Saturday, March 17, 2007
More on Wizard and their eBay shenanigans
Longtime comic book retailer and columnist Brian Hibbs touched upon Wizard’s recent smarmy Captain America #25 eBay activity in his most recent Tilting at Windmills column on Newsarama. Brian writes:
Finally, I think there’s some very real concern about Wizard magazine having advance knowledge of this event (and, as a print magazine, clearly they had to have that information weeks ago), and it either accidentally, or very much on purpose leaking to their sales arm, and their affiliated retail stores, giving them a clear market advantage.
Brian was able to sum up very nicely what Wizard did and why it’s so scummy. He goes on to add:
Wizard is not doing anything, that I am aware of, that is illegal. The comics aftermarket isn’t a regulated one. However, I believe it is deeply unethical to report on news and prices while at the same time selling items that can capitalize on that news and those prices.
He’s right that Wizard doesn’t seem to have done anything actually outright illegal. It’s not like Wizard did anything unethical or illegal with anything having to do with Wall Street.
What Wizard did was Insider eBaying. They used information someone at Marvel told them because they are the de facto Forth Estate of the funny book world and made some serious PayPal money from it. Scrooge McDuck would be so proud.
Wizard needs to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. Does it want to be the pinnacle of comic book journalism or does it want to sell $4 comic books for $50 on eBay the day they come? I honestly don’t see how they can do both. Not if they want people to respect what they do or what they represent. The more this type of crap goes on, the less they seem like a credible magazine and more like the typical fleamarket vendor. Only without the grotesque body oder.
Then again, if they were looking for respect they would have hired Augie De Blieck as Editor-in-Chief and not the guy that ran FMH into the ground. Not that FMH didn’t deserve to be run into the ground.
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Much as I hate Wizard, they aren’t the only guilty ones. I went to a funnybook shop on Saturday, and they were selling the same issue for $10. It wasn’t even a week old. That’s so unethical. I hate it when comic shops do that shit. Instead of the average comic reader buying it, this shop is catering to some asshole who wanders in because he saw a report on CNN. This shop probably pissed off a regular customer for an extra seven bucks. So much for loyalty to your customers. Yet another reason to utilize DCBS.
Maybe the funnybook shop selling them for $10 a pop got their issues from Wizard Universe. If you look at Wizard’s auctions on the day the book came out, most of them were 10 and 25 issue lots. They were either all Buy It Now type auctions or they were one-day auctions. I don’t think it was readers buying the multiple lots.
I think it was comic shops.
The shop you went to might have sold the issues to their regular customers at cover price. I don’t have Captain America on my pull list, but my shop owner still put a copy in my stack.