Avengers #500 Director's Cut - Good luck...

[Kevin Boyd]

You seem to feel that "books sold" means what your LCS sells at their store. I'm trying to get across to you that those books have already been purchased by the LCS from the distributor.

 

I'm trying to drive it into you that the LCS IS the primary collector and they are selling the book to customers. It's why they have legitimate room to either sell it to you at a discount or at an inflated price.

 

When Marvel sells 52K Daredevil #62's they are SOLD. Gone. History. You can buy it from your LCS though, they probably have multiple copies.

 

DC does print over and above what is ordered and keep the excess with Diamond for reorders.

 

I don't think there is a shop that has multiple runs of every title ever printed in the last 20 years. As far as supply and demand goes, why is the arguement always "if you can find it, let me now and I will buy from them." Even if I knew of such a dealer who had these runs, I would never tell anyone anyway. I'm sure nobody else would either.

 

Because it's completely true. Why would you keep something a secret if these books are supposedly around in volume and are of no real value? Wouldn't you be sharing that information in order to prove the validity of your argument that all modern books are of no real inherent worth?

[deathlok]

Kevin, according to Marvel or DC or whatever books that go out the door are considered sales. I understand that. However when a distributor, not a dealer, orders 5000 units to be used as back issue reorder stock. These are books that have never been sold to the public.

 

According to your point of view, for every book printed, someone paid for it from a dealer and is sitting in some collectors house. That just isn't true. I have no doubt there are several thousand books that are unsold, sitting in a warehouse. Only because there is no value in moving them, at least not at the current price for them.

[Kevin Boyd]

There is absolutely no way to track collector sales. By collector I am referring to the person who buys current comics and stores them away, which is different from someone who buys a current comics and then reads it, only for that book to be discarded later.

 

Who cares about that distinction? What a person does with their purchase is their own business. We can only track sales to Diamond accounts and the number of units sold from Diamond.

 

Whether or not those Diamond accounts sell all of the copies they purchase is a different story.

 

Taking the Daredevil #62 example. If 52K are printed to order and sold by the distributor. That number is usually based on the number of copies (to anybody) that a store can sell plus some additional copies to keep for backstock.

 

Very few stores order "cases" of books to store for future worth... maybe 1 in 100 (or less). To do that the buyer has to have enough additonal revenue available that they can afford to tie it up in inventory for a rainy day and with only ~4500 Diamond accounts that isn't very many.

 

If my LCS orders 50 copies of Daredevil and sell 35 to pull files that leaves 15 for "off the rack" sales or back issue sales, then it's likely that they will sell the remaining 15 copies at some point over the next year or more. Once those copies are sold at the shop they are gone, unless someone tries to sell it back to the store.

 

Now I know of a lot of stores that are sitting on hundreds of copies of inventory of books published back in the late 1970's thru to about 1994 when stores could afford to order higher numbers of copies and sit on them, selling them a copy at a time to "collectors". And I'm sorry but aside from simple supply and demand, the books published between 1975 and 1994 are readily available. If I want a copy of ASM 300 I can find one quickly and easily, ditto with ASM 194, 238, etc. just by making a few phone calls to local shops.

 

But if I want a copy of ASM 442, then I may be out of luck. Most stores didn't order heavily when the book was at it's lowest peak in sales and have long since sold out when people went back to complete their runs when interest in ASM began to increase again (particularly when the old numbering was revived).

[deathlok]

OMG why do you keep referring to LCS. I am NOT talking about local comic shops, dealers or Diamond. At all. You keep running the same arguement without reading what I am typing.

 

Never mind. I can't believe I kept responding. enjoy.

[Kevin Boyd]

Kevin, according to Marvel or DC or whatever books that go out the door are considered sales. I understand that. However when a distributor, not a dealer, orders 5000 units to be used as back issue reorder stock. These are books that have never been sold to the public.

 

Marvel only prints to initial orders. If Diamond decides to be nice and orders 5000 units to be used as back issue reorder stock they must purchase them from Marvel.

 

 

According to your point of view, for every book printed, someone paid for it from a dealer and is sitting in some collectors house. That just isn't true.

 

I never said that at all.

 

For every book printed by Marvel, some dealer bought it from Diamond Dist. because Marvel prints to order.

 

Maybe they used to. Certainly our old regional dist. Andromeda went bankrupt because they order-ordered from the companies and warehoused the books. Doing that caused them to go bankrupt and all of their inventory was sold at a liquidation sale to pay the bank.

 

The dealer may be sitting on stacks of books. I never once said that they are all purchased by collector's or casual buyers. They are all purchased by dealers, who will then try to sell them to collector's or casual buyers, which is what I have been saying all along.

 

I have no doubt there are several thousand books that are unsold, sitting in a warehouse. Only because there is no value in moving them, at least not at the current price for them.

 

Me too, and they were all published between 1978 and 1994.

[Kevin Boyd]

Except modern books are hoarded much more than Gold, silver, or bronze age books.

 

The perfect example is just look at the modern submission rates and the number of 9.8's. Now compare those same numbers to any bronze, silver, and gold age.

 

That's why modern books will never be scarce or worth money. Except for perceived value, which is caused by speculators.

 

 

OMG why do you keep referring to LCS. I am NOT talking about local comic shops, dealers or Diamond. At all. You keep running the same arguement without reading what I am typing.

 

Never mind. I can't believe I kept responding. enjoy.

 

Because I don't think you have a point.... and your replies seem to indicate that you don't have any idea of how the new book market works.

 

It's based on some idea you have (probably planted by JC) that people are hoarding modern books to speculate on and for that reason they are completely worthless. That books aren't really being sold, that print runs don't seem to matter, that the market shrinking in 1994 didn't have any impact at all on ordering or purchasing. Your opinion seems to be based on some 1980's mentality that people are sitting on warehouses full of recent books that at some point they will just dump and flood the market.

[deathlok]

You're Kev, all modern books are scarce and are worth hundreds. SELL!! SELL!! SELL!!

[Kevin Boyd]

I didn't say that either, but you have to have the books to sell in order to sell them, and since the print runs are lower on some books that's just not possible.

 

I thought you had gotten bored and left?

[deathlok]

Oh in that case spend hundreds of dollars if not thousand on VF copies of modern books. They are very scarce according to Kevin. The print runs are very low and nobody keeps them. So now is your chance to hop on the gravy train.

 

Nice Kev Buying into the myth.

[Kevin Boyd]

Oh in that case spend hundreds of dollars if not thousand on VF copies of modern books. They are very scarce according to Kevin. The print runs are very low and nobody keeps them. So now is your chance to hop on the gravy train.

 

Nice Kev Buying into the myth.

 

It's all black and white to you. The glass is either empty or full.

[Jayman]

My vote for best current thread on the forum!

[shadroch]

Deathlock,

Not trying to start a fight but with each and every post,its becoming obvious you have no idea how the market works.

1) No one who buys from Diamond can sell a DC comic to any other Diamond account. PERIOD. Understand? To do so would violate their Diamond account contract and they would lose their ability to buy new books. This is not some fluff legalese. It is enforced across the board.

2) Do the numbers Pick a title. Marvel prints 40,000 copys of Comic A. Diamond buys them all,because they are already pre-sold to Diamonds accounts(or as I refer to them,Diamonds unpaid workers).Diamond distributes these 40,000 books to its 4500 accounts. Thats less than 10 books per account.And 40,000 books is a better than average number these days. Once the store sells out,they can't order more from Diamond because Diamond doesn't stock back issues,with some limited exceptions.If enough accounts desire copys of Comic A,Diamond may request that Marvel does a second edition of Comic A. Marvel doesn't just print up additional copys of the original book,they do a new edition.

3) You claim there are dealers buying up cases to sell in the future,as if this is something new. IF there are still people doing this,the number is much more limited than in the past.Again,do the numbers.1968-300 Avengers 45 at 30% =$27for 300 copys 1980 Teen Titans #1 300copys at 50% off a 50cent coverprice =$75 2004 New Avengers#1. We'll assume it has a $2 cover. With a typical Diamond discount of 40% to a small dealer,a case of 300 will run him almost $400 including shipping.A 1000 copies will run him around $1300 bucks. How many LCS or dealers have that sort of cash to buy 1,000s of books and just sit on them for a few years? Ask Greg Buls how succesful this business model worked for him.Robert Bell,Robert Cresthol,Max Seeley and others could do it in the 60s with a layout of a few hundred bucks a month. Fewer products,lower cost per unit. With the flood of new material hitting the market at insanely higher prices,do you really believe that some mythical dealer is putting away cases of every new book that is published?

4) One of the reasons some Silver and Bronze age books are comparitivley easy to obtain is the legendary warehouse finds of stolen and pilfered books. There will be no such finds of this eras books. The conditions that created them are gone and not likely to return.

5) Are you so certain that todays readers take better care of their books than at the time that Spidey 300 came out?

I'm not.Yet copys of a book that sold almost a quarter-million copys in the direct market now sell for serious money.Sealed cases can fetch well over $10,000 dollars.X-Men 266 sells for tenfold more than 265 or 267 yet has the same sales figures.Why are you so positive that no book can ever do that again?

6) Use your own eyes. Go to conventions and shops. How many dealers have tons of Marvels from 1988 to 1995,yet few 1996 to 2003? Most of them? Why do you suppose that is? Are the older books more in demand or is it that dealers simply can't get stock of the newer books. Again,why do you suppose that is.

[FlyingDonut]

Here's a test case. Go to your LCS and find this book:

 

 

This had a print run of under 30,000, and every single one of them was sold on a non returnable basis. I doubt very much that somebody is sitting on a case of Daredevil 380s, as that would represent roughly 1% of the entire print run.

 

Deathlock - you are missing something essential about the marketplace. Nobody is hoarding books anymore, especially moderns printed after 1995, because the print runs are too low. A store simply can't get that many books - a copy of NYX 3, for example, is legitimately hard to find because the print run was so low. Let us assume that there are 20,000 people in the world who want a copy of NYX 3. Since the print run is in the mid 40K range (I'm guessing here), eventually you're going to have a shortage problem.

[deathlok]

3) You claim there are dealers buying up cases to sell in the future,

Show me where I said this Shad

[helionaut]

A store simply can't get that many books - a copy of NYX 3, for example, is legitimately hard to find because the print run was so low. Let us assume that there are 20,000 people in the world who want a copy of NYX 3. Since the print run is in the mid 40K range (I'm guessing here), eventually you're going to have a shortage problem.

 

My LCS had 80 copies of NYX #3 sitting in it's back issue boxes at $3.50 until last weekend (and zero 4s). They cap purchases at 5 copies of any one book, otherwise they'd have had zero after I stopped by. On Sunday they were gone, I assume pulled to get repriced or sold elsewhere, but they might have been picked at by collectors. I don't know if they ordered heavy or accumulated from other sources, but the owner is pretty shrewd about ordering heavy on the right books and is unlike a lot of other shops in the he has the money to do it when he needs to.

[dolphinsrwj]

that dd #380 is a cool cover and hard to find. i do think you will see a lot of the avengers#500 directors cut cgc 9.8s.because between the 4 major summitters of modern books to cgc there will be plenty of them.

[shadroch]

Except modern books are hoarded much more than Gold, silver, or bronze age books.

 

The perfect example is just look at the modern submission rates and the number of 9.8's. Now compare those same numbers to any bronze, silver, and gold age.

 

That's why modern books will never be scarce or worth money. Except for perceived value, which is caused by speculators.

 

Please explain to me, very slowly, how a book such as a typical Avengers issue that has a print-run of some 25,000 is being hoarded more than a 1970s Avengers issue that had a print-run of 350,000?Do you know anyone that is putting away hundreds of copys of each and every Marvel that comes out? Know anyone that buys by the case,anymore? How about buying simply multiples of most isues?

What are the chances,in your opinion, of someone ten years from now discovering a warehouse full of one million uncirculated post-2000 comics?

 

It has been mentioned several times on these boards, that there are companies that buy cases of issues of all Modern books.

 

Is this the quote you asked me about? Or are you going to say that companies are not dealers?

[shadroch]

Except modern books are hoarded much more than Gold, silver, or bronze age books.

 

The perfect example is just look at the modern submission rates and the number of 9.8's. Now compare those same numbers to any bronze, silver, and gold age.

 

That's why modern books will never be scarce or worth money. Except for perceived value, which is caused by speculators.

 

Please explain to me, very slowly, how a book such as a typical Avengers issue that has a print-run of some 25,000 is being hoarded more than a 1970s Avengers issue that had a print-run of 350,000?Do you know anyone that is putting away hundreds of copys of each and every Marvel that comes out? Know anyone that buys by the case,anymore? How about buying simply multiples of most isues?

What are the chances,in your opinion, of someone ten years from now discovering a warehouse full of one million uncirculated post-2000 comics?

 

It has been mentioned several times on these boards, that there are companies that buy cases of issues of all Modern books. When a dealer runs sells out of their stock and needs to order more issues, they can order from these companies. So it would be logical to assume they have quite a bit of back stock.

 

 

 

Isn't this the post you asked me to show you?

[Kermit the frog]

why is NYX 3 a "special comic" hard to find?!

 

regarding the directors cut, i would be surprised if the printing orders were a high one...the big stores around here had around a max. of 20 copies, that fly by in just a few minutes.

[Kevin Boyd]

NYX 3 is the first appearance of X-23, who has powers similar to Wolverine. Rumor is that she is his daughter and they have announced that they are going to address this issue in upcoming issues of Claremont's X-Men book.