Ah, well digital's a lot simpler. Shueisha and Square Enix are starting to embrace it now, but in a country where the elderly rule such change is slow at best. I think if there's a substantial enough push and we see a real digital service from Shueisha they could handle a lot of their back catalog, but the quality will continue to dictate what they do. Companies hold a lot of stock in presenting readable material, and I don't know that they'd be willing to use whatever they can get their hands on to make the digital pages. Which is a shame, because I'd want such a thing soooo bad.
Back on physical copies though, one thing I can love is that even with a rare series in tanks the prices for beaten-up copies is comparable to, hmm… Okay.
So Kujira Daigo on amazon japan's sellers list goes for about 5500 yen local delivery (6500ish to most other countries). That's... ooh, £45.00, give or take. Not a bad price for two ancient volumes, even ones sun-faded, a little torn and dirty. That's really not that bad. But for the sake of comparison I'll stick it next to a more popular ancient OOP series like... (takes forever to find a popular old series that's not been reprinted at least once what the hell)... oh duh, Kouya no Shounen Isamu, where a single volume takes 3000 yen alone, from the 1987 reprint, no less. Daigo, for what it is, comes off okay with its ridiculous rarity pricetag.
Except now I've learnt that trying to own all of Isamu is also a crazy pipe-dream. oof. At least that's one where I can just slink off towards raws of it till it gets reprinted again one day.
