The print runs weren't that low on the early issues, but compared to the books out at the time (X-Men #1 and such) it seemed that way. The rarest non-variant pre-Unity book is Rai #3 with a claimed total print run of ~28,000 with Rai #4 being next with claims of ~30,000 printed. It has been argued those numbers are low by about 5-7000, but even 35,000 is relatively low.
The print runs on the last issues that made it to the end of the Voyager Entertainment-based VALIANT run are smaller than the early ones, many with less than 10K I believe.
Check out Greg Holland (valiantman's) site, it has a comprehensive price guide and well-researched print runs - http://www.valiantfan.com/valiant/guide.asp
-slym
Beat me too it.
Magnus Robot Fighter 64 14,000
Solar, Man of the Atom 60 14,000
X-O Manowar 68 15,000
Bloodshot 51 9,000
It appears the Bloodshot final issues did dip below the 10K mark. These numbers are actually higher than the current Valiant's numbers for most of their titles, at least for the month of September.
There is no reason not to grab these anytime you see them and they do show up in dollar bins:
Last few issues of,
magnus, eternal warrior, solar, turok, harbinger, bloodshot and x-o
Rai 33
Shadowman 43
I don't know about the print runs for last issues of Hard Corps or Ninjak?
There are a lot of newsstands too and they are rare as f**k. So are
any of the 2.50 cover price variants ( visitor vs the valiant universe ) etc.
Against the advice of even Greg himself, I continue to assemble my box of Valiants