Key Collector, FOC and You ... A hobbyist tale.

Greetings Readers,

I thought it best to build off my first post to better elaborate on the value of using Key Collector as your planning hub. As we all know proper planning pays off in the long run. I'm all about finding ways to avoid paying full cover price when single issue costs are steadily rising. Even worse when you pick up a new issue just to discover you previously nabbed it when you get home. My goal for this post will be to help direct your collection efforts in a way that is efficient as well as cost effective.

This is where we begin making our logical, non emotionally driven decisions in choosing what issues we want. It's way too easy to pick up a reactionary book and question why later. Just like going to the grocery store hungry, if you familiarize yourself with all the offerings for that week / month you're less likely to knee jerk buy an issue you didn't take the time to research.

Let's cover some basics first. FYI - I yoinked this from the following site but its a good reference: https://www.comicreleases.com

Common abbreviations

• TP/TPB: Trade Paperback

• SC: Softcover (like a TPB)

• HC: Hardcover

• FC: Full Color

• DM: Direct Market. This refers primarily to comic book stores or online shops that order via one of the large comic distributors.

• FOC: Final Order Cutoff – The time an order has to be submitted by the vendor.

• RES: Resolicit – A new listing for a product that was previously solicited in PREVIEWS or New to Order, and which is being listed anew since the original Solicitation was cancelled either by the vendor or by Diamond.

• O/A: Offered Again – This designates an item that has been previously solicited and released, but is being solicited again.

For this walk through, I'm going to get you into buying all your comics before FOC. FOC stands for Final Order Cutoff. If you're not 100% familiar with the term or just heard it in passing, this is when the large distributors take in orders for issues before they get printed. The goal here is to try and prevent overprinting or underprinting of issues. There is an FOC ordering deadline that ends about 3 weeks before an issue is set to be shipped. Shipped as in arrival for any given Wed, to meet that week's new comic book day.

This is why your local comic book shop is always hounding you to start a subscription box because they have to get their numbers in prior to this deadline and they don't want play the over/under game any more than the big distributors. All in the name of saving money. If a distributor prints too many issues or a LCBS orders over their local demand, that's wasted dollars given those books seem to find their way into the discount bins. Don't order enough books and that was money left on the table, provided the after market sellers love this scenario and will pillage your wallets later.

Lucky for us we don't have to own a comic book store to put in early FOC orders. There are a couple sites that allow us to work around the big name online or local comic book stores. Even better when we use a site that specializes in just FOC ordering they typically offer nice discounts because we're helping them be efficient with their ordering. I'm pretty sure LCBS's don't give much of, if any, a discount for having a sub box so the upside, other than you not missing an issue, is you help your local comic shop stay in business.

The down side to directly ordering your issues at FOC is the need to order them at least 3 weeks in advance to beat the deadline. When you first start ordering your issues via the FOC market you won't get your first box for at least a couple weeks, possibly months based on how early you pre-order. This is when tracking what you've purchased really is a must. I'll do a whole talk on tracking your inventory efficiently in another post.

All these future FOC release issues are preceded by a solicitation. Solicitations are short paragraphs put out a few months prior to an issue coming out that allow us prospectors a glimpse into what an issue has in store for us. Additionally, the solicitations will typically show the issues main cover and variants, yet some vars ride the pine all the way up to FOC and can even change or get canceled. Keeping dibs on issue solicitations is a healthy way to know when a big event is taking place or a new character is going to be introduced. AKA your key books. Sample:

So by this time your thinking 'uggg, this seems like homework'... and your right so lets work smarter and not harder. Let's use the tools at our disposal to efficiently gather our issue intel and execute a plan that saves us money!

Step ichi:

With all the above said let's open up our Key Collector app / page and create a target package for our hunt. I'm going to plug for a subscription to Key Collector once again. It's 40 dollar for the year but super handy. The bread and butter of their app is letting them read all the solicitations for us and we run with the TL;DR versions. If it's a Key book they will tag it. I use this insight as my first priority when looking through the FOC offerings.

I touched on using 'Future Keys' in my last post but the gist is Key Collector lays out all the week by week releases and the Key issues that will be coming out. Once again you can toggle the key view to include non-keys and see all the books for said weeks as well. The number of key specific books is normally pretty short so I just take note of them. Keep in mind FOC ordering means looking ahead a few weeks or more based on when you're putting your order in. I like to place my orders when all the new books are first offered, this way I have plenty of time to go back and make modifications to the order if necessary. Most of the time I get my order in and just let it ride.

Number B:

Remember how I said there are sites that let us purely purchase before FOC, IE pre-order. You can do your homework and find one you like but the top one in my book is DCBS.

I think its google blurb speaks for itself, but that's using the classic 'up to' lingo. The average comic savings is 30-40 percent off cover price per issue. Each month I look forward to my ordering day when a majority of the new books emerge for the first time on the site. It seems around the 10th to 12th of each month DCBS gives you a fresh rotation of the new issues coming out. You will need to create a login for the site and it costs you nothing other than the price of the books you order... common you know I had to clarify or someone would rocky road that statement. From here it's pretty straight forward. There's a preorder tab and you just walk down the list for each of the big comic name brands. Pro-tip: Set your items per page to 100.

Of course the big three are DC, Marvel, Image. If you don't find the publisher your looking for try the "Other" category, you'll find stuff like zenescope etc stuff like that in there. If your not trying to just walk the pages to find what your after you can use the search field in the upper left to hunt specific titles or artist. Walking the pages you see all the variants along with the incentives. Keep in mind incentives are not the same thing as exclusives. Incentives are limited variants that are only given out if a buyer meets the requirement in terms of number of issues purchased. IE a 1:5 incentive means for every 5th book you ordered of an issue you get a variant cover. The incentive purchase only applies when you buy from the printer, not if we buy 10 copies of a single issue through DCBS. That's why DCBS offers them for sale because they are the actual buyer and supplier. The discounted price is our incentive. DCBS typically charges 30 for a 1:25 which is around what a LCBS will charge maybe a bit higher so I only buy incentives off this site when I think its going to be a hard one to get at a better price locally. This is where doing our homework can really pay off, if the incentive is for a 1st appearance or a hot artist drawing a cover for a smaller comic company IE potential low print counts. I'm on it. For example a series created by Dan Panosian had a 1:25 cover by Adam Hughes. There wasn't a lot of noise about the series and I happened to notice Hughes did the cover so I grabbed it for 30 on DCBS.

15 watchers on an unsigned 9.8 for 195, not bad but I also got mine signed by Hughes and Panosian. There are some other techniques I'll use in a future post to help spot rariants(yes, this is a word... given I made it up).

Another cool offering by DCBS (if you're lazy) they provide multiple pre-shipping bag and board options (not tapped), each around .40 cents per B/B which is high imo. I typically go with silver age bags and boards that I buy on eBay by the 1000's. Silver age bag/boards give a nice edge clearance for the comic inside. I have to buy bags / boards maybe once every other year. The brands I've used and like for the money are these two, minus the MaxPro shown are thick and I've only used the normal with no complaints so the thick might be even better?

For boards I use the same companies just look for these attributes: 24 point THICK precision cut, Acid-free, coated one side, 7 X 10 1/2

Ok back on topic: Last couple tid bits about DCBS, you're going to run into cover images that are not confirmed yet and they show up as default 'no image' fillers. These start to be solidified as time gets closer to the actual FOC release for said issues. You also don't get charged by DCBS for your order until FOC hits and they are locked in order wise, so you have time to go back into your order number until that point to make changes. They ship your books super secure in a stout box, I've yet to get maybe the slightest corner ding since I stopped having them do my bag and boarding.

But wait your like DD, what if I miss the DCBS window for the books I wanted. Well you're in luck we have a plan B, there's a site that's a bit more forgiving in terms of timeframe up until FOC with a similar discount. With a catch, this web site looks great but it's a buggy mess. I also prefer the simplified UI of DCBS but don't let me delay any further.

Section 3:

Let's go visit our friends at Midtown comics. Midtown is like the relief pitcher when your star goes down. We'd prefer to have our starter on the mound but we have faith our backup can get the job done. One added benefit to Midtown is their constant deals on back issues and man are there a lot of them. Great place to get a missed issue or complete a run. You can also find older incentive's for sale at a decent price.

I'll admittedly have to say I haven't used their site since I got locked out of it. The site wasn't accepting my password so I tried to do an SQL injection test check in the login prompt and got a hard locked out message from their cloud flare so... ye be warned.... Also ... ye be warned... you may find yourself wasting hours going through page after page of those back issues, just be mindful to go into that section already knowing what you're after else you'll find yourself with a cart full of impulse purchases which defeats the purpose of this post.

Last but not least, if you errored with a book you'll have to roll the dice and just let the time pass. More than likely you'll find the issue you've missed in a discount bin at your LCBS. This is when FOC over / under comes full circle but be prepared to only find the crappiest variant of the issue possible. Worst case head on over to eBay and scrape for a bargain but watch for those tricky butt heads that sell a book for 5 bucks but charge 20 shipping.

There's always room to elaborate on more techniques but that's a tale for another time.

Until the next one, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and safe travels.

DD