waahehe94

A few more books

Pulp book from November 1928

A few of the books in my collection that haven't been listed on the auction yet.

Spoke with the auction house today and was informed that they will be listing the rest of my collection in the upcoming days prior to the auction. Should be several thousand more books listed. I was into collecting complete runs so their is probably something for everyone in the auction. If there's any Star Wars, Amazing Spider-Man, Iron Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Batman or Superman fans this will definitely be an auction that you don't want to miss.

The auction house still hasn't listed the entire collection yet, but here is a link to the auction on Auctionzip. https://www.auctionzip.com/VA-Auctioneers/236706.html

Right now only a small fraction of my collection is listed on the auction site. Hopefully they'll list the rest of it later in the week, if not today. It's a fairly big collection that spans over 37+ years

If you have any questions concerning the auction you can contact the auction house, A Ok auction group LLC, by their website, phone or Facebook page. They've been in the auction business for decades, but first became in comic book & collectable auctions about 5-6 years ago when they worked a huge estate auction. They seem to auction off comic collections on regular/possibly monthly basis now. A lot of the local dealers and comic con people in Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina seem to participate in their auctions on a regular basis. I believe that they always start the bidding off low and there's no reserve on any of the lots. I'm just ready to leave the hobby and haven't participated in a con or event in the last 4/5 years.

I'm having an auction house (A Ok auction) auction off my comic book collection of August 21st @ 10 a.m. if anyone is interested. The entire collection is raw books and I've been seriously collecting for 37 years and reading/buying comics for 40+ years. The collection has everything for Golden Age to Modern books with a few Pulps from the 1920's - 1950's. A few of the highlights are a complete 1970's Marvel comic Star Wars run, an Amazing Spider-Man run from issue 13-400 and a nice assortment of Silver Age Marvel books Here's a link to the auction, it's on Invaluable and might be on AuctionZip at some point. A-Ok auction house in Damascus, Virginia will be hosting the auction of August 21st at 10 a.m. https://www.invaluable.com/catalog/knjun5oq6d?fbclid=IwAR28VMOW9Sl0u-4b5ehM9NCn7B3gd6j60B8Zz_Vg3HeUtMd2UP6wl2KaieM

Your reasoning is flawed. DC, Marvel, and the rest kept meticulous records because they HAD to: both for postal service regulations AND because they had contracts in place with various distributors, who you bet kept close track of what they sold and what they returned. Your contention doesn't make any sense. The printer knew exactly how many copies they printed; they had to. Marvel knew how many copies they ordered. DC knew how many copies were claimed for credit. They all, if they were sent out via subscription, had to keep these numbers for filing every year. When you have competing interests making sure everything was accounted for, of course they would keep meticulous records. Does that mean there wasn't human error and fraud? Of course not. But that doesn't therefore mean Marvel just told the printer to print whatever they felt like printing, and vendors to claim whatever they felt like claiming on returns, and no one kept accounts. What printing company are you referring to? UNLESS you have competing interests keeping everybody honest. No one said it was absolutely NASA precise down to the very last copy, but it's beyond silly to think that Marvel, DC, and the rest kept loose books. Not the point. The point was, and is, that record keeping was precise 230+ years ago, so to say "well, technology wasn't that advanced in 1970" doesn't fly. Wait...are you envious of Chuck? And what do you mean, "comic publishers weren't good businessmen prior to Disney buying Marvel"? Warners has owned DC since the 60's. Martin Goodman, owner and publisher of Marvel comics from 1939 to 1972, was a very capable businessman. You haven't submitted one bit of solid evidence here that the publishers have kept meticulous records and can account for the number of newsstand copies that survived other than your opinion and maybe a quick google search you've done in your spare time. There's other factors to consider than you seem to be aware of when producing a product, storing it, shipping it, selling it and dealing with returns. I'm not saying that the publishers don't have a general idea of the newsstand copies that survived, just that it probably isn't as precise and accurate as most people seem to believe or claim. Anyone with any experience in that type of sales and returns knows what I'm talking about. Nothing is exact when you work with machinery like a printing press, you have 2 sets of numbers that you go by, Efficiency and True Efficency. If you don't know what those are then I suggest that you step away from your keyboard, get some real world experience in the industry and then check back with me in about 10 or 15 years if you make it that long. You keep saying that my statements are wrong and that my reasoning is flawed. Exactly what proof do you have that my statements aren't as accurate as yours? Do you work for DC, Marvel or any other publisher? Exactly what and how much experience in this field? I only have 30+ years of experience dealing with comics, how much do you have? As far as Chuck goes, I've met the guy on several occasions at cons and we have some of the same friends and associates in the comics industry. I don't like him, never have and never will. The only difference between him and 90% of the other comic dealers that I know is that he got a lucky break and was smart enough to exploit it and take advantage of it. How do you know how efficient or inefficient recording keeping was X-Amount of years ago before technology advancements like computers were avaliable? Were you there X-Amount of years ago? Were you even involved in the industry in the 70's or 80's or are you just assuming? Please enlighten me on your experience in the comics industry and dealing with newsstand editions since I seem to know so little about it and you have all of the answers?!?

Publishers were only required to give averages per USPS regulations, and specifics only for the issue "nearest to filing date." So yes, it stands to reason that the only one who has actual figures for each particular issue would be the publisher. The real answer is that no one knows, not even the publishers, whether it was 1970 or 2002 or today, the precise number of copies destroyed or still extant, and never will, because that information isn't possible to obtain except on a theoretical level. Because of the filing requirements, the records for comics from 1970 would not have been much different from the records from 2000. After all, we have accurate records of US Mint activity going back to its founding in 1792. They're not perfectly complete, of course, but we have excellent records going back 230+ years. Again: because of the filing requirements, the record keeping at publishers who distributed comics via the USPS (that is, most of them) wouldn't have been radically different in 1970 than they were in 2000. Advancements in technology didn't change the way people counted things; only the speed in which it was done. We know precisely how many 1885-CC Morgan dollars were minted, because the Mint in Carson City kept meticulous, daily records of those facts....and that was when there was no computer technology of any kind. You would be incorrect. They kept meticulous records, because that was how people were paid and companies stayed in business. Marvel, DC, and the others weren't fly-by-night companies with sloppy accounting (at least internally.) They may not have preserved those records...but they certainly kept them. I have to disagree with you in the fact that I don't feel that publishers like Marvel & DC kept meticulous records on the number of comics they published each month and on the returns. My reasoning behind this is because when I was in college, many years ago, I worked part time for a Fortune 500 Company in both ops and warehouse. This company supplied its product to retailers all over North America and tried to keep track of what it produced, what it had in inventory and its returns through several different types of tracking methods including a monthly inventory of all its warehouses. Even a Fortune 500 Company with all its tracking and inventory measures in place couldn't keep a 100% complete accurate record of everything that it produced, shipped and the returns with modern technology, so I highly doubt a printing company that has been on the verge of bankruptcy on several occasions could. There are just so many unkown factors that come into play throughout the production process, through the shipping and warehouse process and in the return process to the fudge factor that you have to allow for when people are involved that it just isn't possible to keep track of everything. Comic collecting isn't like coin collecting in the fact that Marvel and DC aren't likely to be hoarding back issues of comics away in a safe like the U.S. Mint could be with coins. I can pretty much guarantee that Marvel and DC doesn't have the accountability for each indiviual comic produced that the U.S. Mint does with each coin or paper bill produced also. If history and experience has taught me anything it's that Chuck's ego is only overshadowed by the amount of sheer luck that he has had in his career and comic publishers weren't good businessmen prior to Walt Disney buying Marvel.

Nothing at all? I'm not sure how this is relevant to 2005, when Barns (sic) and noble DID carry newsstand Marvel titles, which is the argument. Oh, I don't know. I think it carries a little more weight. You know, what with the research and hard numbers and data and all. But what do I know? During your research did you happen upon any numbers such as how many books were destroyed at the end of each month because they were unsold? I feel that a lot of people overlook the fact that newsstand edition's are basically destroyed when the next issue is released for partial store credit whereas direct editions aren't. Yes, we have all of that information for many books published in the 60's-00's. The Statements of Ownership, published during this time, tells us the net extant copies of any particular title (if not necessarily a particular issue.) Here's an example: From here, you can see the total print run, as well as the actual amount of copies actually distributed (in this case, 184,826 as an average.), as well as the returns from news agents which you describe (that is, 50,045.) Now, there have always been shenanigans on the newsstand returns side, so actual copies reported returned may not be the copies that are actually destroyed, BUT...we know that number is not greater than the number reported, because then those agents wouldn't receive credit for those issues (which, while possible, isn't a mistake many vendors tended to make.) And, granted, in the era of the Direct market (functionally 1979-on), those numbers got a little muddled, because those numbers don't separate out Direct vs. newsstand copies. However, we CAN do a little extrapolating. For example, that New X-Men SOO is from 2002. We know that, in 2002, say, New X-Men #128 (intro Fantomex) has a reported Direct market number of 106,190 copies. If you look at the average amount of copies distributed (184,226) and subtract 106,190 copies from that figure, you arrive at roughly 80,000 Newsstand copies actually sold on average for the year 2002. Now, granted, we don't know precise numbers, and we can't get very precise, except for the "issue published nearest to filing date" which is probably issue #132 or #133, but it's still reasonable enough information. For fun, let's look at #132, since #14 on the SOO says the issue date (which means the publication date, not the cover date) is September, which would make it a November cover date, which would be #132. We see, for the year, the series took a dramatic drop in both printed and sold copies, from an average of 184k copies distributed, to only 132k for the most recent issue. But, returns from vendors also dropped, which means they had a higher sell-through percentage, which is good. We see that the Direct copies remained pretty consistent: 105,640, which means that the newsstand only sold about 27k copies for that particular issue. However...27k copies actually distributed (or, rather, reported as sold and not claimed for credit) is still nearly 26% of the Direct market copies! For every ONE HUNDRED copies sold of that issue, SEVENTY FOUR were Direct, and TWENTY SIX were Newsstand. And, on average for the year, the newsstand books sold about 80% of what the Direct market sold. This is why Chuck's numbers are so ridiculously wrong. 2% newsstand vs. 98% Direct? Chuck is claiming that for every ONE HUNDRED copies sold, only TWO were newsstand? Total nonsense. Those numbers, and many like it, prove him drastically, dramatically wrong. And yet...that misinformation is repeated as fact, because research is time-consuming and understanding and relaying data in a meaningful way is difficult, so....here we go. Not entirely true. Thanks to those statements of ownership, we're not completely in the dark with regards to how many newsstand copies were actually distributed. Where there are no SOOs, yes, we're out of luck entirely. But SOOs exist for the vast majority of DC, Marvel, and even other companies for the time period involved, so we have a pretty fair estimate about what was printed and what, of that, actually still exists. It is vital, as you point out, to always include that "net press run" does NOT equal "extant copies", and I think this board has been exceptionally consistent in making sure that information is repeated on a fairly regular basis. Yes and no. Remember, Diamond only reports Direct sales in North America. We have no idea how many US English editions are printed for, and distributed to, the United Kingdom, for example. And, of course, those numbers reported by Diamond are always very carefully caveated to be "estimated." That's important. Here's what Diamond says about it: "Data for Diamond’s sales charts — which includes the monthly market shares and all top product charts — are compiled by Diamond Comic Distributors from sales made to thousands of comic book specialty shops located in North America and around the world. Additional sales made to online merchants and other specialty retailers may be included as well." (Emphasis mine.) http://www.diamondcomics.com/Home/1/1/3/237?articleID=174561 And here's what the John Jackson Miller of Comichron has to say: "The individual pages for each of these years can be found by clicking the links below. Remember that these pages only show what the comics shops of North America ordered, whereas the Statements of Ownership report sales through all channels. More years coming soon!" http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales.html So, JJM and Diamond conflict a bit, which should be cause to consider. Not entirely true, but certainly true of Chuck, clearly. We don't have to worry about Newsstand Marvels anymore, because they're no longer published. I appreciate the research you've done with your X-Men example from 2000, but I still stand by my statement that only the publisher has an idea of the exact number of newsstand books to survive each month and I would guess that the records from 2000 would be far more accurate than from 1970 with the advancement of technology. I'm pretty sure that in 2000 the upc code associated with each books pallet or package would have been scanned and entered into the database and when a return was made roughly a month later the returned covers upc would be scanned and entered into the database. Back in the early days of comics before computers existed I would bet that the publishers didn't keep as detailed records as they did after computers & upc codes made the job quicker & easier with keeping up with returns.

I feel that with newsstand editions you really can't look at the number that was made and then delivered to the retailer, because that number doesn't reflect how many were returned and destroyed when the next issue was released. Once a direct edition is printed and sold to the retailer it stays in the market until someone buys it. Newsstand editions are sent back to the publisher (at least the cover is) from the retailer when the next issue is released for partial store credit and supposed to be destroyed. I just think it would be hard to keep track of what was printed, what was sold and what was returned/destroyed over a 2-3 month time period. I know that Chuck has an ego bigger than Stan Lee could ever dream of having and likes to think that he knows everything and speculators like to number crunch everything, but with newsstand editions there seems to be a lot of variables that can't be taken into account by just looking at a Diamond sales list.

Nothing at all? I'm not sure how this is relevant to 2005, when Barns (sic) and noble DID carry newsstand Marvel titles, which is the argument. Oh, I don't know. I think it carries a little more weight. You know, what with the research and hard numbers and data and all. But what do I know? During your research did you happen upon any numbers such as how many books were destroyed at the end of each month because they were unsold? I feel that a lot of people overlook the fact that newsstand edition's are basically destroyed when the next issue is released for partial store credit whereas direct editions aren't. Newsstand editions have a shelf life, I don't think anyone actually knows how many survived from month to month. With direct editions you can go by Diamonds monthly sales list & not have to consider return numbers like newsstand editions. I doubt anyone knows the actual number of newsstand editions that survive each month, especially Chuck from Mile High considering he doesn't deal in them

I bought a total of 4 comics yesterday and 2 of them were Walking Dead 150. Didn't expect to be able to find a B&W retailers variant for a reasonable price, but actually got lucky and found one. When the comic shop owner told me what he was selling his copy for I had to ask him twice to make sure I heard him right. It's rare these days to find a comic shop owner that doesn't realize which variants are hot but yesterday was my lucky day!!

Does anyone have any idea of how many B&W variants were printed? Just curious because I was lucky enough to buy one at a reasonable price yesterday from my LCS

Just bought a copy of New Mutants 87 2nd print, 99 & 100 1st print in the $1 bin at my LCS the other day. Kind of surprised to see collectors/flippers speculating on the 2nd & 3rd prints of issue 100 since they have the same cover as the 1st print except for a color difference. The only reason they exist is because the 1st print sold out and 2nd print sells were better than expected. Makes me wonder if my 2nd print of New Mutants 87 will ever be as in demand as the 1st print in the current comic collecting market? The cover on it is a different color than the 1st print and I'm sure it had a lower print run the 1st print as well.

Won an auction at my LCS for a Star Wars collection so I guess I'm a member of the the 1-107 club.

Some of the things that I look for are a 1st appearance, because they could become popular 20 seconds or 20 years after they are introduced and when a new artist or writer starts on a series (like Frank Miller and Todd McFarlane). I also try to look for characters and storylines that I think fans and collectors will be interested in 30 years from now. Comics from the big 2 like Marvel and DC seem to always be a good investment in the long run for me. Not saying that some of the independents aren't good investments, just saying that IMO, for the most part, they don't seem to have staying power like the characters from Marvel and DC do. Marvel and DC have been around for awhile and I don't see them or their characters fading away anytime soon, especially with Disney owning Marvel now. With a company like Disney owning Marvel you can bet that they will be trying to introduce every new generation of fans and collectors to their characters in one form or another. Something else I look for is oddities in the market. Something like a newsstand version of a comic with a $1 price variance (or any price variance) over the direct edition like on the DC comics that are out now. In the past the Marvel comics with a price variance seem to be more valuable, but only time will tell with these new DC newsstand vs direct editions. I also look for out of the ordinary things like the Rub & Smell cannabis editions of the Harley Quinn book that came out last year. You would think that in this PC world that we live in today if that comic with its marketing gimmick of Rub & Smell cannabis would have caught the medias attention like Superman 75 did years ago that it would have caused more than a little bit of controversy.

Just found an interesting article and it looks like the autographed pictures of Spider Gwen and Spider Ham that Jason Latour was giving out at the Spider Gwen release party last month are going to be his variant cover for Spider Gwen #3. He posted the link himself on his Facebook page so I'm guessing it's accurate information. http://www.newsarama.com/26693-latour-goes-whole-hog-in-new-spider-gwen-variant.html

A couple of pictures of Jason Latour and Rico Renzi from the Saturday signing and Spider Gwen release party. This picture isn't me, but it pretty much sums up how excited everyone was when Jason Latour started signing and giving away prints of Spider Gwen & Spider Ham that he brought with him for the event.

Here's some pictures from the local Charlotte newspapers website from this weekend with Cliff Chiang and Jared K Fletcher. After talking with them I feel that the Paper Girls creative team is going to be putting out some good stuff in the future.

That's the Heroes Aren't Hard To Find store variant. Cliff Chiang did the cover and Jared K Fletcher did the logo which is why my copy is signed by Jason Latour and Rico Renzi as well as Cliff Chiang and Jared K Fletcher. I'm pretty sure that they have a few left because the owner of Heroes posted that he ordered 30 cases of Paper Girls, I Hate Fairyland and Spider Gwen comics for Saturdays event. The store owner seems to make sure that you can walk into his store and find just about any comic, new or old, that you're looking for, especially something for one of his release party's.

Thank's, when I saw how they signed that copy of EOSV 2 I was impressed. Both of them signed several different copies of Spider Gwen 1 for me & that was the only book both of them signed that way.

At the Spider Gwen release party at Heroes Aren't Hard To Find in Charlotte today I can say that people were very excited about this comic. I lost count of all of the Spider Gwen cosplayers, Spider Gwen hoodies, The Mary Janes T-shirts and Spider Gwen plush dolls that I saw. The fact that Jason Latour & Rico Renzi were there signing autographs and talking about the comic might have had something to do with it as well. The highlight of the release party was talking with Jason about Spider Ham and him signing prints of both Spider Gwen & Spider Ham that he brought to give away to everyone at the release party.

Just got back from the release party at Heroes Aren't Hard To Find in Charlotte, North Carolina where I meet Cliff Chiang and Jared Fletcher. I have to say that everyone at the release party was cool but those two guys were especially cool to talk with about Paper Girls!! The enthusiasm they have when talking about that project and what's going to happen in issue #2 made me realize why that comic is so good, they are just as excited to be working on the comic as we are to be reading it if not more!! They seemed really impressed to know that this thread exists about their project. After meeting those guys I can honestly see why Paper Girls #1 has been so successful. I also found out that they did some of the cover work on the Heroes Aren't Hard To Find store variant of Spider Gwen #1.