New York Comic Con runs from today, 8 October, to Sunday 11 October at the Javits Center. The exhibitor announcements are out, and they divide cleanly into two groups: the companies that said how many of a thing they made, and the companies that said “while supplies last”.
That distinction is the whole of this piece. An edition size is a fact a collector can plan a queue around. “While supplies last” is a sentence that is true of everything and tells you nothing, and most of the floor is saying it.
The exclusives with a published edition size
Two exhibitors put numbers on their items.
Monogram International gave an edition size for all six of its exclusives, and they are small.
| Item | Price | Made |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. Doom Bank | $50 | 252 |
| Absolute Batman 3D Foam Bag Clip, 3-piece set | $25 | 260 sets |
| KPop Demon Hunters HUNTR/X 3D Foam Bag Clip, 3-piece set | $25 | 260 |
| One Piece Pin & Lanyard Set | $20 | 504 sets |
| New York Knicks 3D Foam Bag Clip, 6-piece set | $50 | 756 sets |
| KPop Demon Hunters Lanyard & Pins Set | $20 | 2,000 |
The Doom bank at 252 pieces is the smallest run among the exclusives covered here. We have not surveyed every exhibitor, so it is not a claim about the whole floor. The KPop Demon Hunters lanyard set is the largest of the six at 2,000, and it is also the one to be least precious about: the same set was a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive earlier in the year.
CGC published runs for two of its three convention covers. Absolute Batman #24 has a Jock cover with a blue background and a Dexter Soy cover with a red background, each limited to 1,000 copies. The third, a Dungeon Crawler Carl #0 “Day Variant” drawn by Doug Mahnke and coloured by David Baron, carries no stated run.
Those covers are not sold. Each is free with an eligible grading submission, one per person per submission per show, while supplies last. So the 1,000 figure is a ceiling on how many exist, not on how many are for sale, and reaching one means handing over a book to be graded.
Free, with something asked in return
Most of the giveaways have a condition attached, and the conditions vary in how much they cost you.
- CGC gives a limited-edition NYCC pin to anyone who submits, one per submitter per show. Card submissions also carry a bonus: one of two CGC x Mercari Mike promo cards, and a One Piece Cybercel card, each one per person per show.
- Bandai Namco will give a Gundam Card Game promo card — GUNDAM ROGUE ORBIT, EXBP-029 EX Base — to customers spending $50 or more on Gundam merchandise at its booth, while supplies last. The company states plainly that receiving one is not guaranteed.
- Bandai Namco's Godzilla booth is handing out free collectible pins in eight styles of varying rarity, with no purchase mentioned.
- The Pop Insider booth gives an Entertainment Earth tote bag to the first 500 players of its Tap2Win promotion each day. First 500 is a number you can act on: arrive early.
- Walmart runs The Collector's Quest, where rolling a die can win one of five exclusive comics: Doom #1, Batman #497, VeeFriends Special Edition C, Last Yojimbo Ashcan #1 and Terminal #3. No quantities are published.
Early rather than exclusive
Walmart's headline item is a Hasbro G.I. Joe Classified Series Retro Cardback Collaborative Lara Croft figure, a 6-inch release it is selling at the show ahead of a wider release on 1 November. Walmart describes a limited quantity at the booth without saying how many, and the figure can also be preordered on Walmart.com during the show.
Worth being clear about what that is. It is three weeks early, not convention-only, and a figure you can preorder from your seat is not a figure worth queueing for. Walmart's genuinely store-exclusive items at the booth — a DC McFarlane Collector Edition two-pack of Batman and Spawn with fabric capes, a Dawn of Justice Knightmare Batman, a Banpresto Godzilla Minus One art vignette and a Culture Fly One Piece collector box — carry no published quantities either.
The booths that published no numbers
DC is at booth #4365 with exclusive foil comics, a 5-inch Absolute Batman Battleaxe magnet pin, a Lanterns replica ring and a Lanterns replica power battery keychain. Every one of them is “while supplies last”, with no prices and no quantities given. DC also requires digital queueing for eligible shop purchases and for some creator signings, so the queue begins on a phone rather than on the floor.
Bandai Namco's Tamashii Nations booth will sell event exclusives without naming them. A Godzilla Scramble event exclusive is mentioned with no name, price or quantity. Funko is at booth #4515 with what the trade coverage describes as a slate of exclusives and limited-edition collectibles, none of which are named.
None of that means the items are not worth having. It means nobody outside those companies can tell you what you are queueing for or how long the queue needs to be.
Times worth knowing
Three things on the schedule have a stated time rather than a day.
- The Pop Insider raffle runs at 6:45 p.m. each show day, with Doll Haus of Dread dolls from JAKKS Pacific, DesignerCon exclusives and a Craniacs skate deck signed by Joe Simko among the prizes.
- Walmart's signings: Arthur Adams at noon and Gary Vaynerchuk at 3 p.m. today; Todd McFarlane at 10:30 a.m. and Greg Capullo at 4 p.m. on Friday; Stan Sakai at 2 p.m. on Saturday.
- Joe Simko signs Craniacs cards at 1 p.m. on Sunday.
Where the sources disagree
Monogram's booth number is given as #1202 by the San Diego Comic-Con Unofficial Blog and as #1201 by The Toy Book. We have not been able to reconcile the two, so check the show's own floor plan before walking to either.
Walmart's own announcement gives no booth number at all; The Toy Book places it at #2821. CGC is at booth #2805, with its Signature Series and JSA desk at #HB906. Bandai Namco occupies three: #2619 for Gundam, Tamagotchi, Gashapon and Godzilla, #2417 for Tamashii Nations, and #2319 for Bandai Namco Entertainment.
How this was put together
Every figure here is one the company published itself, in its own announcement, and is linked below. Where a company did not state a price, an edition size or a booth, this says so rather than estimating one. Nothing here is a valuation, and nothing here is a claim about what any of it will be worth afterwards.
Quantities quoted before a show are what the maker intended to bring. They are not an audit, items get held back and allocations change, and a figure published in September is not a promise about Sunday afternoon.
