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Post by Action Ace on Mar 21, 2016 19:52:37 GMT -5
Story from Bleeding CoolSo it seems that Loot Crate had an exclusive Harley Quinn comic that went out with its latest "crate." The Harley Quinn collectors are already after it and prices are on the rise. A collectible comic that Direct market retailers could not offer, I'm sure that will go over well. I expect Dennis Barger to have a sensible, mature response...unless he suffers a stroke first.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2016 5:31:44 GMT -5
Thye've done that multiple times in the past. It's really what sets Lootcrate apart from other subscription box services, is that Lootcrate actually has good exclusives that can net you a profit on eBay. That time I think it was ASM randomply selling 700k copies was thanks to a Lootcrate variant. They have also done it to some indy series that made the title jump to the top of the sales charts for an issue and then disappear.
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Post by Bronze Age Brian on Mar 22, 2016 11:59:26 GMT -5
I'm not a big fan of the Loot Crate craze, not one to put money into a box of surprises that I don't even know if I'll enjoy or not. And it can get expensive, one box a month for a year is $300. And that is if you don't get hooked on adding another box.
Although I have been watching people split their boxes up on eBay and make a profit. That interests me a bit.
That Harley Quinn comic can be had for around $20-25 bucks, which is about on par with any retailer exclusive variants.
EDIT: Oh but it's not a variant, but an exclusive comic only through Loot Crate. I get it now. Hmm, interesting.
Buy it and you just bought the seller's Loot Crate for the month.
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Post by Reptisaurus! on Mar 22, 2016 17:21:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I dunno... The whole idea speaks to a kind of conspicuous consumption that puts me off. "I don't know what I'm going to spend my money on, but I need to buy SOMETHING to combat the existential despair."
And it says it has a subscriber base of 400,000. (More than ANY monthly comic? That's insane!) So there are a lot of copies of the "exclusive" out there. Like way more than the # 1 Diamond comic of the month.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 22, 2016 22:42:48 GMT -5
Yeah but the assumption is a lot of these Lootcrate subscribers are casual comic fans at best, and mostly just fans of pop culture junk. So the exclusive comics/variants likely aren't being preserved well and slab bed, but flipped through and tossed in the closet, tossed in the trash, given to the kid, like comics used to be. Finding an actual issue won't be hard, but finding a pristine mint condition copy is probably not quite as easy as a variant that had been distributed to the direct market to a bunch of grade obsessed collectors who will immediately bag and board it and buy a second copy with a more common cover to read, if they read at all and aren't just modern variant cover collectors.
Admittedly, the overwhelming majority of any of these variants would have to be destroyed for it to be even as common as the regular cover, but this is the logic the people paying for these variants are using.
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Post by Randle-El on Mar 23, 2016 0:53:23 GMT -5
My wife got me a Loot Crate subscription for six months as a birthday gift. It was okay, kinda neat for a few months to try out, but nothing that would compel me to stay on long term. I did get several exclusive comic book variants -- issues of The Walking Dead, Batman, and Star Wars #1. There were a few other neat trinkets here and there, but overall I got the impression that Loot Crate is something that would have been much cooler to twelve-year-old me than adult me.
By the way, it's not like each box is a total crap shoot. There's a pattern to what they include. Typically, there is one "big ticket" (relatively speaking) item per box. Sometimes it's a toy, like an action figure. Sometimes it's a comic book. In one of the boxes I got, it was actually a full paperback novel (Ready Player One). There's often an article of clothing, like a tie, or a T-shirt, pair of socks, etc. There's a usually a couple of smaller novelty toys, like dice or souvenir coins, or maybe a small poster or art print. Rounding it out are a few pieces of novelty candies. So like I said, it's definitely something twelve-year-old me would have really enjoyed.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 23, 2016 0:58:24 GMT -5
I think Randle nailed it... 12 year old me would have begged for Loot Crate, and college me certainly would have bought it, then either tried to split it up for profit or gotten sick of it after a few months. Adult me, while mildly intrigued at the trend (there are LOTS of similar 'box' subs out there now), has little interest in buy stuff I don't know what it is just for something that's exclusive.
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Post by Trevor on Mar 27, 2016 20:37:03 GMT -5
I'm loving my Comic Block subscription. I think it worked out to about $15 a month, and I get three new comics (often variants), a print or similar knickknack, and a t-shirt. Even if I wouldn't have bought the comics normally, I consider them freebies and I'm just paying for a monthly t-shirt.
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Post by hondobrode on Mar 28, 2016 2:48:47 GMT -5
I hadn't heard of this before.
What comics have you gotten, Trevor ?
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Post by Trevor on Mar 28, 2016 8:35:28 GMT -5
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