Well, since it appears that Wizard Universe has just about controlled the entire market for Captain America #25 I wonder how their monthly price guide in their magazine is going to show the price guide value of this book? I assume they can basically set their own value to keep their inventory high right? All I know is I am DONE with Wizard and their shady dealings...

Damn, this is really bugging you isn't it?

The whole Captain America 25 sequence of events is interesting. Marvel printed extra copies, but held them back. Wizard overbought the initial delivery to enhance the scarcity. Now they'll release the extra copies and then make a second printing (apparently).

The pair of both covers went for ~$100 early last week. Now you can get the pair for $20-25. An impressive cycle.

I haven't been overly thrilled with Wizard for awhile, on many different levels. I stopped buying their magazine years ago because it just got really stupid.

Next was the whole CGC thing. Don't get me wrong, I think it's good for people looking to resell or just wanting to preserve their comic for collections' sake. But when you can send in a book and get a 7.5, then open it & send it back, and get an 8.5 on the same book.. there's a problem (I had a friend do exactly this). Plus, the same thing as the original poster mentioned with Cap #25... who's to really say they don't or can't artificially inflate prices?

The third complaint is just a minor eBay thing (2 separate auctions won resulted in them not having either "in stock") that really ticked me off.

So yeah, Wizard does indeed suck.

Just let it go, man. Let it go.

Maybe some humor will help:

Oy vey! This reminds me that Dork Tower was the first regular comic book I was buying that went up to $3.49 per issue. I had to drop the book out of principle. I realize that the next time there's a price increase, I'm getting out for good.

How true, if regular titles creep up to $3.25 or $3.49, I'm going to slash quite a few titles off my list.

I slashed every title once they went past $1.50.

I did buy the occasional issue of Dork as I'd pay as much as $5 per issue from anything by Evan Dorkin. But that was like 5 years ago, last time I bought one.

I can't remember the last issue of Wizard I even read, let alone bought. I stopped reading the magazine after it became obvious that any major comic news would be posted on the internet long before it hit a monthly magazine. That, and I just couldn't stand the fact that the magazine had turned into a mouthpiece for Marvel.

I think Newsarama.com essentially killed Wizard Magazine.

Aside from the occasional trade, I haven't bought a comic in years. A couple of weeks ago a friend loaned me his copies of Wizard which I also hadn't read in years. Been fun catching up on what's "hot" in the industry but overall the mag is a bloated mess.

The features are basically puff pieces and lame lengthy "what if" scenarios that only the diehardest of fanboys could give a shit about The jokey captions accompanying the pictures are embarassingly bad and the layouts are an inconsistent mess.

Definitley not the same mag I subscribed to years ago.

How would the value they list it for keep their inventory of the issue high? Not offering any of their inventoryfor that issue for sale would keep their inventory high.