George Brent

On 10/22/2021 at 2:39 PM, Lazyboy said:

I would bet that the Namor series belongs in this thread.

D-a-m-'.       That was a good half hour I spent on that thread  --but a good one  (though I'm not sure about one claim on there that every Sensational She Hulk after #2 had both direct and newsstand, as I've never seen a newsstand copy of #51-60 --and, holy cow, I just checked MHC for their She Hulk newsstand info and their prices for #40-onwards are now 4-5x the already very high prices of a few weeks ago, #60 is $2280 in VF)

On 10/22/2021 at 12:06 AM, divad said:

90s are tougher finds . . . 

:-)

Actually, some are.   Talking about basically worthless issues (but, darnit, have to have them  -- this goes back to the bug of collecting that someone just posted about)  :  try finding newsstand copies of Namor #16-34.  AFAIK, 16-19 only exist with UPC stickers on them, I have never seen a newsstand copy of 20-26, and have found and bought only 1-2 copies of 16-19 & 27-34 in the past ~10 years.  This is very surprising for an era of huge print runs for both direct and newsstand Marvels, I'm sure there are interesting lost stories about such cases  ("yeah, I remember those pallets of just-printed comics tipping and falling into the Hudson river")  --Lazyboy, can I claim that those are 1:100,000 ?   

On 10/20/2021 at 3:33 PM, fastballspecial said:

Look nobody is arguing scarcity why does everyone bring it up? Why is it not 1:50 or 1:250 instead?
I mean there is the same amount of proof for those as well? Know why ? Marketing.

Its a marketing ploy to sell comics. Mile High has been doing it for years and people who find them 
have bought into it. I sell newsstands all the time. I do not market them as 1:100 variants. 

Some of you are taking this way to personal. I got nothing against newsstand collectors. I have several
myself, but don't believe that the 1:100 label is nothing more then a marketing ploy. So when you can't
prove something its probably not right. 

And lastly keep in mind many boardies on here have years of experience at this. Its not like we just woke
up and said this or are we new collectors entering the market.   Money brings out the books. Ask GI Joe
21 collectors. Years ago you couldn't get a book in 9.6 at one point now many are more available. Keep
getting large sales for newsstands they will show up more. Honestly nobody cares about many unless they
are keys or core titles. 

BTW welcome to the boards.

 

(thanks for the welcome, btw, though I've been here for a few months)

Yes, it is marketing.  No, I don't think it is a ploy (MHC's ridiculous prices notwithstanding).   You are saying you don't advertise newsstands as being 1:100 when you sell them, but the empirical evidence is that this is quite a realistic estimate (your argument of "why not 1:50 or 1:250?" can be translated as "nobody knows exactly what it is, so why bother mentioning an estimate?"  --well, because estimates are out there for anyone to come up with via eBay (or CGC as well, I suppose) and, yep, ~1:100 is pretty close in many cases, so why are you opposed to people referring to that?    I don't think it's false advertising or wishful thinking, the numbers out there support that well.   

On your comment about issues that gain in popularity/price and then becoming more available:   yes, you are correct for pre-2000s issues and post-2000s direct issues.  The main difference between that population and post-2000s (roughly) newsstands is that 1:50 or 1:100 or 1:250 scarcity.   The small amounts of newsstands printed post-2000 (inferring from the greatly reduced overall --direct+newsstand-- print volumes compared to pre-2000) mean that there aren't many collectors/hoarders/dealers out there who have those newsstand copies and you only get odd cases every now and then (the Doc Collection is a prime example, as well as 2-3 folks selling only newsstand editions on eBay, so I imagine they are sitting on stock they somehow accumulated via a newsstand store they owned or had access to its supply  --but I'm only guessing).  Furthermore, newsstand copies have been commanding multiples of direct-prices for at least 6 years now and, if your theory were correct, we would already have seen an influx of newsstand copies due to the higher prices  --but we haven't and, on the contrary, that supply has dwindled, especially for 2010-2013 issues.   So, respectfully, what you say is not what we've been seeing.   I would like it if you were right (so I could get some of the late newsstands I'm missing to fill my collection), but I don't see any way this happens. 

On 9/21/2021 at 4:37 PM, fastballspecial said:

That an accurate impression I guess. Because it cant be proven and was made up by Mile High.
The fact that you cant understand this baffles me there is no data to prove it none. 

I think if you will go back read previous posts you will see I agree on most of the rest of this.  

Here is a simple example below for Mile High. They want 3 times the ebay price for their copy. 
I got nothing against Chuck, but does this seem like a competitive price or someone looking
for a sucker.

 

Lazyboy's and fastballspecial's fixation on (and denial of) the 1:100 ratio is baffling  (folks, never too late to repent and join the newsstand bandwagon!   :-) 

Sure, nobody can absolutely prove the 1:100 ratio, but there is a ton of empirical evidence out there, as Paqart mentioned.   Try looking up, for example, what's for sale on eBay right now for Amazing Spider Man in the #660-700 range.    A couple I just checked show >50 directs and 0 newsstands --combine that with completed listings from the past 3 months and the 1:100 ratio is certainly not the BS you are indignantly claiming it is.   I could say the same about any 2010-2013 series, but there are a lot of 2000-2010 issues I've been actively looking for newsstand copies of and haven't found any during the past 10 years.    

And the scarcity is becoming a lot worse.  Back in 2010-2013 I would constantly find plenty of modern newsstands on eBay (kicking myself for not buying some of them back then), whereas now things have dried up considerably and it takes a lot of digging (and luck) to find copies.   Yes, MHC has got crazy high prices, I would never pay those (though in a lot of cases they have the only known newsstand copies of issues in stock), but the (obvious and readily available) empirically derived evidence for newsstand scarcity should lead to a very hefty premium, and for key issues (and lots of non-keys) it indeed has led to hefty premiums on eBay sales for years now --but, yeah, you guys can continue claiming that there really is no ~1:100 scarcity b/c nobody can outright prove it and everyone paying those prices is being misled and any day now it'll be obvious that there are a lot more copies out there and make the prices collapse, blah blah. 

And here are some newsstand pets, to get back to the "show us your modern newsies" theme:

On 4/8/2021 at 12:54 PM, bshowell said:

A few more...

Grading question:  (disclaimer:  my knowledge of GCC criteria is zippo)   I thought 9.8 was pretty much flawless, only extremely difficult to spot tiny defects.   For Astonishing X-men #3 I see a small (but nevertheless perceptible even in the photo) spine bend, about straight to the left of the bottom of the "X".   I thought something like that would drop the condition to a 9.6.   Not complaining, as this means a lot of my issues that I thought were 9.6's may be 9.8's, but I, maybe erroneously, thought that 9.8 meant basically flawless  --bshowell, if what I think is a spine bend is really not a spine bend, feel free to call me a insufficiently_thoughtful_person and move on  :-)    

On 3/23/2021 at 3:39 PM, andyborehol said:

This is awesome! I signed up for this board a few years ago but hadn't really been inspired to participate until I stumbled across this thread...it's cool to see how many passionate newsstand collectors there are out there. About 5 or 6 years ago I realized that I had collected a copy of just about every US Wolverine and X-Men-related comic that had ever been printed. This actually made me quite sad..I felt like I no longer had anything to "hunt" for. One day shortly thereafter I was flipping through a dollar bin at my local Half Price Books and found high-grade newsstand copies of Wolverine #154 & 155. I already owned the direct editions but knowing that those issues can fetch a few bucks I scooped them up, thinking that I would sell or trade them. When I got them home it dawned on me -- newsies give me a reason to rebuild my entire collection from scratch! Since then I have acquired complete newsstand runs of Wolverine vol. 1 (1982) & vol. 2 (1988), a near complete run of vol. 3 (2003) [I'm fairly certain that issue #74 from this run was not printed for the newsstand market], and I'm just missing a handful of issues from vol. 4 (2010) and vol. 5 (2013). Also have complete newsstand runs of Wolverine: Origins, Wolverine: Weapon X, all of the issues of Marvel Comics Presents that feature the ol' Canucklehead plus a bunch of other minis & one-shots. I'm currently working on Uncanny X-Men (roughly 80% complete) and some other titles where Wolvie features heavily like New Avengers and Uncanny X-Force. In all I have over 1,400 books that I could share in this thread, but I'll limit myself to just some of the more unusual/interesting ones for now:

Iron Fist/Wolverine: The Return of K'un Lun #1-3 - For some bizarre reason, Marvel decided to re-brand these issues for the newsstand market as "Avengers Universe" #4-6. This is certainly not the only example of Marvel doing newsstand re-branding (I'm sure that the Daredevil, vol. 2 "Marvel Universe" variants are pretty well known to those of you interested in this topic) but it strikes me as particularly odd in this case when you consider that neither Iron Fist nor Wolverine had ever been an Avenger at this point. I also suspect that the general public would have been more eager to buy a "Wolverine" comic than an "Avengers" comic in the year 2000...maybe the Marvel marketing department was trying to test that theory? In any case, there is a 4th issue in this series but I have never seen a newsstand copy (a.k.a. Avengers Universe #7) -- if it exists and you've got one I would love to see it here.

 

Wolverine/Punisher: Revelation #1-4 - This mini-series is unique because it's the only example I'm aware of where Marvel did 2nd newsstand printings. The series originally came out in 1999 and was released in both the direct and newsstand markets, then in spring 2001 they did a 2nd printing for the newsstand market ONLY. The 2nd printings are easily identifiable because they don't have the issue numbers on the cover (yet another strange choice by Marvel) and also the UPCs have a 3-to-4 letter month code on the side, whereas the first printings do not.

 

Wolverine: Origins #6 -  The newsstand edition of this issue actually says "Direct Edition"...likely just an oversight during printing. The only way to tell them apart is the shape of the UPC itself.

 

Wolverine: Origins #9 - The first 10 issues of this series had "50/50" variants in the direct market, meaning that there are variant covers with approximately the same print run as the "standard" cover. For just this one issue Marvel used what had been labeled as the "variant" cover for the newsstand market and even left the words "Variant Edition" in the corner!

 

Wolverine Saga (2009) and All-New Wolverine Saga - In the direct market, these were both free giveaways to promote some newly rebooted Wolverine-related titles. When they went on the newsstands, Marvel charged $3.99 for them. Part of me wants to say that newsstand customers were treated like suckers, but then I remembered that several years after the fact I probably paid more than $3.99 each to acquire these...so I ask you, who's the real sucker here? 

Some great info I didn't know about, though I've been into newsstands for over 10 years now, thanks!     Also good to know that someone else has struggled to get a newsstand edition of Wolverine(2003) #74, have been looking for that forever and have never seen a newsstand copy.   

10 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

Anybody who pays a premium for stickers is absolutely insane. Do they think it's hard to copy them or something?

Well, it depends on the stickered issue.    Some were only printed as direct editions (I assume accidentally) with the sticker added later by Marvel (e.g., Spirits of Vengeance #13, Wolverine(2003) #44 --or #43, can't remember which, etc.), and I'd definitely pay a premium for those.   The stickered XMen(1991) #1 is a bit odd, those do exist with the UPC code and they are not that rare, so not sure that the stickered finds by F For Fake qualify as a rare collectible (but I'd certainly pay a bit of a premium for those as well, cool to have).

On 3/9/2021 at 7:29 AM, Corona smith said:

First newsstand edition I’ve seen of this book in the 2+ years I’ve been watching for it. 
 

 

Nice! 

On the topic of "do they even exist?", has anyone ever seen newsstand copies of the 2005 House of M series?    (I also have the same question for some not-quite-modern-newsies, like Marvel Comics Presents #175, but we'd go down a rathole if we started discussing 90s issues as well).

Speaking of multiple copies:   I'm betting most of us would rather lose an arm than sell our newsstand copies, however, what about swapping our multiples?   Sorry if this topic has been brought up before (I joined very recently)  --but I would be interested, please ping me if interested as well.  

3 hours ago, Corona smith said:

Mighty Avengers #1 has a newsstand as I own one. Amazing X-Men #1 on the other hand I don’t believe so. 

Thanks, good to know the Mighty Avengers #1 has a newsstand version, adding it to my "wanted" list. 

4 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Amen. The only one of those that I have is the Hulk 1 2008, and I payed up for it. I recall seeing the Dark Wolverine recently with Ms Marvel, but I don't remember if it was a newsie and maybe why I passed on it. Seemingly I have secret places where I'm able to somehow find newsies, but again, it's severely hit and miss. haha

That is some fun! AND I'm glad to see some posts, as it gives me ones to look at or for, even if they're not different in price than direct editions, which are the ones that I mostly look for  

Speaking of which issues have newsstand editions and which do not, does anyone know whether Amazing X-men #1 (Jan 2014) or Mighty Avengers #1 (Nov 2013) came out as newsstands?   (I once read a comment on some board or other where someone claimed they had seen Amazing X-men #1 as a newsstand at Barnes & Noble, but I have never seen a copy).