July 16, 2010

Chatting with 5FINITY.

Filed under: 5FINITY,General — webjon @ 5:53 pm

It’s difficult to refer to 5FINITY as a new trading card company, after all they keep releasing sets that sell out within days if not hours. Their product format is being emulated by other manufacturers who are hoping to catch lightening in a bottle the way 5FINITY has — after a handful of releases they’ve forever innovated the hobby. . . it’s hard to refer to them as a new company, indeed.

Still, after all of these releases, and the impact to the hobby many collectors aren’t all that familiar with 5FINITY, so we asked 5FINITY to chat with Webjon a bit, and they obliged. Here are a few questions I had for Steve Frank, president of 5FINITY:

5FINITY’s releases are incredibly eclectic, how are licenses chosen to become a 5FINITY product?

We try to select properties that have built-in fan bases which have not had trading card treatment in a long time, if ever. Since our releases are rather limited, it is well served to go after niche type properties. But, we also think the properties have to be fun for the collectors and the artists.

Your releases have been coming out at a blistering pace since the Archie series, do you plan on maintaining a frequent release schedule for the foreseeable future?

We offer, on average, a standard product release twice a quarter. For the second half of this year, we only have two standard releases, one that came out today and one in October. We also have our annual March of Dimes charity release, but that is a premium release and not for the average collector, so to speak. So, combined with the fact that most of our releases are under 1,500 packs, we think the pace is just right. If the market dictates otherwise, we will heed the shift and act accordingly.

Congratulations on your comic book releases! How did you take your product from sketch series into a full blown comic book?

The success of our sketch card property, Zombies vs Cheerleaders, warranted more sketch cards, but we didn’t want to do another standard ZvC release so quickly. Moonstone, a comic publisher that we showcased in a sketch card series called Moonstone Maximum and featuring characters from their library, like The Phantom, Buckaroo Banzai and Domino Lady, agreed to let us produce the comic ourselves, using artists that have worked with us on sketch card products, and Moonstone publishes it. When we offer the comic, we offer the sketch cards as an incentive, so now we can produce a fun comic title and still get ZvC sketch cards out there about once a quarter in small quantities and by different artists. Each ZvC sketch card release from the comics are different as far as the card design goes, too.

What other collectible lines would you like to see featuring 5FINITY licenses?

I think a ZvC movie starring me and Scarlett Johanssen would be awesome. At least it is when I play it out in my head over and over, every day, LOL. No, seriously, you asked about collectibles. I think McFarlane Toys would make great figures.

It’s obvious when you watch releases sell out in hours that collectors and dealers love 5FINITY. . . how do you feel 5FINITY has been received by the other publishers in the industry?

I don’t know. We are a small blip in the trading card industry, for sure. Topps probably thinks we are a Japanese car brand, but I get that. We just want to offer another option in the most distinct way possible, high quality at outstanding value for properties that don’t get as much love. I mean, Voltron was featured on not one, but two series of Reebok sneakers in the last few years, but they have never had a trading card series except for the Topps tattoos in the 80′s. Shouldn’t Voltron have sketch cards? That’s our thinking. But, to Topps’ credit, they have to cater to the masses, like the Star Wars and LOTR fans. There aren’t as many Voltron fans to warrant Topps doing it. That is where we come in.

Seemingly after seeing the success of 5FINITY’s format Sad Littles and Breygent planned releases of similarly packaged and priced products, how do you feel about the imitation?

We didn’t invent and develop sketch cards, companies have been doing it for over a decade. We just did it differently, so if others want to jump in, who can blame them? The difference is we hope to do it the best and I think we do. Everything else will work itself out if we manage that.

What is the most exciting thing collectors can expect from 5FINITY in the next six months?

We have the most dynamic line-up of artists compiled for our upcoming charity release, The Female Persuasion, which features Sabrina the Teenage Witch from Archie Comics, as well as other characters from our previous releases. After that, we have a sketch card series based on Hack/Slash, one of the most popular indie comic titles out right now. Our first release of 2011 will be exciting. It is a popular comic property that has been around for almost two decades and it has a huge fan base. As it turns out, other card companies have been inquiring about it, but the licensor sees how well we treat the properties we have done in regards to the aforementioned quality and value. We will be announcing it in a week or so, so check out our websites. [start with www.5FINITY.com -Jon]

What are the chances we’ll see that classic A-Team set I was practically begging for on Webjon a few weeks ago? How about Mandy 2?

We thought about classic A-Team when we worked with Mr. Cannell last year on Greatest American Hero. Due to the movie coming out, it wasn’t a good fit, but who knows? P’ups: Pin-ups & Puppies was a quasi-sequel to Mandy, but without inundating the collectors with all Mandy. We might do another Mandy release in 2011, but it will have a different spin on it.

Can I get a job at 5FINITY?

Do you have to get paid, LOL?

Thank you, Steve for taking the time to chat with me, and for all the great products you’ve released! Webjon readers — if you have any questions at all for 5FINITY leave a comment or email and we’ll get ‘em answered in our next interview!

Jon

June 3, 2010

Unsolicited Advice: P’ups.

Filed under: 5FINITY,opinion — webjon @ 10:11 pm

I’ve been watching some of the auctions for P’ups cards for the artists that interest me, and I have to say the selling prices on a lot of these have been really sad. In fact this has been a bit of a trend in some other recent sets as well — Voltron comes to mind. So what’s the issue?

While there are certainly many contributing factors, the fact that great cards done by great artists with pin-ups on them aren’t even able to fetch $20 minimum bids in many cases probably has some people scratching their heads (perhaps the manufacturer) — others grumbling in frustration (dealers) — and others either shrugging it off or very happy for the bargains they are getting (collectors). . .

The biggest contributing factor, in my opinion is that these aren’t reaching a large enough collector base to sustain any interest. Alright, that certainly isn’t a revelation — the question is why, and I think that’s easy enough to answer.

WAYYYY back in March P’ups sold out in 10 hours. That’s right, if you happened to sleep in the night these were announced available for sale you were shut out of pre-orders. So, right out the gate many people who might be interested in a pack here or there were turned away instantly, unless they wanted to pay a premium for packs or singles. But really, it isn’t how fast P’ups sold out that’s the issue, it’s who bought the packs. A decent percentage likely went to people who were interested in collecting the cards, but a TON went to dealers who wanted to ‘rip and flip’ the packs.

Who knows how many, but at one point shortly after release there were 650 P’ups sketches for sale on eBay. Even today weeks after release there are nearly 400 of these cards on eBay. Let’s put that into perspective — 1500 packs were made. Of course some packs had an additional sketch, and also of course some of the 400 on eBay now have been auctioned before. . . but at one point well over a third of the entire production run was on eBay at the same time.

And really, that’s not an issue in and of itself, the real problem at that point was the INSANE Buy-It-Now prices many dealers had on most of their cards. Collectors realize dealers need to make a profit, but they aren’t stupid. Lots of decent, but ‘common’ sketches from P’ups were being listed at 4 times the pack price or better — a 300% profit — the rare, and many nice cards were being listed at 6-10x the pack price!

So what happened? The few collectors that were able to get pre-orders in stuck around and collected a few additional sketches — and NO new collectors bought into the set. The end result is what we have today, lots of cards not being able to find buyers, and the ones that do sell are bringing typically less than double the pack price. If more dealers would have started all their P’ups auctions at $21 (a mere 50% profit per card) we’d likely have many more collectors, and organically higher prices for the better cards.

The situation now is tenuous, many dealers are frustrated, many collectors who couldn’t buy P’ups at pre-order price or a reasonable price afterwords are frustrated and have walked away and the few collectors left are picking over the carcass.

The lesson, in my mind, is that more attention needs to be paid to the people who are actually sinking their money into this product at the end of the day. Not the rip and flipper whose only interest in the set is the amount of profit they can make, but the people who are going to spend their hard earned money to add these cards to their collections. Now, don’t get me wrong . . . not every person who bought and sold P’ups sketches falls into this category, but if you look at the history of how these cards were listed the story is pretty clear.

What to do now?

Extend the pre-order period. Get more cards into the hands of the people who actually want to keep them. I’m not sure how to do that, perhaps limit the number of cards per order even more (selling out in 10 hours is good for the short term, but it doesn’t do anything to build buzz or interest in a set, in fact it frustrates a lot of people), perhaps drop the 25 card incentives so there is less incentive to buy more cards than people personally want, I’m not sure how to do it, but there has to be a way.

Dealers also need to be willing to sell the cards they are ripping and flipping at organic levels, not artificially inflated prices — not every card pulled from a $14 pack should sell for $40, or even $30. What’s wrong with a $5-6 profit on a $14 pack — that’s not to say the great cards won’t sell for $75, but many dealers seemed to think that starting an auction at $19.95 for something they paid $14-15 is highway robbery. Now that the collectors have avoided this set many dealers are hoping to get that $20 sale.

It’s good for me, I’ve picked up some AMAZING cards cheap (thanks Rachel, Craig, Nick and a few others), but it’s bad for the hobby and the industry.

Jon