As a collector, I agree wholeheartedly with Don. I already had examples of both versions, but decided not to buy any from this release. I checked the V2 selling prices (actual completed auctions where the item sold), and most decks were only a few dollars more that the price of this release, with a few decks even selling for the "new" price. If they are selling at list price before the "last ones ever/we found some in the warehouse/last of our stock/et cetera" group is released, then the value will remain flat at, or near, retail price. In my mind, the new version released did hurt the value of the first version significantly. Based on selling prices, I'd say that it's a similar thing.
Consider, as I play devil's advocate to you as well (!), a different possible outcome. Granted, while there will be some collectors that will "settle" for the second edition instead of shelling out the extra for the first, thus causing the first to drop in value, there's also the factor that there will be people buying the second who would never have bought the first, as it was out of their price range or otherwise too difficult to obtain. If an adequate distinction is created between the two editions, there's a chance they can co-exist without having too heavy a negative impact on the market value - but there'd have to be a CLEAR, easily-distinguished difference between them, something akin to a design change, thus making the second edition not a true copy of the first and giving it a value in its own right, albeit a lower one (unless it happens to be rarer than the first)!
I finally went and took a look at the differences between the original and 2nd edition White Monarchs. T11 is clearly making a money-grab with this and I'm not a fan. They've been known to do this before - many people don't realize that they actually continue reprinting some of their older decks long after they've sold out on their website, selling them to retailers rather than direct to consumers. The original "black" Stingers and the Propaganda deck are the two most blatantly-obvious examples of this. Both were originally issued in the Cincinnati plant, but both are also to be found in the market with Erlanger markings as well from at least one subsequent printing made since the original release - something that T11 doesn't exactly advertise. There's a comment about this somewhere on this forum where someone contacted a rep from T11 who confirmed that this is their practice. No one knows just how many of each of their "rare" and "sold-out" decks are out there, my friends.
This deck would be among the infrequent instances that the company admits to making a second edition, to the point that they advertise it as a feature. Previous such occasions came with the second editions of Bicycle Guardians (not counting the USPC version), DeckONE Industrial Edition, Bicycle Titanium (both colors) and Sentinels.
Guardians are a very interesting example - those were printed TWICE in the first edition, with a slight variation in the company logo between printings being the giveaway. (The variation was pointed out to someone who claimed the second printing was in fact a second edition when I was buying second edition Guardians from him - the old logo had what appeared to be hand-drawn digits ("11") in the logo in white with a yellow circle drawn around them; the first printing had shorter serifs on the digits than the second printing, where they are elongated almost to the point of looking like "77" instead of "11." The second edition (third printing?
) had a completely revamped logo, the one they're still using today, with a more modern-looking stylized chrome-esque "11" in a circle, done with metallic ink.
No one knows how many printings were made of the decks that were first printed in Erlanger, but judging from prior company practice, I'd be inclined to say that at least some have since been reprinted and sold to retailers, despite being no longer available at theory11.com.
