RockMyAmadeus

You're not interested in a serious discussion. You're only interested in scoring points, by asking nonsense questions like this. As I have stated, multiple times before, I have been to many Diamond Retailer Summits over the past several years, and am quite familiar with both who the distributor is, and how the process works. When you're interested in having a real discussion, I'll be here.

Not relevant. Whether Marvel held them or Diamond did is also not relevant. The point is, someone held them.

Do you want to have a discussion, or a passive/aggressive argument? You've mischaracterized multiple statements in the brief conversation just this morning, and made specious statements like the above. No one said anything remotely like that. The problem comes from estimating print runs using Comichron's numbers. Are you doing this on purpose, or are you not aware you're doing it? Did you read what I wrote? Valiant held on to those books until Valiant was no more. So, the idea of holding on to variants until some later time...for whatever purpose...is pretty common in the comics industry. And, by the way, Marvel held on to thousands...about 3,000....Spiderman #1 platinums for over 15 years, until they were liquidated to New Dimension in about 2007.

What is the title of the Bleeding Cool article....? That's right. You don't.

They're going to find their parents...? (ok, I shouldn't be as excited about this as I am) They're in the New World? That maple leaf was prominently featured.

"Huge" is a qualitative term that doesn't have much meaning. What do you consider "huge"? Bleeding Cool says "a bunch." Both terms have no practical meaning. There were thousands of copies available, and, if you'll notice...they encompassed 1-10, meaning Marvel held onto all of them, at least for a while. And publishers *could* print to give away at summits. The point is that you don't know. No one does. Again, those are your terms. What does "over-published" and "flooded" mean? These are variants that are printed in the range of 1,000-5,000 or so, and they have little effect on the number of regular copies printed, distributed, and sold, other than encouraging some retailers to order more than they can sell, in the hopes of hitting the incentive variant lottery. Frankly, you should be more concerned with THOSE numbers...copies printed solely because a retailer hopes to make a little more money on the incentive, and for which (the additional regular copies, that is) there is precisely zero demand...than the comparatively tiny numbers of "over-published" incentive variants. In other words: a "flood" of a few hundred to a few thousand copies of incentive variants, worldwide...books regular readers don't bother with in the first place...is not going to have a "negative effect on sales"...other than, perhaps, those variants themselves. Let's go with an older example...you're aware that the official numbers from Valiant were that they printed 5,000 of the "gold" variants in the early 90s, correct? And how did Valiant distribute those books? They gave them away, one by one, to those...stores, fans, whomever...who promoted Valiant in some special way. They held on to those books for years. When Valiant was sold to Acclaim in 1996, there were people...Joe Petrilak among them...who were allowed to raid the Valiant offices and take whatever they wanted. What they found was nearly the entire print runs of some of those variants, like Psi-Lords #1 gold and Ninjak #1 gold. Why did Valiant "over-publish" those variants? They obviously didn't use them, or even most of them, the way they were intended. And what happened with them? They were stored, some for years, until they were carted off by collectors and dealers to be quietly hoarded for the next 20+ years. I had a full case...150 copies...of Ninjak #1 gold. A full case. I gave a lot of them away. I sold a lot of them. I still have perhaps 20 or so. I have 300 copies of Psi-Lords #1 gold. I have 150 copies of Hard Corps #1 gold. Yes, those weren't INCENTIVE variants, but they were certainly the pre-cursors of such, and were treated AS incentives...just not necessarily ordering incentives. Your hypothesis would be sound if we were talking about overprinting regular books, in the tens and hundreds of thousands, like Valiant and others did in the 90s. But we're not.

"All" was not meant to be literal, and was a figure of speech. Obviously, it's not "$0.00" to print the variants. The answer to your question is still "No, no one has a better way to estimate." So, perhaps what should be done is: stop trying to estimate. Or... Find some way to convince the publishers to release the information.

But it's not a difference, because they could also print to have some on hand to sell at a later date. Right...? And the regularity of these sales at least suggests that that may be true. Keep in mind that Diamond, as much as their actions say otherwise, DOES want to keep retailers in business...offering cheap variants at a later date...and cheap, as in "much less than an actual regular new book would cost the retailer"...is a way to help retailers. And Diamond is INCREDIBLY inefficient, and screws things up on a weekly basis. I know there are retailers who love these variant sales, because they can sell them to customers as back issues, either in person or online, for around cover price, so it's a great deal for them. I'm not suggesting that's the case...but it can be, and if it is, then it just demonstrates how much we don't know about publisher printing practices...same as with the giveaways. Some of the giveaways have been "old" variants...books that had been out months at that time...and some are new. If there are hundreds that are printed, in anticipation of giving them away at the summits, then that demonstrates how useless using the Comichron estimates really are...those copies aren't even factored in to the "estimates" that people are making up. As for the sales...the quantities available have been far in excess of "overages for damage." The Miracleman incentives that Marvel dumped in 2015 are a good example of that. https://www.bleedingcool.com/2015/05/15/marvel-liquidates-miracleman-1-10-in-all-its-variants/

The cost is all in the regular book. These variants cost very little to print. These are publishers who still print millions of comics a year. A few extra hundred or thousand on the retailer incentives is barely a blip. If they sell, through Diamond, a bunch of them at 30 cents net, they're probably breaking even...and, of course, they can write off acres of stuff for promo purposes (whether they sell them or not) and the like. The point is this: no one knows. It's not one side saying "they print to order!!" and another side saying "they overprint by thousands!!" It's one side saying they know how much the publishers print, and another side saying "nobody knows how much they print, or why." And that's the truth: we don't know. Why is ASM #667 1:100 so rare, while ASM #648 1:100 is pretty common? Why is Ultimate Spiderman #112 1:100 so common, it's practically worthless? I've got 10 or so copies myself, that I acquired out of sheer luck.

I'm not sure what the difference is, whether they sell them in a sale, or give them away at the summits. It's all Diamond. But as for the ones that are sold, Chuck (or anyone who has a Diamond acct) can help on that. Chuck and I were at a retailer summit together a couple of years ago, and Diamond mentioned there were some retailer incentive ("1:X") variants for sale at that very moment, so he went online and ordered a bunch while we sat there having lunch. Again: same type of books that people claim are "printed close to order."

After posting this I took a few minutes to flip through some issues from this era and I haven't found an example where the above ad pre-dates the cover title change noted in the OP (cover date prior to July 1978) I know the art was done in '76 from CAF. Letters page in 118 said bupkis. They must have re-purposed it, since the book wasn't on sale monthly in '76, and Claremont, Byrne, and Austin didn't become the art team until late '77...meaning this ad, wherever it appeared, had to have done so around or after the publication of #112, when it went monthly.

It's at least 500. I've been to several Diamond Retailer Summits where they handed out "1:X" (most recently, the 1:50 Jim Lee sketch cover for Batman #50 at Baltimore last year), and everyone who attends gets one.

It does, their treasure is a butt load more meth. Wait...is that where it's supposed to go...? I've been doing it all wrong.

Yeah, that's a ridiculous price. Last sale was last month for $949...and that is the record.

I love that dumb book. Got a 9.8 for a client. It's tough in high grade.

I heard that if you watch that episode high on meth, it reveals the secrets location of the treasure of the Illuminati.

Someone's been taking @Jeffro.'s lessons... (Don't be offended, gogo, it's all in good fun. Mostly. )

I'll take "claims that Jay makes that he is never forced to prove" for $1000, Alex. Vague, unspecific, unverified claim.

It gets tiresome seeing the same argument by the same people in this thread every few weeks to months. You folks complaining about having to see "the same argument by the same people" DO KNOW there's a perfectly functional ignore feature...right? This isn't said with rancor...what you see here is entirely within your control. Or is it the case that you find value in what those people have to say, and don't want to ignore them, but would rather try to peer pressure them into discussing the way you'd like to discuss...? Either way, there's a fully functioning ignore feature, and if people talk about things that bother you...make them (virtually) disappear from your screen,

Cool. I don't think I ever caught that. Thanks B.

Your opinion is noted.

Ok. Mixed plates, assembly, whatever it was, the point was that to be legitimate, it had to have happened during the printing process...not after.

So, does anyone know the story behind the addition of "Uncanny" in the title of the X-Men, starting with issue #114 on the cover, and codified in the indicia in #142? Is it mentioned in a lettercol somewhere that I missed? As far as I can tell, this was the first time an adjective was added to a title that was then incorporated into the official title of the book. For example....Iron Man was "The Invincible Iron Man" on the cover from #1 until (I believe) #127, but "Invincible" was never part of the indicia. Anyone with any info on this...?

Absolutely, but CGC is composed of people who can make mistakes, too. The only thing that would separate legitimate from illegitimate is where it happened. If it happened at World Color, as a result of mixed plates...it's legit. If it happened anytime after that, it's not. The difficulty is in proving it. Because it's so difficult to prove, and so easy to fake, I wouldn't place any premium on it. As others have said, in the normal course of things, such a book wouldn't even be possible, so it's interesting that it exists, especially so late in Marvel's Canadian price version days (the program would be over by DD #234.) The MJs were for distribution to US servicemen. The CPVs were for distribution to the Canadian newsstand. In the normal course of things...and why we don't see more of such hybrids...these shouldn't exist. For the record...Dan (FlyingDonut) knows as much about these types of variants as anyone I know, so if he's convinced that these are legit, that's good enough for me. He and Al Stoltz (Basement Comics) are more than experts in these fields.