Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

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nycjadie
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Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by nycjadie »

Forgotten Queen and Incursion were recently released. Neither had any incentive variants for their number 1 issues. They still had variants though. 5 each, I believe, but none were limited. I’ve been to a few shops, and neither ordered very many, and far fewer than Valiant minis in the past. I cleaned out my LCS. I am reminded of the first Dr Mirage mini, where there were no variants (there was a later connvariant), and the books were underordered, and really hard to find, especially in high grade.

Midtown is already sold out of several covers of each. I’m sure others are as well. This might be a time when the regular issues are just really hard to find, and scarce. I had an impossible time finding Mirage issues to get signed (I like a raw set untouched), and I wonder if these new books will be as difficult, or more difficult to find than Mirage or other issues. These might be the harder regular issues to find in the future.

So far, I’m a fan of this era, but wonder if it will hurt Valiant’s bottom line.

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by Dallow Spicer1 »

nycjadie wrote:Forgotten Queen and Incursion were recently released. Neither had any incentive variants for their number 1 issues. They still had variants though. 5 each, I believe, but none were limited. I’ve been to a few shops, and neither ordered very many, and far fewer than Valiant minis in the past. I cleaned out my LCS. I am reminded of the first Dr Mirage mini, where there were no variants (there was a later connvariant), and the books were underordered, and really hard to find, especially in high grade.

Midtown is already sold out of several covers of each. I’m sure others are as well. This might be a time when the regular issues are just really hard to find, and scarce. I had an impossible time finding Mirage issues to get signed (I like a raw set untouched), and I wonder if these new books will be as difficult, or more difficult to find than Mirage or other issues. These might be the harder regular issues to find in the future.

So far, I’m a fan of this era, but wonder if it will hurt Valiant’s bottom line.
Some times less is more! I think they were going to the well too many times with the variants so maybe this is a good thing.

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by Shadowman99 »

At this point in time I'd say that Valiant desperately need to expand their readership numbers, and that the key to doing that is to get people talking about the great stories that the companiys putting out, rather than how cool any particular variant cover is.

Sure, they have some major hurdles to jump right now so far as actually achieving that would be concerned, but I think that playing the long game and building back up a quality reputation for the company should be the #1 goal on the list right now, rather than trying to pull in a few extra bucks from the collector/speculator market in the short term.
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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by DirtbagSailor »

On one side of the coin, I love it. It focuses a books artisic AND market value almost exclusive on the book itself. Sort of like how Harbinger #1 or Solar #10 had no need for a variant to be highly desired.

This also makes collecting sets much easier, and as a result, many collectors may well feel a greater degree of motivation towards completing a complete set.

On the other side, this also limits the amount of cover art options available, which as a compulsive Valiant art collector, limits what I can (personally) add to my collection! :lol:

Actually, I prefer the “OCASSIONAL” variant to hunt down. It becomes quite overwhelming when each month a collector would potentially have 30 covers to hunt down, as opposed to 10 with perhaps 1-2 special variants.

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by magnus20009 »

I am all for the large decrease in variant covers. I still have way too many incentive covers to hunt down.

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by TheeBaldMoose »

If you put Savage next to The Forgotten Queen, I think you have similarly interesting books as far as basic interest in the story line. In my mind, what caused Savage to go through 4 different sell outs WAS the variants.

If there were no variants, I could see Savage going through maybe 2 sellouts, nothing more. But because of those Black and White 1:50's and the #1 being so rare, and highly talked about/desired during that time, it pushed the viewership that much higher. Curiosity drove those sales, and the collector community latched onto those books. Of course, there is the idea that Savage is the current version of Turok, and that's a fair comparison, and maybe people wanted to check out the book based on that (or a combination)

Now, I know many of you will say that those third and fourth prints were all of maybe 2000 - 5000 each, but that will be upwards of 10,000 more #1's that Savage will have that The Forgotten Queen will not have at the end of the day, and the main culprit will be the desire to land those 1:50's
Moose

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by nycjadie »

TheeBaldMoose wrote:If you put Savage next to The Forgotten Queen, I think you have similarly interesting books as far as basic interest in the story line. In my mind, what caused Savage to go through 4 different sell outs WAS the variants.

If there were no variants, I could see Savage going through maybe 2 sellouts, nothing more. But because of those Black and White 1:50's and the #1 being so rare, and highly talked about/desired during that time, it pushed the viewership that much higher. Curiosity drove those sales, and the collector community latched onto those books. Of course, there is the idea that Savage is the current version of Turok, and that's a fair comparison, and maybe people wanted to check out the book based on that (or a combination)

Now, I know many of you will say that those third and fourth prints were all of maybe 2000 - 5000 each, but that will be upwards of 10,000 more #1's that Savage will have that The Forgotten Queen will not have at the end of the day, and the main culprit will be the desire to land those 1:50's
I think you are right on Savage, Chris. The artwork on the covers also helped, as did the format of the book being prestige. I think comparisons can be made to Divinity I and Eternity.

I was talking to my LCS over the weekend, and he was kind of bummed they weren't even doing a 1:10 variant on the first issues. He's not a huge fan of variants, but they have their place. The thing is, the number 1 issues still have 5 different covers, but they just are incentive variants.

My preference would be to make fewer covers, and use incentive variants sparingly for key issues and number ones.
Forgotten Queen 1A, 1B (like the pullbox), sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Incursion 1A, 1B, sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Occasional linewide for a special cover - like Harbinger 8 Lemire
Occasional 1:20/1:50 for a key moment - Harbinger Renegades 7 (is that right issue?)

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by DirtbagSailor »

Meanwhile, 10+ LADOTH #1 covers later... :lol:

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by TheeBaldMoose »

nycjadie wrote:
TheeBaldMoose wrote:If you put Savage next to The Forgotten Queen, I think you have similarly interesting books as far as basic interest in the story line. In my mind, what caused Savage to go through 4 different sell outs WAS the variants.

If there were no variants, I could see Savage going through maybe 2 sellouts, nothing more. But because of those Black and White 1:50's and the #1 being so rare, and highly talked about/desired during that time, it pushed the viewership that much higher. Curiosity drove those sales, and the collector community latched onto those books. Of course, there is the idea that Savage is the current version of Turok, and that's a fair comparison, and maybe people wanted to check out the book based on that (or a combination)

Now, I know many of you will say that those third and fourth prints were all of maybe 2000 - 5000 each, but that will be upwards of 10,000 more #1's that Savage will have that The Forgotten Queen will not have at the end of the day, and the main culprit will be the desire to land those 1:50's
I think you are right on Savage, Chris. The artwork on the covers also helped, as did the format of the book being prestige. I think comparisons can be made to Divinity I and Eternity.

I was talking to my LCS over the weekend, and he was kind of bummed they weren't even doing a 1:10 variant on the first issues. He's not a huge fan of variants, but they have their place. The thing is, the number 1 issues still have 5 different covers, but they just are incentive variants.

My preference would be to make fewer covers, and use incentive variants sparingly for key issues and number ones.
Forgotten Queen 1A, 1B (like the pullbox), sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Incursion 1A, 1B, sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Occasional linewide for a special cover - like Harbinger 8 Lemire
Occasional 1:20/1:50 for a key moment - Harbinger Renegades 7 (is that right issue?)
Agreed, you NEED a variant every now and again. I mean, the #1 is important, and as you can see, Punk Mambo's 1:100, and the other #1's 1:250 are something, but even those are getting old (and aren't collectible/CGC-able), which is why people want variants.

Will they ever do a linewide again? Probably not, I just don't see it happening
Moose

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Re: Thoughts on this period of no incentive variants.

Post by agent_graves »

nycjadie wrote:
TheeBaldMoose wrote:My preference would be to make fewer covers, and use incentive variants sparingly for key issues and number ones.
Forgotten Queen 1A, 1B (like the pullbox), sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Incursion 1A, 1B, sketch, 1:20 - the rest are just 1A and 1B
Occasional linewide for a special cover - like Harbinger 8 Lemire
Occasional 1:20/1:50 for a key moment - Harbinger Renegades 7 (is that right issue?)
This.... :thumb:
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