We believe in being transparent as well as demystifying the GO process, so a transparency report is something we've known for a while that we wanted to do and have been working on, and we are pleased to announce it is finally finished.
We did something similar at the end of Outlaw where I wrote about my process of running GOs during the comeback, detailing how I became a GOM, how other people could become a GOM too, and how I ran the actual GOs, and some takeaways from ordering for almost every shop during a comeback. So this post will skip over a lot of that (you can read it here on this reddit post if you want to know more) and focus on how Will went and what all we did. All of the stats and amount totals are taken directly from our masterlist, which can be accessed any time.
What did we do to prepare for the comeback?
Prior to the comeback announcment, I began to get stressed as I watched all these huge GOMs opening fixed claims. I was worried there would be no joiners left because the big GOMs would already have them all (silly in hindsight, but this is how I felt).
I have a strong anti-fixed claims philosophy. Maybe it’s the former lawyer in me, but I don’t believe that anyone should commit themselves to something they don’t fully understand. And there is not a person alive outside of KQ who can fathom exactly how many POBs and LDs ATEEZ will drop during the length of album promotions.
BUT it is true that a lot of the same people joined all of our GOs, and that we wanted to be able to better communicate with people who were waiting on us to open. (Like, if I could open a broadcast channel on Instagram to do that, I would love that. Unfortunately you need close to 1,000 followers to access to that feature, which we do not have.)
So we decided to start a priority claim chat. During Outlaw, we ordered at least 2 sets for each store, and we felt we could handle adding one more. So we opened a priority claim chat, and we wanted to keep it small (3 sets). That way, we could guarantee everyone in the chat their member. We felt confident we could fill 3 sets, or at least cover the unfilled ones.
No one in the priority chat was committed to buying any specific number of PCs or joining any specific amount. So in theory, we didn’t need everyone to claim their PCs every time because we would just fill the extra by posting publicly.
If from the chat, 3 Jongho’s were claimed and only 1 of every other member (a surprisingly common occurrence in our GOs), we would open for 3 sets, and try to fill the rest. If we couldn’t fill it, we would cover it.
This set up got destroyed almost immediately because a person who joined with us frequently and was a good joiner asked if they could be the fourth person for one of the members, and I felt compelled to open a 4th spot for everyone. This of course meant that we were guaranteeing up to 32 cards would be purchased for every store. For example, if all of our Wooyoung joiners wanted a card from a set, it meant we were on the hook for all 32 even if no other joiners wanted their member.
This was, truthfully, stressful.
And that’s where we were headed into the comeback.
How did the Pre-Order Period GO?
The volume of POBs announced almost immediately was absurd, and KQ kept dropping more. As collectors, Cassandra and I are mostly completionists, with a few exceptions here and there. So we knew that we would be placing an order for every store though we also knew we wanted to wait to open GOs until we had previews.
However, just like before the comeback, big and small GOMs were opening the GOs immediately, and we felt that indescribable pressure. If we don’t post now, we won’t have any joiners. Our prio chat will abandon us for GOMs who are posting now.
And in some cases that was true. Many of our priority chat members did end up joining more regularly with other GOMs. We were also getting a lot of questions about what we would open for, and even though we said we would open for everything, we still felt that some people wanted us to open for everything as it was announced.
So we tried to compromise. We created a priority form that would only be available to the chat and gave them access to it. It had every single POB announced on it, and when a new one was announced, we added those POBs to it as well.
This was a bit of a pain for everyone, I think, though I am not convinced there is a better way to do it. A lot of our priority chat members didn’t seem to want to use the prio form, and also because we were guaranteeing everyone’s claims in the chat, we had to enforce the rule that you could only claim your priority member from the priority form. So if people wanted multiple members in a set, they had to fill out the prio form and then also the public form when we posted it. I felt bad about that because I knew it was a pain.
Once a store posted previews, we gave everyone in the chat 3-4 hours to make a final claim, and then we would zero all claims out of the priority form so that nothing else could be claimed. We would then make a public form to be posted on Instagram with the leftovers.
It also was a bit of a pain for me because of the way GOMdrop organizes claims. When priority chat members didn’t pay on time, I had to “accept” their order if I wanted to zero out the form, which sent them an email saying I had their payment even when I didn’t. This left some of them confused and meant I had to to follow up about payments more often than I would have liked.
It also meant I had to be constantly checking multiple forms, and priority claimers were making multiple claims on the same form at different times. This was all mostly fine but if i wanted to double check something, it sometimes took me a needlessly long time to find the right order or form to check. And I was deeply paranoid about making a mistake when I had to keep track of so many things.
In the end, for preorders (so before the album released), we ordered almost 1,200 albums (since then, we've ordered about 600 more). I will offer a price breakdown below for anyone interested in what we, ourselves, spent covering claims.
So why did we open for everything if it was stressful?
The simple answer is because people wanted us to. There were people in the priority chat who we had promised we would get everything they wanted. And also, because we wanted the cards.
We have the ability, time, and funds to help people out in this way, and it’s also a way that we can support ATEEZ. ATEEZ are our ults by a large margin, and it feels good to help people access their albums. We do want to help with their album sales, and we do want to be active and good members of the collecting community.
There is a push and pull, and I think we feel it on both sides. People want a GOM who will give them a fixed claim for everything so they don’t have to constantly seek out and find new GOMs every time they want something, but at the same time, people get frustrated when GOMs can’t offer the best communication or take a long time or win multiple fan calls (more on that later).
Honestly, we are still new GOMs, and we’re still trying to figure out the best balance. The reality is that we will soon need to send out over 1,200 albums worth of PCs, and so while the comeback comes to a close, our work is really just getting started.
How much did all of this cost?
Over the course of this comeback, as of the time of writing this, we have purchased 1,829 Will albums.
If you purchased a single member POB for each drop, it would’ve cost you $478.75. So, you can imagine that if we had at least one member open for each GO, we would’ve spent at least $487.75 just covering claims–that doesn’t include our own claims. And since we each claimed our biases cards from almost every release, that money adds up quickly.
And for most releases, we weren’t covering just one member card. We covered multiple, often of the same member. Here is just a sampling taken at random.
Yes24 1 (digi and album version)
We received $1,070.50 from joiners
We paid $1,253.92
We covered $183 for Yes24 claims
Withmuu 1
We received $629.50 from joiners
We paid $766.11
We covered $136.61 for Withmuu claims
Minirecord 1
We received $1,211.00 from joiners
We paid $1,235.72
We covered $24.72 for Minirecord claims
Makestar 1
We received $786.00 from joiners
We paid $808.90
We covered $22.90 for Makestar 1 claims
You can see that the range on what we have covered has varied by release, but there has only been a single release where all cards were claimed, and that was KNpops 2. So of the 45 Will GOs that we have opened for so far, we have spent a range of $10 to $200 per GO just covering claims so that we could order in complete sets (this doesn't include the PCs we ourselves claimed, as they are counted in the money we received from joiners).
This is true even for LD’s where we also always order in complete sets too, even though LDs are never guaranteed.
And the GOs are still ongoing. Everline just announced a new LD last night that we’ve yet to open for at the time of writing this but will open for by tomorrow.
What about the fancalls? (aka confessions of a serial fancaller)
There has been a lot of discourse online lately about fancallers and serial fancallers, and I think Cassandra and I are in an awkward position when it comes to all of it.
When you open for every single release, you’re bound to get some fancalls even when you’re not trying. We had learned this during Outlaw (again please read my Outlaw post for more info on this), and we tried to apply some of the things we learned from Outlaw to our fancalls for Will.
Lessons learned from Outlaw
During early stages of Outlaw, we didn’t raffle off any fancalls for two reasons. One, we didn’t expect to win anything during Outlaw, so we didn’t see any reason to. Two, we barely had any joiners during Outlaw, and I was buying most of the sets out of pocket, and filling the sets later.
But during the early stages of Outlaw, buying no more than 24 albums for each release (usually less), I had won 4 fancalls. So by the time the MMT fancalls rolled around, we were like, okay, let’s try to do some raffles. I felt that I literally couldn’t talk to ATEEZ again. I was out of things to say.
We raffled off all 3 of the MMT fancalls and none of our raffle winners won the call. Honestly, that feels really bad. It feels terrible to get people’s hopes up and have them not get in. And for all of the MMT rounds, we bought more than we did for any of the early rounds of Outlaw that I had won.
When Minirecord started doing voice calls, we raffled those off as well, and this was our first success with getting other people to talk to ATEEZ. We skipped the first voice call that didn’t have POBs, and then our raffle winner for Voice Call 2 won the opportunity to talk to Yeosang, and our raffle winner for Voice Call 3 won the opportunity to talk to Jongho. (We also raffled off a xikers fancall during this time and had some success.)
But in addition to the success, we learned something else about raffles. They’re actually pretty hard to do. They take time, which is totally possible when you have the time, but we don’t always, which turned out especially true during Will (more on this later).
The first 5 fancalls of the comeback
Prior to the comeback, 5 stores announced fancalls. The traditional sort of knowledge and agreement in the community about fancalls is that it’s harder to win the earlier ones. During Outlaw, I had won 2 of the early fancalls, but I had lost 3, one with 48 albums (and we weren’t ordering anywhere near 48 albums for any site this round).
So we figured, well, we will put ourselves in for these first 5, and we will probably lose. But once we’ve each won one, we can start raffling them off. In hindsight, I would’ve raffled off at least one of these earlier ones because all of the fancalls were to take place over the same weekend.
As is traditional, we had a much harder time getting joiners for fancalls than we did for any other POBs/LDs. I have no idea why it’s so hard to get joiners for a POB that comes with a fancall, but I have some guesses. One, serious collectors know that they can get fancall cards severely discounted through Japan afterwards. Two, all the bigger GOMs are opening up a lot of discounted sets. And three, some people just don’t want to support other people for a fancall attempt, which I can respect.
But because of how our priority claims worked, we were guaranteeing claims for all stores, so almost without fail, we always needed to buy at least 24 albums for every release, including fancalls, and also almost always without fail, we ended up covering multiple cards.
Our philosophy on entering ourselves for a fancall is that we should discount the POBs. For most LDs or for POBs, we charge almost full album price for the POB with a nominal price for the album cards. We think a lot about how we price our PCs, and we try to make the pricing both fair to joiners and not burdensome for us. But when we enter ourselves for fancalls, we believe the fair thing to do is to offer a discount on the POB only option, so for each album we purchase for a fancall, we are covering a portion of that album. The more sets we open up, the more we will pay out of pocket because the more album cards we will be covering.
So here is the breakdown of what we bought/spent/result on those first 5 fancalls.
Everline
Ordered 24 albums
Cost $383.06, received $237 from joiners
Spent $146.06 covering claims and album pcs
Expect to spend around $48 on EMS
Entered Cassandra for Mingi, won the fancall
Fromm
Ordered 24 albums
Cost $388.20, received $208.00 from joiners
Spent $180.20 covering claims and album PCs
Expect to spend around $48 on EMS
Entered me for Jongho, won the fancall
Makestar
Ordered 32 albums
Cost $467.24, received $329 from joiners
Spent $138.24 covering claims and album PCs
Expect to spend $64 in EMS
Entered me for Jongho, won the fancall
Minirecord
Ordered 32 albums
Cost $329.92, received $213 from joiners
Spent $116 covering claims and album PCs
Entered Cassandra for Mingi, didn’t win the fancall
Soundwave
Ordered 24 albums
Cost $383.06, received $253 from joiners
Spent $130 covering claims and album PCs
Expect to spend about $48 in EMS
Entered me for Hongjoong, won the fancall
We hoped that Cassandra would win one of hers, though we weren’t sure because who ever knows, and we’d never tried for a Mingi call. And we thought I would win Fromm based on passed successes. As you can see, we weren’t placing huge orders, and so while we thought it would be nice if we won at least one, neither of us were really counting on it or considering it a serious fancall attempt.
From our experience, Makestar is the hardest to win. I’ve bought more for Makestar and lost than I have at any other site. So while we were ordering slightly more for Makestar, we still thought the chances of a win were unlikely. (This was, in fact, the first time I’ve ever won a call with Makestar.)
Soundwave was something we put me in for knowing I wouldn’t win because we had a very small amount, and it was for Hongjoong. We both needed to work at the hello82 comeback event the day of that call and knew neither of us would have time, so we thought, well, let’s just put these in for Hongjoong, and we won’t win, and then we won’t have to worry about it.
I understand that this might sound crass or flippant, but we really did think we wouldn’t be ordering enough from the first rounds for anyone to win. We were ordering because the people we were ordering for (including us) wanted the PCs.
There were three later fancalls that we also entered ourselves for, but I will return to those after I discuss raffles, some of the issues we had with raffles, and where we are currently with them.
Starting raffles
The next call announced was a Minirecord Voice call, which we raffled off successfully.
We opened for 4 sets, and the GO was mostly full
2 people claimed OT8, which means we order 6 sets (48 albums)
Our joiner entered for San and won
From joiners, we received $494.75 in payments for claims, and we paid minirecord $494.88
Afterwards, an Apple Music fancall was announced, and this was really a low point for me, personally. The order period was less than 48 hours over comeback weekend. I had just talked to Hongjoong, I knew I would be talking to Jongho twice soon, Cassandra was set to talk to Mingi—so we really wanted to raffle this call off.
Which is what we did. We held a raffle, which took time and was super stressful while working at the hello82 event, and then I had to wait to get the fancall info once our winner woke up. But due to how my kaddy’s weekend hours are, they didn’t see my order in time, and we missed out on those POBs entirely.
To this day, I still feel bad and guilty about it. I contacted everyone immediately and refunded money to everyone within 24 hours. But I felt bad to the raffle winner and to the people who wanted these POBs but won’t get them. And this goes back to what I said earlier: a raffle takes time and needs to be organized. We simply didn’t have the time to do a raffle for those POBs, and I shouldn’t have tried.
But even as I say that, what would the alternative have been? Put Cassandra or I in for another call? We had people who wanted those POBs, including us, and if you’re placing an order, then someone has to be put in for the fancall.
For our Apple Music raffle winner, we entered them into the next announced fancall, which was for Dear My Muse. I guaranteed them the same amount that we would’ve purchased for Apple Music, and they did win. But I ended up covering a lot of those albums and paying a lot for their fancall.
We opened 3 sets, claims guaranteed
1 person claimed OT8, which means we ordered 4 sets (32 albums)
Joiner was entered for Wooyoung and won
From joiners, we received $388 in payments for claims, and we paid DMM $512.
That means that I personally paid $124 for this raffle out of pocket, not including my own claims
I know that this was partially on me–we didn’t get as many joiners because we had to charge full price, and we weren’t raffling the fancall off: we were giving it to our prior winner from the Apple Music raffle. And I’m genuinely so happy to give other people the opportunity to talk to ATEEZ, but it still stung to have to pay so much and work so hard (because we do still have to ship and fulfill this GO) for someone else’s opportunity to talk to them.
A short interlude to talk about raffles during Outlaw
This wasn’t the first time we’d paid a lot for someone else to talk to ATEEZ. Here are some stats on the raffles from the previously mentioned Outlaw Minirecord Voice Calls
Voice Call 2:
Opened 3 sets, claims guaranteed
1 person claimed OT7 (no Jongho in this set), which means we ordered 4 sets (28 albums)
Joiner was entered for Yeosang and won
From joiners, we received $278 in payments for claims, and we paid $329.92
I paid $51.92 for this raffle out of pocket, not including my own claims
Voice Call 3 (Last):
Opened 5 sets, claims guaranteed
One person ordered OT8, which means we ordered 6 sets (48 albums)
Joiner entered for Jongho and won
From joiners, we received $437, and we paid $494.88
I paid $57.88 for this raffle out of pocket, not including my own claims
Each of my out of pocket expenses might seem small individually, but put together, I have personally paid almost $234 for other people to talk to ATEEZ. And like, I do wish I could help everyone talk to ATEEZ. I wish I was made of money and that that was an expense I could easily afford and brush off, but it’s not.
So taken together, these experiences showed Cassandra and I that we had to adjust how we deal with raffles going forward. I can’t cover claims for a fancall that I’m raffling off. It costs me too much financially to cover the claims when raffles are already costing me a lot more personally (time and energy) than just a normal GO would.
Back to Will
For the ktown4u fancall, we decided we would not cover claims and that the GO would be sorted, with priority sorting going to OT8 and our priority claimers.
This was an OT8 fancall, and we ended up getting 33 claims, so we purchased 33 albums. Our raffle winner didn’t win, and I’m left with this feeling of… was it worth it?
Because not only was our raffle winner disappointed, most of our joiners will be disappointed when we have to sort their claims and they don’t get the card they want.
Because many joiners will not be getting the cards that they want. And that sucks. It sucks to disappoint people, and it sucks to feel like I’ve made people waste their money.
And no matter how many people try to tell me ‘no it’s okay!’, it just doesn’t feel okay.
KNpops 2 and Withmuu 2
So in truth, raffles cause us a lot of stress, even when it makes us happy to help others have a chance to meet ATEEZ. Sometimes, we have the time in our personal lives to work through the stress of the raffle and hold it anyways, and sometimes we don’t. With Knpops 2 and Withmuu, we just didn’t believe we had the time or mental space to hold a raffle, so we each took one.
For Knpops, we had very little interest from our prio chat, so we knew we wouldn’t be ordering many. Like Soundwave, we sort of sought to throw this fancall entry away. I applied for Hongjoong, knowing I wouldn’t get it, and I assume I didn’t because I never heard from them. I honestly didn’t check the notices to verify.
We opened 2 sets and ordered 16 albums
We entered me for Hongjoong, and I didn’t win
From joiners, we received $208, and it cost us $255.48 to purchase the albums
I spent $47.48 covering claims and album PCs
For Withmuu it had a very short order period over the weekend, and we didn’t have any previews. We worried this would mean either no claims (which turned out to be very untrue) or we would be stressed about getting the order in on time after what happened with Apple Music (honestly, this will probably be a forever stress trigger for me now). So Cassandra decided to take it.
We ordered 56 albums for this GO
We entered Cassandra for Mingi, and she won
We received $670 from joiners, and it cost $893.69 to purchase these albums
Cassandra spent $223.69 covering claims and album PCs
The re-introduction of winner cards (aka Makestar Christmas)
In all the times that I’ve won a fancall, or that others have won a fancall that I entered them into, there hasn’t been any associated winner cards. I’ve never received winner cards unless I purchased them for a large amount of money after the fact.
So when Makestar announced their Christmas fancall with winners cards, honestly, as a collector I wanted them. I was more interested in the winners cards than the fancall truthfully, which is not to say that I didn’t want to talk to ATEEZ or that I don’t value any chance I have to talk to them. But I would have already talked to different members of ATEEZ 3 times during this comeback, and Cassandra was already set to talk to Mingi twice.
So Cassandra and I went back and forth on this for a good hour before finally throwing our hands up in the air and asking the prio chat what they wanted: did they want us to raffle off the fancall or did they want us to raffle off the winner cards? We knew that if we raffled off the fancall, we wouldn’t be covering many claims and we would be opening up conservatively. So, because we understand how fancalls work, we also knew that if our raffle winner chose a member who is particularly hard to win for, it was likely no one would get anything.
We told the chat that if we took the fancall for ourselves, we would cover more unclaimed members and order in sets to guarantee claims. We would raffle off 6 of the winners cards, and we would each keep one for ourselves. The chat said they would rather we raffle the winner cards, and thus, we entered me for this set for a fancall with Jongho.
There are a couple of reasons that I have given this set its own bullet point.
One, is that our choice to follow the lead of the group upset several people who later messaged us that they thought it was unfair for us to get 2 of the winners cards and also access to the fancall. I have thought about this a lot, and I’m honestly still struck by it.
We didn’t see any other GOM offering to raffle off as many winner cards as we were planning to raffle off, and we had really tried to make sure that we could give the most people possible some sort of benefit out of this. In addition, because we were taking the call for ourselves, we’d given a discount and promised to buy in complete sets, so already every joiner was getting some benefit from joining this GO, plus waived EMS if we won (a not insignificant amount given the number of cards we ended up ordering).
In the end, we ended up needing 80 albums for the GO (10 sets).
Which leads me to the second reason why this fancall weighs so heavily on me. I have never, not once, spent this much money on a fancall. Because you see, if you’re discounting the price of POBs, the more sets you open, the amount of money being spent just continues to grow. So while I usually cover around $100-180 on my own fan call attempts, this time, I was looking at covering almost $400 for something that just wasn’t guaranteed.
And we were competing with GOMS who were offering way deeper discounts, some of whom I know plan to sell at least some winner cards to help recoup those losses. Even if we won, we’d already promised to raffle off those winner cards, so getting back any of this money would be impossible.
This Makestar fancall was the first and only time that I’ve stressed winning a fancall. For me, it’s always been ‘well it’ll be nice if I do, but if not, that’s okay.’ This time, I felt like I had to win. I’d sunk so much money into it, and the hopes and dreams of all the people who wanted to win 1 of 6 raffled winners cards were weighing on me. It’s also the first and only time that I’ve woken up and checked a notice in a panic at 2:00 AM.
I guess the good news is that I did win, but this victory came at the same time as the internet discourse once again exploded around the issue of serial fancallers, and here I was on my third Jongho call this comeback, sixth one total. The moment was bittersweet. The people who had messaged me about unfairness filled me with anxiety, and I honestly became pretty paranoid. Were people who were congratulating me just waiting to turn on me? Did everyone think I owed them something like these other people who messaged me about unfairness? I already felt like I was working so hard to ensure every single person in our prio chat could have everything they wanted when it came to their PCs, was I also supposed to feel like I had to work this hard to make people’s dreams of talking to ATEEZ come true too?
It was pretty demoralizing. But, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, I’ve decided to get over it (though this is truthfully an act in progress). If people don’t like what Cassandra and I are doing with our GOs and fancalls, I would kindly ask them to not join. We try really hard to be good GOMs and good people, but I know that doesn’t mean we’re a good fit for everyone. We both love collecting, and we love ATEEZ, and we’re just not going to let a couple of people on the internet ruin that for us.
If that means our GOs go back to being smaller, that’s okay too! We will continue to purchase on behalf of anyone who wants us too, and that’s just how we feel about it.
So where to next?
We just raffled off the Minirecord New Years fancall, and we have been working on some raffle systems that will make raffling fancalls easier in the future. Because we decided we would keep 6 of the winners cards if our raffle winner won, we bought in complete sets.
Opened for 5 sets, which were mostly claimed
Had 6 OT8 sets claimed, including 1 from our raffle winner
So we purchased 88 albums on their behalf
We won’t know if they won until Monday/Tuesday night, but we were both really happy to have the opportunity to raffle off another call. The timing and the store made this a good candidate for raffling, though it did take up much of my free time on the day of the raffle.
So will we raffle off another call soon? Maybe. I would love to say for sure that I will raffle off the rest of the calls for Will, but life doesn’t work that way. We will always purchase for the people who want us to purchase for them because that’s the type of people we are, but I can’t guarantee we will always have the time and space in our lives to raffle off calls just because we’ve already won some.
Our final thoughts and takeaways
To end this, we'd like to offer some of our takeaways from opening for almost every store during Will.
For collectors who want to win fancalls:
I said it the last time I did a write up about GOMing during a comeback, and I will say it again now, if you are a person who collects PCs regularly and winning a fancall is something that is important to you, you should run your own GOs. Yes, at first you won’t get many joiners, but that was also true of me. I didn’t wake up one day and magically have people join my GO. I ran GOs for over a year and half before ever winning a fancall (and that wasn’t because of lack of entering).
Growth is sort of exponential. For all of Outlaw we struggled to fill 3, sometimes only 2, sets, and then very suddenly people were asking us to open additional sets in Will.
There are some collectors who just don’t, and never will, have any interest in a fancall. They should be the ones who join GOs because they are the ones who get the benefits. GOs like ours offer several benefits to people who don’t want a fancall: cheap POBs when there is a fancall entry, split EMS, ease with finding cards.
But if you want to win a fancall? A raffle is not the best way to do it. Not only does the universe have to choose you for the fancall, it also has to choose you from our raffle. Sometimes I look at all the entries we have for a fancall raffle and think, man they have a better chance at the fancall than they do our raffle.
I’ve regularly and consistently won fancalls ordering only 24 albums. I’ve won once with 8, and I’ve won once with 16. I’m happy to raffle calls off, but if you are a collector who orders everything, I do think you have a better chance at winning a fancall if you just start trying to open small GOs.
About the money:
It will cost money. It just will. I know that some people think ‘everyone should only have one entry, regardless of how many albums you buy!’ but kpop isn’t a public right. It’s a business. It’s the monster of capitalism. Everline doesn’t sit down one day and think to themselves, ‘you know, it would be really nice of us if we could let atiny talk to ATEEZ’. They sit down and think, ‘lets make some money.’ So of course fan call entries are tied to album purchases, and they always will be.
The start-up cost is especially high. As much as I spent this comeback covering claims, I spent more during Outlaw because I had to cover so many more claims.
And I agree. It’s not right and it’s not fair that people who have money to spend get these opportunities. It’s not right or fair in so many aspects of life though, not just fancalls. It’s not right or fair that some people can travel the world, go to restaurants or movies whenever they want, or do whatever else their discretionary income enables them to do that other people who work just as hard can’t.
So yeah, it sucks. But capitalism sucks.
Finding the right GOM:
Some collectors want to have every PC, and they don’t want to check a bunch of different GOMs. They just want to go to their reliable GOM and get their cards. There’s almost no way to achieve that without supporting a GOM who has won, or likely will win, multiple fancalls. If you’re okay with that, and don’t mind because you like the GOM, and you’re happy with them winning, then that is great. It’s working out ideally for all parties. It’s a perfect system.
If, however, you don’t want the same people to win, and you want to support people who haven’t won before, you will have to do the leg work. You will have to find GOs from baby GOMs, and you will have to send them your money along with a hope and prayer that they don’t succumb to the atiny madness and take all of your money never to be seen again. You will have to keep a spreadsheet that says from which GOM you got which card, and you will need to find different GOMs for each release. It’s not going to be as easy, and some of the GOs you join might be better than others. But being a conscious consumer has always taken more time, effort, and money than just doing what is easy. It’s the difference between shopping locally and getting on Amazon. And I do think that if you are bothered by a person who wins multiple fancalls and you want to see other people get in, this is the only way around it.
I personally was that person. I was in fixed claims with several different GOMs over several different comebacks, and overtime, I became weary of them taking forever to send me my stuff all the while getting into multiple fancalls. Perhaps if I had liked any of my GOMs personally, I wouldn’t have minded. (There is in fact one European GOM for the Europe cards who was the best GOM I ever had, and I wouldn’t mind joining their GOs whenever to help them win a fancall.) But most of my GOMs were the type to never send my cards, charge me for shipping then have my stuff still 2 months later, or just.. disappear entirely.
So I did stop fixed claims and tried to seek out smaller GOMs or GOMs who were doing raffles. And I had terrible luck there too. I have cards I will never, ever see. And that, very simply, is why Cassandra and decided to become GOMs for PCs. We had already been running MD GOs for about a year before we ever started opening seriously for PCs.
So as a person who never got into GOMing to win a fancall, I am always wary when I see people posting that they’re going to try for a fancall and open their first GO. To me, it feels like it skips a couple of steps of figuring out how to be a GOM—things like building a masterlist and systems for how you post and ship.
But that is just my nature, and I don’t fault them for it. I just personally appreciate GOMs who open for more than just fancalls. Fancalls are a benefit of GOMing no doubt, and there is something that bothers me personally about a GOM who only wants the benefit but doesn’t have interest in helping people get other items.
But that’s me. Honestly, if you have a moot or a friend who wants to run their first and only GO to win a fancall, and you’re comfortable joining with them, I think that’s great. There are so many people who would do a great job if only given the chance. I just know, from a collector perspective, how hard it can be to give those chances to people when we’ve already been burned by GOMs so many times.
And final promise:
I so badly wanted to end this on a high note. Some positive thoughts to close because I know my tiredness and weariness is bleeding through the post. I even asked other people how I could end this positively.
But honestly, I’m rushing the posting of it because I’ve received some messages this morning, on Christmas Eve, about people discussing my intentions with this latest announced fancall (Fromm 3.0) and whether I am entering for myself. Because if I do, people will be upset.
And the answer is no. I’m not taking it. But I don’t have time to do a raffle. It’s Christmas Eve, both of my parents are suffering from terminal illnesses, and I don’t know how many Christmases I get with them. I don’t have time to hold a raffle today. Or tomorrow on Christmas. And this order has to be placed.
Neither Cassandra or I want to be entered into this call, so we thought, well, we have a silent partner in our Etsy shop who works really hard to help us and support us. She loves Yeosang and has never had a video call with him—let’s ask her if she would be interested in buying out the discount we give. She would cover all the sets, and she would give the POB only discount, and if she won, she would cover EMS. She has said yes, and that’s who we are entering.
And we told her we would still be raffling off 4 of the winner cards as a thank you to anyone who joined because we do want to be fair and spread benefits around where we can.
But I also know that people will be upset about us entering a friend. They’ll want to know why we didn’t give all of our joiners a chance in a raffle, or they’ll feel like we’re just using them for our friends. And I genuinely don’t know what options I have.
I don’t want to be paranoid, but when you have someone in your priority chat who is actively messaging about you with others and questioning your motivations and intentions.. is it even paranoia? Isn’t it just… true?
So anyways, Cassandra and I will continue to try to achieve the right balance. We are truly, truly grateful for anyone who has trusted us to get them their merch and supported either our Etsy shop or our GOs. We appreciate that the trust doesn’t come lightly, and we want to do right by the people who are trusting us.
We will continue to work really hard and try to help others get benefits. We will continue to try to be good people and good atinys, and that is the most positive ending I can come up with.
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