I'm with you on the last part.
I'm not willing to take that leap of faith and I very well may like and keep this month's album once I give it a try. I am thinking, if they do this monthly, they have to have the next few months plotted out given timing on pressings and the lead-up. I would expect it to be limited to Rough Trade exclusives that have 500+ copies remaining in their stock who they can get artist signatures and Q&A's from for the next six months at least. The Volvelle seems like something they can do on the fly. Given RT Exclusive quantities tend to run lower, I think people who are really motivated could probably get that list rounded down.
The thing is, there's some really good albums/artists that fit the mold of this kind of club who likely have that stock still available on 1500 or 2000 pressing exclusives (I won't list them as not to remove them from contention for this month, and for all I know it could be one of those), but it doesn't fix the underlying issues and I'll let others give them $40 to find out, especially if I can just buy the exclusive I want after it's shipped for less unsigned if I love it. One of the major aspects of signing on to this is that the language strongly suggested that it was an exclusive to this club at an LE of 500, since it's not, well, that changes the equation.