You are I are on the same page about the whole thing.