When did the bubble burst?

[randle-el]

Yes and no. When ebay first entered its prime, the vintage toy market was insane. Things thatnow sell for $20 were going for $150 in some instances. I was a buyer and a seller at the time, but the market got too big, people began to realize vintage pieces weren't as rare and hard to come by as they'd once suspected now that everyone was selling on ebay, and the manufacturers often got wise and began selling reissues, as well as new toys that better resembled and captured the fan base of the old ones. It's difficult to remember now, but in 1998, if you liked Star Wars toys, Transformers that turned into vehicles, or Masters of the Universe, your only recourse was ebay. Now there's so much new and so many reissues of the old, as well as a flood of vintage pieces available online, so there's still a market, but its nowhere near what it used to be.

That's true. I wasn't into eBay back then, but I do have a small collection of vintage toys, and I scan eBay from time to time for pieces to add. From what I've heard and read online, there was stuff selling for insane prices. According to one site, the original Takatoku/Bandai 1/55 scale Macross valkyries (i.e., Jetfire before he got licensed to Hasbro for the Transformers line) could fetch $1000 or more. Those prices have since dropped considerably after Bandai released their reissues. That being said, they are still going strong on eBay, selling for a couple hundred apiece. A far cry from the bubble days, but not chump change either.

One of my LCS owners claims digital sales aren't anywhere near what publishers had hoped they'd be and that print is still dominating by a long shot. I can't verify this, but it's what he says.

CBRs own articles seem to confirm this -- that digital sales are additive to print comics and doesn't cannibalize business. Though it's usually the suits at DC/Marvel that are saying this, so I take this with a grain of salt. After all, if digital were cannibalizing print sales I somehow doubt they would openly admit it, since they seem to be making a big effort to have LCS owners embrace digital as something that can benefit them as well. But just from reading various threads on CBR's forums, there seems to be quite a few comic readers to have left print comics and jumped to digital.

But going back to my original point, I don't think it's an impossibility that comics could be a primarily digital market, with a small subset of buyers still buying print. I don't think it will happen anytime soon, but perhaps in another 20 years or so, why not? If it did happen, I would see it as being part of a larger wave of publishing in general moving to a primarily digital format, and periodical publishing in particular. Comics might be one of the last holdouts, since there is more of a collector mentality associated with comics, versus newspapers and magazines.

[MRP]

That's true. I wasn't into eBay back then, but I do have a small collection of vintage toys, and I scan eBay from time to time for pieces to add. From what I've heard and read online, there was stuff selling for insane prices. According to one site, the original Takatoku/Bandai 1/55 scale Macross valkyries (i.e., Jetfire before he got licensed to Hasbro for the Transformers line) could fetch $1000 or more. Those prices have since dropped considerably after Bandai released their reissues. That being said, they are still going strong on eBay, selling for a couple hundred apiece. A far cry from the bubble days, but not chump change either.



CBRs own articles seem to confirm this -- that digital sales are additive to print comics and doesn't cannibalize business. Though it's usually the suits at DC/Marvel that are saying this, so I take this with a grain of salt. After all, if digital were cannibalizing print sales I somehow doubt they would openly admit it, since they seem to be making a big effort to have LCS owners embrace digital as something that can benefit them as well. But just from reading various threads on CBR's forums, there seems to be quite a few comic readers to have left print comics and jumped to digital.

But going back to my original point, I don't think it's an impossibility that comics could be a primarily digital market, with a small subset of buyers still buying print. I don't think it will happen anytime soon, but perhaps in another 20 years or so, why not? If it did happen, I would see it as being part of a larger wave of publishing in general moving to a primarily digital format, and periodical publishing in particular. Comics might be one of the last holdouts, since there is more of a collector mentality associated with comics, versus newspapers and magazines.

I think trying to gauge digital sales by how many people who have a strong internet presence and post on message boards and have switched to digital versus print will give you a very skewed picture if you try to use it as a microcosm. These are likely early adopters to any kind of new tech. And digital comics are still really in the early adoption phase. No numbers have been given by the suits for digital sales except to say the sales by title generally fall in line with print sales i.e. the best sellingprint titles are the best selling digital sellers and the worst sellers are the same in both medium. The only general number I have heard is digital are about 10% of print but that is vague and can be misleading. It's also apples to oranges as digital sales go directly to the end user while print sales are to retailers and not end users, so its not the same thing being measured exactly.

However, digital is still in its early phase. E-books were around for quite some time before they gained a wider acceptance in the general public. There were lots of early adopters again active on message boards of all sorts, decrying the death of print books. Now some 5-10 years later, digital has made some serious inroads into print sales and many books and some entire publishing houses have gone to e-book only or e-book release accompanied to print on demand. But there is still a market for books in print (I won't say a healthy market, but a market). The true sense of how widely accepted digital comics will be is not now in the early adoption phase, but 5-10 years down the line. However, we are starting to see more digital first comics from both of the Big 2, and some webcomics offering free content on the web but selling collections of the content in trades (thinking of Order of the Stick by Rich Burlew as an early success story on that model), so there is some movement towards a wider adoption of the format. However, it's a time will tell thing.

-M

[Alex Dragon]

And just to show that no one learns their lesson, it appears that Marvel is bringing back trading cards as an incentive (like variant covers) with their launch of Guardians of the Galaxy.

http://www.newsarama.com/php/multime....php?aid=48788

-M

I think it needs to be pointed out that there's nothing wrong with variant covers, trading cards, etc... Although it's not a popular thing to say, the comicbook crash of the 90s is more the fault of comicshop owners than the comicbook companies. Plain and simple: Many comicshop owners got greedy, tried to take advantage of the situation and it came back to bite them in the butt. The comics shops that didn't get caught up in the nonsense were okay.

Think about it....The majority of comic stores that went under did so because they spent/wasted money on comics they couldn't sell and knew they couldn't sell because they purposely ordered extra in the attempt to get that "special" variant cover comic they could sell at an overly inflated price. They absolutely didn't have to do this. They would've been just fine odering the usual amount for their customer base. If they usually ordered enough to get that variant or two that's great but over ordering comics they knew they couldn't sell just to try and gouge a person for that variant is poor business planning. Not only did it leave the stmre with tons of useless inventory but it made those variants less special because with so many people ordering them they were plentiful and not that special at all.

Then there were the greedy shops who ordered a ton of "hot" books and stashed them in their backroom and kept them off the shelves trying to create a demand for them so they can sell them later at an inflated price. Again, if those shops had stuck to ordering based on what their customers typically bought they would've been fine....and those "hot" books would've actually been worth something if there wasn't tons of them lying around. Also, marking up books based on the price guides instead of a fair price turned off and turned away a lot of people. Perhaps it would've made more sense to sell that book at a reasonable price instead of marking it up at a ridiculous price only a dumb speculator would even think about paying and ending up ot selling it at all.

In the end it wasn't really the crappy comics that caused the crash. It was the greedy/bad business shop owners that did themselves in by over ordering and being stuck with money invested/wasted on a huge inventory the ended up not being able to sell. And here's the funny/interesting thing about comic readers...When their comic shop goes away a lot of people simply just stop buying comics. You would think they'd just start going to another store but a lot of them just stop buying comics. Ask any store owner if the closing of another shop increses their customer base in a major way. The answer most often is "no". So while many people think it was crappy comics that ran people off, that didn't play as big a part as many people think.

I can totally understand trying to take advantage of the situation and making a little extra but many shops simply got too greedy and wnt to far and have no one to blame but themselves..even though it's easier to blame the comic companies.

[MRP]

I think it needs to be pointed out that there's nothing wrong with variant covers, trading cards, etc... Although it's not a popular thing to say, the comicbook crash of the 90s is more the fault of comicshop owners than the comicbook companies. Plain and simple: Many comicshop owners got greedy, tried to take advantage of the situation and it came back to bite them in the butt. The comics shops that didn't get caught up in the nonsense were okay.

Think about it....The majority of comic stores that went under did so because they spent/wasted money on comics they couldn't sell and knew they couldn't sell because they purposely ordered extra in the attempt to get that "special" variant cover comic they could sell at an overly inflated price. They absolutely didn't have to do this. They would've been just fine odering the usual amount for their customer base. If they usually ordered enough to get that variant or two that's great but over ordering comics they knew they couldn't sell just to try and gouge a person for that variant is poor business planning. Not only did it leave the stmre with tons of useless inventory but it made those variants less special because with so many people ordering them they were plentiful and not that special at all.

Then there were the greedy shops who ordered a ton of "hot" books and stashed them in their backroom and kept them off the shelves trying to create a demand for them so they can sell them later at an inflated price. Again, if those shops had stuck to ordering based on what their customers typically bought they would've been fine....and those "hot" books would've actually been worth something if there wasn't tons of them lying around. Also, marking up books based on the price guides instead of a fair price turned off and turned away a lot of people. Perhaps it would've made more sense to sell that book at a reasonable price instead of marking it up at a ridiculous price only a dumb speculator would even think about paying and ending up ot selling it at all.

In the end it wasn't really the crappy comics that caused the crash. It was the greedy/bad business shop owners that did themselves in by over ordering and being stuck with money invested/wasted on a huge inventory the ended up not being able to sell. And here's the funny/interesting thing about comic readers...When their comic shop goes away a lot of people simply just stop buying comics. You would think they'd just start going to another store but a lot of them just stop buying comics. Ask any store owner if the closing of another shop increses their customer base in a major way. The answer most often is "no". So while many people think it was crappy comics that ran people off, that didn't play as big a part as many people think.

I can totally understand trying to take advantage of the situation and making a little extra but many shops simply got too greedy and wnt to far and have no one to blame but themselves..even though it's easier to blame the comic companies.

And what about the retailers who have to deal with losing customers if you can't get them that variant they want? The guy who had a pull list of 40-50 books who wants the variants for completeness sake and if you can't get them, he will take his 40 books a month business elsewhere? (He has other alternatives whether it is other comic shops or mail order-and now-on line retailers-If the publishers print it, there will be completists who have to have it. If to keep one of my most prolific customers happy I have to order 100 copies of flavor of the month #1 when I only sell 35 normally, and I can recoup the cost of those extra 65 copies by selling the variant, why wouldn't I? If I don't, I like the 40 books a month and $120 in revenue a month. Is that greed or bad business practice? Am I taking advantage of my customer by selling him the book he demands to have? Should I just let $120 in revenue walk away each month instead? Now what if it is 2 completist customers? Five? Ten? How much revenue can I let walk away before My 35 copies sold each month dwindles down and profits versus operating costs disappear. You're right, I don't have to order it, but it the publisher puts it out I will have regular customers who want it and will take their business elsewhere to get it. Is it greed to want to provide the product and service my customer wants? If I have to order 500 copies to get 5 copies of the keep my 5 regular customers happy and I can absorb the cost and still turn a profit. The publisher loves it because they "sold" 500 copies when they would sell 35 normally. If I don't do it, can my store absorb $600 in lost revenues each month if those five 40 book a month customers walk to go elsewhere? Can my margins absorb that kind of loss and still keep my doors open? It's easy to point the finger at retailer greed, and yes there was a lot of it, but a lot of shops were put in a difficult position trying to balance meeting customer desires and keeping their doors open, where retailer greed was not part of the equation. Publisher greed however, is another matter, but they had their own worries meeting their bottom lines and managing their margins to answer to stockholders.

Then if I order 100 copies of a first issue and sell 80-and only 25 come back to buy issue 2 because it sucked, but I had to place my orders for #2 and #3 before #1 ever hit the shelves-how does my greed factor into the dwindling sales on the book. I have to gamble that as many people who buy #1 will by it and order high, or gamble that demand will drop and order low and hope I don't have customers left empty handed. How does my greed factor into that one again? Oh yeah, my five regular customers who want everything want the variants on those issues too, so I then have to order enough to accommodate them even though my sales overall will drop from issue #1 to #2.

We can shift the blame to the end user too-if readers weren't completist collectors there would be no demand for variants and incentives, so its their fault for wanting it those things...

However it all starts with putting the product out there, making it available and tying it to ordering a certain amount of books...neither the end customer or the retailers decided to do that-retailers and collectors may share part of the blame, but the impetus came from the publisher level. Sure retailers could not buy extra copies to get variants, but that's is the equivalent of telling a customer, no I won't stock the books you want to get, go elsewhere. I don't see how driving customers away like that is good business, so the retailer is in a no win situation of sorts.

It was the publishers plan to court short team gains without any plan for retention of readership/consumers other than more of the same that created the dilemma to begin with.

-M

[verslibre]

This isn't that hard to believe. I have to think the majority of digital readers are people who live far from the nearest comic shop. As much as people were terrified that digital comics were going to kill off traditional comics and comic shops, at this point there's really no reason a person who regularly goes to a comicshop would go digital. The insentives aren't there yet. First and formost most people prefer the physical comic. Secondly, if you have a pull list it's probably cheaper to buy from your comicshop because many offer discounts for customers with a pull list. Third, many people are still "collectors" and like the idea of having a collection.

I, for one, never bought into that notion. Collectors want an "artifact," plain and simple. It's reaffirmed on comics blogs and podcasts, including I Sell Comics, the ongoing weekly show with Ming and Mike of Comic Book Men. Digital copies have no resale value — print copies do.

[pakehafulla]

I dont think that comics sales numbers at todays levels can solely be laid at the feet of the speculator bust of 17 - 18 years ago. Obviously that may have been the start, but there must be other catalysts as well.
Sales in the 90s were inflated by speculators.
The rise of the internet, as a means of information dissemination, finding books, or as an alternate entertainment source(all those teenaged boys with porn so readily available???).
The collapse of the Indy publishers.
Image having to reel in there number of titles, and actually having to deliver said titles.
The rise of manga.
The rise of higher grade video gaming, especially with the PS1 in the late 90s.

The restructuring at Marvel in the early 2000's, with the start of the trade-age delivering a completely different way for publishers to stay affloat.

I'm well aware there are other variables I've forgotten, but just wanted to point out the issue was a lot more complicated than just the sales figures of superhero books. Just look at one of the main blogs on CBR today(tilting at windmills I think) where he has an in-depth look at the top selling books of the year. Only a single Batman and AVX volume amongst the top 20. So theres money being made in the field, and the good thing is that it ain't just from Super-Heroes.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

[QUOTE=MRP;16637498]

And what about the retailers who have to deal with losing customers if you can't get them that variant they want? The guy who had a pull list of 40-50 books who wants the variants for completeness sake and if you can't get them, he will take his 40 books a month business elsewhere? (He has other alternatives whether it is other comic shops or mail order-and now-on line retailers-If the publishers print it, there will be completists who have to have it. If to keep one of my most prolific customers happy I have to order 100 copies of flavor of the month #1 when I only sell 35 normally, and I can recoup the cost of those extra 65 copies by selling the variant, why wouldn't I? If I don't, I like the 40 books a month and $120 in revenue a month.[/I]

You have to question though......is his $120 bucks in revenue a month worth sinking your store massively into debt for a 1/50 variant comic and having 50 copies of a book you maybe sell 10 copies at most ? Because the situation is , if he does this for 1 variant he may try it again and again. Which sinks your store further into debt for 1 customer. Its best to say...fine walk on out. But I can't sink my store due to 1 customer demanding variants my little store can't afford.

Is that greed or bad business practice? Am I taking advantage of my customer by selling him the book he demands to have? Should I just let $120 in revenue walk away each month instead? Now what if it is 2 completist customers? Five? Ten? How much revenue can I let walk away before My 35 copies sold each month dwindles down and profits versus operating costs disappear. You're right, I don't have to order it, but it the publisher puts it out I will have regular customers who want it and will take their business elsewhere to get it. Is it greed to want to provide the product and service my customer wants? If I have to order 500 copies to get 5 copies of the keep my 5 regular customers happy and I can absorb the cost and still turn a profit. The publisher loves it because they "sold" 500 copies when they would sell 35 normally. If I don't do it, can my store absorb $600 in lost revenues each month if those five 40 book a month customers walk to go elsewhere? Can my margins absorb that kind of loss and still keep my doors open? It's easy to point the finger at retailer greed, and yes there was a lot of it, but a lot of shops were put in a difficult position trying to balance meeting customer desires and keeping their doors open, where retailer greed was not part of the equation. Publisher greed however, is another matter, but they had their own worries meeting their bottom lines and managing their margins to answer to stockholders.

At some point you can't as a business order more copies you will have to hope you can move. If your over ordering to satisfy a few customers only and risking your business to dictate for those customers , then its not worth it. Unless thet want to fit the costs for the variant. Which as my LCS manager told me when I mentioned a variant ..."If you wanna pay for it and give me $100 bucks ...I can get you the variant. Because I have to buy $100 bucks worth of books I know this store can't move."

Then if I order 100 copies of a first issue and sell 80-and only 25 come back to buy issue 2 because it sucked, but I had to place my orders for #2 and #3 before #1 ever hit the shelves-how does my greed factor into the dwindling sales on the book. I have to gamble that as many people who buy #1 will by it and order high, or gamble that demand will drop and order low and hope I don't have customers left empty handed. How does my greed factor into that one again? Oh yeah, my five regular customers who want everything want the variants on those issues too, so I then have to order enough to accommodate them even though my sales overall will drop from issue #1 to #2.

We can shift the blame to the end user too-if readers weren't completist collectors there would be no demand for variants and incentives, so its their fault for wanting it those things...

This is why it should be explained to those who want variants to put some money on the table more. Ok here is the realities of the comic book business. You guys want variants right. Well my customers , if you want these variants your gonna have to pony up the dough and buy the 100-500 issues I have to get for them. That ok ? Whoops...its not. Ok sorry then....I can't do it . You will have to either find a shop that will do that (which I'm sure they may find one) or just stick with the great customer service I give you each month with discounts and more.

Is it worth sinking your overall business for 5 customers or keeping the doors open for the rest each month is the question.

[MRP]

Is it worth sinking your overall business for 5 customers or keeping the doors open for the rest each month is the question.

5 customers at 40 books a month is $120 x 5 or $600 per month or $7200 a year (assuming a $3 cover price). If it is a 1 in 100 variant, it probably retails at around $100, and ordering an extra 65 copies (using my example of normally selling 35 copies of the book) at 1/2 cover or $1.50 equals $97.50, so essentially a break even. That's per variant. Some of the incentives offer a deeper discount than the normal half cover if orders exceed a certain level. There may also be 1 in 20, 1 in 50 or other possible variants in there that can recoup some of the cost of the extra copies. So I am not going to put my store in debt by ordering the extra copies, but I may if I let $7200 of revenue walk away for the year, which is what I would do if I let those five 40 book a month customers walk away.

-M

[Parch]

There's the completist collectors and then there's investors. During the sports card boom there were people buying cards who didn't know squat about the sport. They weren't fans, they were grabbing rookie cards because they thought they could turn a profit.

I think it's same with variant covers now. How many are actually collecting and keeping them and how many are turning them around by immediately putting them up on ebay?

[Alex Dragon]

And what about the retailers who have to deal with losing customers if you can't get them that variant they want? The guy who had a pull list of 40-50 books who wants the variants for completeness sake and if you can't get them, he will take his 40 books a month business elsewhere? (He has other alternatives whether it is other comic shops or mail order-and now-on line retailers-If the publishers print it, there will be completists who have to have it. If to keep one of my most prolific customers happy I have to order 100 copies of flavor of the month #1 when I only sell 35 normally, and I can recoup the cost of those extra 65 copies by selling the variant, why wouldn't I? If I don't, I like the 40 books a month and $120 in revenue a month. Is that greed or bad business practice?

A valid point if the shop owner is certain he/she can handle the loss to please a particular customer. I'm sure there was some of what you describe but it's still on the retailer to say no if the risk outweighs please that one or few customers. I'm sure some customers made threats to take all there business elsewhere if they couldn't get a variant but I'm guessing it wasn't that common because typically it was speculators that were willing to pay outrageous prices for those books and not common comic readers. Plus, most customers knew and and understood what their shop owners had to do to get those types of Variants and most decent ones would understand if they couldn't get them. But that's only one senario. What about the retailers who bought all those extra books with no customer in particular in mind and ordered all those extra books so they could mark it up as high as they figured they could hoping someone would want it bad enough? I went in lots of shops during that time with lots of variants hanging on the walls like trophies with a high dollar price tag on them hoping someone would meet that price. So now the retailer has tons of books they can't sell and a variant that's sitting there and may never be sold at the asking price. That's a lot of money tied up in product just sitting in their store. You can only get away with doing that for so long.

So yeah, if a retailer does that or is pouring major money into extra product they know they can't sell to keep a customer or two happy that's bad business if the gain isn't that big overall. The reatailer who over orders in hopes of sticking it to customers later down the road is greedy.

Then if I order 100 copies of a first issue and sell 80-and only 25 come back to buy issue 2 because it sucked, but I had to place my orders for #2 and #3 before #1 ever hit the shelves-how does my greed factor into the dwindling sales on the book. I have to gamble that as many people who buy #1 will by it and order high, or gamble that demand will drop and order low and hope I don't have customers left empty handed. How does my greed factor into that one again? Oh yeah, my five regular customers who want everything want the variants on those issues too, so I then have to order enough to accommodate them even though my sales overall will drop from issue #1 to #2.

This is something comic retailers have had to deal with from the beginning and has nothing to do with over ordering for variants. A good shop owner/orderer knows how to gauge this stuff after awhile through experience and keeping track of product movement. For stores with customer pull lists it's a bit easier to manage.

We can shift the blame to the end user too-if readers weren't completist collectors there would be no demand for variants and incentives, so its their fault for wanting it those things...

I'm not saying the retailers were totally to blame...I'm just mentioning that no one really ever talks about the big part they played in the whole thing and if many of them weren't trying to take advantage of the situation to the point some obviously were so many of them wouldn't have gone out of business and contributed to the bubble bursting.

As far as completists go...Not always getting what you want is part of the game. If a completist marches into a comic shop and demands things doesn't mean the shop has to or should get that person what that person demands if it's unprofitable or risky for the store. People hear "no" all the time. And again, by those supposed "special" books being so plentiful they weren't special at all.

However it all starts with putting the product out there, making it available and tying it to ordering a certain amount of books...neither the end customer or the retailers decided to do that-retailers and collectors may share part of the blame, but the impetus came from the publisher level. Sure retailers could not buy extra copies to get variants, but that's is the equivalent of telling a customer, no I won't stock the books you want to get, go elsewhere. I don't see how driving customers away like that is good business, so the retailer is in a no win situation of sorts.

It's not as simple as you try and make it sound. It's one thing if a customer wants a regular title that is easily ordered. If a retailer could order that variant for a certain higher price point and get it with no strings attached and refused to order it that's one thing...but to order a bunch of extra unsellable books in order to get a variant for a customer who demands it is something completely different. If the retailer is only slightly bumping up orders to do this it's not much of a problem but if they're doing it with on a continuous basis and the unsellable book quota is fairly high they'd be better off disappointing that customer because as we've seen the odds aren't in their favor. There's no set formula for this and if the unsellable book margin is small it's not much of a problem but if it isn't that customer(s) will have to be disappointed like the rest of the custmor base who wants things but can't get them.

It was the publishers plan to court short team gains without any plan for retention of readership/consumers other than more of the same that created the dilemma to begin with.

-M

And unfortunately many retailers helped to make it turn into a monster. The retailers had the power to not go along with the madness and stop it or at least not let it get to the place where it caused them to have to close.

[Jezebel Bond]

Both MRP and Alex made some good points about variants.

We've had a couple of obnoxious customers demand variants or threaten to go elsewhere...and we (1) ignored them, and (2) discretely told them to fuck off when they tried to return...as we bought in new customers who didn't try to make us jump through their hoops. One of these fools was in abject horror when I took everything out of his pull-list and sold it to someone else...only about a dozen books or so, but my point is, don't threaten me to discontinue your business, I will tell you to go to hell.

Our customers are made to understand that rarer variants, like 1:50 and above come with a premium price tag, and in many instances, aren't for sale as they are kept by us (dealer and myself). If we get good deals on other variants...like several of the 1:50 Amazing Spidey 700 variants...we order them and sell them to customers who specifically requested them.

I've also told our better customers who are interested in variant covers when places like Midtown and Limited-Edition and Mile High announce pre-orders for their variants...Midtown recently started taking preorders for its new X-Men #1 at $10 each, and Mile High has its Wolverine #1 variant at $6. These customers can then preorder through us, or by themselves...

Here's the new Miss Fury variant...we have several customers/foot fetishists drooling for it...

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Both MRP and Alex made some good points about variants.

We've had a couple of obnoxious customers demand variants or threaten to go elsewhere...and we (1) ignored them, and (2) discretely told them to fuck off when they tried to return...as we bought in new customers who didn't try to make us jump through their hoops. One of these fools was in abject horror when I took everything out of his pull-list and sold it to someone else...only about a dozen books or so, but my point is, don't threaten me to discontinue your business, I will tell you to go to hell.

Our customers are made to understand that rarer variants, like 1:50 and above come with a premium price tag, and in many instances, aren't for sale as they are kept by us (dealer and myself). If we get good deals on other variants...like several of the 1:50 Amazing Spidey 700 variants...we order them and sell them to customers who specifically requested them.

I've also told our better customers who are interested in variant covers when places like Midtown and Limited-Edition and Mile High announce pre-orders for their variants...Midtown recently started taking preorders for its new X-Men #1 at $10 each, and Mile High has its Wolverine #1 variant at $6. These customers can then preorder through us, or by themselves...

Here's the new Miss Fury variant...we have several customers/foot fetishists drooling for it...

Well as my LCS guy told me in a nicer way when I saw a cool variant , give me the $100 bucks and I can get it for you. Because my shop can't move so many issues of that and I can at least have the money put up to ordering so many copies of said issue.

I've never been a big variant guy anyhow and turned down the offer. As long as I get my monthly pull and all ...I'm happy. I was never understanding why some fans want variants so badly. Yes its cool to get different covers of comics. But it shouldn't be a huge deal where your threatening to end your business there.

[Jezebel Bond]

I was never understanding why some fans want variants so badly. Yes its cool to get different covers of comics. But it shouldn't be a huge deal where your threatening to end your business there.

Sometimes the variants just have covers which are more attractive than regular editions. I'm a big fangirl of Campbell covers...but not Quesada black&white covers, even when they're in a ratio of 150:1.

And...I'm still trying to get the Del Otto variant to Amazing Spidey #667...brutally hard to get....this is over $1000...

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Sometimes the variants just have covers which are more attractive than regular editions. I'm a big fangirl of Campbell covers...but not Quesada black&white covers, even when they're in a ratio of 150:1.

And...I'm still trying to get the Del Otto variant to Amazing Spidey #667...brutally hard to get....this is over $1000...

Oh I agree a lot of variants have great covers and they are awesome to see. I had my LCS I pulled from 2004-2009 pull me variants and ask me which copies I wanted at times to buy for regular price. It wasn't like I demanded them. If say Astonishing X-Men had a better cover I went with it and JSA as well.

If I had my choice of picking that variant of Amazing Spider-Man #667 for $1,000 bucks or dropping that money on a classic great copy of Amazing Spider-Man in the top 10-20 issues I'd take the classic old issue.

[Reptisaurus!]

I, for one, never bought into that notion. Collectors want an "artifact," plain and simple. It's reaffirmed on comics blogs and podcasts, including I Sell Comics, the ongoing weekly show with Ming and Mike of Comic Book Men. Digital copies have no resale value — print copies do.

Sure, collectors do.

But when the market was aimed at readers back in the '40s, and comics were considered completely disposable, it wasn't rare for them to sell more than a million copies an issue. The similarly target (and similarly disposable) "Weekly Shonen Jump" magazine sells 2.8 million copies in Japan as of 2009 - And, hell, even the AMERICAN version was outselling any American produced periodical comic for a couple years.*

And, uh, how many copies do current comics aimed at collectors sell again? Eleven? Fourteen?

Fiiiiine. I exaggerate for comedic effect. But the actual numbers are a hell of a lot closer to 11 than to a million.

So, based on historical precedent it seems like there are a far, far greater number of readers than collectors.

* Although as of now it's gone all digital.