paqart

I was totally shocked to find a Daredevil with a Mark Jeweler's insert at a flea market for a dollar. Didn't know it was there until I got home. Would be really hard to find those in most situations involving bagged comics.

How do cover variants factor into overall print run? Are they counted as part of direct run, without distinguishing covers? How do cover variant prices compare to counterpart newsstand prices?

Wouldn't be surprised if some of the posters here have already paid one. I've paid up to 10x for newsstand comics and regularly pay 2x-4x.

How many people on this thread have stopped buying direct editions? I have almost completely stopped buying them, treating them as fake comics for the most part. The ones I have were either bought before I knew the difference or were given to me instead of the newsstand copies I ordered, and it was too much of a hassle to send them back. If there are others who feel the same way, I wonder if there will be downward pressure on directs, in addition to a premium on newsstand comics? For me, the issue with newsstands is partly about rarity but also what they represent: a different time and a different way of buying comics. I would prefer them even if direct edition were the rare ones, not the other way around. speaking for myself, I’ve recently realized that a dealer can not reduce a price enough to make me want to buy a direct edition, unless it is so far below profitability that I could turn it into a profit without half-trying. For instance, a 9.8 slabbed copy of Daredevil 168. Going price around $200 (for the sake of argument) I’d be a buyer at $45 or so, but that’s it.

That is why I would ask for a lower price. It isn't so hard to find these in NM condition, when they are found at all. Until that changes, I would only want lower grade issues if the price was really low. I even find NM copies at flea markets sometimes, even if I have to sort them out of a pile of trash.

One of these days I'll figure out why total strangers are so willing and eager to be disrespectful of each other. Maybe it's just the way young people talk these days but I don't get it.

If that was true, Star Wars 35 cent price variants wouldn't be worth $30k.

Franchisees are given leeway when ordering stock about as often as Marvel printed newsstand editions in 2013. I didn't say it was common practice but it does happen. For instance, some McDonald's franchises don't have to follow the architectural design requirements of all the rest because local building codes prevent it. Maybe McDonald's doesn't exist in the real world, but last time I looked, they did.

Some franchisees are given discretion. Many aren't but maybe in this case there was some leeway. I'd at least ask the question before assuming the answer.

Personally, I wouldn't. I would try to buy them but not at that price. You can still get NM copies for $10 apiece from good titles. I'd try to talk him down to maybe $150-$200 for the lot.

The way I found out about this board is that I was looking for the name of a store I used to provide grading and estimating services to when they bought collections. This was in around 1977. One of the links that came up was a post on this site, by someone who I interacted with back then at that shop, who was describing what I did at that store at the time despite being a kid. It was an old post, probably several years ago now. He sent me a PM to tell me that he still had a list of Neal Adams comics that I'd written for him all the way back in '77. Believe what you like but you're wrong and that is somewhat amusing.

True enough. If the newsstand run was 2%, then they would have had 4,000 for B&N, which would have been enough. One thing I wonder is if the couple of estimates we've seen are of final sales after returns are subtracted, rather than print run percentages. Alternatively, maybe they didn't print enough copies for every Barnes & Nobles to get 5 copies. Maybe the stores decide what they want and some don't want any.

For what it's worth, the range of prices I am actually paying for NS comics is between $1-$250, depending on the comics. I am most comfortable with prices around $40 for something I really want, to $10 for something that is nice to have. Lower prices are flea markets and dollar bin comics. When I have paid more, it is because they are slabbed and are keys of some kind.

On a related topic, about eight months ago or so, two 9.0 Four Color V2 #9's came up for sale at auction. One on ebay, the other at Heritage. FC9 is not one of my favorite comics. I actually don't like the story or the art very much but it is the first comic book drawn by Carl Barks. For that reason, I've always wanted one, though I think his second and all subsequent efforts are far superior, like FC29 (Mummy's Ring) and FC62 (Frozen Gold). The ebay copy was not slabbed but described as a 9.0. Based on the photos, it looked like a plausible grade for the comic. The Heritage comic was in a CGC slab with a 9.0 grade on the sticker. I was willing to bid the ebay copy to $2500. After that, I worried the condition might really be an 8 or 8.5. Even worse, what if there had been restoration or something else not visible in the photos?. I was the high bidder at $2,550 right up until there was literally one second to go, when it jumped to $2,600. Meanwhile, the Heritage copy went for over $10k. So, did I miss out on an incredible $2,600 bargain? It's hard to say because the comic wasn't officially graded. I would have been confident of the Heritage copy but am not in a position to spend over $10k on one comic. Hence, my attempt to get the ebay copy. That said, I knew it was risky and was somewhat relieved when I didn't get it.

I bought a copy of my favorite comic ever, Four Color #199 (Donald Duck in Sheriff of Bullet Valley) on ebay for $75. It is about a fine, maybe VF. If so, I got a great deal. Not selling but will slab it for display.

That makes sense to me, I just wonder what the figure will be when volatility has dissipated. The issue as I see it is that we have the following unknowns, 1) How many people (dealers and collectors) have made a conscious decision to remove newsstands from the market by stockpiling them? 2) When did newsstand editions start getting stockpiled? 3) What percentage of available comics in the marketplace reflect what is left after stockpiling? 4) What is the maximum available pool of newsstand editions (print run)? The print run can only be estimated from postal records and other figures but without certain knowledge how the print run was divided between newsstand and direct editions, the only safe bet is to assume 99.9% newsstand, .1% direct, though that would be ridiculous. The other questions are also difficult to estimate, though easier because we can at least see what is available in the market. Also, we can see who is selling what. For instance, last night I stayed up until four in the morning to count newsstand copies for every issue of ASM in 2004, 2005, and 2006. One thing that stuck out was that if it weren't for Mile High Comics, many of the issues checked would have had zero newsstand representation. As it was, the lowest rarity I found was 6 directs for every newsstand copy of ASM 508 (N=49). The highest rarity was for ASM 529, with 116 directs and one newsstand copy. In a couple of cases, after doing my count and recording the result, I bought the newsstand copies available, so a check today would reveal different numbers. I don't feel like working out the average at the moment, but glancing over the list, it looks like about 20:1 in favor of directs for 2004, 40:1 for 2005-2006. That said, without the Mile High comics, which in some cases numbered as many as 4 for a single issue, the numbers would be quite different. Another thing about the MH comics is that the prices they asked were about a third of the posted prices on their website, and they were only offering lower grade comics. Whether this is all they have for those issues or a strategic choice, I can't tell. EDIT:, I've decided that my "random selection" is going to be every issue of ASM between 501-700. This is because many have only fifty offers or so, thus requiring a larger sample. It increases the target population size but as you know, the increase isn't proportionate.

That matches my buying pattern at the moment. Still, these are interesting to me as long as I perceive newsstands to be bargains. Once the price goes high enough that they aren’t bargains any longer, I become a seller.

Just because I didn’t mention the source of that figure, though I did in a general way earlier, doesn’t mean it is random. It is based on a check of auctions at Heritage of copies in 9.0 and better condition. I believe you when you write they are equal on eBay, because eBay often has lower grade comics than Heritage. As for the premium I would pay for this, less than nothing. The reason is that, although it is harder to find on Heritage in slab-worthy condition, it isn’t on my want list. I would have bought it about a month ago, and at that time set my price at about 50% the going price at auction. I didn’t find any at that price so I didn’t buy any. Later, I saw that newsstand comics in that time period were easier to find than I had expected, so I stopped buying newsstand comics published before 2000. A week or two after that, I stopped buying newsstand comics published before 2005. Now, although I am willing to buy comics in the 2005-2010 range, I am focused on 2010-2013. The more I look at this, the less I like issues that I regularly find even if they are in tiny proportions to direct issues. ‘I have paid a premium for these but in most cases it was a slab premium, not a rarity premium. When I have paid more for rarity, in most cases it is a comic that has a low direct value, so the premium brings it up to only $40 or so from $3-$4. I’ve bought a few in the $150-$240 price range but those are all slabbed and are worth the price as direct editions, though they are newsstand. That way, if needed, I could get all or most of my money back fairly easily.

That is something we’d have to see. It would be interesting to know how it worked with the Star Wars variants. The number that come out of hiding can’t go above the number that exist, and if we’re looking at less than 1:100 now, when over a hundred copies are put out for sale, likely the newsstand copies would be out there right now also, for the same reason the directs are out there. More would be looked for and more found as a consequence, but quite possibly in exactly the same proportions. If the direct version was worth putting out before, it would still be worth putting out, so as the newsstand copies are found, so will directs. More plausibly, people like you and I would be more willing to sell the copies we have but we are finding our copies in tiny quantities, and that presents a totally different scenario. If the newsstand current rarity is 1% of the market and collectors like myself and others are removing these from the market, it is possible that before long, they make up substantially less than 1% of the market. Then when prices go up significantly, collectors like you and me would disgorge our copies, bringing levels back to around 1%. New copies may be found in the meantime, but of the group that exists today, there will be some attrition before the time when prices go up. Then they have to enter the market and be in decent condition to be interesting. At the same time, they were rare to begin with, thus limiting their potential to affect the number on the market. with those two scenarios as options, where in version 1, new entries to the market after price increases cause the proportion of newsstand copies to go up as high as 5%, and version 2 is that copies disappear from the market until prices go up and they are returned to a 1% level, I think option two is slightly more convincing. That is because it matches what I am seeing right now. For instance, I have three copies of ASM v2#36 and four copies of ASM v2#30. A casual newsstand customer isn’t likely to buy so many copies of one comic. Therefore, it is possible that returning my copies to the market, and the same for other collectors, has a stronger impact than previously unknown copies. At that point the question becomes, at what stage of the newsstand hoarding process is the market in right now? For instance, at NYCC, I was told of a dealer there (who I didn’t get to meet) who was assembling a collection of ASM 500-600 in newsstand editions, just as I am (though I am going through to numbers above 700). According to the dealer I was talking to, the other dealer is not selling the newsstand copies he gets. How many other dealers are doing the same?

LOL

I can accept that possibility but doubt it would go much further. Keep in mind that at the same time the newsstand copies come out of storage, so will direct editions, thus diluting the effect.

They are called "private messages" for a reason.

Fair enough. In the quest for best evidence in a convenient sample, ebay isn't a bad place to go, particularly when the data available on the site itself reflects a pattern of favoring direct versions despite newsstand versions being worth more. If I find 115 direct versions and 0 newsstand versions, that demonstrates that both versions are at the very least equally worthy of being posted. The fact that no newsstand editions appear is not an indication, therefore, that they are unworthy, but that the poster doesn't have any newsstand editions to offer. If they did, they would be there, following the logic that if the directs are worth posting, the newsstands are even more worthy of posting.

I'm not saying I rejected your information due to offense taken. I'm saying it was less credible at the outset because it looked like there was some kind of personal animus or emotion involved. I know someone else who loves to communicate using all caps and emotional language. He's a sharp guy, intelligent, and very observant. I trust him quite a lot and it's why I've hired him to troubleshoot some problems for me and why I handed him a $2,000,000 video game opportunity. That said, most of the people on the teams I've worked with cannot communicate with him effectively because they think he is too abrasive. On my end, I've more than once had to hold my phone a few feet away from my ear as he described some kind of technical problem. He's a great guy, worth the premium he charges, but I prefer him as a freelancer or consultant to being on staff. I do appreciate that I now understand the issues you brought up a bit better thanks to the fact you brought them up. Now I am telling you that the next time you run into someone on this board who seems to be polluted by a connection to Benjamin Nobel's blog that you could make your job of educating that person easier and more pleasant by approaching it differently.

Agreed on Spawn #1, curious if this generalizes much beyond that. The reason is that Spawn #1 was a heavily collected mega-event in comics. Most comics don't have the attendant publicity that one did, had significantly lower print runs, and *probably* had lower survival rates. Inevitably, comics will trickle into the marketplace over time but will they do so in numbers significant enough to meaningfully alter the rarity of a newsstand comic? For instance, Wolverine V2 #67. That comic wasn't heavily promoted like Spawn #1 and is legitimately very hard to find in any condition. Is there any reason to believe it would suddenly become less rare if its price shoots up? While it is likely that dealers will become motivated to check their stock, most won't have any because most or all of their recent comics were bought through their distributor, who gave them direct editions. Everyone else, who bought at book stores or newsstands, are less likely to learn of the increase in value and thus, less likely to bring their comic to a shop. My guess on this is that you'd be looking at an increase in the number of newsstands in the market but not enough to alter their overall rarity more than a percentage point or two. What happened with the Star Wars #1 35 cent price variant? How many of those suddenly became available after the comic's rarity became established?