RCheli

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?

When I buy a collection I tend to pay what the value of the best 4 or 5 comics is. So if I can sell those 4 comics for $200, I'll offer $200. Keys sell quickly, and the rest of the box is all profit.

There was the Michael Carbonaro church basement show that he put on for a few years. I'm not sure why he stopped. I know the load in/out for that show was a pain the butt. I will do just about any show within two hours of my house, and I wouldn't do a Manhattan show -- the logistics just sound terrible, regardless of the potential for great sales. Also, while I think Manhattanites don't have cars, all the other boroughs are full of them.

I mean, even if the guest list is crummy, at that price for 4 days, that's a good deal for just going to buy stuff.

I have so many new books, I don't know if I have enough room to fit them in my car!

I recently bought a collection that included Melody #5, which had a Dave Stevens pin-up of a woman showing her ta-tas (as my wife loves to call them). Is this the only Stevens work that actually shows nudity? Obviously a lot of other works had a strategic sheet or arm or shadow covering up an otherwise naked woman, but this one had none of those. (And after typing this, it seems like I'm some sort of pervert... but really! I'm not! I'm quite chaste!)

Because cost of putting on even a small show is ridiculous. Plus, Northern Jersey is really close to Manhatten and the Bronx and Queens and Brooklyn are close to Long Island.

That's great. I would just hope that these shows stay one day, low cost, comic focused, because there is a definite want/need for them. When you move to two days, the dealer's costs go up significantly higher than the potential rewards.

I think that nearly every medium-to-large sized city could stand to have a one-day show 3-4 times a year. I think that it makes the hobby stronger. Now, obviously, New Jersey has a few things going for it -- it is very densely populated, it has a lot of high earners, it is very close to two very large cities -- but I am always surprised when I see large cities not having something more often. Is there a regular Nashville show? Or Phoenix? Or Las Vegas? They are very inexpensive to put together. A small hotel ballroom or a VFW can cost as little at $800 on a Sunday (when they usually struggle to fill spaces). You sell 25-40 tables at $50-75 each, spend a little money on fliers and a website, $3 admission... PROFIT.

Quick payment and nice guy. It's everything you want in a comic book transaction.

I emailed Mark Evanier and this is his reply: "ME: DC was very secretive about exact numbers so I question whether anyone had solid information on that. But we were told they were printing around 400,000 per issue."

There are a lot of Shadow #1s and Sandman #1s and She-Hulk #1s and many others because, by the that time, there was a direct market starting with Phil Seuling and others. Speculation was fed by the availability of a large quantity of these first issues.

Newsstands got the same amount of issues that they sold of the most recently returned/checked-in issue, plus a percentage more. So if the newsstand got 10 copies of Superman #200, and the returns (the top 1/3 of the cover) was 3 copies, they're probably get 10 copies of Superman #203. (It usually took a bit for them to see total returns.) If they sold out of all 10 copies, then they'd get 12 the next time. If they got 7 returns, they might get 8. For new titles, there was usually a benchmark series that distributors would go by. A new Archie title might mean the newsstand got the same number as Jughead. A new Marvel title might mean they get the same number as the Avengers. There was NO PREMIUM ON FIRST ISSUES BY THE PUBLISHERS. At least not until much later on (the 1980s). If there was speculation, that was for the buyers only, and not from the distributors/newsstands side. (Edit; Added "BY THE PUBLISHERS".)

I suspect you're right. I think that if people bought Forever People, they did so because of Kirby. If they bought Jimmy Olsen, they (or their parents) did so because of Superman. That latter group was significantly larger than the former.

You can't honestly believe that 1.2-2.4 million copies of Forever People #1 were printed, can you? There hadn't been print runs of that magnitude for well over a decade. Remember, editorial did not determine print runs (and they were the ones promoting Kirby); numbers were all on the business side, and while I can assure you that the print runs were higher for the first Fourth World issues than the first issues of Hawk and Dove or Beware the Creeper a few years earlier, they were not in the millions.

Who designed this website? If you look on the home page, it doesn't tell you these two very important things: Where it is! (It says Chicago, but I don't think you want to drive up and down the streets of that very large city) What hours are the convention? (It gives you 3 days... but no hours) Hector -- I hope you do really well. It looks like a pretty decent line-up of dealers for this.

(I know this isn't copper and it's getting way off topic, but...) There is a Statement of Ownership available for Jimmy Olsen #136. It reads: Average print run 627,102; average paid circulation 333,539. (That's for the average of the previous year's issues.) That's a really big number -- bigger than possibly any Marvel book at the time. (Compare it to the Avengers #86: average print run 411,541; average paid circulation 239,986 or Fantastic Four #109: average print run 518,737; average paid circulation 285,639. I can't find a Spider-Man sales figure for that period, which I believe was Marvel's top selling book.) I do not think that Forever People #1 touched that Jimmy Olsen number and probably was lower than even the Avengers. Even if DC/National started to speculate (which I doubt), printing 600k of a new #1 wasn't realistic, especially for characters nobody had ever heard of.

I would not be in the least bit surprised if there were more copies printed and did of that Jimmy Olsen issue than I'd Forever People #1. They didn't really overprint first issues then and the Superman family books still sold well.

I don't think there's any difference in supply between IH #180 and #181 or SPJO #134 and FP #1, so that doesn't really answer why. (And I don't know the reason why.) The difference is all in demand. The same may go with this WW/Circe fiasco. Do people care more about a full body/face/cover than merely a panel or two of eyes?

We all have to remember that facts aren't nearly as important as what the market is saying. The market has told us that IH #181 is more valuable than #180 and SPJO #134 is more valuable than Forever People #1. There is no rhyme or reason to it.

My table is mostly long boxes of $3 and $5 books. I'll have some 50-centers and some priced more, but those two price points are my bread and butter. I'll have a rack of wall books behind me. I'll probably be wearing my RC Comics t-shirt, and my 10-year-old son will be sitting behind the tables playing on his switch.

I also give my first 3 autographs for free. Seeing as how nobody's ever asked for one, I don't think I need a policy above and beyond that.

He has never gotten to a show on time. I think I've set up at a half dozen shows where he's also there, and he's always unloading after the show starts.

I picked up a collection of various late-80s/90s Dark Horse comics a couple of months ago -- 11 short boxes worth. (No Aliens books... he wanted to keep those.) I'll tell you what, Dark Horse published a lot of junk.