Cpt Kirk

Update: After a few months of questioning sellers on ebay (and the German ebay), I've been able to find all but 21 of the 692 possible jeweler variants of Batman, Detective, Superman, Action and JLA. I have all but 14 of the ones that I know exist for those 5 titles. I've graphed the numbers of these that I've found over the years, and it appears as if I will eventually find all but 10 of the 692 possible variants. I'm think there's approximately 10 comics that should have contained the insert but never got it. A good example would be JLA 195. I found a string of JLA comics from one place, and all the JLA issues contained the insert except issue 195 (it even had the AAFES star on it but no insert). If anyone has a listing of these variants in those titles, I would love to hear about it.

Barnes and Noble would have real data in their system. And Barnes and Noble was about the only company selling newsstand issues from roughly 2008 until the demise of the DC newsstand issues in October 2017. I've seen B&N data with my own eyes on their computerized inventory system. Each store had a record of how many newsstand issues they received for any given title, and how many were actually sold. So I am pretty sure someone at the corporate level could get a roll-up of exactly how many issues of each comic book were received and how many were sold. The variables would be the accuracy of the "sold" data, and how many of the unsold were actually destroyed. p.s. Recently, @Lifesuggs on this website found a bunch of newsstand issues that were 'rescued' from the pile that was to be destroyed. Thanks to him, I was able to find the last newsstand issue that I was missing from my collection (namely, Superman New 52 #8).

I do have this one... but wow... 9.8. Nicely done dude!

I hear you. I originally started noticing newsstands about 10 years ago when I tried to make sure ALL my issues were direct sales copies. Then I got hooked on trying to find all the rest of the newsstand copies for completeness. It was a nutty pursuit but I finally found them all. I can't quantify with any precision the ratio of newsstand to direct sales, but I can say that some DC newsstand issues between 2003 and 2011 were really hard to find.

JJM -- I really appreciate your analysis. Very interesting and helpful! I'm sure that a lot of these oddball variants are stuck away in collections and closets, but you sure don't see them come up for sale very much. Usually they sell for at least $100 when they do.

challenge accepted and accomplished. I found this one on ebay... it was a qualified (green label) CGC 9.6. It was from a source different from Comixdlr. The qualified label was simply because this comic book had a sticker on it. Based on info form Comixdlr, it sounds like Diamond might have been short on direct sales copies, so they put stickers on some newsstand issues to ship to dealers. I wonder how many collectors noticed the stickers, and I wonder how many were annoyed by the stickers.

One of the funny things about the Mile High Comics website is that they list several comics with a newsstand premium when in fact it is the same thing as the regular copy. Case in point: Superman (1939 series) #348 with cover date of Jun 19082; Mile High lists a 'regular' copy in FN for $6.75 and a 'newsstand' copy in FN for $15. DC's Direct sales issues were not even created until Oct 1982, so Mile High's 'regular' copy of Superman 348 is the same thing as a 'newsstand' copy. They should be embarrassed for creating two separate listings for the same thing (especially since I pointed out this problem to them about 8 years ago). The other thing that they might want to take note of is the fact that the earliest direct sales issues are harder to find than newsstand issues, yet they charge more for the newsstand issues and less for those direct sales issues.

holy moley.... what is this world coming to?

Lifesuggs is great. He has helped me get some hard-to-find comic books at a very reasonable price!

I agree. Just another warehouse find. If a Mile High II at 9.6 were to sell at same time as regular 9.6, I wouldn't expert there to be any significant price difference.

I recall one of the Mile High comic book stores in Denver had several Mile High II comics on their wall back in the mid-90's and I never bought any of them (the price was somewhere around 50 bucks if I recall correctly). Then around 2005 I saw several Mile High II's that were CGC'd on Mile High's website and they all topped out around 9.6. I bought JLA 134 Mile High II CGC 9.6 for $60 in 2005 just to have one (not really a good buy, but what the heck... just wanted to have one to see what it was like... I immediately cracked it out of the slab).

It seems like we often see premiums for the later newsstand issues. Does anyone recall examples of sellers asking more for the somewhat hard-to-find copies of the earliest direct sales issues?

One of the fun thing about the newsstand issues is that there are still a lot of sellers who don't realize that they have an uncommon newsstand issue in hand. Plus there's not a lot of collectors who care whether or not they have a newsstand issue Therefore, with patience, many newsstand issues can be found or bought at a reasonable price without a lot of competition.

I will amend my note about to say that I was able to find confirmation that the last newsstand issues in the Rebirth titles mentioned above were Batman 29, TEC 962, Superman 29 and Action 985

I found a Superman 50 2nd print newsstand in the wild today. It is in FN- condition and is a spare for me. If anyone needs this, feel free to send me a PM. I'm always interested in trading.

BM 457 error newsstand is hard to find (it is the one with 000 in the indicia and bar code on front cover), but the really rare and expensive one is the 457 2nd print newsstand. You can google "Batman 457 2nd print newsstand" to get the whole story and see some prices. BM 457 error newsstand can usually be found after a long search... and I think $20 to $50 is a reasonable price for that one.

I concur.... the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc printing of DC Comics that were cover dated from July 1986 through June 1992 can usually be found without paying a premium if you don't mind waiting a couple years to get them (but some are hard to find, especially since many of them have identical front covers). Some examples of ones that were hard for me to find were as follows: Action 654 & 660, Adv of Superman 463 & 467, Justice League America 36, 37, & 45, Superman (2nd series) 44, 51 & 52. I thought it was relatively easy to find all the Batman ones after a couple years of looking (maybe they made more due to the popularity of Batman... but that's just a guess). p.s. I recall when these came out that most of us collectors were adamant that we had to have first printings; and additional printings were something to avoid because they would not be worth as much. Funny how these things turn out sometimes. Now some of those rarer 2nd and 3rd printings from the Funeral for a Friend series (i.e., the ones with the DC Universe symbol in the UPC box) are worth more than a hundred bucks in nice condition, whereas the first printings would be hard to sell at their original cover price. And the newsstand version of the second printing of Batman 457 sells for more than one thousand dollars if in really nice condition.

This is just an educated guess... but here it is. From about 2000 thru 2003, the newsstand issues are pretty easily found if you work hard at it for a few years. I'm going to guess that there is usually 1 newsstand issue to be found for every 10 to 40 direct sales issues during that time frame. There are exceptions, but Waldenbooks and newsstands were still selling a lot of newsstand issues up until about that time. Then Waldenbooks started folding, and a lot of newsstands stopped carrying comic books. From about 2004 through about 2012 the newsstand issues are hard to find. More like 1 newsstand issues for every 50 to 100 direct sales issues. I've got friends who have been looking for some newsstand issues in this time frame for years and still not found them. Around 2012, newsstand awareness really came of age, and I think a lot of people started buying and keeping newsstand issues for speculative purposes. For example, someone from Mile High Comics told me they had an arrangement with a couple of their customers, who would buy them from Barnes and Nobles and then bring them to Mile High for re-sale. So newsstands from this time frame are usually easily found (in spite of the fact that ratio is still more like 1 in 50 to 1 in 100) but those speculators seem to want a lot of money for them. However, there are a few cases from this time frame where distribution was limited. I recall a few newsstand issues toward the end of their run that could not be found except in a few Barnes and Nobles stores. So I had to send friends to those Barnes and Nobles stores that had them in hand, because my local Barnes and Noble in Columbus GA did not. Those newsies are really hard to find.

I believe I can help solve this mystery. I recently traded my spare copy of the Washington Park Mall variant for a variant I wanted really bad, and the person I traded it with must have sold it. Funny that @mycomicshop listed it as an "Ordway Mall variant". "Ordway" is listed at the top of the cover and he was the author of the story (good story in there, by the way). It is showing as sold on MyComicShop's website when you look at their new arrivals listing. From the outside looking in, it appears as if someone snatched it up right away at $150. For whatever it is worth, if it was a mall variant that I needed, I would gladly pay that much for it even in vg condition. With those mall variants, you can't be picky about condition. As I said earlier, 10 of the 14 known mall variants have only one known copy. And only a few of the 11 copies I have are better than FN condition.

Does anyone know who owns a copy of the Westlake Mall variant of Adv of SM 443? I know where all the others are, but never found the owner of that one.

I recommend you buy it if it is in nice condition. I would buy it for $20 more than you paid, plus shipping if in nice condition. It is handy to have these rare ones for trades.

Cranberry = Maryland (I think) Westlake = Boston Georgetown = Wash DC Clearview = Pennsylvania Rhode Island = Providence Spring Hill = Chicago suburbs Eden Prairie = Minneapolis The Parks = Dallas suburbs Town East = Dallas suburbs Washington Park = Oklahoma Montclair = Los Angeles suburbs Fiesta = Phoenix Willowbrook = Houston North Shore Square = New Orleans suburbs Many, but not all of these, are tied to malls developed and owned by Homart.

Action 686 is hard to find, but I think I've seen or found 10 of them in the last 19 years. Probably half of that for Superman 77, SM MOS 20, and Adv of Superman 499.

Those prices seem reasonable to me, especially the Superman 77. That one is really hard to find.

No. That's just me posting in the wrong area, I suppose. Dumb question... what age is 1988? Modern?