SDCC Preview Day Or How I Learned People Buy Exclusives for a Free Trip

Comic Con began in San Diego with the doors being swung open to the teeming horde of fans who waited to get in. But our story doesn’t begin today. It begins back on Tuesday July 7, with a man named Anas. You don’t know him; he isn’t a celebrity. He’s just a normal guy from Chicago who also happened to be the first guy to get in line for his Comic Con badge. Being first is important because the closer you are to the front the more likely you are to be able to purchase the coveted exclusive items that vendors offer for sale only at San ‎Diego Comic Con.

He started lining up around 2PM on Tuesday; a full 26 hours before the doors were ‎scheduled to open. He was looking for a very rare limited Batman action figure… but not everyone lines up because they’re a collector. They line up because exclusives are big business, sometimes fetching upwards of five to six times their original price on the resale market.

For example, a Batman v. Superman two pack of Funko vinyl figures has been listed on eBay for $264.99, more than ten times its original twenty five dollar price tag. Now of course, what someone wants and what someone is willing to pay are two very different things; but it does illustrate the potential value of a highly sought after exclusive. Hasbro, Funko, and LEGO SDCC exclusives are so sought after that they’ve implemented a lottery system. Spending 26 hours in line doesn’t even guarantee you an item; only a chance to win the opportunity to buy one.

Last year Bandai sold a limited edition replica of the green power ranger’s dagger. It was a lottery item and at the convention (on the same day it was released), some booths had marked it up to $500. In fact, one booth at Fan Expo in Toronto is dedicated solely to reselling some of the surplus exclusives from San Diego, marking up last years Deadpool Mr. Potatohead from $20 US to $40 Canadian.

Score enough of these exclusives and you can effectively pay off a large portion of your trip… if you are willing to part with them.

After 27 hours in line, disappointingly, Anas ended up not getting his limited edition Batman action figure. A number of retailers that were supposed to have them (their locations were tweeted by Jim Lee himself) claimed not to have gotten them at all. Since they were limited to 150 for the entire convention, it is possible they were kept in a drawer for aftermarket eBay resale. He’ll never know, but after trying four of the locations that Jim Lee tweeted, he gave up when the answer was the same from each one.

You might be asking, how did Anas and I meet? Well, I was fourth in line behind him. I started lining up almost right behind him at 6PM, a full 24 hours before preview night was scheduled to open.

I am obsessed with Funko pop vinyls and this convention had some very cool exclusive ones, so I waited. After getting shuffled through various lines in the process of getting us into the exhibit hall, I ended up being third in line to be the first group to enter.

I was stoked.

When they let us in I walked (never ran, that would be against the rules) as fast as I could to the Funko booth. Only one person behind me got ahead of me, but that was okay because this year Funko was only selling one of each type of figure per person.

However, when I turned the corner, to my horror I discovered two hundred people ahead of me. Since there were only two people ahead of me in line, I found it curious.

Undeterred (but seriously disillusioned) I got into the line behind people I’d never seen waiting outside. After twenty minutes, I was asked to leave the line because it was too long; it had become unmanageable and the Fire Marshal was going to shut it down so they cut it off well in front of where I’d come in. I left with no exclusives to show for my 24 hours in line.

The rumour is that exhibitors, people with booths in the hall, buy an attendee badge in addition to their exhibitor one. They are already in the hall at their booths before the convention opens; they switch their badges to appear as an attendee as the doors open and voila, they are first in line for exclusives, which they will buy and then possibly mark up 100% and resell on eBay.

That rumour (which was the belief of the of majority of the people I was in line with when we reconvened afterward and shared our disappointment) is one potential reason.

We weren’t the only ones disappointed.

A man named Omar was second in line and wanted the Devastator Transformer figure from Hasbro. By the time he got to the booth, the line had already been cut off, even though no one had been in front of him upon entry aside from one person.

Regardless of why this happened, it is a clear example of how valuable these convention exclusives are and the lengths some people will go to obtain them.

This is meant as a cautionary tale: there’s gold at San Diego Comic Con if you can get your hands on it… but even if you are literally the first person in the doors at SDCC, you may still leave empty handed, and more than a little disillusioned.