I find it utterly disgraceful that we have been duped into believing that a particular release is LIMITED in number, only for whoever decided to release these (be it the studio producing more, or Zavvi stockpiling them for a later date) to go and announce more several years later - with the EXACT SAME ARTWORK no less! So regardless of whether this is a new print run or just new old stock that has been hoarded for the last three years in a warehouse somewhere, it is deceiving to lead consumers into believing that a product is limited in number when in actual fact what they really mean is that it's limited for a specific time only!
There really needs to be more transparency here. Some collectors may argue, "
but we missed out the first time around" or "
we are too tight to pay eBay prices", and those newbies are lapping it up because they don't see the bigger picture here. It's not about resale values or collectability anymore - it's about being deceived by retailers like Zavvi, and the shenanigans they continuously pull on their customers! It's stunts like this that lost them their loyal consumer base in the first place, as more and more veteran SteelBook collectors get fed-up of these tricks.
Consumer watchdogs should be brought in to investigate whether unlawful business trading practices have been breached, because to me they have. Advertising a product as "LIMITED TO 1,000" should mean that there are only 1,000 of that product. Not "
Limited to 1,000 now, but we'll release another few thousand a few years down the line for those who missed out on these"! This is essentially the same as a country printing new currency to try to escape a depression