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Anyone know the story behind Wildcats #1 Gold and other Image gold books?
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33 posts in this topic

Picked up a Wildcats #1 Gold (signed in silver by Jim Lee) and couldn't find much information online about the book.

Overstreet states that there is a regular Gold and a signed Gold. I believe Jim Lee signed a bunch because the backs of all the signed one has silver ink transfers from where he signed and stacked the books. This is consistent across eBay images for the books signed in silver.

The questions I have are:

- What is the print run of this book (and other Gold books of the era)?

- How were they distributed to retailers? 1 per store ala the Platinum Spidey #1? Or as Incentive Variants for ordering XXX number of copies?

Does anyone know? Google searches haven't turn up much info.

Also, does anyone have information on the print run of the Another Universe Variants of Battle Chasers #1 (Red Monika Gold variant).

Thanks in advance.

Edited by Shawn Low
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The golds were a wildcats 1 retailer incentive. Get 1 gold cover per xxx number of books ordered. The signed version was 1 per xxx books ordered also but a higher order amount was required to get that one. Don't remember the allocation amount on either

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15 hours ago, Oat Willy1 said:

The golds were a wildcats 1 retailer incentive. Get 1 gold cover per xxx number of books ordered. The signed version was 1 per xxx books ordered also but a higher order amount was required to get that one. Don't remember the allocation amount on either

Thanks. I'm still trying to find out what the ratio is and hope someone here knows!

The print run of Wildcats #1 is estimated to be at least a million copies. Even if this was a 1:100 ratio, there are 10k copies out there? Anecdotally, they seem rarer than that?

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Just now, fastballspecial said:
1 hour ago, valiantman said:

It's likely that the Image gold issues are around 10,000 copies.  It's also possible that there are cases of them somewhere, which are waiting to be (re-)discovered... but it has been 25 years so who knows. :bigsmile:

agree they were all over the place in the 90s.

At the time, they were getting about 1/2 the price of Valiant golds and the number of Deathmate golds (the Valiant/Image crossover) was at least 10,000 (more like 20,000 golds for Deathmate Prologue)... so I'd be very surprised if the Image golds were less than 10,000 copies since they didn't hit the same prices as the 5,000 golds for Valiant and since the Valiant/Image crossover used a higher number than the 5,000.

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On 11/7/2017 at 2:32 PM, Oat Willy1 said:

The golds were a wildcats 1 retailer incentive. Get 1 gold cover per xxx number of books ordered. The signed version was 1 per xxx books ordered also but a higher order amount was required to get that one. Don't remember the allocation amount on either

 

18 hours ago, ygogolak said:

Nobody said they were (shrug)

Maybe I misunderstood Willy's post? 

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10k seems to be in line with Gold/Platinum variants from the 90s. 

- Spider-Man #1 Platinum
- Venom Lethal Protector #1 Gold
- Death of Superman #75 Platinum
- Valiant books

Maybe the answer to the sign/unsigned version is simply that stores which ordered above a certain amount got a signed copy and those who ordered less than said threshold got the unsigned versions.

The unsigned versions are actually going to grade out better as they won't have the silver in smudges on the back.

Finally, Anyone know the print run of the Another Universe Variants of Battle Chasers #1 (Red Monika Gold variant) and the Battle Chasers Prelude (Gold)?

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On 11/6/2017 at 6:53 AM, Shawn Low said:

Picked up a Wildcats #1 Gold (signed in silver by Jim Lee) and couldn't find much information online about the book.

Overstreet states that there is a regular Gold and a signed Gold. I believe Jim Lee signed a bunch because the backs of all the signed one has silver ink transfers from where he signed and stacked the books. This is consistent across eBay images for the books signed in silver.

The questions I have are:

- What is the print run of this book (and other Gold books of the era)?

- How were they distributed to retailers? 1 per store ala the Platinum Spidey #1? Or as Incentive Variants for ordering XXX number of copies?

Does anyone know? Google searches haven't turn up much info.

Also, does anyone have information on the print run of the Another Universe Variants of Battle Chasers #1 (Red Monika Gold variant).

Thanks in advance.

ooo, look! A thread I missed!

The print runs for most of these books isn't public, and are mostly guesses.

Spiderman #1 plat, for example, is, according to the letter from Salicrup, is 10,000...but there's nothing preventing that from not being the case. Venom #1 Gold says 11,000 on the inside front cover. 

These books were distributed by various methods...usually 1 per store. They WERE NOT incentive variants, since incentive variants would not exist for another 10-15 years (2005-ish.) 

Why didn't incentive variants exist...? Because there were MULTIPLE distributors at the time, and it wasn't possible to collate among these various distributors for orders. That does NOT mean that they weren't given to retailers based on number of copies ordered...but that was a decision that individual distributors made, because they were the gateways between the publishers and retailers, and often the distributors decided how to distribute these books themselves, independently of the publishers. But they were NOT incentive variants, in the sense that "you order this many copies, you get 1 of this incentive." That didn't exist until the mid 00s.

And, while DF gave you approximate print runs on their COAs, AU was notoriously tight-lipped. There's nothing public about the print runs of AU variants like Battle Chasers #1, Crimson #1, Spiderman Chapter One #1 Gold, etc.

At the time of publication, there was two versions of Wildcats #1 Gold produced, a signed and an unsigned. These were available through various retailers throughout the country, and were priced to the tune of $50-$100. There is nothing in contemporary literature that definitively answers how they were initially distributed. 

Edited by RockMyAmadeus
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That said, the numbers bandied about were "5,000." The sub-distributor that I worked for in 1992-1993, for example, received copies for every X copies he ordered. Maxx #1 Glow, for example, he got 1 for every 10 or 25 he ordered. He had maybe 10-15 of them.

But these are just guesses.

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16 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

That said, the numbers bandied about were "5,000." The sub-distributor that I worked for in 1992-1993, for example, received copies for every X copies he ordered. Maxx #1 Glow, for example, he got 1 for every 10 or 25 he ordered. He had maybe 10-15 of them.

But these are just guesses.

Knowing that there were at least 250,000 copies of those Image books and using your higher estimate of 1 for every 25, then there would be at least 10,000.  Using your lower example (1 for every 10), there would be at least 25,000.  Some of those early Image books sold a lot more than 250,000 copies, so I'm still confident (two years after I was part of this discussion) that 10,000 (or more) is a good estimate for full-sized Image premiums.  Ashcans are a different (and literally smaller) animal.

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1 hour ago, valiantman said:

Knowing that there were at least 250,000 copies of those Image books and using your higher estimate of 1 for every 25, then there would be at least 10,000.  Using your lower example (1 for every 10), there would be at least 25,000.  Some of those early Image books sold a lot more than 250,000 copies, so I'm still confident (two years after I was part of this discussion) that 10,000 (or more) is a good estimate for full-sized Image premiums.  Ashcans are a different (and literally smaller) animal.

Remember: these are total guesses. We know as much as we do about the Valiant golds/plats/variants precisely because Valiant was so open about how many they made. Image wasn't so open. And what made the process far more complicated was the presence of multiple distributors, each ordering from the publishers, and each handling distribution their own way. For example, the sub-distributor I worked for, who distributed mainly to sports card stores in the Bay Area, gave zero of these premiums to his customers; he kept them all for himself. If he did it, there's nothing preventing those further up the chain from doing the same thing. I have no doubt that some of them converted them into "1 per store" rewards, and kept the rest. The internet consisted of alt.rec.arts.comics, and that was functionally it...and no one else in the industry press talked about it (almost certainly because they benefited from it, particularly Wizard.)

I cannot stress this enough: none of these books were incentives to order. That concept simply didn't exist in comics at the time, and it would have been logistically nearly impossible, because of the existence (until late 1994) of these multiple distributors. That's different from what DID exist, which was rewards from publishers. Spiderman #1 Plat was a reward, as was Venom #1 Gold. There was no reward for X-Force #1, and the reward for X-Men were the silly silver and gold hologram cards. Superman #75 Plat was a reward, as were most of DC's premiums and limited editions from these early years (Swamp Thing #140, Death: THCOL #1, Extremist #1, Jonah Hex #1, etc.) 

A question I still have is how did publishers like Marvel figure out how to send out books like Spiderman #1 Plat to stores? Where did they get this info? Did they ask their (multiple) distributors for names and address lists? It's not like they could get on Google. With several thousand stores and retailer accounts in existence, it must have been a hell of a job figuring out who got what, all pre-internet.

Back to numbers produced, some of these books were self-identified, like the Ultraverse "Ultra Limited 5000." While "5,000" was almost certainly not precise, it's probably close....that is, not actually 10,000 (or more.) The aforementioned Spidey #1 was identified in the letter as having had a 10,000 print run. Superman #75 Plat was numbered (to 10,000) with some that aren't numbered. But most of them were not.

It is also important to mention that a lot of these types of books were still at Image's Orange and Fullerton offices well into the early years of the 21st century; that's how the Jay brothers, for example, made their money...buying these no-longer-wanted premium books that were 1-8 years old. I ended up with perhaps 30 copies of Maxx #1 Glow that way, along with long boxes of other variants, all for $1 each. But what was missing were a lot of the 1992-1993 Image "golds": I never bought a Wildcats #1 gold, for example, or Brigade #1, Supreme #1, Youngblood #0, Youngblood Strikefile #1, Wildcats Sourcebook #1 Gold (yes...the madness was high), etc. Lots of Maxx stuff, but very little else going back that far. Lots and lots of Witchblade variants, Darkness variants, Tomb Raider/Witchblade, Aria, etc.

But then I also bought 600 copies each of Brigade #1, Supreme #1, YB #0, and YBSF #1 from Steve Schanes...the erstwhile publisher of Pacific Comics and Blackthorne...from his house in San Diego in the summer of 2000. How did he come to be in possession of these books? I suspect he was still, in 1992-1993, in the distribution business, and just kept these for himself. Otherwise, he'd have no reason to have so many.

So were there 10,000 Wildcats #1 golds...? Eh. Hard to say. It was the first Image premium, and one of the very first premiums in all of comics. Prior to Wildcats #1 gold, you had, essentially, Spidey #1 Plat. Yes, you had gold second printings from Marvel, but they weren't premiums, of course. A&A #0 Gold and EW #1 Gold were functionally contemporaneous, so they wouldn't have been an influence. Spawn had no premiums (yet.) Youngblood had no premiums (yet.) Wildcats was the third Image title. It really was uncharted territory, for the entire comics publishing industry. The first Dark Horse premium was Robocop vs. Terminator #1 Platinum (May of 1992.) The first DC premium was Superman #75 Plat! 

And the biggest problem with these books is that they weren't announced, and they didn't come out according to any schedule. The internet just wasn't a source people used yet. You had to "hear it from a friend who heard it from a friend" that these books even existed. And they were treated as gifts for RETAILERS more often than not, who then promptly put them on their walls for outrageous prices. The books just showed up, with no announcement, and no fanfare. As for Image and Wildcats, they never said anything in writing about how many they made. But, they aren't rare, by any means. 

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I think for Wildcats #1, it was an incentive ratio, and I recall it was 1:100. I really wanted one, so placed an order for 100 copies of #1, just to get the #1 Gold, which was signed. I don't recall if the Gold unsigned was an option or not.

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20 hours ago, Jeffreykli said:

I think for Wildcats #1, it was an incentive ratio, and I recall it was 1:100. I really wanted one, so placed an order for 100 copies of #1, just to get the #1 Gold, which was signed. I don't recall if the Gold unsigned was an option or not.

Incentive ratios didn't exist in 1992. There was no way to order this that way. It's possible, even probable, that Image gave a copy for every 100 copies ordered, but there was no way to place a "qualifying order" to obtain a gold. 

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