Desperate Times

December 22, 2008

Want to know why the Japanese model of selling anthologies without back issues won’t work in the US?  This ebay auction is a pretty good indication.  With 2 hours to go, the winning bid is $91.00 for Yen Plus Volume 1 issue 2, which started out at $8.99.  Such outrageous extremes wouldn’t be happening if Yen Press had thought things through and had a plan for back issues.  I think this is a good indication of how uneven the distribution of Yen Plus is in brick and mortar stores.  I don’t think anyone in this economy would pay such a price if they were so readily available.  And Collectors want their collection complete, graphic novels coming out later or not.

The auction ended, by the way, at $102.50.  That seller is going to have a happy Christmas.  I hope it was really worth it to the buyer.

5 Comments

  • Lissa December 22, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Wow, that’s really something! I was just looking into what some of my out-of-print manga books were going for on eBay but I never thought an anthology as new as Yen Plus would already be going for such high prices.

  • Adam December 24, 2008 at 3:30 am

    Maybe the problem is that Yen Plus issue 2 came out so closely after issue 1 that many people just overlooked it?

  • Tiamat's Disciple December 24, 2008 at 5:00 am

    Doesn’t quite work that way though, both issues 1 and 2 sold on ebay for near $100 as well, and this was while they were still readily available in stores.

    It is possible to get back orders though, a friend of mine recently picked up the series and he was able to buy all five issues easily, including 4 back order issues.

    Hell i’ve seen volumes of Shojo Beat going for similar prices, and they’re available for back order as well.

  • Laura January 16, 2009 at 1:50 am

    It’s really ridiculous to see that someone would pay that much for a magazine that is still so new. If they would have done some searching they would have found out that you can still get most back issues at the regular price, instead of going on a bidding war on ebay.

    From what I’ve seen so far is that issue 1 is hard to come by and issue 3 is no longer available anywhere (which is driving me nuts since it’s the only one I’m missing).

    Yen Press needs to get with making back issues available, because no matter how good they are, their price is relatively high and people want to know they can get a back issue with out the hassle of searching the entire internet and every comic book store in their area.

  • 2tmanga February 9, 2009 at 9:31 pm

    Nice…I love it.

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