[SPEAKER_03]: what is up everybody welcome to comic book club on Alex and i'm coming at you with another bonus episode with two great guests this time there the co-founders of cover price c o v r price dot com leave it a minute john she let us and not to vote welcome to the podcast
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, thanks for having us.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you and I want to do a full disclosure at the top.
[SPEAKER_03]: You guys advertised with us for about a month last month.
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is going to be a hard hitting interview, but also I love you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just wanted to mention that up front.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, we're used to all the questions and everything.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, come back, come out of it.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's not really going to be hard getting.
[SPEAKER_03]: But I just want to get that out of the way in case anybody and, you know, judges my journalistic creeds before we get into it.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, cover price.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've talked about it in the ad that we don't view for the past months, so hopefully our listeners are at least a little bit familiar.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you've got a lot of stuff going on on the website.
[SPEAKER_03]: The main thing is kind of what the title implies that it's given you generally prices for your comic book collection.
[SPEAKER_03]: But you tell me what's the elevator pitch for the site?
[SPEAKER_02]: At, basically, it's the, if you have a common collection, put it in the cover price, set it and forget it, and we'll tell you what everything in your collections worth based on actual sales data aggregated across multiple marketplaces for both raw and slab sales.
[SPEAKER_02]: Beyond that, we actually do a bunch of content, but we have four live YouTube shows a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: 28 articles a month goes out on the side all based on actual aftermarket trends.
[SPEAKER_02]: What's hot?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's not?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why is it that way?
[SPEAKER_02]: What can you learn?
[SPEAKER_02]: How can you become a better collector?
[SPEAKER_02]: New releases, FOC.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we now have, of course, a convention list.
[SPEAKER_02]: So our team goes together and like puts in about 250 hours of effort to aggregate and gather the impossible, which is wrangling retailers wrangling publishers wrangling creators and putting it all in one massive list
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's see if I stop, let's always argue with John and say, not set him forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's set and pay close attention to it constantly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not forget it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, the whole point is to like, come every day and see what's happening with your collection.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I don't really understand it based on what John's saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: You check the website once and then never check it again.
[SPEAKER_03]: Never come back.
[SPEAKER_03]: But let's take a way back actually and I'm sure you talk about this a lot, but tell me about the journey leading up to cover price because I got it a badge and you weren't like we're going to make big money out of comics necessarily you had to have started probably with the collection of your own so where did that begin or not maybe I'm going to go back to first grade on the playground, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: You want to go for it, Matt?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we've been lifelong friends since grade school for the longest time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So our lives of those kind of been around video games and comic books in a lot of ways, like that's what we did when we were in grade school, literally play video games at the local arcade or the bowling alley and then walk down the street to the comic book store.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this was during the explosion of images.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is when image launched with your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, every there was always new number ones and everything felt really exciting and it kind of got you the taste of like that little like, you know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of that foam moe, a lot of that, oh, I can, this, these are going to be worth extreme, and like, you know, these are going to be the most valuable books in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my long run, I mean, joke is that I paid $20 for spawn back then when it came out, because I missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: and it took like 30 years for it to get that value back, but it's back, is the spawn number one that's fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you know high school I think we both kind of stepped away from comics a little bit, but then we were kind of still reading more than collecting.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then we kind of fell back into it, you know, later in college or post college and then it was just full steam ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that's kind of the backbone.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then our past cross, we went different industries, John went to UX design.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went, I was working in entertainment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I worked for a studio for the majority of my career.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we kind of just, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: There was this point in, you know, we were hanging out and John had his box of comics, which I hadn't looked at in my pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was very heavily into the spec game, you know, I was very into everything that came out as a really active reader.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was really interested to kind of dig through his box and see what he had, you know, from his time collecting in grade school.
[SPEAKER_00]: And high school and you picked up stuff in between right on the rest of picking up stuff here and there.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Matt was like the only person interested in my comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he was like, Yaris came over and he was like, let me look what you got.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You picked up the rest of the story because you do a pretty good job of sharing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, yeah, he came over and he's like, dude, this one's worth.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was NYX number three and it was very when Logan was coming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's like, dude, this is worth like almost a thousand bucks right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it really kind of blew my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like,
[SPEAKER_02]: How could I know, how could there be something in my house worth a thousand bucks I didn't know about?
[SPEAKER_02]: What else is in my collection that might be worth something?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, okay, well, not everyone has Matt, you know, in their lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, well, how do I find this out?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, where can I go to get this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And everywhere that at the time, this is about in 2016, 2015, everywhere at the time was just doing like algorithms of like, oh, if it's, if it's great, it does at 10.0, it must be worth 100, 100x, what it's worth, a cover price.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it just doesn't make sense, you know, because it's just pure speculation and guesswork.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that wasn't really an effective way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, working in UX, my background's human factors, which is like technology psychology and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was like, well, why don't we just aggregate sales data and build like this beautiful marketplace where people know where their comics are actually selling for.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we got into it, and there was a lot of excitement in the beginning, because it was like taking or taking vacation leave to like design out the pages, because I was like, okay, how do we make this work, how do we make this work, and then I'd go over to Mads and that would look at and go, no, that's wrong, you know, no one's going to care about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, that's a good one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Matt went into the speculation slash.
[SPEAKER_02]: entertainment realm he was working over at Sony and this is when like walking dead and all those other big comic book TV shows and movies were kind of being shopped around and he was involved and like you know talking about those at the studio and he just knew everything about comics and so at that point he was like well this is let's just see if it works and we put all our money into it we you know quit our jobs we did all this stuff I moved into a from a nice
[SPEAKER_02]: We tried to get some funding and, you know, either we couldn't sell the idea of comic books making hundreds of millions of dollars for somebody or a big company.
[SPEAKER_02]: They weren't very interested.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was always the same kind of like, well, we'll see.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tell us when you, you know, get a hundred thousand members or you can give you money.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, make money, and then we'll give you my own, it's like, okay, so we're like, we'll do it ourselves and all through, you know, I made a lot of connections working at a dev agency for a long time, you know, so we hired some of the developers that I knew to do the prototype and the MVP long story short.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the the Genesis and then 2018, it took us two years to build it in 2018.
[SPEAKER_02]: We'd launched and nobody came.
[SPEAKER_00]: We launched it that we were passing out flyers at San Diego, it's kind of a con or like this is going to be big, this is going to be huge.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like 15 hooks into like making flyers and having people passing out or like okay, turn on the light.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here we go, that fliction points coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we had no funding.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a there's a video, a popular video of like the store hyping up their release and they were working up all their workers and they're like yeah, and they opened up the blinds and there's one guy standing in the front.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how it felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a realization.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, this is going to be hard, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was for probably good four years of just the tool of us building the site, updating the site, adding sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had a few people enjoying throughout the years, not too many.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was just, it was a slog.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, you know, for like John was,
[SPEAKER_00]: living on ramen at, you know, trying to afford rent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was working two jobs essentially.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working putting in 90 hour weeks, you know, to kind of keep this alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was, it was a really tough time for, for a number of years.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot of big sacrifice to run.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a, I know we're getting into it, but there were processes that we had to run that were manually started instead of being automated.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'd be, now I'm married, I have a kid now, but at that point, my wife was my girlfriend and we were dating, we should come over watch movie and I'd have to pause the movie like four times ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to start a process real quick and I'd go to the laptop start something, start it, it would fail, I'd go back started again.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was just that for years, it was, it was work.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now eight years later, you know, we have over 100,000 registered members.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are putting out all these articles and doing content.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have 33 full-time and part-time and contract employees, and we're busy with an ever growing like crazy, so it's been well worth it.
[SPEAKER_03]: What was the turning point then?
[SPEAKER_03]: How did it go from that one guy waiting outside?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you're lifted up the blinds to 100,000 people on this.
[SPEAKER_00]: COVID was really great for everybody.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was interesting to see because when COVID hit, everyone was worried about businesses failing, closing because a lot of businesses did fail, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of businesses did close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, what was interesting about COVID is that because it was such a hard time, people started leaning back on nostalgia, leaning back on hobbies, leaning back on things to occupy their mind and time, and some of them fell in love with comics again, people were going through their collections again, people were looking up a book online,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, there was this big surge in collecting, again, and a lot of new people into the market that came from sports parents that were dumping a lot of money into things.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was this big boost in the comic economy, essentially, and it brought a lot of people to our doorstep.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I mean, there's been a lot of milestone since that have given us significant boost.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was pretty much the big turning point for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was really right after COVID was when I was able to quit my job because it was like, okay, we can I can make this salary work and quit doing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was only meant at this time to be able to say Matt quit that job and come over here.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that was that was huge.
[SPEAKER_02]: to what Matt said, COVID strategic partnerships.
[SPEAKER_02]: We had a partnership with CLZ, which is a great kind of partner with us where you can see, come up with price sales data on their platform.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you are a member of both platforms, they're a collection management system and then they they port in our sales.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was a good thing because we were at that point marketing was hard people you can build something and no one knows about it And so no and knowing you're throwing a pebble into the ocean and hoping the the ripples create waves So that we we had so much data that we were collecting that you know Matt would reach out to different influencers and they would use our data on their shows weekly
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that got people talking about us more and more.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it was a slow organic, real growth.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then COVID happened and there was a tick up and then the relationships happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's just been a slow kind of grind to be honest.
[SPEAKER_02]: But now it seems like we've reached a tipping point where it's like, okay, so many people know about us.
[SPEAKER_02]: People are talking about cover price.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now we're in the consideration set when people are looking for a collection management system or price card.
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know if this is proprietary, but where does the data come from?
[SPEAKER_03]: If I want to find out, I have a copy of Spawn No.
[SPEAKER_03]: 1 of my collection, and I'm like, okay, I wonder how much this costs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Where are you getting that from?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we're pulling from five different marketplaces.
[SPEAKER_02]: The ones that we can say are eBay and Heritage Auction House.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are the ones we have different partnerships with, and then we have the other ones don't want their name out there because of price comparison and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: No.
[SPEAKER_02]: So different, you know, so we're pulling from five different places.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone seems to think it's just eBay, but eBay covers like really well for like modern comics and some maybe some silver age stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you have to go to the auction houses to get the golden age silver age platinum age type stuff?
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you have to go to retailers to get the super modern like new release stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we try to create a network so that we can have accuracy across all the different genres and
[SPEAKER_02]: And what we've been spending all this time doing is perfecting the input mechanism to make sure that our pricing is as accurate as possible.
[SPEAKER_02]: What we are focusing now on is volume.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to be actually even augmenting that net to include many more auction houses, many more marketplaces.
[SPEAKER_02]: And very shortly, probably in the next two months, we're actually going to start revealing where those are coming from so people can actually dive and deeper to explore the data.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is definitely true we have those agreements in place on those conversations in place because a lot of these people have been working with you know some of our competitors for years so it's kind of like you know trying to have.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, trying to introduce ourselves to them, you know, and knowing that, you know, hey, we're here to help you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're here to help send people to you and show you, show where what you sell and when you sell.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the intention is actually just to give information to our users.
[SPEAKER_00]: and to make them informed and keep collected, sustainable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So a lot of the stuff, all the upfront information is kind of our focus in the next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, clarity.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I mean, I think you kind of mentioned this, but are you including comic book stores as well?
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel like that might be the most difficult place to get data because they're all on very, very different systems, but how much is that potentially a factor?
[SPEAKER_02]: We have of the five...
[SPEAKER_02]: two of them are comic book retailers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and major ones, not like, you know, smaller mom and pop ones, ones that actually have more breath of volume and different types of comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a little bit a better kind of coverage.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you have them, so we're really covering all those different aspects of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: The weird thing is, you know, Matt was saying like, when we got into this, we thought the entire comic book market,
[SPEAKER_02]: like every e-capart of the ecosystem was connected, there's so much disconnect between new comics and publishers and retailers selling a new comic and then forgetting about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the, like no one thinks about the aftermarket except the collectors and the speculators because it's not making immediate money, I think, for those other companies.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so what happens is we become that source of truth and actually report back into the publishers and say,
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say absolute Batman, but that hasn't its own steam, it doesn't even need us.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's a lot of comics out there that were like, yeah, you know, everyone was looking for number one, and because of the hype and the influencers were talking about it, it's now pushing it, and that's moving like 345, issue 345 further down, which they didn't anticipate.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, why is this happening?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, oh no, look, look at the data.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, we realized that we've become the connective tissue for a lot of the industry to support, because then, you know, now we have relationships with everybody, and so we have creators and publishers and retailers coming on to our, you know, our YouTube show and doing interviews with us and stuff, because they realize the importance of the aftermarket in helping them, you know, get their story out for their comics for both new releases and to sustain the new releases, so that they actually don't die off, you know, after issue three or four.
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, not that it necessarily matters that much, but let's say you have a writer come on your stream.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is that put at their figure on the scale at all?
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matt, do you want to, um, you know, not necessarily because there's kind of an open to everyone, and anyone who wants to come on is welcome to come on and talk about their book.
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, it's something where we get compared to like a modern like a modern version of wizard to some degree at least in terms of like a price guide.
[SPEAKER_00]: And some of our content is kind of built that way too.
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a sense while we're not, it's not like for like what we enjoyed about what wizard did was
[SPEAKER_00]: They gave a lot of, like, I always appreciate the getting previews and insight to books before they released, through their articles, through their futures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's not any source that kind of offers that up anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: Except through their own direct channels.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no singular outside source that can take this, stuff outside of their own social media.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we're trying to provide that to folks.
[SPEAKER_00]: So anyone's a lot of come on and talk about a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's our job not to promote it in a sense of hate this will making money.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more of an insight of like, hey, this might be a fun book to read, this might be a fun book to pick up.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of our conversations like we do at FSC article in any kind of theoretical and the conversations are like here's some highlights of things that are probably going to be hard to find when they release or some things you might not want to miss and maybe it's a high profile artist on a cover or a new release or a first appearance or something key will call it out in order for you to call your shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell them that you want it and get it on F, but at F of C. So when you show up on the convict that you have a copy in your paying cover price and you're not going to the after market and paying a premium for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's our intention is kind of like create sustainable purchasing while also bringing as much attention across the board.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you read our content,
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, we're definitely not Marvel, just Marvel DC.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as we're all over the place, despite there will be focuses where like, okay, there's a lot of absolute badming going on because it takes over our top 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: It takes over some of the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those do happen, but that's kind of a cultural thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't get away from that when it takes over, it takes over.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you look at our content, we kind of cover every one and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do a crowdfunding article and that's to give independent creators a highlight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even though there's books don't exist on our site, there's no exchange that where there's nothing for people to come and visit us other than for the article.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the whole point of that is just to gain exposure for these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of that is just, you know, it's just, hey, this looks good.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that we're interested in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like nothing that we do is pay for play, nothing that we do.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no exchange of goods and information.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is simply just what we as a team think is interesting or a thing that we need to draw attention to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when people come on, you know, it is an opportunity for any creator to jump on
[SPEAKER_00]: and promote their book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's kind of like, we've been testing the waters with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it seems to be pretty effective.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it tips the scale at all, because I don't think we've seen any clear case of being like, I'll cover price had them on, and this was a crazy book.
[SPEAKER_00]: Though we did get blame for Dork for doing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I honestly think we did not have much to do with that book there, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the, I mean the other aspect of that is like we are super sensitive to not tipping the scale in any way.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have an ethos out there for our entire team that, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: If you write about a comic, you cannot sell that comic for a few months.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, there's literally like a ban on that for our team members because we don't want our team.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then everything filters through Matt who then approves and moves things that that way and says, like, okay, you know, here's a sale.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's the thing that you're going to talk about.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, is it even worth talking about this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why why are we bringing this up?
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have a really sweet team of writers who are just big comic nerds who'd love, I mean, it's, and it's funny because they're all like lawyers and doctors and professors and stuff like that who all reached out and said, we want to write for you and we're like, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: But aside from that, one thing Matt and I have talked about in the past, everyone says, why don't you do an exclusive cover and we're like, well, we can't, because if that cover lands on our top 10 list, everyone's going to say we put it there, and the thing that we've built in our system is we don't have any control over the top 10 list.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
[SPEAKER_02]: We literally like have a data stream that comes in and whatever based on our metrics that we're counting like volume and percent growth and stuff like that interest demand.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what makes the top 10 and it's always retrospective.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not like here's what's going to be hot.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's this is what's already trending.
[SPEAKER_02]: So people a lot of times come to us and say like for door, they're like, oh, you started, you know, you started that trend.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like, no, no,
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you want to blame us for going back in time or something, like we can't, we don't know this stuff's happening, we just, this is what is happening.
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, we are very, very cognizant and careful about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: We do have advertising on the content section and we do have advertising sometimes on.
[SPEAKER_02]: in the email blasts, but we're a business as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're trying to find advertisers that are interested, would be interesting to our members, like other comic shops, and then we've always call it out as like paid sponsorship and stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're very careful about it, and we realize the awesome power that cover price would have on the market had it gone into a different direction.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we have a lot of checks and balances to make sure that it doesn't go to the dark side.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, let's talk about Dork for a second then, and like you're saying, you're not necessarily to blame for it, but obviously that was at the forefront of this trend, particularly a lot of image comics in a row, just having big sellouts, or at least according to image they had a lot of big sellouts, what happened there from your perspective?
[SPEAKER_03]: Why did that happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, there's a number of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The market loves the surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: The, it absolutely loves the surprise.
[SPEAKER_00]: The, it likes to be caught off guard, because it generates just this fanfare around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And this,
[SPEAKER_00]: People love to have something to chase and to try to get, you know, I think it kind of is kind of like that in absolute Batman hit those bells.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Brett Bean came from a popular series called Dungeon Crawler Carl.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a hard name to say, but I got it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that brand is massive right now, and so he's been attached to that for quite a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so a lot of those followers from him came to Kane with Dork.
[SPEAKER_00]: They showed up for Dork because of that connection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think anyone anticipated that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know some people we did talk about in one of our teammates was like, Oh, I have to see them because of that reason.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's something we probably should have shared because it would have been a good tidbit to share at FFC.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was, you know, the signs were there, but the comic book market wasn't dialed into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when it released, you know, it was a smaller print run, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was not a book that was supposed to go as hard as crazy as it did.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a cute character, fun concept, you know, a great execution, a great story, you know, and then that got shared around because it was a fun read.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was great for kids or families to walk in.
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard a lot about it, like, you know, dads with their sons and daughters would walk in and pick this up and read it together as a family, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So in broad and, like, all these elements in it, one being hard to find, being a surprise,
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if all those all those pieces really came together, I do have to acknowledge that we are part of that Mark the machine in a sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when this book does take off, and it lands on our top 10.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we report that top 10, or essentially reintroducing it because of where you're sharing that list and that trend, we're now introducing it to some group of people who have not, didn't hear about the hype, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that does build into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have to acknowledge that when the hype happens, when the setting success happens, that there is an element of us just reporting on it,
[SPEAKER_00]: then continually feed into it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a buy product.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're kind of like a buy product of each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but it's also celebrating the industry.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's also that we'll only have a distalking about what's happening, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, and I mean, Dr.
[SPEAKER_03]: Excuse, you guys, but these sort of things like you're saying, it's word of mouth, right?
[SPEAKER_03]: That's how it always works.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the same thing with the top 10 of the box office.
[SPEAKER_03]: Something is a new, like obsession is a huge hit and it continues to be a huge hit because people
[SPEAKER_00]: So I try to check it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they're like, oh, it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm now going to tell my friend that it's good.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the interesting thing is it won't stay good, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's not actually good, people stop talking about it, then it dies off.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot of hype for a lot of comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there's a lot of like, oh, fanfare of people actually enjoying it and wanting to stay with the entire series.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's a combination, I think, of the two.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, just to take that even further, one of the big things that I'm sure you're aware of, intimately aware of the COVID-19 history is the preponderance of variant covers and now, blind bags are everywhere.
[SPEAKER_03]: I was writing up a bunch of diabetic press releases today.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're all very nice, but every single dynamite press release now is like, and we're going to have a blind bag, and we have a blind, like literally everything is a blind bag.
[SPEAKER_03]: So from your perspective,
[SPEAKER_03]: There's been a lot of worry.
[SPEAKER_03]: I've certainly ended up in a lot of conversations, people are like, oh my god, speculator bubble.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to burst.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's coming just based on the amount of varied covers, the amount of blind bags, given that you are like, the trenches here, how do you see it?
[SPEAKER_03]: How are things actually going?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really interesting conversation because we were just talking about this yesterday and how the market has changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually, over if you look back, really the speculation market really formed in around 2000.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that came with eBay was about four years old at that point.
[SPEAKER_00]: The launch of CGC really transformed the fact that you can now grade a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: and sell it for significantly more.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was also the formation of the ultimate universe, which kind of brought people back into shops.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of some of the first post-image boom creation in the 92 boom that really kind of like in a modern market where you can take a book and flip it online.
[SPEAKER_00]: That these were the first iterations of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it kind of kept adapting and changing
[SPEAKER_00]: The Walking Dead and why the last man in saga that came over, you know, over the next 10 years that brought in a lot of readers, but also a lot of speculation, oh, these would make great TV shows, you know, it was a lot of multi conversations.
[SPEAKER_00]: One, they were fantastic reasons and people wanted them and those first issues were hard to find and then all this, the TV spec that was a routine conversation for a long time, everything was like, oh, the next Walking Dead is the next Walking Dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: then you had the marvel boom you had like then the market pivoted to you up here spec market around content
[SPEAKER_00]: So I need a new trailer, a new movie would pop up, all these books would take off based off those trailers and those surprise appearances.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were in that window for a good 10 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a good chunk of time where people were just buying books for covers.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you saw the rise of artists like Perala, and Art Germ, and Dalada, like all these guys that came from like,
[SPEAKER_00]: you know that we're just standard cover artists and interior artists and then how the big boom because now all of a sudden artists are just collecting everything they created now we're in this like market where it's all of it it's all of it at the same time it's all happening right now and it's also really adapted to like so people people don't like all the varying covers and there's I mean when there's a lot to talk about here
[SPEAKER_00]: But the varying covers does a lot for the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives retailers the opportunity to create businesses.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives a lot of artists new opportunities to create covers.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's given a lot of, it's introduced as to a lot of artists that we wouldn't have been introduced to.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, a lot of artists that are gaining a lot of traction lately.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've noticed that a lot of people, this is a trend that we've even seen internally and I've seen it for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: The spec, people used to buy a cover because this is going to be worth X amount of dollars as soon as I purchase it and they expected it the next day.
[SPEAKER_00]: people are going into a convention, into their buying a book online, and buying these books simply because they want the cover, they want the artists, and they're not selling it, they're sitting on them, they're holding on them, they're putting them into their collection, these things are very rarely getting flipped, at least not into the lengths that they were before.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting to see people just picking up books.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just hope that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no, there's no spec where that used to be the whole driver.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm only buying this because it will be worth X amount of dollars.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's, you know, we were talking about this yesterday, as well, in terms of like when you're looking at the San Diego comment on numbers, I could share this with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think in 2024 there were 552 exclusives and then in 2025 there were 1100 and then right now and still counting or I think we're about 800 and we still have a week to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, it's probably hit the same amount and now those are every individual cover available.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, some of the books have multiple treatments and so that number includes all those different treatments.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, with the blind bags and variances like that, blind bags is interesting because it definitely taps into the gambling aspect of this hobby, which a lot of people,
[SPEAKER_02]: I could get this one, this one book and it's borrowing from breaks from like you know sports cards injury industry and stuff like that Like I think that that kind of gambling component is a huge factor in it and I think what's going to happen is right now everyone's testing it out And then you see people who are doing it well and people who are not doing it well are putting in junk in some of these things or not really you know
[SPEAKER_02]: communicating the actual print runs and things like that and what you can win, but that's getting weeded out because people will start gravitating towards companies like boom, who I always use kind of so far as the gold standard for a blind bag because they really outline the rules.
[SPEAKER_02]: They say, you're going to get one of these three lesser comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: You might get this one signature thing and you might get this incredibly rare one in 10,000 type comic, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know what you're going to get so everyone goes in feeling successful and feeling like they're going to be buying something which might turn out to be something worth more.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think the blind bag is just an extension of the variant concept and a little bit of gambling as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it going to last?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's already kind of it's blowing up, but it's already kind of burning people so I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, as long as it's done sustainably, and that's the big question is, you know, I will admit that when Daredevil won came out with blind bags, I was not intending to pick up any, not that because I'm a huge Daredevil fan.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just wasn't a top of mine to go race out and get it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I ended up buying four blind bags because I was like, I like the gamble and the cost was low.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was 10 bucks, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know Mark Stewart's monster is like, he had a bunch of chase books and that was only $5.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know people who bought a hundred of those because the cost was left over to like, you know, and cost them, I think like two bucks to order them in a piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, like, you know, I think when you have a low buy-in and there's high reward in there, you know, people feel like they had a fun experience, open to them up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sucks when you buy-in to, and I've been susceptible to this at conventions when they've, I bought buy-in bags where, oh, you can get some original art.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, this is $150 buy-in, and then I opened up and I was like, got jailed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I was like, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_02]: I got this one from a blind bag.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a convention in midspot one right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a remarked in one of the remarked in one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've ever smitten that on the side by side.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got nothing and I got that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, what the?
[SPEAKER_00]: What did it that?
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have two experiences there.
[SPEAKER_00]: So John is probably more likely to buy another one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or he never did it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has it because of our experiences.
[SPEAKER_00]: with those bags.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you give people an experience where they're happy with something that they got out of there, they'll keep returning for those.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if they get burned in the crosses too much, then they're out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's all a matter of how they're done sustainably for the long run.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not going away.
[SPEAKER_00]: they're only going to get more popular.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do like them because it gives you the opportunity to get things like original art, remarks, and signed copies by people that you wouldn't typically be able to get, or you'd have to pay a fortune to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, the gamble is, well,
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a chance I might get one of those.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a chance I might also get one of these rare books.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it worth, is it worth me taking that risk for my 10 bucks?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a personal choice, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it's like in anything, whenever you're buying something.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, yeah, I want the fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you get that adrenaline, like that small little adrenaline push.
[SPEAKER_00]: Robert Kirkman actually talked about this lately on a recent interview.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said what did it for him was when people were doing the invisible battle beast books, people were open them there in the store and getting excited for other people when they had got his and getting excited about their stuff and they were doing it and it had this very nice community element that you really don't get in stores too often.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it really did generate some
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, so it's just how they're handled by individual publishers will be how long they're sustained for and how much the market tolerates them.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could ask a million more questions about this and just to bounce off of what you're saying.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think from my perspective that skybound at least is doing it the right way because they have that delightful surprise in there, it's not just a cover, it's not just the same comic, there's something that you had no idea was coming.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you get that, that is a thrill,
[SPEAKER_03]: They had the blind bag for basketball, and it turned out it was a rob number one.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it was awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: I got a lot of pictures.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got a lot more cross, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Isn't that universe now?
[SPEAKER_02]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: On the universe.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in the standard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Different universe.
[SPEAKER_03]: They're going to bring her in.
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't you worry.
[SPEAKER_03]: don't figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I didn't ask you though, you're not super.
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, no, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: You mentioned San Diego Comic Con and I didn't want to ask you about that because that's coming up.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, just to stay on the same sort of thing, I know it's all probably impossible to make blanket statement, but a lot of what people are doing is they're picking up the San Diego Comic Con exclusives, or like you're talking about, you had 800 encountering at this point on your exclusive list.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: How well does that pan out for people?
[SPEAKER_03]: Because from my perspective, it's something like, oh, it's the first appearance of this marvel who now she has a TV show and now it's huge.
[SPEAKER_03]: Or this thing that I didn't expect is the thing that really blew up.
[SPEAKER_03]: Versus, you're going to
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, a limited edition, absolute bad man.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's going to have a certain amount of value.
[SPEAKER_03]: But is that something that's going to maintain the value or potentially grow over time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or is there no way of saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's interesting because if we look over the years, there are, you know, I mean, it's hard to say because back in the day, there are only used to be, you know, 50 to 100 exclusives offered at the Sanio Comic Con.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, every publisher would bring like two or three.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are some of the most valuable books, modern books, are from those big conventions from San Diego and New York, I mean, there's a ductile that is my personal grail that I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have bought that, you know, there's 500 copies, what was it 2011, and they were like cost 15 bucks at that convention, and now it's worth almost a thousand, like $800 raw and high grade, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And more, if it's in the night, if it's graded in an employee, some of the Jay Scott, some of Jay Scott Campbell's rarest books were Conventional exclusives that are worth 1,000 plus raw, you know, and there it's, you know, there's not everything was going to be valuable.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a there's a lot that that has been now today like for example there was we are sending it go four years ago and do you see handed out a Kentucky fried chicken DC crossover so it was like a homage of like the kernel instead of like you know instead of some of like the main characters would be the kernel and
[SPEAKER_00]: in the homage cover and they were just handing these out literally you would see them in the trash and on the floor and one of them There's a green lantern one that sells for 150 raw and you could have got you could probably collect it a stack if you were there So you never know when and how and today it's clear that not everything is going to be worth worth
[SPEAKER_00]: So like even internally when we go through the list like I were going through oh, I just want that cover I was that artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want this cover.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want that without the intention of the flip Now there are people who go in there and do the flip But because they're so much I can't imagine the hustle that they have to do To maintain that like do you really have to have a very tight plan and I have seen people like their race and around preview night
[SPEAKER_02]: trying to buy up as much as they can and then they're out and they're stout they're listing them that night right just because not again in front of it you got to be the first one on or you're not going to go especially with the live streams now people want to just quickly flip them and go on their stream and just kind of start you know moving that one one good thing about cover prices we
[SPEAKER_02]: We, like I said, we create these lists for the convention.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was just looking as we were talking at the 2025 SDCC.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can actually sort that entire convention list by highest Roth values right now in Slab.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm seeing some comics, definitely like, a lot of a maintained value of over at least around $300 to $400, some of them, some of the Slab to ones in out, thousand.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I mean, it is hidden, there is a lot of comics to choose from.
[SPEAKER_02]: But like you start if you if you follow site site cover price and other, you know, reporting sites you'll start hearing the noise around it and then that usually drives even more attention towards those things and then those things usually become the convention favorites and they kind of blow up, you know, but yeah, even even a year later is a lot of these are retaining some value.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the best way to do is like if you're concerned about value, you know, go to the panels.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's we list out on a panel.
[SPEAKER_00]: We give away free books.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can just hit up every panel.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a lot of these books typically are worth $100 plus in the aftermarket.
[SPEAKER_00]: So like you can just go from panel to panel, spend $0, collect these books and walk away with, you know, $1,000 worth of books.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, if that's your intention, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: If there is a way to do it and
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, make it financially sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this is also not a convention that is financially sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good.
[SPEAKER_00]: The fellow rooms costs $5.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your dollars is not more per night.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's, I mean, the, you know, just the food costs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this is not a convention where you're going to win financial.
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I like reading the truth.
[SPEAKER_03]: between the lines and correct my wrong but I think what you guys are saying which if so I definitely agree with is ultimately by what you want if you like the cover, if you like the art, if you like the comic and if it just blows in price, that's great but if not, you have a good piece of art.
[SPEAKER_02]: The secret salsa remix honestly is you buy it because you want to read it and you love a story and it might be worth something.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, some day it might be worth something.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then like, if it works out, amazing, then you have something that in the future you can, or you know, if you're not a flipper or somebody, but if you're just buying it through it, most of my collections are just stuff we bought for a personal collection that we just love.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then now 20 years later, we're like, oh my goodness, invincible is worth $7,000.
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, it's like, how that happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just nice to know that the story that you really fun love with is valued and a lot of people appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what has changed our conventions in a very big way that the anchors, that a little bit more, is that you used to have, now, San Diego, you're going to have a long length for Funko, for Mondo, for Mattel, and Hasbro, for all those excuses that you have to get into a lottery for.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're going to have a long line for spawn, because there's a lot of spawn, fondant fans out there, and those books typically are the most valuable.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what we see that has had a massive boom over the past couple years is people giving a line for artist signatures and a creator signatures like those are now the longest lines at the convention of people just with their stack of books wanting to get them signed by their favorite creators.
[SPEAKER_00]: That does support that, like, okay, people are buying these posts because they want them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're getting them signed by people that they want to get signed by.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're leaving that convention super happy.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're there for the experience now instead of the flip.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when else has the problem sometimes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right now, some history have creators been rewarded so well for their work.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, usually it's like you, you make it and you move on because some of them audit and owns the rights, now you can sell your signature and I can sell that exclusive now you can do a remark and like these guys, you look at their crowdfunding.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, raising six figures, no problem for a lot of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I shouldn't say no problem because a lot of people don't, but like the bigger names are doing very, very well in the industry.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, we're going to have to wrap up at a second, but I did want to give you a chance to plug some of the stuff it said Diego correct me wrong, but you have a panel that is going to be July 25 from 4 to 5 if that's correct.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so we have Lucio Prillo and his wife Carla Cohen both amazing comic book artists.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're doing an interview panel at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe you said like that, yeah, the 25th.
[SPEAKER_02]: where we are going to use cover price to show all of their comics and then have them talk about the origin story of, you know, what was your first along?
[SPEAKER_02]: What was your, you know, what was your favorite?
[SPEAKER_02]: What, why did you go in this direction?
[SPEAKER_02]: How was your artistic style change?
[SPEAKER_02]: We did something similar at C2E2 with Jenny Furisen and it went really, really well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think we're going to start doing this at conventions moving forward.
[SPEAKER_02]: Matt and I joke, it turns out nobody, when Matt and I were doing these because we've been doing this for like eight years.
[SPEAKER_02]: No one wants to hear about cover prices data.
[SPEAKER_02]: They want to star power.
[SPEAKER_02]: So when you start out a year about the data.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You look familiar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's fun because we geek out about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it is kind of fun to show the website and show what it can do with the actual creators.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they a lot of them don't even know what their stuff's worth.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's hilarious because you're like, oh, yeah, now that's $1,000 book and they're like, wait, what, I have like 30 of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: What?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_02]: I threw some of those away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, my God.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, they set freaking out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have a whole presentation on how the aftermarket safe comics and how the aftermarket is such an integral part of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, of modern comics, the fact that it's the only form of print media live is really tied to after market value, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, it's, it's a big conversation because I know a lot of people kind of look at, you know, selling a book as something dirty or negative, but like this is one of those rare.
[SPEAKER_00]: industries and you dare call it a hobby.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't feel like a bit anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: But one of the few industries where you can pay for itself if you do it correctly, where you can find a book that you don't care about in your collection, it's worth x amount of dollars sell it by the things you do care about.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is and how it should be.
[SPEAKER_02]: The other thing at SDCC, we're going to be interviewing people at the Eisner's list this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to be doing kind of red carpety stuff over there.
[SPEAKER_02]: If people are interested, please follow our YouTube channel, our Instagram will be posting a lot of the clips from the interviews and stuff there.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're just trying to do a lot of fun stuff.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want an exclusive list that is probably, I dare say, the best in the world of
[SPEAKER_02]: because we put hundreds and hundreds of hours of effort into actually making it happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Go to cover price.com and you'll be able to get a full list, add it to your wish list, see what's training at Comic Con and then follow the channel to actually see what's going on life.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_03]: John, Matt, thank you so much for coming out again.
[SPEAKER_03]: I could talk about this for hours.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is awesome and really fascinating.
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for your time and have fun at San Diego.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome, thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: We appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll let's just turn back to number one There is even I get I get I get I want to be There's no gonna mind with their promises And it's done now that it's done now that it's done now that it's done now that it's done now that it's done
[SPEAKER_01]: They sit on crappy couches, and they let the secret leak And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, they're short, they're speaking So grab your ring, hammer, don't relay, or it'll fail