paqart

I'm getting the impression you have fixated on the ratio "1:100" and have let it distract you from the more important point: newsstands printed in certain years are much more difficult to find than direct editions of the same comic. However this is expressed, the salient fact is that some newsstands are much rarer than corresponding directs. You may want to believe there is no difference in value, or a slight difference, or a difference that is less than whatever Mile High charges, but other people have different opinions and have spent money accordingly. You might think they are insufficiently_thoughtful_persons, which is your right, but meanwhile, others are having a good time looking for these rarities and adding them to their collection. There is more than estimated print runs btw. There is also the actual proportion of these comics that appear for sale. I created a database to check this. Some issues appear on eBay only once for every 100 or so direct copies. A 1:50 ratio is more common, but not much less. Many issues the ratio is much more lopsided, like 1:380 or so.

What I wrote is literally true. If you have evidence that newsstand editions were not printed or haven't survived at a 1:100 ratio, you'd have a better basis for your statement. Without it, you have no more legitimate claim to accuracy than someone who thinks there is a 1:100 ratio.

It is incorrect to say that a ratio is "not accurate" because a specific person "can't prove it". It could be accurate regardless but you wouldn't be out of line to have a lower level of confidence in the estimate (it is an estimate) because you weren't satisfied with its provenance or basis.

I might have bought that one if I had seen it. However, I've cut back lately because 1) local flea markets were cancelled this summer thanks to covid, 2) I spent too much last year, and 3) opportunities are drying up. This is when, I expect, prices are going to start going straight up. It's one thing to have a hard time finding these when hardly anyone is looking. At least when you find them, they are reasonably priced. When everyone is looking, their rarity becomes more pronounced, creating a feeding frenzy for the few available copies. This theory of mine is the exact opposite of some theories I've seen here. Namely, that when prices start going up, newsstands will start coming out of attics and storerooms, revealing that they were never as rare as was initially claimed, and prices will drop. There are enough valuable comics in the direct edition version to haul out the attic and storeroom copies. Indeed, I saw a few of them for sale. However, newsstand editions were rare even among comics that regularly sell for five hundred dollars or more in direct edition. What that means to me is that there will be intensified interest in newsstands as their rarity and value become better known. That increased interest will create greater awareness of how rare these things are, because the attic copies were sold long ago, back when the direct editions were bringing in good money. Lesser-known issues may remain in storerooms everywhere but I think it is possible that increased interest will creater greater scarcity, not availability. In this case, these comics really are rare.

I see. I don't have any copies of any issue of God of Thunder. I see them for sale occasionally but the prices are very high. I just saw a newsstand copy of #6 on eBay for slightly over a thousand dollars. I wish I had run across any of these in the few lucky strikes I've had, where I've walked into a large group of late Marvel newsstands for below cover price, but that title has never shown up. At least not yet.

I don't have any. Why do you ask? Maybe you intended to respond to someone else?

I've seen newsstands sell for more on eBay than Mile High's top pricing for the same comics. It doesn't happen often but it does happen. For that reason, I've been tempted more than once to buy from MH. As far as patience is concerned, I've gone 2 years + without finding some issues. My patience is about gone for those. MH prices reflect actual rarity even if collectors haven't gotten comfortable yet with those prices. Still, try to find a run of ASM from 600-700. I've been working on it for a couple of years but to date have only about 30 issues, only a few of which might be 9.8.

It may get that way later. I just bought my first "strike-out" direct (Daredevil #159), just in case. That said, whether the early directs are as hard to find as late newsstands hasn't been established. I have made a very serious effort to locate many modern newsstands that to date I have never seen for sale. I run across the early directs often while looking for newsstands.

I started buying them two years ago because it looked possible to exploit perceived value among people like Lazyboy against actual value to get a quick profit. That profit could then go into the stuff I really wanted, Silver Age Marvels and Carl Barks duck comics. However, when I realized how genuinely rare newsstands are, I started collecting them for their own sake. The only ones I've sold came from a cache of dozens of copies of the same comic, sold to a friend to cover the cost of the purchase. Everything else, I've kept. Right now, that is 15 short boxes and 100 slabs.

Last year for DC was 2017

I almost bought that exact comic at auction recently. Instead, I went to a comic con and picked this up.

Ask and you receive!

Canadian version of Vacation Parade #1, to go along with my US version. This comic, btw, is about half the page count of the US version. The only part I care about is the missing Junior Woodchucks story. Grandma Duck is at the end and Forest Fire at the beginning.

I'm going to my second con of the month at the end of August, as an invited guest for a change. Hopefully I'll have my current project done before I get there. Here are the first few pages, for those who might be curious.

Just in case you're asking this because of the golden age Donald Duck I posted, all comics from that time period are newsstand but it has the added distinction of being a Canadian edition. Modern Canadians are both Newsstand and Canadian but they were printed alongside direct editions, making them separately collectible.

Now that I see what you got, I did see these but I rarely buy newsstands from this time period unless they are Canadian or super special for some reason. I don't collect them for anything other than rarity, and they aren't that hard to find until 1999 and later. After that, they get spectacularly hard to find. The Mazzuchelli Batmans are great comics btw.

Will look forward to seeing them. I should admit that I wasn't looking super carefully because my main purpose in going there was to show my portfolio and pick up an assignment (which I got). After that, I was mainly looking at the walls behind the dealers instead of doing a careful comb through of their boxes. I was tempted, but with my portfolio to lug around, didn't want to add a box of comics to that.

I started collecting newsstands because it seemed like a way to pay for the comics I really wanted; bronze and silver age Marvels and DCs and Carl Barks duck comics from the 1940's-1950's. However, as I bought the newsstands, I started noticing how hard it was to find certain issues and became obsessed with getting them as collectibles on their own. The hunt was as much fun as it was frustrating. In the end, I bought 2514 newsstand comics over the last 12 months or so. By year, they break down as follows: present-2010 (Rarest): 283 2009-1999 (Rare): 953 1998-1990 (Uncommon): 274 1989-1979 (Common): 381 1978-all previous years (All comics): 530 The reason the rare category cuts off at 1999 instead of 2000 is that the rarity of comics from 1999 (or market availability) seems more similar to comics published in 2000 than 1998. I also included comics before 1979 because my database counts all comics printed before 1979 as newsstands even if they have no separate collectability for that reason. I noticed that some publishers are easier to find than others as newsstand editions. Archie: Common (1:3 comics listed for sale on eBay) Dark Horse: Uncommon (1:8 comics listed for sale on eBay) DC: Uncommon (1:30 comics listed on eBay) Marvel: Rare (1:50 comics listed on eBay) Image: Rare (1:50 comics listed on eBay) Valiant: Very rare (I've never seen one of these on eBay. I only have one Valiant NS, bought from an LCS) For awhile, I tried buying only key newsstands, like X-Men# 260 and ASM V2 #36. However, that was too easy because some key issues tended to be much easier to find than others. For that reason, I started drifting to comics that were just hard to find, regardless what they were. For instance, try to find a newsstand edition of any of the Jonah Hex issues with Darwyn Cooke covers. I still haven't seen any of them but did manage to score one JH in newsstand recently, even if it wasn't one of the group I am targeting. At the moment, I am most interested in high grade Valiants, Marvels in the 1999-2009 time period, and DCs from 2008-2017. The Marvels either get more common from 2010-2013, or the issues become less interesting to me as comics because of all the new titles and mini series. The comics I am most interested in finding now don't appear for sale more often than once every three months. Some I have never seen offered for sale, others took a year before I found my first copy. A small subset of this group appears infrequently but regularly at high prices, like ASM #601. I'd like to get a copy but so far, of the eight or so copies I've seen, either the condition was too low (7.5 or less) or they were too expensive for me. All of this is leading up to something I learned when I went to my first comic con in two years yesterday, the Terifficon in Connecticut. First, I might have more modern newsstands than all the dealers at that show put together. I found exactly zero newsstands from the groups I am most avidly looking for. The newsstands I did see were mostly from the 1980's. Prices for newsstands showed a significant premium, roughly 2x-3x. In one case, it was 5x (I forget the comic offhand but it was $400 for the direct version, $2,000 for the newsstand--might have been a Thor 337, not sure about that though). When I spoke to some of the dealers about it, many seemed rueful they hadn't known about actual market availability of newsstands. They either hadn't thought of them as collectible until recently, or thought they were more common than they were. In the end, I only bought three comics: a Canadian edition of the 1950 Dell comic Vacation Parade #1, a very nice copy of Captain Marvel #26, and a direct edition Daredevil 159 with a strike through UPC box. Everything else I saw was disappointing because I didn't see much printed before 1980 that would grade higher than a 7.0. One dealer had such comics labeled 9.2 or 9.4 but I don't think there was any chance they would grade that high. I hope the next con brings out better comics.

Just picked this up today. It is one of my all-time top ten favorite stories (Carl Barks' extra long forest fire story) and its a Canadian variant. On top of that, it's in better condition than my US edition, though that needs to be upgraded soon. Differences between US/CAN editions: 1) At bottom, box contains text "C.D.L. Canadian edition 15 (cents)". US edition the text is "This is an action cover! See it move!" 2) Inside front and back covers of Canadian edition are completely white. No text, indicia, or drawings. The US edition has drawings and an indicia on the inside front cover and another drawing on the inside back cover 3) Different page counts. Unfortunately, I damaged the Canadian version getting it back in its razor sharp mylar sleeve, so I'm not taking it out again to count the pages but it looks like 52 pgs/CAN, 96 pgs/US. 4) Canadian version is missing all puzzles and short gags as well as a couple of stories that are present in the US version. 5) CAN version is normal binding, US version is squarebound.

Full set Pacific Comics Groo, #1-8. Fifty cents each at a flea market. All in high grade.

Okay guys, these few comments have given me an idea. Instead of writing about the strangeness of my early years, I'll write about my comic book collection. There is no way to do it without revealing glimpses of unusual aspects of my home life. That will give me the throughline needed to keep the other story interesting. Otherwise, it would be a collection of random shocking events. BTW; my mom died last year of starvation in a house full of food. She was afraid the neighbors were sneaking in and poisoning her food, so she stopped eating. By the time she was found immobile and weakened in bed, she had done too much damage to her system and could not recover.

To put it another way, it is a newsstand edition but there were no direct editions at the time. Therefore, the fact it is a newsstand copy shouldn't affect its value because it isn't differentiable from any other version of the comic on that basis. A 35 cent price on the other hand, that is a different version.

Here is a German version on eBay without the lenticular cover: https://www.ebay.com/itm/112487222429?hash=item1a30c2cc9d:g:4-sAAOSwzVxZbxyu

Does the indicia show if it was published at a different date than the lenticular cover versions?

I've had more than one person ask me to write a book about it. The problem is that on the few occasions I've tried, it isn't as interesting as when the subject comes to mind while discussing something else. Thanks for the thought though.