RockMyAmadeus

Your effort in that regard, without blowing smoke up your bunghole, is tremendous, and one that will perhaps bear much fruit in the coming years. I wish you'd bought EVERYTHING, but.... It cannot be understated the massive amount of data value that your (and Jerome's) efforts contain. To that, I give you a hearty "thank you!"

The reason newsstand comics are hard to find is simple: they were sold to individuals, who bought a single copy, and any and all that were unsold were "returned for credit"...however that mechanism evolved before the end...which means that those single copes, if they were saved, don't filter onto the secondary market the way that Direct copies do. We don't know how many were made. We don't know how many were sold. We don't know how many were returned. We don't know how many still exist. BUT...just by virtue of the way we know they were distributed into the hands of buyers...we DO know that the market is going to see these books in single examples, one at a time, until and unless people who have gathered them over time sell them in lots. It's just like the DCU books...they're not hard to find, but they are not found in "clumps", because of the way they were distributed: individual copies inn individual collector packs.

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. WILDLY exaggerated claims. Nonsense claims like "1:100!!!" that you see on eBay with regularity. That number is quite literally pulled out of thin air, yet, there it is, believed...and worse, acted upon...by others.

That would be my assumption, now that I know they exist. First the late 80s UPCs, and now the Sandmans...? Man, you have some catching up to do. But seriously, I think that's entirely it. Sandman trades were FLYING off the shelves, especially when DC announced that #75 would be the last issue. I don't remember a time when Sandman was more popular. Tori Amos, a close friend of Neil's, was also popular at the time, and I think she mentions that she's a big Sandman fan around this time....1994-1995.

And this is the result of his bad methodology: http://milehighcomics.com/newsletter/031513.html Virtually every paragraph in that article contains errors, but the most egregious of all is as topnotch here mentioned: he sees what he's got and comes to conclusions that are false, because he doesn't have any controls on his experiment. He only looks at what he has, not why he has it, and doesn't even consider why he has what he has (or he would have mentioned it somewhere.) Then, other, uneducated people, like a certain Benjamin Nobel of the "rare comics" blog, runs with those made up numbers...and he's hardly the only one...and you end up growing a cottage industry of marketing newsstands based on fake statistics. It's unfortunate, but that's what happens with a market composed of people who choose to be ignorant. The information's out there...but many people don't want to look. The CBCS forum, for example, is filled with such people, who aggressively resist any challenge to their conclusions, and fight with anyone who does.

Not necessarily. Just because it's profitable to print 1,000,000 copies and sell only 400,000 doesn't mean it's equally (or at all) profitable for 100,000/40,000 or 10,000/4,000. Eh. Either way. Someone at Marvel decided it was no longer worth the effort, and a few years later, someone at DC decided the same thing.

I just went on ebay and searched out 2 comics from 2000. Uncanny X-men #381 with a print run of 119,319 and Wonder Woman #157 with a print run of 22,637. There are 37 Uncanny X-men #381 Direct Editions and just 1 Newsstand Edition. There are 17 Wonder Woman #157 Direct Editions and 0 Newsstand Editions. Numbers don't lie. I could do this all day.  No idea why you're fighting this, especially with bad/false information. You don't have any idea what the print run was for either of those comics, because that information is not published. The only people who know those numbers are the publisher and the printer. The numbers you are quoting represent SOLD copies, and only in North America, and only the initial distribution. As well....as I said above, it would be a mistake to assume anything based on copies available for sale on eBay. Newsstand copies tended to be sold to readers who, if they saved them, didn't buy them in multiples. They bought A copy to read, and perhaps keep. That means those copies were far more widely distributed than the 10-15-20-30-50 copies that stores ordered that then got put in back stock to sell at a later date. THAT means that those newsstand copies don't make their way to the market very often, and certainly not in the "clumps" you see with Direct editions. You're trying to come to conclusions that no one but the publisher and/or printer can possibly come to. You do not have the information available to reach those conclusions. Your "numbers" don't represent what you'd like them to.

I would imagine that, since Sandman trades were a big, big seller at that point in time, that the national book sellers...B&N, Borders, the usual suspects....had convinced DC to do some newsstand distribution, a la "Spiderman #1 Gold UPC" several years earlier. I imagine not a single copy ever made it to a "traditional" newsstand. They are exceptionally scarce, but they do exist (as the pictures above demonstrate.)

WTF? Sandman didn't have newsstand distribution. Oh, but it did.....at least the last 10-20 issues or so....

I've been on the road since 1989 because of my job. Although, I am basically in NY most of the times. Up to the mid 90's I was usually able to find comics in most newsstands in the 5 boroughs of NY. Soon after 2000, I could only find them in very few newsstands in Manhattan, but always at the Hudson Newsstands in Grand Central or Penn Station. Forget about the other boroughs. Mind you, they never carried all the titles. Usually just the major ones, like Spidey, X-men, Tec etc. As far as how many? I have no idea. I just know from my own personal experience, that as the years went on it became very diffilcult. Of course. I don't think anyone disagrees that newsstand sales and distribution fell over the years. The core question, however, is "did it fall to the point that it was still selling fewer copies than the Direct market?" And the answer to that is a hearty "we have absolutely no way of knowing, in any way, because there are far too many unknown variables to even attempt an estimation." It is my contention, based on the very broad and sparse information we DO have, that newsstand sales in the 00s...the last full decade of it for Marvel and DC...may have represented MORE copies sold, and certainly more printed, than the Direct market, especially for books that had Direct sales (as reported by Diamond) in the 10k-20k or less range. The newsstand model was still in effect; publishers still printed 3-5x the amount of copies they thought would sell (unlike the Direct market, which was more or less print to order.) Retailers still participated in the newsstand return program. Falling sell-through, however, is probably what convinced Marvel and DC to end their programs, not actual numbers. It's simply more cost effective to run the Direct model for publishers than it is the newsstand model. So, to sell 6,000 copies Direct could have been (and is, for smaller publishers) cost effective, whereas selling 20,000-30,000 of the same book via newsstand distribution may not. So, for folks to carry the (correct) assumptions of the late 80s and 90s....that is, Direct editions were made and sold in higher numbers than their newsstand counterparts (which is true)...into the 00s and 10s may not be an accurate picture of the situation on the ground.

It's an old board joke, The book doesn't exist.

I'm sure you could find a sticker "variant"... Probably before your time.

This has been discussed at some length over the years on this board. The gist of it is that newsstand copies were bought by readers, not collectors, and those that survived are in the hands of those readers, and far less likely to be filtered back into the market...but it would be a mistake to assume that they don't exist, or that the number is anything even close to "30:1." (I really need to update my newsstand experiment.) An average of 45 to 50 copies per store means that there were plenty of stores who ordered 10-15 copies, as there were lots of stores...including online wholesalers, like DCBS and the like...who were ordering hundreds of copies, if not more. Again...there are too many variables for anyone to make any claims, and the plural of anecdote is not evidence. You say there were "very few newsstands that sold comic books in 2011." Ok. How many...?

There are far, far too many variables to consider for anyone to be able to come to any conclusion in this matter. For example...in 2011, Barnes & Noble operated 705 stores in the US. If every one of those received even just 5 copies, that's 3500 copies for just B&N. And B&N wasn't the only chain ordering newsstand copies in 2011. There were still actual newsstands across North America that sold comics. And how many comic shops were ordering 50 to 100 copies of ASM #600? Nobody has any idea, except the publisher and the printer, and without ANY meaningful data, no claims can be made about anything, much less that DE were always ordered more heavily.

Maybe. Working with direct market initial order numbers, and trying to extrapolate from that, makes reliable estimating quite difficult. It's entirely possible that, given the number of "newsstand" outlets throughout North America (Barnes & Noble, etc) that the newsstand run was higher on some, or even many, issues during this time frame than their Direct counterparts. We just don't know. It's the great mystery of modern comic production.

So, did anyone ever dig up that 25 cent test variant of ASM #129...?

Comichron doesn't report newsstand numbers for modern books.

Only the Sith quote film lines and apply them to real life...

No, it's a loss leader in that scenario when I'm pricing normally $4-10 books at a buck a book to stimulate sales elsewhere. It's just not profitable at that price at the more expensive cons. Depends upon your definition of a "loss leader." I'm employing the one where it's sold at below it's minimum profit margin. Most of us understand what you mean and are not bound up in strict definition. They get the point even if they are stuck trying to give you a strict definition. There's much to be said for clarity in communication, and not much to be said for dismissing it. If you imagine that "most of us" understand what people mean, I can show you 10,000 examples...on this board alone....where that's not true, and that's when the writer uses words correctly. How much less so when they're not...?

No need to be offended. Truly. Half the problems in written communication is that people use words that mean something other than what the writer intends. I agree, there's no need to beat this horse to death. #TimeToMoveOn

Good. Pie is where it's at anyways...

Bought for somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,000.....

I realize it's a tad late to comment on this painting but I just read the posts because it was resurrected. That said, that is not a chair in the painting but a "kneeler." Notice how the right rear foot raises the cushion on which the girl is kneeling only inches above the floor? Thank you! I'm not familiar with Catholic regalia. In other words, Picasso wasn't out of proportion at all...meaning, he was an even greater genius....

One of the best.

I 1000% agree with you. In addition to your comment on the paper and these being trash books (getting trashed!) My feeling is that this had a much smaller print run than comparable comics of the time Even people that have these books (Mile high, Gary Dolgoff Comics, etc.) don't bring them to shows (because why would you?) so you'd have to rely on dumb luck finding them in person. Seeing these books in person saves a lot of churn, since you can accurately pre-screen without the hassle of ordering books and dealing with returns eBay is as eBay always is with books from this era. If you find a collector, selling their collection, or a dealer selling an OO collection you can do okay- otherwise... weep. No one else is going to grade them If I weren't done doing runs like this, I would totally do this run because it would be a challenge. I think it's a fantastic run to put together. Like I said, the covers are absolutely gorgeous, they're big magazines, it's got the Last Galactus Story, plus it has all the factors of difficulty we've discussed. I think they are out there, but certainly not in the "they're not worth grading, so no one's subbed them" sense, like, say, Thundercats #9. These are rare in very high grade the way mid 60s Marvels are. While everyone was carefully storing away their 50 copies of X-Men #192, no one was saving Epic Illustrateds in the same fashion. I doubt, even with pressing and a diligent search, you could ever find more than 20-50 copies of these magazines worldwide in 9.8 of each issue, ever. But I think you could find 2-3 of each in 5 or 6 years.