FCBD Vs. eBay.

§ April 25th, 2008 § Filed under free comic book day § 1 Comment

Beginning to prep for the ever-approaching Free Comic Book Day, coming May 3rd. We were shorted our Gumby and Love & Capes FCBD comics, and the Nascar Heroes and Imaginary books have yet to ship to us. Here’s a sentence I never imagined myself saying: “Boy, I hope those Nascar comics show up next week.”

As in previous years, we divide up the free funnybooks into three age-appropriate bundles to hand out to equally age-appropriate customers: “Kids,” “Teens,” and “Grown-Ups.” This year the books are all allegedly more “general audiences” than in past years, to avoid any more penis panics, but the three-pack distribution has worked well for us in the past, so we’d like to keep up the tradition. And there’s still some necessary age sorting to do…I don’t particularly want to give the Top Cow freebie to kids, and I’m just assuming the Wizard giveaway isn’t for kids, since they haven’t been yet.

Since the sorting is fairly time-intensive, we’ve got to get cracking early…but that also means when the missing or late FCBD books finally show up, we’ll have to go through and dump them all in the bags after the fact, which is a little annoying. And, we’ll only have a couple days to do it.

In addition to the bags, we’ll have loose copies of all the freebies on our tables in the FCBD staging area at the front of the store, as well as leftovers from previous years. Plus, I’ve already spoken to some folks about providing leftover giveaways to schools and libraries.

We’re using these FCBD comics for their intended purpose: promotion. Getting them into the hands of as many people as possible. Maybe…just maybe, getting a new reader or two out of it. Or getting old readers into something new. (I’ve discussed the apparent effectiveness of the event here.)

That said, here’s a quick survey of 2008 Free Comic Book Day comics I’ve found on the eBay, current and ended auctions, as of this writing:

  • Multiple listings for “full sets” of all of this year’s FCBD comics (one set sold for about $30)
  • One copy of this year’s Marvel Adventures: Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man with a minimum bid of $7.99 (wholesale cost, by the way: 20 cents)
  • One copy of this year’s Hellboy book, minimum bid about $2 U.S.
  • One copy of this year’s Broken Trinity (Top Cow) book, minimum bid $2 U.S.
  • Two copies of this year’s Sonic the Hedgehog book, sold for $2.50 and just over $3

There ain’t no law sayin’ they can’t, but it still feels like a shame. At least it’s just one or two books here and there, and not, say, case lots of FCBD books like I’ve seen in previous years. Hopefully the people selling these still have plenty more of them in stock to give away.

And I just looked at this next auction because I was wondering why a copy of the FCBD Ultimate Spider-Man #1, from a previous year, was listed at $24.95. Turns out the seller is also accepting “best offers.” Given that other copies of the same book have sold for a penny (well, half a penny, in this case)…well, good luck.

Anyway, the auction that I actually wanted to draw your attention to is this one, and don’t look at it if you’re somewhere where web page sound is gonna be a problem.

So, did you look? “What th–!?” — right? Startled the heck out of me. Here’s the site responsible (sound, natch).

One Response to “FCBD Vs. eBay.”