How statue preorders work: deposits, balances and delays
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Most premium statues are sold before they exist. You reserve one from a prototype, it is produced months later, and you pay in stages. Understanding the stages is what keeps a preorder from becoming a surprise bill.
The usual sequence
- Announcement, with photos of a painted prototype and an estimated release window.
- You place the preorder and pay a deposit, or nothing, or the full price, depending on the shop.
- Production, which commonly takes from several months to more than a year.
- The shop tells you the piece has arrived and asks for the balance, plus shipping.
- You pay, and it ships.
Deposits
A deposit reserves your piece and is often not refundable, or is refunded only as shop credit. Read the terms of the shop before paying: the rules on cancelling are theirs, not the manufacturer's, and they vary a lot.
Record the deposit when you pay it. A year later it is easy to forget how much of each piece is already paid.
The balance
The balance comes due when the piece reaches the shop, and many shops give a short window to pay, often one or two weeks. Shipping for a large statue is added then and can be a significant amount on its own.
Several pieces reserved in different months can arrive together. That is the situation to plan for.
Delays
Release windows are estimates. Delays of several months are common, and a piece can move from one quarter to the next more than once. Treat the announced date as the earliest it might arrive, and keep the money available from then on.
Payment plans
Some shops and manufacturers let you spread the price over monthly instalments before release. They make a large piece manageable, as long as you count the instalments of every open preorder together and not one by one.
Costs people forget
- Shipping, which depends on the size and weight of the box.
- Import duties and taxes when the shop is in another country.
- Currency changes between the day you order and the day you pay the balance, when the price is in another currency.
Cancelling
If you need to cancel, do it as early as possible and check the shop's terms first. Some shops allow it freely until the piece is in stock, some keep the deposit, and some limit future preorders for customers who cancel often.
Plan it month by month
Write down, for each open preorder, what is paid, what is left and when it is likely to be due. Put those amounts on a calendar next to what you can set aside each month. If a month does not add up, you will know while there is still time to move money or let a piece go.