Shadow King
The shadow of death
The one thing letting this idea down is as you stated the retail savings factor. Not every statue is a grail, and retailers at the initial release do not get overly inflated prices or inflation due to popularity unless they initially price them that way. The the EX is essential to $ideshow. It is their bacon on profit margin, it must be - given 40% of their usual sales are EX and they are already profiting on wholesale. Sometimes I think that they are heading in the direction that because some of the EX versions are worth so much more on the secondary market that they can rip collectors off, increase the edition sizes drastically and make a cut of what these statues are worth later on.
Problem is for every grail there are multiple turds.
A lot of Ex statues are still around retail.
Word of mouth, scarcity, and sculpt quality usually make for a grail piece. How many $$ pieces fulfill all of this criteria?
Just the grails and probably ManThing!
I am thinking beyond the retailers as that really did not occur to me in my thought line and I understand the value of an "exclusive" but my point was that SS would have regulars left over themselves. I just figured that include everything on the piece and just reduce the ES. SS does not really care about after market value.
I was thinking if the included a print with every piece and just charged $10.00 more across the board (of course we would just see it as a cost increase) then it would mean more money overall and would end the exclusive debate. The only people it would reallly hurt is the flippers.