We bought more than we could sell so we could get variants that would cover the cost of ordering them. Same with Image's 25 cent Walking Dead issue, Dynamite's Red Sonja 25 cent issue, Vampirella 25 cent issue and Sheena Queen of the Jungle 25 cent issue. Though once again I have tons of unsold comics. I sold these and covered the cost of getting the comic. Recently, I ordered a ton of the 25 cent DC's Year of the Villain one shot to get the variants. We made money off of the issue though still have too many leftover copies. I ordered a lot to get all the possible variants. I still have tons of copies of Amazing Spider-man 1 from Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos from years ago. At times comic stores order far more of a title than they can possibly sell just to get that one variant cover that they hope they can sell for far more than cover price to cover the cost of ordering so many. Now decades later, comic publishers are trying to court speculators with variant covers. The market took one heck of a hit and took a long time to recover. There were red flags raised about what would happen if the speculators suddenly left. I remember reading reports at the time about a large amount of people who were not reading comics, just buying them as an investment.
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As someone that was around (as a comic collector) for the 1990s comic speculation bust, I would also say we are nowhere near the level of the 1990s boom or amount of speculation. Are back issues for comics booming? I would say they are on the rise.