collected volumes

I've been getting rather annoyed recently with the western anime companies.

The reason is that they keep putting out "collected volumes" almost immediately after releasing the last of the individual volumes. And guess what--the collected volumes are of course a lot cheaper than the individual volumes. I mean, they are different--the collected volumes are often thin packs and so have only one cover and no inserts, etc, but it's such a total pain in the arse.

The collected versions hack the resale potential of the individual volumes. I mean, if I buy 6 disks for £14 that's £84. Maybe you'd hope to resell at a third, so that's £28. Well if there's a collected set that's only £30 or so, then that's never going to happen, is it? You'll be lucky to clear £15, which is barely the cost of one disk.

I mean, collected volumes have always been a bit annoying for that affect, but they at least used to give it a year-or-so. Now, you can have just received the last volume and you can already buy the collected version. It gives you no opportunity to resell at a decent price.

But it actually looks like it's going in a good direction. Quite a few series are just being released in collected format to begin with--sometimes as half collections, with "part 1" and then "part 2" of a season. This is obviously a total win situation for us consumers. The collected volumes do represent excellent value for money and of course even if they're re-released as a complete collection the resale isn't so horribly impacted.