paqart

USPS delivered my 9.8 newsstand Hulk 1 (2008) to a neighbor down the street. Sat on her kitchen table for a couple weeks before I got it.

The first comic I ever owned, as far as I recall, is Avengers #93, bought off a spinner rack for a quarter. I've wanted to have another copy for a long time. I'll have to keep looking because the copy I just got is a pence variant.

I wouldn't. I'd count myself lucky to get the 9.6.

I agree with you about the value of the direct edition driving the value of the newsstand. However, as far as I am concerned, the $345 price for ASM V2 #11/$2.29 was in line with what I paid for the #13. The only difference is that it was beyond a price threshold I set for myself when I got back into collecting, $250. I haven't paid more than that for anything since I was 12 years old and bought a copy of Thun'da #1 for $375 in 1978. That Thun'da by the way, was not very good value for the price. Today it might be worth about $5k in the condition it was in. In the same year I paid $175 total for a copy of FF #5 and ASM #6, both in what I think would be 9.8 condition today. I think that was the best purchase I ever made, though I lost the value of it when my mom forced me to sell my collection in 1979. This is me in 1978 or so with some of my comic collection. On the walls are some Frazetta posters. The most prominent is a rare painting of Conan by Brunner.

There are a few of these "most desirables" that I haven't bought despite appreciating the features that make them desirable. It always comes down to two things: 1) they are more expensive than an underpriced newsstand edition, 2) there isn't a newsstand version with the variant cover. For instance, Daredevil #111 with the Aja cover. I really like that cover and have been tempted several times to buy it. However, at $450-$650 it is very expensive and likely at the top of the market. There is no newsstand version to add a little room to its potential, so I stay away from it. I do have 2 copies of the regular cover newsstand, which is one of the most difficult issues to find in decent shape. At least, in my experience. I should mention that I try to get comics with room to grow in value or that are severely underpriced. It is less about profit but awareness that if I had to sell fast, I don't want to lose money. Just like a car that loses value the minute you drive it off the lot, comics at the top retail price cannot easily be turned around for the same price if you have to do it. That is why I was uncomfortable with the ASM V2 #13. I probably paid a very high price for that, maybe the highest to date. The other thing I like about newsstands is specifically that they weren't "supposed to matter". The rarity of the DD #111/Aja cover is artificially produced by having an intentionally limited print run. The newsstand print runs are based on how many copies the publishers thought they could sell. After that, the comic still had to survive rough handling at the store and after purchase by the customer. Therefore, I look at the rarity of newsstands as more natural, or genuine. To me, the retailer variants are fake rare, newsstands are genuine rare. It's pretty much the way I look at the value of comics signed by artists in assembly line fashion at conventions. Since the artists are usually paid for the signature and anyone can have one if they go to the convention, the idea of paying a premium for these makes no sense to me. From my point of view, without a personal connection, signatures should reduce the value of a comic, not increase it. For that reason, I don't buy signed comics and I don't get my comics signed. I know a lot of creators (having worked in the industry myself) and could get signatures outside of conventions without paying a fee but I don't ask unless I have a personal reason to do it. Recently, a certain creator asked me for a run of some comics I did in the nineties and he wanted them signed. I sent them off. A few months later, he sent me a run of his comics, all signed. That was fine with me because I know him and I don't intend to sell the comics though it is a particularly valuable group. An exception I've made to the dealer variant/direct edition rule is post-newsstand comics by creators I really like. For instance, Michael Cho. I love his covers, so I buy them whenever I see them, provided I don't have them already. Unlike newsstands, I don't buy doubles of these because I don't intend to resell them. Getting back to the ASM V2 #13, the issue isn't a key, at least, not yet. However, it is one of 36 price variants. As a group they are interesting and desirable to me for that reason alone. To date, I have 13 of them, and am looking for the rest. The search for those comics, and the cost of acquiring them, is to me like multiple trips to Disneyland. It's fun to hunt them down even if the issues themselves don't stand out from other stories in the same run.

I get keys and non-keys but focus on keys. This is why I have 8 copies of ASM V2 #30 and other key issues. Below are a few of my newsstand keys in slabs (the ST 25 is Canadian). My best ones though, are at CGC right now, and have been since March. I look forward to showing them here when they come back. As for the variants, I think newsstand variants are more than "just a variant". To me, these comics beat the system by emerging from the newsstands intact. Also, I remember buying comics in 7-11 off spinner racks, so they are nostalgic for me also, though the rare modern variants were more likely to be found in a bookstore than a 7-11.

This arrived a couple days ago. It is easily the hardest to find newsstand I've ever tried to get. I have five other newsstand copies of ASM V2 #13. Three are the normal $1.99 price. Two are $2.49. This is the only $2.29. Of the price variants that came out around this time (around 36 in total), 18 are priced $2.29. I have only two. This comic and Fantastic Four 24. It cost about the price Mile High charges for a copy in fine ($160) plus shipping and tax it came up to $190. There was a copy of ASM V2 #11 $2.29 in 9.8 available from the same seller for $345. I didn't want to spend so much, so I passed. A couple days later, after sitting on eBay for months, I got a message saying I'd missed out on it. It doesn't show up in eBay under sold items, so I think the buyer got it directly from mycomicshop.com. That's what I did.

This may be the rarest comic I've ever owned. The image is from Heritage, I sold mine in 1980. I also owned a giveaway called "North Korea My Home" that was the first copy discovered. I reported it to Overstreet in person at a NY comic con in the late eighties/early nineties. I think of the Feature Book as more rare because it has greater collector interest and likely had a higher initial print run.

Newsstand only?

Getting back to scarcity, I just reluctantly paid $190 for this. It is the only copy I've ever seen for sale. My understanding is that Get Marwood &I might have multiples of this but these days, when I look for 18 months and find one copy, it's scarce. There's a copy of #11 in 9.8 I'd like to get also but the seller wants $345, which is more than I'm comfortable spending. Even this was a stretch, particularly after I saw it sit on eBay for 2-3 months with no takers. Meaning, I'm the only dumbbell interested enough to pay this price. That said, I don't know how I would have gotten it otherwise, and my eyes are getting sore from looking at the little price boxes in online ads. My other 1999-2000 Marvel price variants are at CGC for grading. They've been there since March, so I hope they get graded soon and I can put this together with the $2.49 and $1.99 copy. So what is the scarcity anyway? I think these $2.29 variants are much more scarce than 1:100 printings but it's hard to know for sure.

I agree to a point. Carl Barks' work transcends all eras, as does Eisner, Kurtzman, and a few others.

Whatever quibbles you have with Nobel, the way he writes about comics is fun. If it weren't for his blog, I might not have gotten back into comics. I even started drawing comics again. I did one with Chuck Dixon a few months ago and am doing one with Graham Nolan and Beau Smith right now.

This story is my favorite after reading comics for 50 years. In my opinion, the best example of good writing and perfectly matched art in all of comics history. The photo isn't my copy btw, which is in somewhat better shape (7-7.5 or so)

To say "more rare than they truly are", you should know exactly how rare they are. A better way might be to just admit that they are harder to find (rarer) than directs and leave it at that. As a collector, I have paid much higher prices for newsstands because I have had such a hard time finding them. If you care to pretend they aren't rare, go for it, but if you ever get serious about looking for them, you may be surprised.

By that logic, I guess these are about to blow up someday soon...

I stopped buying comics in 1996, sold almost all the comics I had, and didn't care. All because of the 90's gimmick boom, which offended me a great deal. I started buying again in 2018, when I spotted an Uncle Scrooge #6 at an antique store. From there, I went after a number of Barks Four Colors until I had most of them. Then, I stopped for another year. I started again because I wanted better copies of the Barks comics and to restore my original collection from the 1970's. To do it, I decided to focus on hard to find modern newsstands, sell those, then buy the comics I actually wanted. However, after beginning the hunt, it became very addictive. It is fun to hunt newsstands for no other reason but it is hard to do. That said, I have near-zero interest in them as comics. Comics made before 1990 are much more fun to read than anything made later, particularly the last ten years. There are some very good covers on modern comics though, and that I like.

The other one I have my eye on is also a PV. The reason I wanted them is they are the first $2.29 variants I've seen for ASM. I have all the other ASM variants.

Sidebottom had the FF1, Avengers 1, SM 1, Hulk 1 all priced the same, $500 per. At the time, that was over-priced. Also, the credit was at Recycle, not Sidebottom's.

I just bought an ASM from MCS for what I think is a huge premium. I've been looking at it on eBay for months and it hasn't moved likely because of the price. Still, I wanted it, so I bit the bullet. They have another one I want but it is too much for me $345 for ASM 11 V2 CGC 9.8.

I just bought a pence variant Avengers #94. It follows my first Pence variant, Daredevil #163. In both cases, I'm happy to have them.

This is where I bought comics in 1978, Recycle Books (on the left). At least, one of the places I bought comics. Bob Sidebottom's is visible in this shot (on the right, mid-block) but is hard to make out. He had a back room loaded with full boxes of comics like FF #1, Hulk #1, Avengers #1, etc. All bought from the same warehouse. The boxes went up to the 14 foot high ceiling and almost totally covered the floor. I was shown a box of Hulk #1's, never opened. I was only 12 in 1978 but they hired me a couple of times to grade and price comics. Once, they called me in to price a collection someone wanted to sell them. It included a full set of Spider-Man, starting with #1. I think they gave me a $200 store credit for that one.

The owner of my LCS recently told me that a friend of his sold a copy of the Hulk #1 (newsstand, like mine) for $3,000. And yes, there is a significant learning curve. I had to make a fairly comprehensive database from scratch to track the rarity and value of these things. It took months but the result is that it looks like I spent about a nickel for every dollar of value on over 2,000 comics. I just sent the first 75 to CGC to prepare for selling them. EDIT: The reason some of these are worth so much is rarity multiplied by heightened interest related to film and TV series connections. In many cases, the moderns are much harder to find than much more expensive older comics. For instance, I just searched "Hulk 1 1962" on eBay and found 4 copies right at the top of the list. A search for "Hulk 1 2008 newsstand" yields 3 copies total. I didn't check the multiple pages of results for the 1962 result, so there may have been more. The 2008 version had one page of results, most of which were other comics. This result is not unusual for modern newsstands. To a collector like me, it means that the only thing getting in the way of a copy of the 1962 Hulk 1 is price. If I want one, I can buy it on any day of the week. The newsstand 2008 edition is rare enough that whole months go by without a single copy turning up. There are some moderns I still haven't seen but have been actively searching for more than 18 months. For people who have the money, the issue is availability. On that level, the moderns are in many cases much rarer than older comics. That is the other reason I decided to go for them: I wanted to scoop them up while I could. That said, I intend to convert them over the next year or two for GA and SA comics.

Here is one example: The two modern Hulks, both newsstand editions, cost me $75. The two Vacation Parades (1 US/1 Canadian) cost $300. However, the Hulks are worth much more than what I paid and more than the ducks, more than enough that the ducks were effectively free.

I'm 55. All of my GA comics are Barks ducks. Although I grew up in the 1970's, I collected GA back then. I also had a much better collection then than now. I once was the proud owner of Batman #2, Wonder Woman #2, Action 25, Sub-Mariner #2, Comics Cavalcade #3, World's Finest #2, Many ECs and Barks ducks, including US #1 and Christmas on Bear Mountain, all in NM condition (the Barks, not the others), along with many Eisner/ Lou Fine, LB Cole comics like Spirit, Plastic Man, Uncle Sam, and others. Now, though I started with the goal of recreating my 1979 collection, I am buying modern newsstands for their high value to cost ratio. Hoping to sell those for enough profit to get some of the more valuable comics that are now out of reach financially.

Many of his prices seem outrageous but I have seen real sales on eBay for multiples of what he charges. For example, a newsstand Hulk 16 that went for $800, as compared to $160 at MH. I bid $205 on it because it was a 9.8, and two other people on this board outbid me before dropping out. I've seen the same thing with other comics