Cpt Kirk

I agree. I think you can throw out the high bid of approx $250 as invalid. It looks like it is way too early to establish a value for this comic book. The only thing I can say for sure is that there appeared to be much more desire for it than I expected. I really did not expect it to sell for more than $50, which is what one friend offered to pay for it before I put it up for auction (I put it up for bid to see what it was worth to help settle the argument, and also to show my friend that $50 would probably be a good deal... neither of us expected it to go north of $100). If we don't count the high bidder (and we should not count it in my opinion), It looks to me that at least 2 people were willing to spend about $200 for it and another $150. But I really can't say if any of those bidders planned to put it in their collection for that much money. I know that my friend would have bought it for $50 and placed it permanently in his collection. I still might just sell it to him for that price if no one is interested in paying appox $200 for it. To me the money is not that big of a deal... I would rather just help friends find stuff for their collection in exchange for them helping me find comic books that I'm looking for. CarlElvis/RockyMyAmadeus/CooperAgekids -- would you have kept it or flipped it if you bought it in the $150 to $200 range?

Thanks for pointing this out. Dumb question... how can you tell these other bidders have re-tracted in the past? I just looked up their feedback rating and I can't see anything about retractions.

I'm the seller and I'm not quite sure what is going to happen here. I will let you know how it comes out. regards, Kirk

yes, but they aren't worth much because the DCU's from those packs are fairly common. If you are thinking about selling the pack, sell it was unopened and show both sides of the pack in your listing. Those packs usually sell from $10 to $20 unopened.

I agree with Revat.... he is right on the money with his assessment. I will say that if you find the ones I'm looking for, then you just hit a small stakes lottery. I'd gladly pay $100 for Adv of Superman 521 & 530, Superman 95, 113, 117 and Superman Man of Steel 49 and 50 DCU variants in VF or better.

For SM 50, it is easy.... it has the "Historic Engagement Issue" banner and bar code on front cover. (all other 2nd prints have Superman shield in the UPC box) For Robin, it is also easy... it has "The Adventure Begins" banner on top right hand side of cover and bar code on front cover.

Great analysis.... thank you! As for Superman 50 2nd print newsstand, I've been looking high and low, as well as offering a bounty. No other copies have surfaced except the one you found. You might find this amusing... I cleaned out MyComicShop's stock of 2nd printings of Superman 50 (roughly 16 of them at roughly $3 a piece) with the hopes that they had a newsstand copy somewhere among their bunch. Not a single one was a newsstand copy.

Ygogolak --- thanks for "liking" my posting. I also see your point about hyping a comic book. As a result, I added the following to my Robin #1 listing: "Additional words of caution: 1. Please look at the photos carefully. This comic book looks very nice but it is not high grade in my opinion. Look at photos carefully. There are some stress marks on the back cover on the spine, and they break color on the back cover. 2. This existence of this comic book has only recently come to light. I'm sure other copies will be found, and supply may eventually exceed demand" Now, hopefully for you, others will stop bidding on this comic book and you can win the darn thing!

Here's the truth for any of my friends who care to know... I decided on the 4th of July to create the listing for the newsstand version of the 2nd printing of Robin #1 after reading the discussion about it in this thread. This Robin #1 was sent to me as a spare when I bought some other newsstand issues and the seller sent it to me with the following note: "I also have this Robin newsstand issue so I thought you might like to have it too." I don't collect Robin but I saw the debate about whether or not this comic book had any worth. So I thought "Let's create a listing and see what is worth... I would love to know". I didn't give much thought about the listing but I went back later that night and saw that the high bid had increased from $30 to $150 (I really didn't expect to get much more than $30 for it). Then I saw my statement in the original listing that "only a couple copies known" and I thought to myself "oh .... I've overstated the rarity of this comic book... I need to check into this and make sure I don't create a false sense of rarity". So I revised the listing to make it clear that I've heard of 4 known copies and that even though they cannot be easily found on ebay right now, I'm sure that others will be found. Money has never been the issue for me. If you look at my ebay history, I've bought more than 1,000 things and sold about 20 or 30 comic books. I'm just trying to collect comic books, man!.... no intent to ever sell (it is too much of a hassle). Several of my sales were actually me selling a comic book for a friend who did not or could not sell on ebay for whatever reason. I would expect that many more copies of this Robin #1 2nd print newsstand comic book will be found to exist if they sell at more than $150 per issue. I recall a short time ago when Batman 457 2nd print newsstand was thought to be a "faked" comic book because no one had ever been able to produce a real copy. But one was finally found and now it seems like roughly 25 copies have been identified on these boards. So I would personally caution against speculating on the Robin #1 2nd print newsstand because I would think there's only a few people who would care about it. In other words, I would expect that supply will eventually exceed demand. To me, the supply/demand of variants is a very interesting topic. It seems to me that the die-hard variant collectors will battle each other to get these variants, but once they have them in hand the market is completely saturated and then there is zero demand after that. The insatiable demand for the Batman 457 2nd print newsstand is understandable to me because there are so many fanatical Batman collectors. I can't imagine there are too many fanatical Robin collectors, so I would caution anyone about spending a lot of money for this Robin 1 2nd print newsstand. The price that a variant can achieve is simply fascinating and unpredictable to me. When two die-hard variant collectors go toe-to-toe in an auction, silly things can happen. Case in point... there are only a few DC Mark Jeweler variants collectors, me being one of them. A string of Batman jeweler variants came up for auction on ebay the other day, and one of them was Batman 271 in vgFN condition. I already had one in my collection, but it was on my 'upgrade' list ((my copy was gvg). I was on vacation and knew I would not be able to monitor the end of the auction, so I put a ridiculous max bid of $250 on it to make sure I got the darn thing, knowing that I might not see another one in 10 years. The auction ended at approximately $110 whereas most of the other jeweler variants in that run ended in the $10 to $20 range (which was probably just other Batman collectors trying to get a reasonably priced Batman comic book, not caring about the jeweler insert). I took my undercopy and listed it for $50 BIN, and it sold withing hours. Turns out the buyer was the other guy who was bidding against me on the higher graded Batman 271 jeweler variant, and he was a friend. So we had a good laugh about it and we both felt pretty decent about spending $50 to get what we wanted. I suspect if we listed a 3rd Batman 271 jeweler variant in vgFN, it would sit on ebay forever at $20 and not sell. I've seen at least 50 high-grade Batman jeweler variants sit on ebay for more than 6 months now at $30 per copy with no bites (because I already own them in high grade and I'm guessing the other very few Batman jeweler collectors have them too.)

http://the-comic-book-forum.boards.net/thread/812/discovery-superman-1990-print-newsstand

thanks for the info!

So I am selling my Robin #1 2nd print newsstand because this thread made me wonder "Is anyone really interested in a newsstand version of 2nd printing of Robin #1 ?" Well, I don't know if the bidders are just speculators, but the answer is yes. I just listed it last night and got 4 different bidders going after it, and the price jumped from my starting bid of $30 up to $150 within a few hours. Here's a link to the auction in case you want to watch it. It ends about 6 days from now. I personally would be surprised to see it go for much more than $150, but who knows. https://www.ebay.com/itm/163133148040?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

guys -- Interesting discussion... I've never seen a stickered comic book with CGC label. I have some spares and might send one off to CGC just to see how they handle it. Besides DC Universe stickers, recall there are several newsstand issues that had stickers placed on them to correct an error on the bar code (Superman 677, Action 759, Batman 568 come to mind)

yes I encountered the same thing. Some of them from Japan seemed to have a unique stamp.

just my opinion: 1. I would not grade the TEC 690. I only know of two people who try to get these stickered copies, and both of us have those. I would instead put it up for auction on ebay and see what happens. 2. Same thing on the Action 718. Even though uncommon, you never know what you will get for these when they go up for auction. Most of the people who would drive the price up on this variant already have it. So if there's no competition, it might not even sell for $10. I would instead take good photos, and put it up for auction with minimum price of $20. If no bites, hang onto it. Eventually someone else will get the DCU variant bug and will be willing to pay at least $20 (if not more) because he won't be able to find it after a year or two of looking, especially in that condition.

yes, those are both hard to find. I've seen about 3 copies of the Action 718 and the TEC 690 with sticker. RockMyAmadeus raises a good point about the stickers being easy to fake, but I've seen several copies of the stickers now and I think the original sticker would be hard to reproduce exactly the same each time. Makes me wonder if CGC would ever go to the extremity of trying to verify validity of stickers... I sincerely doubt it since there's only about 3 collectors out there who care to chase them down. I have myself pulled a Superman 104 stickered DCU variant out of a sealed Superman Greatest Foes 6-pack once. The sticker was not visible from the outside of the package, so I can't explain why they felt the need to put a sticker on that issue.

Thanks for the explanation Rock. Also love that you were "Timdrake72" once... lol. And I agree that only one Superman 50 2nd print newsstand has been discovered and noted on this website. If anyone else finds one, I would gladly pay $200 in FN or better. Wait... let's make that $300 to prove that point that at least one nutty variant collector cares about it. To all... I have Robin #1 second print newsstand on hand if anyone is interested in buying it from me. If you are, just send me a PM. Thanks

What was driving the price so high on that auction? Was it just the Robin newsstand issue?

Thanks for bringing this up. I have about 700 DC issues with the jeweler insert, and it seems like only 10 percent of them have a star. Mark Jewelers expert awe4one says he's seen lots of comic books with the star on them, but they did not have the insert. The star was something that AAFES (i.e. military) store clerks seemed to place on the comic books when they were sold. So the presence of a star is a good indicator that the comic book would contain the insert (I believe the inserts were made exclusively for military PX's overseas, and therefore if it had a star on it there is a decent chance it had the jeweler insert since quite a few PX's are overseas).

Shortly after this post a Batman 283 jeweler variant popped up on ebay and I managed to win it. Now I am down to 5 Batman issues that should have the insert, but I've never seen them: namely 245, 324, 326, 376 and 390. There are about 40 issues among the titles of Batman, TEC, Superman, Action and JLA for which I know there's a jeweler variant but I don't have it in my collection. So I'm doing an experiment on ebay. So far I have asked about 200 different sellers of those individual issue if they copy of one of those issues contains a jeweler insert. For example, I asked Quality Comix if their issue of Batman 288 contained an insert. Of the 200 asked so far, I found one issue that contained an insert. I try to hit each seller only once so as not to be a pain in the neck. I'm amazed at the number of sellers out there. It seems like only roughly half of them know about the existence of the Mark Jewelers advertising inserts.

I agree. Some we thought might not exist eventually showed up. And new ones keep showing up every year.... especially when LikeEmScanned keeps looking... he has uncanny ability to find new ones.

Great post... thanks. A little off topic but in a similar vein, there was an image of Batman #420 that was produced for the "Ten Nights of the Beast" trade paperback. The slightly different cover got into distribution as a stock image on ebay, which made some people think it really existed as a variant (it does not exist). Newkadia uses this stock image on ebay. It has a "newsstand" price box and a "direct sales" symbol in the UPC box. Following is a photo of it from the trade paper back.

Very true Revat. I am sure the ones I am looking for are rare. I am OK with people thinking they are rare because I would gladly pay a large finders fee to anyone who can find them (in my mind, the more people look for them, the better). I know several collectors who have been combing shops and conventions for almost 10 years now, and have not found some of the ones on my want list (or only one or two have been found). Rare is Adv of Superman 521 (two found), 530(none found), Superman Man of Steel 49(none found), Superman Man of Steel 50(one found), Azrael 22 (I've yet to see a photo, but I did hear someone found it), Superman 95 (none found), Superman 113 (one found), Superman 117 (one found). I'm offering $100 or more for these. Some of the ones listed above that have never been found might have been typos or mistakes from the legendary Jerome Wenker list (he admittedly had mistakes on his list). Some have been thought in the past to be non-existent but then popped up in quantities later. Action 706 (I think at least 5 have been found now) and Superman 117(one found) are good examples.

Nice haul. I'm guessing that HeroesCon is one the very best shows for people who like to find back issues. I recall going through the convention booths before dealers knew anything about variants, and there was always lots of good stuff to be found.

awesome finds!