paqart

Good point

Fair enough but the number of newsstands in the census is fairly small, and I prefer to find raws and send them in. I have 75 at CGC now, can't wait to get them back.

I have the feeling that I enjoy this aspect of the hobby because of my interest in statistical analysis, which led me to pursue my PhD studies (and complete them). In this case, the problem is that the data cannot be known, so it must be estimated based on circumstantial evidence (like many statistical problems). The question then becomes, what is the best evidence? Or, what is the most practical evidence to achieve the goal? In comic book collecting, I think the practicality of estimating availability outweighs the value of an estimate of existing copies in circulation. The reason is that online sales data is more readily available and more likely representative of the market than data on print runs. In other words, I have a higher confidence interval for an availability estimate than a copies in circulation estimate.

Thanks for the explanation. For reference, I tend to pass on anything with an availability score of -7 or higher (meaning, in the plus direction).

A question: In what way does it not work for you? This method compares availability over time as opposed to proportion of print run minus destroyed/lost comics. As a metric, it is easier to estimate. Even if it doesn't accurately reflect proportion of print run, estimating proportion of print run has a lot of problems also. On balance, what matters to me is whether I can get a copy, not how many were published. ASM 300, for instance, is so easy to find that I have very little interest in the comic.

To each his own. For me though, I just realized while I was replying to a post here that I was making bidding decisions based on market availability. I hadn't made a rule of any kind, or a formula for testing how available a comic was, but if I'd been looking and hadn't seen one in months or years, I paid a lot more for it. Therefore, availability had a strong effect on perceived value to me. Whatever the relationship to actual extant copies, that meant that sellers got more money for their comics than if I didn't perceive market availability as scarce. Once I realized I was doing that, it was pretty easy to come up with a method to determine whether my perception of availability matched the reality. That said, when prices go up, comics become more available, hence the ease of finding ASM 300's. My newsstand Hulk #1's (2008) were very hard to find over the last couple of years but have recently become much more available now that the direct edition is selling for more than $500.

Although I have him on ignore, apparently Lazyboy's supercilious emoticon reactions remain visible. I think I see a way to improve the ignore function.

Thanks to this thread, I just made a post on Benjamin Nobel's RareComics blog. I think it is pertinent here, so here it is: Benjamin, I think I have figured out a way to rank the scarcity of newsstand comics with a single numerical value. For the time being, I'm calling it "availability scarcity" or "availability" for short. To calculate it, just search through the offered and sold items on eBay for any given time period and find out how many newsstands were sold over that time period. Then, divide the number of days searched by the number of copies found. For instance, I just did this for Supergirl #1 (2005), without taking into consideration whether it was the Turner or Churchill newsstand edition, and came up with an availability rating of 1:76, or simply "-76" (negative 76) for the Turner version and -37 for the Churchill version. Meaning, over the course of any given 76-day period, you could expect to find only one copy of the Turner version on offer at eBay. None of the copies I found (two Churchill cover variants on offer and one Turner variant sold) were slabbed or in better than 9.0 condition. You could also compare the number of newsstands to the number of directs (that number was around 1:150 for Supergirl #1/Churchill and 1:300 for the Turner cover). However, I like the availability number better because it cuts through discussions of print runs and percentage of newsstand to directs printed, and then dealing with survivability rates. For comics that do not appear at all for sale or as sold items, like the newsstand edition of Supergirl #67, which I haven't seen a single copy of in over a year of looking, would be given either a "print run" or "infinity" rating. That means that until copies are found for sale, the newsstand edition exists in a -1:PrintRun ratio for the purpose of finding one to buy. These comics theoretically exist (and likely do) but for collectors they may as well not exist until their existence is proven. Now let's look at one of your favorites, ASM 300. Every time I've looked for a newsstand copy, I've found one. That suggests that its availability rating would be 1. However, I don't look every day, so let's take a look at the sales history. I just looked at the most recent 14-day period and found 57 sales. That means that on any given day, one could expect to find four or more copies available. That results in a positive availability score of +4. For any "non-scarce" comic like ASM 300, a 14-day period should be enough to establish negative scarcity (or positive availability). For comics that are truly difficult to find, like the Supergirls just mentioned, one has to keep going back until a sale is found, if any. Because the search window varies, that number should be included in the score. So, the ASM 300 score becomes +4/14 and the Turner Supergirl #1 becomes -76/76.

RE: Byrne ASM V2 rarity: I buy a lot of these but they are nowhere near as common as directs, if availability is anything to go by. I have done counts of these on offer at HipComic and ebay and found that the newsstand editions were between 25x-75x less available than their direct counterparts at the time I bought them. That has changed recently, thanks to a couple of sellers who have dropped a few dozen slabbed newsstand editions of these on eBay, but they remain less common than the directs. I expect that will change as soon as those comics sell. Other comics, like ASM 300, appears to be more common (slightly) as a newsstand edition. Here is a case in point: I have been trying to put together a full run of the 2005 Supergirl title for the past two years. I just took a look at the first 300 eBay listings for Supergirl 1, keeping in mind that there are three covers for this and two of them have newsstand versions. Out of those 300 comics, two were newsstand editions of the same cover variant (Churchill, both offered by Mile High Comics for around $400), and zero copies of the Turner variant. I also checked the sold listings just now. There were five pages of listings (250 total), some of which had multiple direct copies of #1, but only one newsstand sale on March 13 (Turner variant). In other words, if you wanted that comic at any time in the last ten weeks, unless you saw that listing on that day, you'd be out of luck. By my "availability scarcity", that issue has a rating of 1:76, meaning available on one out of 76 days. With more data going back longer, that number would likely change, but for what I just checked, that is what it's rating is. However, try and find a newsstand copy of the last issue, #67. I've never seen one. eBay has none on offer right now, and no sold items come up for the default time period eBay searches for (around 3 months). The availability scarcity for that issue is 1:PrintRun until I find two or more copies. For comparison, there are 10 copies of FC #9 on eBay right now and one (in 9.4) on Heritage for the discerning collector. Every time I've looked for that comic, I have found it instantly. Meanwhile, there are many newsstand editions from Supergirl and other titles that I have never seen. Try and put together a newsstand run of Amazing Spider-Man from #600-700. At the moment, I have multiples of #600 and #700, but only about 20 issues in between. I've seen about 25 others available at one time or another (at prices I didn't feel like paying at the time, or in the wrong condition), but the rest simply haven't appeared. I ran into a dealer at the last NYCC trying to put together this run but was only half successful at that time, despite the large volume of comics he handles.

FWIW, this is what I'm collecting: 2014-2017: DC/Dark Horse Newsstand 1999-2013:Marvel/DC/Dark Horse/Valiant newsstand 1980 (or so)-1990: Marvel/DC Canadian/British editions 1979: Marvel direct 1975-1978: all Marvel 1961-1974: Marvel/DC US/British/Canadian editions 1941-1960: Carl Barks duck comics and DC superhero comics Speaking of "rarity" in the context of availability, I have discovered that it is fairly easy to find a copy of Four Color #9 (1942, first Barks Donald Duck), meaning, in any given week I can locate one for sale at an appropriate price. On the other hand, there are many modern newsstands that I have been looking for over a period of years and still haven't seen any copies available for sale. In some cases, I also haven't been able to find evidence of any copies having sold in auctions I missed. Out of all the comics I collect, the ones that are the most difficult to find tend to be in the 1999-2008 period at Marvel, particularly price variants from 1999-2000. For that reason, I have shifted my focus completely to modern newsstands.

I put LazyBoy on ignore a long time ago. You may want to consider doing it as well.

I'm working on my first comic in years right now, with writer Chuck Dixon. Hopefully will be done tonight.

Here are some of my illustrations. No 3d involved, no paintovers, painted from scratch over my drawings. The Thor is acrylic on paper, the rest are painted in a 2D program called Sketchbook Pro.

No.

I started my career as a comic book artist for Marvel, DC, and Harris, then became a 3D artist in video games (Epic, Square, THQ, Universal), a VFX artist in films (Space Jam, Spider-man, Daredevil, etc), then started a school for Game artists. I have a lot of experience making in art in a variety of mediums, including 3D. Below are my comments: 1) I have never seen well-executed 3D art in a comic or on a comic book cover. It may exist but I haven't seen it. My overall impression is that the average quality is poor. 2) Making anything to a high level of finish in 3D takes much longer than making a drawing. This is why game artists will frequently throw together a few cubes or other existing assets, like vehicles made for a different project, to quickly lay out a scene, and then paint over it to add detail they don't have time to create in 3D. These are called "paintovers". The paintovers I've seen in the game and film industry are superior to the feeble attempts I've seen in comics. 3) The principal problems with comic book covers that incorporate 3D elements, either as a paintover or final art are: very poor textures, terrible lighting, lack of expected detail, poor drawing/painting skills. 4) My preference is for hand-drawn art but I do recognize that some artists are able to rough out otherwise time-consuming mechanical detail in 3D as a sketch for final art. When it is not rendered but inked like the rest of the art, this can look fine. I saw this recently in a Batman comic, though I forget the artist offhand. The scene included a complicated clock that would have taken considerable time to layout by hand. www.paqart.com

The only problem I have with this scale is that it doesn't take into account demand and print runs. Almost the entire print run of many modern Marvel and DC comics would give them a rarity value of 2.0-3.0 (thinking of direct edition Supergirl/2005 and Catwoman/2002) yet those comics are very easy to find. Try finding the newsstand editions, and it's a completely different story. I've been trying to make a newsstand run of both titles for the last two years but haven't seen most of the needed issues offered for sale anywhere at any price. Catwoman is particularly hard to find. Out of 84 issues, I've passed on 5 due to price or condition but bought every other issue I found. The result is that I now own about 15 issues of that run, or about 20%. If I wanted a set of direct editions, I could buy that today, possibly all at once from one seller. Based on published estimates of print runs and the proportion of newsstand editions in various years, most newsstand editions from Marvel or DC post-1999 would be rated somewhere in the 5.0-6.5 range on this scale. Based on my experience trying to find these comics, their availability indicates much higher rarity scores, in the range of 8.0-9.0 or higher. It's hard to know without more data. For instance, I haven't seen any copies of Catwoman #1 (2002) newsstand edition offered for sale on eBay in the last 18 months. I also haven't seen any copies on HipComic, at the NYCC, or at any local dealers. Mile High Comics, who seem to have everything, don't have it, nor have they for the entire time I've been looking. According to Comichron, approximately 49,413 copies of Catwoman #1 were distributed by Diamond. If one accepts the NS/Direct ratios published elsewhere, there should be around 4,297 NS copies out there to be found. And yet, so far I have seen exactly zero copies. Maybe collectors are holding onto these, but 1) NS comics tended to be bought by non-collectors, 2) there are plenty of copies of the direct edition available at any time of the day on eBay. If the directs are worth selling, then so are the newsstands. Another interesting comic is 2008's Hulk #1. It was the top seller for the month it came out, January 2008, and had a fairly high estimated print run of 133,895 copies. That would suggest an additional 5,579 newsstand copies were printed. I've seen about 15 of these for sale (and bought one) over the past two years, one of which is available on eBay right not for just under ten grand. More often, it sells for between $300-$500. The Catwoman #1 and Hulk #1 should be about equally available based on print run estimates combined with published estimates of newsstand/direct ratios. The Catwoman had a much lower overall print run but should have had a higher proportion of NS copies vs. Direct copies because it was published in 2002, not 2008, when the number of newsstand editions supposedly dropped sharply. And yet, trying to find these myself tells me that the Hulk #1 can be had in any given month (though not on any given day), but the Catwoman #1 still hasn't appeared once. On that basis, I would give the Catwoman a presumed scarcity rating of 9.0+, and the Hulk a rating of 8-8.5. Another comic for comparison, this one from the Golden Age, Exciting Comics #30. I just checked eBay and found two copies immediately: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2047675.m570.l1313&_nkw="exciting+comics"+30&_sacat=0 There were five copies of WDC&S 31: https://www.ebay.com/sch/66/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=walt+disney's+comics+%26+stories+31&LH_TitleDesc=0 A search for "catwoman 2002 newsstand" (without quotes) yielded 15 results, one copy each of fifteen issues from the run. There were no copies of #1 or the majority of the rest of the series. I checked without the word "newsstand" but didn't find any listings that didn't show up in the newsstand search. All but one of the fifteen comics were listed by Mile High Comics. Because eBay is such a huge aggregator of comic book sales, it makes sense to me to have an eBay scarcity index. That would be time-consuming to generate but it could be done and the data is readily available. Based on the searches I've done for specific comics, there are a lot of GA comics on the Gerber scale that are easier to find than many modern newsstands.

Usually I buy newsstands one at a time, but sometimes you run into an unopened box from the distributor dated 2002, and another 2005, and you have to buy multiples. Just got this lot today. 200 comics in all, all newsstands. None are keys but it was fun to find so many newsstands in one place. Almost all of the Marvels and Dark Horse issues are 9.8 CGC candidates. The DCs had very few 9.8 candidates among them, about 3-5 for each title. The rest are about 9.2, owing to a bend near the spine due to sitting in a box for fifteen years. There are no color breaks though, so it can probably be pressed out in most of them.

I disliked his work when I first saw it in the nineties. I also disliked Jim Lee's work, which is better drawn but a similar style.

I've been trying to put together a newsstand set of the 2005 run of Supergirl for the last 18 months or so. To date, I've been buying them one at a time as they become available, which isn't often. Today, I picked up 38 issues from the 67 issue run, 29 of which are NS copies. These have been, for me anyway, more difficult to find than ASM #'s 600-700.

One of the things I like about newsstands relative to the 1970's price variants is that there is a newsstand issue for almost every key made.

Some inkers add so much that there is a premium for their inks. Williamson over Frazetta, for instance. Wrightson over anyone is another. One you don't hear about too often is Bill Everett over Kirby. I had some of the Thor pages by that pair and they were some of the best pages I'd ever seen.

BTW: I'm curious to know whether creating these price variants had the effect of reducing the normal $1.99 run as well. Has anyone seen any indication this may have happened? In my search for these variants, I have found the regular newsstand versions of the Thor, Hulk, and Fantastic Fours almost as hard to find as the variants.

Okay, done. We'll see if they do anything with the info.

Is it possible to upgrade lower value comics to a higher tier submitted in the same batch so they are all returned at the same time?

Mine was delivered March 4. Still hasn't shown up on CGC site. However, I called and was able to confirm they have it. So that is three weeks so far, added to the turnaround time.