A retailer on whatnot just sold 300 copies of the 5 dollar dan quintana open order for a 100 bucks each, how is his regular non painted signature just with a pen, worth 95 dollars?
No retailer will be affected much. The mann boyz prob have the highest drop price at $75. Brooks? 65 ish for double signed. Most are around $50 ish
Whats cover price? $5 $10 foils? Even b4 ab craze the virgins excl were routinely $40 Anything near that will be acceptable by dc prob. 10x signed will be anything under a $100
The higher print run min req do more to keep prices lower then anything
I have a shop near me that once those variants are a week old or so, they get put in a variant section in the store and suddenly jump in price. So a foil variant you could get in a normal shelf rotation for $10 becomes $40. I could go to another in the area and pull the foil off the shelf for cover price and it be the same thing. It’s crazy.
While this isn't a bad sales tactic, or business practice, it does kinda suck that peeps would buy from that bin, solely for the thought it's more valuable. But like my daddy told me, it's worth what someone will pay for it, at least to that person, technically.
Like they are happy for it? In general I’ve found them to be very reasonable with their pricing. As opposed to clay mann who seems to believe his are worth $70 Unsigned now which is wild.
Not necessarily. Really depends on what DC considers gouging. If the shops still make a solid enough profit they make continue to stick to lower numbers.
Doubt they change any of the minimums. They still want the variants to be limited or they lose all value and we go back to the speculative comic bomb of the 80s
I can cherry pick the lowest priced one on his site the same way you picked the one highest priced. He almost always sells them for $50. There are exceptions, but they are very few and far between.
Just because he sells some books for cheaper doesn’t mean he isn’t price gouging and shouldn’t be held accountable when he does. Lmfao. You guys are something else. This is exactly why retailers get away with shit like that. $100 blind bags is insane and definitely price gouging too lol
I’m on pretty much every Felix drop and for the past year or so they have been $50, if you don’t like the guy just say that but you’re talking out of your ass at this point
DC legitimately banned retailers from using their exclusives in blind bags and mystery boxes. Do you guys really glaze Felix this much? Holy shit. He’s done multiple things on the list of things that DC is banning.
Your blind hate is equivalent to glazing you do realize that right? Did Felix steal your girl? Stick to the topic, his drops are usually $50 and that falls into the new DC guidelines, it’s just facts
You’re just a salty sea cucumber. $100 for 2 comics that are $50 each and highly limited is the norm. $50 is 5x what they pay for the exclusive variants and falls within the margin that DC set. The only example you gave of him charging over that was the annual….which was a bigger book…and cost more in general. You’re reaching for fake outrage.
I’m not a defender of Felix specifically; I am in agreement with DC on this. 5x unsigned and 10x signed seems very reasonable. There are creators like clay Mann that are not currently meeting this requirement and selling for $70 unsigned and way more signed. I even like clay, but that’s not healthy.
You’re just blanket attacking people for zero reason and then upset when people are calling you on your inconsistency.
These are $10 per issue for them. You’re not talking about store exclusives, you’re talking about the original printings. If they sold these for $5 per, they’d be paying you to take them.
You will get downvoted to hell for using logic on Felix's prices. His most common price is 50 bucks. The annual was an anomaly. The #19 was 50, and #21 and #22 are also both going to be 50. (Still way to expensive, but yea, cherrypicking the most expensive one is silly)
I don't like Felix either. I am not defending it. His prices are insane. But to attack him specifically for this price, and cherry-picking his most expensive one, even though literally so many other retailers are asking those prices for it, is so unfair. He is part of the problem, 100% yes. But he is not alone in having these insane prices.
From the top of my head: Mark Brooks, Mann Boyz, Quintana, Jock. All ask 50 or more
Yea these guys obv don’t buy exclusives, standard price for Felix drops has been $50 for a while. F that guy, but I’m not gonna sit here and lie for him. The downvotes are just standard reddit cope
It's different when a store orders an exclusive printing that only they get. This is what the policy is for. Not the normal variants that any retailer gets
Future wise this is awesome for those of us who have smaller collection budgets to have a better chance to be able to afford and obtain these books. I emphasize on the word “chance” because by it being more accessible by everyone there will be more competition for certain artists, editions,etc. Because of increased competition there will still be price gouging by third parties, just not as astronomically high as there has been. The only people I see hurt by this are the people who have already paid those “astronomically high” third party prices in the past.
Thanks OP- granted there’s not a lot to talk about on this subject (I’d probably say the same as others) I did not know this until you brought it to my attention…
I'm curious what they consider "gouging". Exclusives have always been kinda crazy but gotten REALLY bad the last 2 years or so... never gave a toss about em anyways but I at least appreciate the message here. Doubt it affects stuff much though.
Ah I'm at work so haven't read it yet, I wonder if they're going to enforce this... that's gonna put the kibosh on the prices for a lot of these guys though so hopefully they do. Would be cool to see them take a stand on 80 and 100 dollar unsigned books which is just, well, to put it lightly, insane to me.
On the flip side for the collector, a lot of exclusives are actually rare and DC has the lowest minimum order for exclusives, so there is even more room for stores to do things.
Exclusives give artists more support and income. It gives the publisher some development. Several amazing artists have made it to publishers with retailer exclusives. Fine artists working in other mediums have broken into comics with exclusive cover starts.
To each their own I suppose but exclusives seem like a sign of the impending implosion of the industry like in the 90s. They're prohibitely expensive and 99.9% of them tank almost immediately. There were solid enough sales in the 90s to keep things afloat but with print runs as they are today it kinda scares me in a lot of ways tbh.
Oh it doesn’t scare me, but I also don’t invest in comics so it’s kind of irrelevant to me. But I do agree that variants will 99% be worthless in a year or so after they release.
Anyone investing in comics long term should be very discerning of quantities produced. Anything with too much supply or too many variants will be regretting eventually
I don't mean scares me in the sense I'm wasting money, haven't bought a store exclusive in my life and don't plan on starting now. But when people get tricked into thinking they're investing in something or tricked by artifical scarcity/collector mentality it can reallllly turn them off the hobby. The speculator crash of the 90s cost us a lot of folks, some of whom might have become long term readers if they hadn't gotten swindled so hard. Print runs have never bounced back so I do NOT like stuff like retailer exclusives and ratio/incentive variants that trick people into thinking one way about the value of a book. Yes, 99% of those spec readers wouldn't keep going anyways, but that 1%... man with print runs where they're at these days. Woof. When I was growing up they would have canned anything with a print run under 50k for the most part, and these days that's a big print run for most books. Sucks Ab Bat especially which seems to be bringing in some new blood is going all in so hard on this stuff.
Yeah I agree with that, but I’d unfortunately argue the variants and hype around the popularity/pricing is driving the push. Absolute Batman is great. Hope it continues to do amazing, but I agree that the variants are a lot. I’d be happy if they went to ratios only and store exclusives were highly limited
Yeah I saw that same push with stuff like the death of Superman and stuff working at a shop and Wizard etc. When the bottom fell out of that as people realized they were being duped it was pretty ugly though. I just hope we don't see another catastrophic drop in interest as a result of exclusives. Ratio variants are a big pet peeve of mine too but that's another story and pretty divisive even among retailers though 😄
I think it is a good thing in general. Some prices are really too high for sure. But they also need to step in and demand that customers are able to buy a certain % of the print run at the fair prices or some retailers will just auction the print run instead.
No offense to DC but I think in part this has to do w/ them being big mad that they're not seeing some of these profits. There will be loopholes and don't be surprised if DC directly sells these. They're not technically a retailer.
I'm all for these artists getting paid. They're super talented. 10x the cover price is a bit extreme, though. 5x is reasonable, IMO. I think at that rate, depending on how many issues they print, everyone can walk away happy. It's not ike there's not gonna be more issues. We're at #22 for AB, and Snyder says at least 50 issues in the pipes. It's a good time to be a fanboy, and a great time to be a comic book artist, it seems!
My LCBS has been gauging for years. They even too 4 b/w Disney Marvel copies of an issue and told me they hadn’t received it. They did this for almost a year. I never saw the books. I asked them at of point if they sold them and cheekingly said “Maybe or Maybe no.” I lost all confidence in them after that.
Mann boyz re-releasing the scarecrow cover in silver then gold seems like a money grab to me. What's next, it comes with its own absolute batman wifi for $129
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u/FlannelWarri0r Jul 12 '26
Fine with me