GW cut the price on a Warhammer 40k release, and fans cleaned it out, raising fresh questions about overall pricing and demand.
The $420 Space Marines Limited Edition was still in stock days after preorders opened, which you don’t often see with GW’s limited edition books. Then the Adeptus Custodes Limited Edition went on sale for $105 cheaper, and most markets sold out within hours.
GW may not have planned a price test per se, but it sure looks like they were testing how much people would fork over. If the Marine price had you checking your hobby budget, this almost looks like a good deal in comparison… Well, sort of.
- What’s happening: GW may have found how much collectors will pay for premium 40k codex releases, somewhere between $315 and $420.
- What we have seen so far: The $420 Space Marines book hung around after preorder, while the $315 Custodes book sold out within hours in several regions.
- What’s next: $315 now feels “normal” for a limited codex, even though it would’ve looked wild next to last year’s $250 Chaos books.
Custodes Was $105 Cheaper, and Buyers Went for It
The funny thing is, that $105 difference works out to exactly 25% off the Space Marines price. Sure, you’re still paying $315 for a book, but it went from “why is this still available?” to people actually buying it. Warhammer Wordforge reported that the Custodes book had sold out across multiple regions, so something about this release obviously worked.
The Smaller Book Actually Costs More Per Page
The page counts make the prices look even stranger. Codex: Space Marines has 232 pages, while current listings put the new Custodes codex at 120 pages, so you’re getting roughly half the book.
Do the math and the Marine Codex costs about $1.81 a page, while Custodes comes in at around $2.63 a page. Nobody should judge a collector bundle by page count alone, and please don’t start doing this to everything on your shelf.
Still, the idea of a “smaller book, smaller price” doesn’t really explain the pricing of these two boxes.
For a start, they come with different stuff. The Marine edition has six swappable metal Chapter badges, a big metal Crux Terminatus, six art prints, and the full Space Marines Command Pack. Custodes get a gilded faux-leather cover, a mini metal vexilla, a lapel pin, ten dice in a wooden dice vault, six prints, an A2 cloth map of the Imperial Palace, and the Custodes Command Pack.
Which extras do people actually want? You could spend all day arguing that one, but the Marine book has a lot more custom metal attached to it, so it could cost more to make. But the Custodes box has plenty too.
So unless GW ever shares its manufacturing costs on the bundles, nobody outside the company will ever know whether those badges account for the full $105 difference.
So Why Was the Marine Book $420 in the First Place?
So yeah, we just keep coming back to that $420 price, especially when you look at what came before it. At $315, the Custodes box is closer to what GW was charging for its earlier limited codex bundles.
Last year’s Chaos Limited Edition books cost $250 each and included cards, prints, metal objective markers, and collectible medallion pieces. Going from $250 to $315 for a fancier box is still a hefty increase, but you can at least see how GW got there.
Going straight to $420 felt more like GW asking, “How much will people pay?” And, sure, if you’re going to try that, Space Marines are the obvious choice. They’re GW’s flagship army with the biggest audience, so you’d probably count on Marine collectors to buy it.
Even so, players noticed that the stock is still hanging around, and for a limited edition people want, that’s pretty unusual.
This Probably Isn’t GW Learning Its Lesson Sadly
It’s tempting to think GW saw the Marine book hanging around and lowered the Custodes price, but we wouldn’t assume that yet either. Both books would’ve been planned well before anyone knew how the Marine one would sell, and you aren’t comparing identical bundles.
So we can’t say with any certainty that GW dropped the Custodes price because the Marine book wasn’t selling out.
Still, $420 may have been too much for some collectors, and $315 was easier to swallow. Of course, a bit of FOMO probably helped too. Once copies started disappearing, waiting became a lot less appealing. Custodes players were describing exactly that as stock dried up.
Final Thoughts on the Custodes Limited Edition Codex
The Custodes sellout isn’t hard to understand. It’s the $420 Marine price that still has us scratching our heads. A $315 box with a 120-page codex sold out within hours in some regions, so collectors are willing to spend plenty. But how much more will they put up with?
We’d bet the next limited codex gives us a better idea. Will GW stick closer to $315, or try another price like the Marine book’s $420? That’s when we’ll see whether watching one book sit in stock while the other sold out made any difference.
And let’s be honest, the Custodes Limited Edition hasn’t become cheap. GW priced the Marine book so high that $315 doesn’t sound quite as ridiculous anymore.
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What do you think of the Custodes Limited Edition Codex at $315, and where’s your line on a limited codex?
