RCheli

Noble Causes Family Secrets #3b -- First "Appearance" of Invincible $45 Came from the same lot as the other two, so it's unread. The black cover shows a couple of non-breaking ticks on the spine, though. Still unread and sharp.

Capes #1 $20 Also looks to be unread. Walking Dead #1 preview, so this comic probably should have been listed for sale 5 years ago.

Just three books for now. Shipping is $6 priority in the US. I do ship ex-US and those costs are exact. Payment through Paypal. Spawn #231 -- Spider-Man #1 Homage $50 Terrific unread copy. Great spine and corners. I honestly don't see anything wrong with this book.

Just one book today (well, I'm going to list a few over in Copper/Modern...). Justice League of America #1 FR/GD Now $350 (includes free shipping in the US; I'll take $12 off ex-US). Payment would be Paypal. This book has seen better days for sure, but it's all there. I suspect it would grade out at a 1.0 or 1.5 for CGC (though obviously I can't guarantee that). Tape at the staples; extra staples, too. If not for the spine, this would be significantly nicer. Of course, if not for my face, I'd be much more handsome. Send me a PM with any questions. An "I'll take it" trumps any ongoing negotiations. Sunday update: I'm currently sitting in the ER suffering from ridiculous kidney stone pain, which is the Gods' sign that this comic needs to get sold!

I get long boxes shipped to me all the time via media mail. Costs around $30. If the boxed are good enough, you don't need any extra padding other than maybe at the corners. Tape the lid on well, obviously. I mean, don't send high grade Golden books like that, but bulk stuff is all good.

There are very few non-Disney/non-Warner Brothers Gold Key/Dell titles that featured characters that are still recognizable and collected today. (And even the Disney/WB are stretch.) I can see how this is a key book in high condition -- though it's not uncommon in VG and below.

I mentioned on the ACE Chicago thread last time that Navy Pier was a bad location, and the promoted came on and argued with me a bit. It looks like they're moving to Rosemont.

I've actually started doing a Hector-esque manner of selling. I have priced comics -- which are all alpha/numeric and then $5 (green sticker), $3 (yellow sticker), and 50-cent (no sticker) boxes that are not in any order whatsover. Some people don't like it, but most don't mind. They're hunting for bargains so they're okay doing box diving. EDIT: The $5, $3, and 50-cent books are all in different boxes -- they're not mixed. I'm not into that much chaos.

At the time, Eclipse, Pacific, and other of the newer publishers started publishing more non-super-hero titles and a lot of reprints. Pacific (and then Eclipse) did this one, the Arthur Sudyam, Darklon (which I think were Warren reprints), and few more. They weren't all good, but they were interesting.

I think nearly all of the Marvel/DC titles mentioned in this thread do sell... just not at guide. If a Marvel Team-Up #104 is $8 in NM in Overstreet, it will be a cold day in he!! when anyone could ever sell a raw copy at that price -- even a pristine condition one. I pack my $3 boxes with Defenders, Sub-Mariners, MTUs, World's Finests, Adventures, etc from the bronze age, and they sell well. In fact, at the show I did on Sunday, I sold a stack of Marvel Team-Ups from 100-150 (probably 25 of them). And I also have a separate $3 box for "loincloth comics" -- those books where the heroes all wear some animal pelt over their junk and nothing else. Tarzan, Conan, Kull, Kamandi, etc. I've found that many collectors who buy those books don't care about super-heroes, and they like that there is one spot for all their "savage" goodness.

Heroes is the same weekend, so that's going to hurt with the number of dealers. But I suspect you'll be able to get a good deal on aluminum siding for your house.

I doubt Costco was selling the 2 packs -- that's a price-point they wouldn't be interested in. And they had to be selling the 20-packs in more places than just there. In 1995 (according to their timeline), Costco had 200 stores (today they have 770), and I don't know how big their geographic coverage was back then. I would love to hear from someone at DC that set up this program.

Less than 2 weeks away, and the comic creator guest list is... terrible. The top line of creator guests include: Carl Potts, Kurt Lehner, Mustafa Moussa, and Jeremy Clark. I know Potts, but I have never heard of the other 3. (Not that me not knowing is that crazy -- my knowledge of artists from the last couple of years is lacking.) But holy cow! That's awful!

I think this was mentioned earlier -- RMA specifically -- but I would love to know how these packs were ordered/distributed. Obviously DC printed the comics, but who packaged them? Who designed/made the packaging? How were they distributed? Where were the comics stored? This is completely from memory, so I may be very wrong, but when I was working at a comic shop around the time these were first distributed (mid-90s), stores could order the "Best of" packs from Diamond, but I don't think they were part of the DC section. I would love to search through old Previews from those years and see if they have them listed somewhere as being available from a different company. Obviously not all of these packs were available to stores through Diamond, but some of them were.

I don't know exactly, though I suspect they were in multi-packs.

Superman #50, Robin #1, Batman #457 all had a 2nd print with a barcode that weren't ever distributed to a newsstand. There's X-Factor #71 2nd with a barcode that never got on newsstands.

I mean, there were a lot of 2nd (and 3rd) prints that had bar codes but were never on the newsstand. They were in multi-packs or whatnot, but because they didn't have a DC logo in the UPC box, they are classified as newsstand.

You're right; my bad.

I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for a premium for newsstand copies in the new century, though the number of people that actually care is a small percentage of the overall collecting population. To me, as a dealer, I'm more than happy to sell a book for the same price as a direct edition now than price it 2-3x higher and hope that the right person comes along and finds it. (I very rarely sell online, so maybe that's the way to go for these books.) The more uninformed in our hobby lob the word "rare" around a bit too easily, and there are no rare copies of a newsstand edition of any comic published in the 20th century. And many had huge print runs (I'm looking at you Spawn #1), even though people want to hawk how difficult they really are to come by. I think we also have to stop calling certain comics "newsstand" that were never actually sold on the newsstand, such as the many second printings of DC books in the 90s. There has to be a better name, but equating newsstand with UPC isn't right either.

When you take into consideration the buyer's premium and shipping... I don't understand it. 9.8s have sold between $1400 and $1800 on eBay over the past couple of months. You're paying anywhere from $300 to $700 more because why exactly?

So it's about 66-33-ish... It looks like there have been no CGC 9.8 newsstands sold on eBay recent enough to be in their sold listings, and there have only been a handful of 9.6 newsstands, which ended with about a 10%-15% premium over direct.

As I'm in a meeting where I have nothing to add, I did a quick and dirty eBay search. Currently (and this a very unscientific way to look at things), there are 227 direct editions of ASM #300 and 92 newsstand copies. (There were a few copies that I couldn't see from the initial tiny pic, and I didn't bother to click into the auction.)

I've always assumed the crossover was a little later (closer to 1990), but this looks about right. I wonder if an 80-20 split would be enough to make one a premium over the other... Or is it not until 90-10? I mean, I have some Moon Knights from the early 90s (the Marc Specter series) when the split was probably 70-30, and I would never consider pricing them higher than their direct siblings.

I think 2000 is a good point, because by then, comics were at its nadir in all phases of publishing/pop culture (years away from the first Spider-Man movie and even further away from the first Iron Man), and if direct sales numbers were plummeting, I can only imagine how small the print runs of the newsstands were.

My personal feelings about the collectability newsstand copies of comics aside, I do realize there is a market out there for certain issues. My question is: at what point (date-wise) does it matter? I ask because on Sunday, the guy setting up next to me at a local show was hawking his wares, and was talking to anyone who would listen about how newsstands are the next big thing. And, amazingly, he was able to sell a newsstand Hawkeye #1 (from 1983) to an unsuspecting doofus for $35. Now, this clown dealer loves to chime in when I'm making sales (which is another story altogether), I held my tongue, even though I would have loved to rescue this buyer from wasting money on this otherwise common book. So while I assume that there was a pretty even split newsstand/direct in '83 (or maybe even more newsstand), when does it tip to the point that newsstands are actually a significant minority in print runs where there is a difference?