lighthouse

This may also be covered in the thread. But I noticed that at least one of the April 2000 shipping books I looked at had a $1.99 cover price and a $2.25 indicia.

In a past life I dealt a number of the 30 cent price variants, including finding Donut his last remaining book to complete the first ever set. I found that April indicia odd, because with the 30 and 35 cent "tests" the new price took effect immediately after the test was completed. But this 99-00 test seems to have been run, then they made a decision to go with the new price and updated the indicia, but didn't update the actual cover price until a later month. It's not like September 1976 at all.

I promise I will read through the full thread when I get a chance. But my Diamond shipment just arrived and I'll either be procrastinating on the Diamond shipment by looking through this collection or procrastinating on the collection to process my Diamond shipment. Either way the thread will have to wait a bit.

There's the 18, and a 20 for reference of the publisher code change.

So this weekend we acquired a 2200 book collection that is entirely newsstand editions, all from 1996 to 2004.

It's an original owner collection that was donated to a nearby charity. They couldn't do anything directly with the comics, so they brought them to us and we are swapping them out for stuff they can actually use (both merchandise and cash).

I've never seen a collection like this before. I've seen collections of 50-100 books that were all newsstands, but nothing larger than that. The idea of someone amassing 2000+ comics without ever once patronizing a comic shop boggles my mind.

We haven't completed the triage on the collection yet. But I didn't find a Thor 19 on my initial pass. I did, however, find a Thor 18 with $2.29 cover price (which I believe is new based on your chart). And strangely the Thor 20 is $1.99. I am quite confident this is an original owner collection. Not a single book was bagged and boarded, they were just accumulated. And it's clearly never been picked through (things like 1997 Deadpool #1 and Amazing Spider-Man #36 were both present). When I get to the other titles, I can see if there is a pattern on which months were variants or not.

One thing I noticed, which may have been brought up in the 300+ previous replies, is that the price variant has a different publisher code. UPC codes on comics are a standard 6 digits denoting publisher, then 5 denoting title, then a 12th digit that is a check digit to verify an accurate bar code. The Thor books are all title "03506", but the regular price version is publisher 074808 (both before and after the variant) while the price variant is publisher 071658. It also doesn't have a Canadian price option.

I'll try to eventually read all 11 pages of this thread. But if there are specific items you'd like me to look for, just let me know. The collection is roughly 50% Marvel, 45% DC, and a smattering of Image (Spawn 32-55 etc). The weirdest thing (to me) that I found so far was Amazing 400 deluxe newsstand. Hadn't seen one of those before. But there are a lot of books to go through.

We have several customers that drive 200+ miles specifically to shop with us, and some of them are pretty fervent about what they collect. Between those folks and the locals, we have around 25-30 regulars who actively inquire about newsstand editions. It's not a huge number, but they are there.

It's not the sort of thing that we would choose to devote active square footage to (setting up an entire section of late 90s newsstands with flashing signs and strobe lights), just like we don't keep Fury of Firestorm or Darkhawk or Gen-13 on the tables currently. We bring things like that over from the warehouse on request, and we have a few customers who will reach out 3-4 days before they plan to visit, asking us to bring this title or that one. A decent number of the books from the latest collection will just go out, newsstand or not. There's a run of 1997 Deadpool 1-17, plus the Daredevil/Deadpool Annual, and we will reach out to our "best" Deadpool customers to see if any are actively pursuing newsstands. We've never had any in stock so it hasn't come up. The Spawns (roughly issues 35-55) we have five different customers currently working on newsstand runs, so those will go quickly enough. I've only triaged half the collection so far. Once I get a handle on all of it, I'll see where we go with it. We have roughly 70-80k books offsite currently, another 2,000 won't take up much room.

Alright... I know I am long overdue for an update. And January and February are nice, slow times so I should be able to pick up the story again where I left off.

But jumping ahead to the present, I'm positively delighted that IDW is doing this Marvel Action Spider-Man series that is all-ages friendly and features Peter, Gwen, and Miles all together. It's a beautiful thing to have parents come in with kids excited about having seen this great movie and be able to put comics in their hands that are age-appropriate AND similar to what they just saw in a theater. Something that simply wasn't possible with any of the recent Marvel films.

We've been buying collections like crazy, another 40 last month and already 10 in January. The latest one is particularly odd. Was a donation to a charity and they brought it to us to purchase. It includes roughly 2200 newsstand comics from 1995-2002, including several I hadn't seen in person before like Punisher 104. It's mostly Marvel and DC but a few Image and Valiant. One that caught me off-guard was a copy of Amazing Spider-Man #400, newsstand with the gray tombstone overlay. I wasn't aware there was a newsstand version that had that. I had only seen the more common newsstand version with no overlay and the back cover ad. I don't think there is a single direct edition in the entire collection, which definitely makes it the oddest collection I have seen. I've found "all newsstand" collections of 50-100 books before. But never anything like this.

On 11/27/2018 at 3:09 PM, the blob said:

a year break is a great way to kill a comic.

 

I dunno. People still ask about Battle Chasers...

I realize the graphic is intended to be simplified and the most common case.

But that said, there is a sizable quantity of inventory that remains at Diamond undistributed for months and months after most books are released. For every Batman Damned that sells through at Diamond completely the first week of distribution, there are two dozen titles that Diamond carries in inventory for 4-6 months, and more than a handful that it will still have in inventory more than a year after publication.

Here are the oldest in-stock matches for a casual search of "Batman" and "Spawn" just for example. Showing issues that came out 4-5 YEARS ago that are still available to be ordered.

I can't even imagine just how much "back issue" inventory is sitting in the Diamond warehouses.

11 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

No, I'm not. But most of the people who recently started "caring" about them are doing so with a speculator mentality and only because of exaggerated claims of rarity.

I suspect there are some people collecting them specifically because collecting them is a challenge. Folks who have the "collector gene" will collect darn near anything because it's the process of collecting that is enjoyable, more than the end result of having a finished collection. I get customers walk in wearing a $5,000 watch whose faces light up like a kid on Christmas morning because they found some random $4 back issue they "need". It's not about the money, it's about the joy of the hunt.

If I wanted to "collect" the main covers of the current Suicide Squad title, all in roughly 9.0 condition, I could finish that task in less than a week without using the internet, and in less than two hours with using the internet. Not much fun in that process.

But if I wanted to "collect" all the Marvel and DC comics that are cover-dated with the month and year of my birth, all in 9.4 or better? Even with the internet at hand, that's a project that will last me a while. Some of those titles just aren't that easy to find. But I would still be done in a few months of casual searching (and some hand-wringing over how much of a premium I wanted to pay for the last few romance and western books I needed).

Searching for newsstands in random dollar boxes, and chasing for uncommon versions of very common books? That's exactly what collecting is all about. Will they appreciate as much as the 30 and 35-cent price variants did 15 years ago? Probably not. But they still represent a difficult but achievable challenge that gives one a reason to dig through boxes they might otherwise ignore.

On 11/21/2018 at 9:39 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

Just for clarity, and I don't know if this was answered elsewhere, but the coding on the Direct edition on the left is for a "variant", not a second printing.

The first three numbers of the code are the issue number, the 4th number is the printing (or edition; rarely used in comics), and the 5th number is the printing. Though it is WILDLY misused much of the time, the coding is supposed to look like this:

37611 <---- this is the code for a standard, first print, issue #376

37621 <---- this is the code for a first print variant.

37612 <---- this is the code for a second print.

37613 <--- this is the code for a third print.

37622 <---- while excessively rare, this would be the correct code for a second print variant. I doubt this actually exists.

Also...the two groups of five numbers at the bottom of the code refers to the Publisher (first five numbers) and the Title (second five numbers.) Publisher and title codes are usually different for Direct and newsstand (Curtis Circulation), but in this case, the code for "Wolverine" is the same, which is interesting. For the newsstand, the top number ("12" in this case) represents either the number of issues released with that cover year (in this case, 12, and usually corresponds to the month, unless there were issues released more frequently) OR the last two digits of the issue number.

I do not know, and have never been able to learn, what the small numbers represent.

The final small number is a check digit that verifies whether the first 11 digits form a valid bar code.

We generate our own bar codes for back issues in the shop, and I wind up having to deal with the check digit math more often than I would like. The ones we generate ourselves are 8-digit codes, so they are 7 useful digits plus 1 check digit (where a self-generated code of 9900720 would have a check digit of "1" for example, and a code of 9900721 would have a check digit of "8"). When I send data to my barcode printer I am only sending 9900720 and the printer knows to add a "1". But when I upload the bar codes into our POS system I have to tell it that 99007201 (including the check digit) is a $20 back issue of 1990s Deadpool.

The first small number is part of the publisher code. Things change over time, but all current Marvel start with 759606, DC with 761941, Image with 709853, Boom with 844284, Valiant with 858992, IDW with 827714, Oni Press with 649856, etc.

So if I were to generate a bar code for Uncanny X-Men (2018 series), issue 8, main cover, 2nd print, the code would be: 7 59606 09134 8 00812

And if Marvel decided to put out a new title with the title code 09135, the first issue main cover would have a bar code of 7 59606 09135 5 00111, because the check digit for the new 09135 title would be a "5" instead of an "8".

Some of the Marvel titles have been rebooted so many times, and aren't easily recognizable by trade dress changes, that we actually note the title bar code for the various volumes on our title dividers in the back issue boxes. It makes life a lot easier sorting in issues of Deadpool if you use the bar codes and don't even both trying to guess based on covers. Same thing for Amazing Spider-Man.

And yes, we need to update the divider for Legacy to no longer say "Current", and need to add a divider for the 2018 volume. Just hasn't happened yet.

We picked up our 3rd large collection of 1999-2004 DC animated books this week. Nearly full runs of Batman Gotham Adventures, Batman Strikes, Justice League Unlimited, etc etc etc.

And I noticed that a few of the Harley books happened to be newsstand editions. These animated books are harder to find in nice shape than most books from the time period, which is reflected in so many of the commons being $12-15 in high grade on MYCS. I can't imagine that the newsstand quantities on these were much at all.

Whether anyone cares? That's another matter...

I didn't destroy any Spidey 129s this year... but I'd estimate I destroyed roughly 15,000 comics total.

Around 2,000 that were strip cover returns, and another 13,000 that weren't worthy of the dollar boxes and went straight in the trash compactor.

On 11/10/2018 at 6:56 PM, ygogolak said:

Wait until this initial wave of copies dries up and then we will see what the demand is. That's assuming Diamond doesn't drop 100 of them on the market in 6 months.

And that's exactly why gambling on low print run variants is challenging. Diamond doesn't mess with the distribution of 1 in 500 or 1 in 1000 variants. Those are handled by a specific office at Diamond that keeps all the overstock until they can confirm how many damage replacements are needed, handles the damage replacements themselves (not shipped as part of a normal weekly delivery), and then disposes of the excess.

But 1 in 25s, 1 in 50s, and 1 in 100s? Diamond keeps piles of overstock with the main inventory at the distribution centers and periodically dumps excess on the market 6 months or a year later (in some cases even longer). We have ordered loads of 1 in 25s and 1 in 50s months after their release for $2.00 net cost. And even on "common" variants, they can swamp a market. Diamond dumped hundreds of Thanos 13 lenticulars on the market at $2 net cost just a couple weeks ago. Now regular covers sell for $40-80 raw, and the lenticulars can be had for $6. The lenticulars will likely be absorbed, and if anyone cares about CGR in the future, the prices will get closer together as the lenticulars come up. But it was quite the deluge.

13 hours ago, mr_highgrade said:

Hey House, when are you gonna finish the rest of story? 

I'm hoping for some more free time this weekend. We had some staffing issues leading up to Halloween ComicFest and I've been out on the floor a lot more than normal the last few weeks. HCF was good for us, presumably in the top 10% of shops, giving that Diamond doesn't even offer breakdowns above 500 attendees when surveying shops and we were in that group. For perspective when they survey after FCBD there are attendee breakdowns all the way up to 2000+. The survey for HCF also asks questions like "was it better than a normal Saturday" where the FCBD survey asks questions like "is it your best sales day of the year".

All in all, HCF feels like a real missed opportunity, and I mostly put in on the publishers. Most of the material offered is reprint, and almost none of it connects with titles people could follow up with on the shelves. Marvel's choice to put out Superior Spider-Man was especially perplexing. Here's a reprint of a book from 5 years ago with the same name as a title coming out a couple months after HCF. It's like getting a gift from your nice old grandma who heard you like Transformers so here's a Go-Bot for you. FCBD at least has a mix of fresh and reprints, and most of them are geared to steer future sales. HCF is a second class citizen.

Which is a shame. Because our customers love the event. Dozens of people dressing in costume and having a good time. Just hard to get excited about the comics on the table.

3 minutes ago, greggy said:

I want them all....cheap

You know where I am. Come visit and I'll show you the sweet sweet DCs we picked up a few months ago.

39 minutes ago, the blob said:

Cash is king.  If you are dropping $500-$1000 let's say on some books that may be priced at market, chances are you can work a deal and get the prices knocked down. If a $100 book costs you $75 because you did a group deal, you have a margin to work with. Alas, ebay and paypal fees eat a lot of that up, less so if you sell here or some other fee-less venue. But you need to know that's a book you can actually sell for $100, not just one you see other people trying to sell for $100.

And there are plenty of times when a dealer will take a quick small profit over a potential larger slower one.

If I drop $250 on a collection that includes a nice but not great Spidey 300, that would normally go on my wall at $400 but I happen to have 8 copies currently in stock... it's not uncommon for me to do the math and decide I would rather have my $250 back today rather wait until I've sold 9 copies to see my return. A sale at $275 that I have to do no work for, no packing no emails no auctions no consignment no waiting, just an instant sale? There are plenty of times I will take that and treat the rest of the books as free acquisitions.

Now if I only have one other copy in stock? It's going on the wall at a fair price of $400, and I probably won't take less than $360 for it because I don't need to in order to make a sale. But if I have several, someone is very likely to get a bargain. And the people who will be offered that bargain are the ones I have relationships with.

(And fwiw, I currently have 7 copies of ASM 300 in stock... so that's very much a real-life example if I buy another one today).

Yeah, it's tough. About 95% of the time, I would rather someone brought me a collection of 100 books from 2016 than 100 books from 1992. I have far more demand for back issues from the last couple years than I do for any non-key books that are 25 years old. I'm excited when I get a call saying a customer has a long box of Rebirth they want to sell.  "I have a whole box of X-Men comics and they're like 30 years old!" Not so much.

3 hours ago, the blob said:

I'd think the "we have a lot of this stuff already and it isn't selling" should work, no?

 

It rarely does. Instead it comes across as "everything we have is valuable, and everything you have is trash". Unfortunately so many people have had bad experiences with the Comic Book Guy types that anything that smells vaguely bad to them just becomes a reason for a fight. They convinced themselves back at home that what they were sitting on was valuable, and once the endowment effect sets in, almost anything you say that is negative about their books is just another example of someone trying to rip them off.

If there is ANY chance of educating folks about which books are valuable and why, we jump at the chance. We keep two copies of ASM 300 on the wall with prices $200 apart just so we can explain that "as much as we might like to charge $400 for this copy, it has such-and-such flaws, and that's why it's $200 cheaper". Showing them what amounts to a $100 crease or a $150 tear can go a long way toward teaching them why condition is so important. But the ones that come in raving about what they "know" their books are worth? Even starting down that road is a disaster.

Twenty times ratio for a book that's been out a week. I like it.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CGC-9-8-Spider-Gwen-Ghost-Spider-1-Jee-Hyung-1-100-Variant/142996502472

I mean... it's a beautiful cover, don't get me wrong. And raw copies are already in the $650 range. But... Yeah...

After a little TLC by @Stronguy, the grade is in.

2.0

44 minutes ago, thehumantorch said:

You got to see Greggy’s collection?

LOL... That would imply I had spent two months in his residence.

But I was indeed honored to spend a brief visit, with Greggy pulling cherished treasures out of boxes and showing them off, yes.

4 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Perhaps I wasn't greedy enough. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nah, I still owe Greggy for picking up the tab on our sushi lunch in Vancouver about 15 years ago, when I visited his collection in person.

I mean, I was visiting Greggy too... but let's be honest... it was all about the sweet, sweet DCs.

37 minutes ago, greggy said:

Give them all to me

I tell you what, Greggy... you come visit before Christmas, and I will give you a free set of both covers of Batman Damned.

I'll even let you look through some sweet sweet DCs sitting in the warehouse location from a collection we won't get to before spring.

1 minute ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

There are already multiple cgc 9.9 and perfect 10s...

Blow them out raw! But didn't you say that you originally limited it one per customer? 

My LCS still has copies of both covers, I suggest selling while you can.

 

We did. Sold them at cover price for a few days after the secondary market was already at $40+. Made lots of flippers happy, but that's part of the deal.

Since then we have given away a half dozen copies to some of our better customers. We do the same thing with many of the hot cover variants (recent Mattina covers, recent Jenny Frison covers, and very recently the Putri covers... along with old standby, Artgerm). We hold a few back here and there for back issue sales, and slab a few to sell on MYCS, but the ones in the 9.4-9.6 range usually get distributed for free.