The publisher posts a drop notice days ahead. It names the issue, the cover artist, and a Bangkok-friendly start time that is rarely round. Collectors who treat that notice as a rumour miss the variant footnote — the one that says the gold-foil Groot head is a separate allotment, not a random roll inside the main mint.
When the window opens, nothing cinematic occurs on the page. The issue file is already finished. You are claiming an edition of a comic that has been lettered, coloured, and locked. The rush is administrative: confirming you are on the right listing, paying the publisher’s mint price from your own wallet, and not grabbing a reprint listing that uses the same cover crop.
We sit with clients through that hour because the failure modes are ordinary. Someone has the drop URL for issue #4 and the tab for #5. Someone’s clock is still on Tokyo. Someone tries to screenshot a confirmation that never loads and assumes the mint failed when it simply lagged.
After the window, the useful work is filing. Note the edition number, the exact cover, and whether the metadata lists the colourist. That log is what anthology assembly later depends on. The story on the page does not change because you minted at minute twelve instead of minute three.