The new Batman #1 by Matt Fraction & Jorge Jimenez is another title that jumps on the blind bag bandwagon where the “Blind As a Bat” blind bag is set to be released to the public on September 3rd. However, it appears that sellers on sites such as eBay are already selling copies of yesterday’s blind bags.
The copy is shipped by DC’s main distributor Lunar, and most DC shipments arrive a week earlier. Retailers observe street dates, but these do not ship until street dates, but these increasingly popular “blind bags” appear to slip between cracks of what is acceptable, and in diamonds, wild west situations have emerged to force street dates anymore.
Sean Killcam (@bigclutch), a veteran and retailer in the comic book industry, posted on Instagram about the Batman #1 blind bag pre-sale.
here we go again. new @whilem.dcomics batman #1 blind bags ship early and stores/streamers are selling/broken them before street days at @whatnot (photos of these and maybe @ebay live.
Just like how @SkyBoundent Battle Beast #1 blind bags were sold early on livestreams and show off all the cool secrets that have been added to the bag.
It also affects other stores/sellers. In particular, West Coast stores/sellers usually get the book a few days before release, not to mention a week ago.
These products are so new to our industry that publishers and distributors don’t know how to police them.
With these items dominating our industry, I think our reps need to look at industry leaders in card space and get some clues on how to patrol and implement street dates.
We focus on the potential biggest blind bag event using @Markspearsart and @keenspot’s monsters and wolves #1. Does anyone want to fix this before it’s released?
Or does anyone care?
I’d like to hear from you. What are your thoughts?
Although we can’t check if any of the packs are open, it appears to have been preprocessed in livestreams and eBay posts. Carcam mentioned this in the comments:
In my opinion, it’s not pre-sale and opening at retail stores.
I think the bigger discussion is about auctioning out the pack before the pilot date and how the atmosphere is like it is with the general idea of ”street dates.” Also, if the store gets them in front of other stores, the level is uncompetitive and unfair.
On FB, there was a discussion about how Diamonds could make sure the store wasn’t getting the book too quickly to stop this type of behavior.
When it comes to comic book distribution, we are in a brand new world. Kirkham and others said these are issues that will be fixed to ensure that diamonds break “street days” and not selling books before release, but diamonds are gone.
One online retailer responded to Krikham, explaining that neither the publisher nor the distributor made it clear that retailers could sell blind bags.
I was auctioning them off. If I had something that the publisher/distributor told me not to hold shows early, I wouldn’t. I totally agree with the clutch, but this is about a conversation about what you need to do. No one will try to avoid breaking rules that don’t exist yet. According to the East Coast, get them early and it’s again in the distributor. If I was running it, I would first fill the farthest. Apparently they aren’t.
The rules seem to require clarification as some blind bags have been reported already on display at comic stores. Troll Comics continued to explain his side by commenting that he had not broken the rules by holding a pre-sale auction.
Street dates apply only to customers who hold items in their hands before street dates. There’s nothing about blind bags yet. If they did, I wouldn’t sell them soon. But I’m not going to sell anything early for a non-existent law. This is basically pre-order. No one will get these until Wednesday. If you say in writing to avoid opening it, there is no problem. The East Coast arrived early on the West Coast. I agree it sucks. Again, it is with the publisher/distributor. I was upset, but not with the other sellers.
Check the month before running the show. There is nothing on their site yet about opening early. Street days are for physical sales and customers’ hands. I know that the blind bag is new, but if they don’t want it to be open early, why haven’t they said anything yet? They’ve been around for months to write something since the Battle Beast. @markspearsart You need to let it know in ASAP. People think they care about DC opening early, but they actually want this hype.
Lunar always has a dashboard with stupid updates. This could easily be on top. I find it strange. If that’s my book and I felt strongly about it, I’d raise hell until they post it on the moon site.
While neither DC nor Lunar commented on the advance sale of the “Blind As a Bat” blind bag, there was an announcement of the blind bag program, which released the DC KO #1 Lightout blind bag on October 8th.
Like this:
Like loading…
