Comment Policy
Offensive, harrassing or baiting comments will not be tolerated and will be deleted at my discretion.
Comment spam will be deleted.
Please leave a name and either a valid web-site or e-mail address with comments. Comments left without either a valid web-site or e-mail address may be deleted. Atom Feed LiveJournal SyndicationLOLcats feed
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Unscientific Data
I recently had the opportunity to go through one of our customer's pull-boxes and make a tally of everything in it. This is a customer who buys almost everything from the "front of the catalog," or in other words, almost every title published by Dark Horse, DC, Image and Marvel. Due to his current work situation, he hasn't been in to pick up his comics for about 22 weeks (we knew this beforehand, otherwise we wouldn't have let this many books go unpurchased for so long). But I thought it would be interesting to share with the world a breakdown of price points from the Big 4 publishers, via a "one of everything" customer.
Price
Quantity
1.75
2
2.25
103
2.50
72
2.95
56
2.99
180
3.50
28
3.95
3
3.99
11
4.95
2
5.95
3
5.99
2
6.95
1
The $2.25 books are about evenly split between Marvel and DC. Both the $1.75 books are from Marvel, for a title which has since raised its price to $2.25. All of the $2.50 (save one) and most of the $2.95 books are from DC. All of the $2.99 books are Marvel, Dark Horse and Image. The $3.50 books are mostly Marvel titles, with several issues of one DC mini-series. All of the more expensive books with prices that end in $.95 are from DC, and the ones ending in $.99 are from Marvel.
There are a couple of things worth noting here. First of all, there are still a good number of $2.25 books coming out, but more and more books are coming out at higher prices. I can't remember the last time a Marvel title launched with a price of less than $2.99. There's a lot wider scale of prices at DC. The mid-point price of $2.50 is only there on DC titles and Spawn. But DC has a much wider range of prices. The most expensive book on the list is from DC. Marvel's most expensive regular title is $3.50. There are also a lot of specials and one-shots on the list, especially given that this list only covers about half a year's worth of purchases. There are 19 of them, ranging in price from $3.99 to $6.95.
So, there you go, completely unscientific data. Make no assumptions regarding the health of the comics market from this information, nor generalize regarding the policies of various publishers from it.