San Diego Comic-Con 2026 ran July 23 through 26, with Preview Night on July 22. Its exclusives did not operate through one universal access system, and they were not simply rewards for whoever reached a queue first. Instead, companies set their own production caps, purchase limits, booth procedures, preorders, and drawings on a product-by-product basis.

Among the prominent releases were a Dark Horse Invisible Bilbo Baggins figure limited to 500 units at $60, with a five-per-customer limit; a Mondo Panthor figure limited to 500 and priced at $525; and a Funko Pop Absolute Batman limited to 1,000 pieces at $40. Mondo offered Panthor at its booth and through an online preorder, while Funko used online purchase drawings for select SDCC exclusives.

The clearest shared feature was not the method of access but the use of item-specific scarcity. Dark Horse, Mondo, Funko, and IDW each announced fixed edition sizes for at least one release, including a 300-piece TMNT #300 lithograph priced at $60. These examples show a market in which scarcity and access were determined separately for each product.

An Origin Claim That Remains Unverified

At a 2025 spotlight panel, Todd McFarlane said he had been the only vendor offering a San Diego Comic-Con exclusive when he first tried the idea. He recalled people questioning why merchandise would be sold for only one weekend and summarized his position as, “I was like, the guy.” Popverse, which reported the remark, said it could not verify whether McFarlane Toys was first.

The available evidence does not resolve that origin question. It does show that convention exclusives had become an established retail category by 2017. Entertainment Earth had been a San Diego Comic-Con fixture for nineteen years and offered a 350-piece Star Trek monitor mate for $10. GeekWire also reported that a $65 Enterprise model took a year to develop and that an $80 Deadpool figure sold for $132.50 on eBay that year. By then, an exclusive could function as a carefully scheduled retail release as much as a convention souvenir.

Scarcity Without a Universal Rule

Even the use of production caps was inconsistent in 2026. Super7’s $30 Pink Glitter Godzilla had no stated production limit, while the Bilbo and Panthor figures were each limited to 500 units. Some products carried exact edition sizes and customer limits; others were promoted as convention exclusives without a published cap.

A guide written for resellers made the secondary-market appeal explicit, saying successful pieces “can flip for multiples of retail within the first week.” The same guide said most exclusives never clear retail on the secondary market and warned that its highlighted purchases were final sale. In context, that warning addressed inventory risk for the guide’s reseller audience. It did not establish that resellers generally obtained the items before fans.

The evidence supports a narrower conclusion. Capped convention exclusives can attract collectors and secondary sellers at the same time, but scarcity alone does not determine who gains access. A 500-unit edition remains 500 units whether a buyer intends to display it or resell it, while the route to purchase may involve a booth line, an online preorder, a drawing, or some combination of the three. In 2026, the rules were set by the product and the company—not by a single convention-wide race to the front of a queue.