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A friend of mine bought the Limited Edition Chaos Codex which was $100 and (allegedly) limited to only 1000 copies. He went and picked it up on Saturday and was content. He was even happy that he managed to get #127 out of 1000.

Then on Monday he goes to check how much they are going for on Ebay. In his search he happens to find a listing for one that claims to also be #127 out of 1000. Thinking it's a scam he contacts the seller. The seller is also surprised and sends him a picture of the number in his book. Both are #127!

Here are photos of both copies: http://imgur.com/a/2csqE

So my friend is understandably upset and contacts GW to see what the hell is going on. GW's story is this:

Apparently at the last minute they decided to change the numbered paper inserts. Apparently something was wrong with the watermark and they decided to remove it from the cards. Unfortunately they already put them in all the books, shrink wrapped them and sent them out to the various countries. 400 was sent to North America, 400 to the UK, and 200 for the rest of the world. So to replace the cards they had to open each one, remove the old card and put in the new one. Apparently this was done properly to all the NA copies, but the UK didn't and just taped the new card on the outside and left the old cards on inside cover. They also fethed up because they didn't replace the cards with the same numbers, but gave each book a new number with the new card.

So according to GW, my friend has the "real" #127 since it doesn't have the watermark and the dude in the UK has the "fake" #127. This all sounds like stupid bs to me and I'm sure they would tell the UK guy he has the "real" #127 if they contacted him.

I'm not sure if GW is telling the truth, but there is at least one guy on the B&C saying he received two different numbers in his copy... so who knows.

The point is, GW really fethed this one up. On such a limited printing, and at that cost, they really should have done a better job. If this was sports memorabilia or collectables there would be a gak storm. When you limit the quantities like this you are directly creating a collectors market. Something like this makes the books fairly worthless as collectables since no one will really know what copy they have.

My friend was going to just get rid of his one ebay as well, but then there would be two #127s listed at the same time. Instead, he might be returning it to GW and getting a regular copy from our local game store for half the price.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here is a post by my friend explaining it in his own words:

Apparently at the 11th hour there was a decision about a Chaos Marine watermark. You can see it in the background of the pic that the eBay seller sent me. Then you can't see it in the background of mine. The originals (the one the UK guy has) was already shrink-wrapped into each book. They sent out enough for each country (North America got 400) and GW unwrapped every book, tossed the original card and then put the new one in. I don’t know why they did this. No explanation was really offered beyond “We didn’t like the look of the original card”.

The UK however, didn't bother opening all the copies, they just taped the new card to the outside, leaving the originals inside. So some books have two numbers.

So what am I to make of this?

GW customer service apologized, but made no attempt to rectify the situation. On the phone I repeatedly told them I was not happy with this and all I got was a "Well, your card is the "legit" one and the Ebay seller’s is the old one that should have been thrown out”. But there was no communication on this to people who received two cards. How were they to know which one to keep?

IMO, neither is legit because they knowingly allowed multiple cards to be sent out with books.

These items are offered as limited, numbered editions. This immediately creates a speculators market where people buy these things and attach a secondary value to them as "collectibles". While GW has no stake in this secondary market, they do create it by marketing these items as “limited editions”. I can tell you if this happened in the sports memorabilia community there would be hell to pay.

The fact that GW UK didn't ensure the integrity of the system they created (by selling them as limited/numbered) constitutes a violation of their promissory intent, and in a sense is fraud.

If GW had made some sort of gesture to fix the situation, I would have held my tongue, but they were pretty dismissive of the whole thing and couldn’t really understand why I was so upset.

So, GW says the cards that are only printed on one side are the “legit” ones.