It's not necessarily flippers. Out of the exclusives I would have wanted to get last year had I been able, 23 would have been from the convention center rather than the pop up shop, some of which are rides, Vynl 2 packs, multi-pack pops, multi-pack dorbz and therefore bigger than regular pops/dorbz. I would also have been bringing back an additional 5 for friends, plus I might have helped other attendees who wanted a Pop I didn't already have on my list
All of the coverage I see about SDCC exclusives doesn't take into account that as an international attendee, getting the exclusives at Comic-Con is the easiest way to get them. Otherwise not only are you dealing with international shipping and customs charges, on top of that, a lot of shops won't ship outside the US so you can't get them, other than 3rd party sites such as Amazon or eBay with the obligatory markup.