How much of a premium are we talking for newsstand issues v/s direct editions? 10 10

[ADAMANTIUM]

3 minutes ago, paqart said:

32 minutes ago, comicginger1789 said:

So people do care? Is the rarity level as high though? Personally, I think the 30/35 cent variants are much neater than a barcode but hey...one collector's opinion.

I sit corrected and appreciate the knowledge (I havent purchased a "new comic" ever so this info is helpful)

Keep in mind the price difference. On many newsstand editions (though not the majority, as I understand it) there are different prices. For one three month period, Marvel had three different prices on around six of their most popular titles: $1.99, $2.29, and $2.49, with $2.29 being the hardest to find. That means for each issue published in that period, for instance, Amazing Spider-Man V2 #'s 10, 11, and 13 (not 12 because it was giant-size) there are all three price variants. So far, I've only found one of these for my collection (a $2.49 ASM 10). Does anyone know which of these are considered the variant? I assume that the $1.99 version is the regular edition (not a variant) and the $2.29 and $2.49 versions are the variants. They did this for Cable, Fantastic Four, and a few other titles, but only on the newsstand editions. All of the direct versions have the same price.
Yesterday, I picked up a Hulk #441 newsstand price variant with a cover price of 150 cents (not $1.50). It is also printed on newsprint, including the cover, unlike the direct version.
As for rarity, try finding some of the later newsstands, it isn't easy. Earlier in the week I picked up a CGC graded 9.6 newsstand copy of Incredible Hulk 92. It is only the second copy I've seen, but the direct copy is available everywhere.

His point mostly stands for the "copper age" though, it's in the modern age that things blur, so I can see how it would be easy to get confused.

[ADAMANTIUM]

2 minutes ago, bababooey said:

Some people care but the price variant moderns are no more rare than any other newsstand of that era.  The fact that CGC chooses to only make note of newsstand issues when they are price variants makes them a more viable target for hucksters to talk them up & extract money from n00bs...even the ultra rare bronze age 35 centers need to be a decent grade for most people to cough up some dough for them.  IMHO any price variant where the price is over a dollar is too new for me to care.  No offense. 

no offense taken, they're a niche of nichy niche for sure, but that era is still rare  , especially compared to 30 centers and 35 centers. I'm not saying they're "more rare" but perhaps equally  

[ADAMANTIUM]

a price variant is a price variant, is a price variant  The fact it could be a "newsstand" is non-sequential, and has nothing to do with copper age to my knowledge....

but it's definitely an acquired taste, that is until it isn't, and for now,    

[paqart]

1 minute ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

His point mostly stands for the "copper age" though, it's in the modern age that things blur, so I can see how it would be easy to get confused.

Agreed there. I bought a few of those before I figured that out. The most expensive of which was New Teen Titans 2 in a CGC 9.4 case. Now I wish I'd spent the same money on a late Spider-man instead. I also bought a bunch of raw high grade keys like DD 168 and 181, ASM 298, 299, 301, and Spectacular Spider-Man 64, all in newsstand versions. The high grade copies of these are harder to find than high grade directs, but if the "high grade" qualifier is removed, they are quite easy to find. Average rarity seems to be around 4:1 favoring directs through most of the eighties, then around 8:1 for the nineties, but some issues are as low as 50:1. By the time you get to 2005 and beyond, some comics are literally 100:1 or rarer in newsstand form. And, to forestall expected criticism from the usual suspects, the 100:1 figure is based on actual counts of copies for sale on ebay. The real numbers vary from 102:1 to 116:1. One is 125:0, but because I couldn't find any copies of the newsstand version, feel uncomfortable assigning a rarity value to it beyond 125:1. As for the very broad averages mentioned earlier, again to forestall expected criticism from we-all-know-who, yep, those are broad and inaccurate estimates. Use them at your own risk! That said, when I go looking for these, those are the numbers I have in the back of my mind and use when I don't have the real numbers with me, for instance, at a garage sale or something like that.

[ADAMANTIUM]

4 minutes ago, paqart said:

Agreed there. I bought a few of those before I figured that out. The most expensive of which was New Teen Titans 2 in a CGC 9.4 case. Now I wish I'd spent the same money on a late Spider-man instead. I also bought a bunch of raw high grade keys like DD 168 and 181, ASM 298, 299, 301, and Spectacular Spider-Man 64, all in newsstand versions. The high grade copies of these are harder to find than high grade directs, but if the "high grade" qualifier is removed, they are quite easy to find. Average rarity seems to be around 4:1 favoring directs through most of the eighties, then around 8:1 for the nineties, but some issues are as low as 50:1. By the time you get to 2005 and beyond, some comics are literally 100:1 or rarer in newsstand form. And, to forestall expected criticism from the usual suspects, the 100:1 figure is based on actual counts of copies for sale on ebay. The real numbers vary from 102:1 to 116:1. One is 125:0, but because I couldn't find any copies of the newsstand version, feel uncomfortable assigning a rarity value to it beyond 125:1. As for the very broad averages mentioned earlier, again to forestall expected criticism from we-all-know-who, yep, those are broad and inaccurate estimates. Use them at your own risk! That said, when I go looking for these, those are the numbers I have in the back of my mind and use when I don't have the real numbers with me, for instance, at a garage sale or something like that.

Those big books command a premium for sure, another is ASM #344 in 9.8 newsstand. I hardly ever see it, and it's premium is lower compared to your ASM #298 & #299...

 

[paqart]

12 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Those big books command a premium for sure, another is ASM #344 in 9.8 newsstand. I hardly ever see it, and it's premium is lower compared to your ASM #298 & #299...

 

You made me curious, so I checked my inventory. Looks like I got two ASM 344's also (9.4 and 9.8). Here is the rarity I found with ASM for that time period:

Heritage (HA-above 9.0 only), ebay (EB-all grades)
ASM 298: HA 28.67:1

ASM 299: HA 23.5:1

ASM 300: HA 15.38:1

ASM 301: HA 53:1

ASM 309: EB 2.63:1

ASM 313: HA 38:1 EB 4.04:1

ASM 344: HA 31:1

 

 

[ADAMANTIUM]

1 minute ago, paqart said:

You made me curious, so I checked my inventory. Looks like I got two ASM 344's also (9.4 and 9.8). Here is the rarity I found with ASM for that time period:

Heritage (HA-above 9.0 only), ebay (EB-all grades)
ASM 298: HA 28.67:1

ASM 299: HA 23.5:1

ASM 300: HA 15.38:1

ASM 301: HA 53:1

ASM 309: EB 2.63:1

ASM 313: HA 38:1 EB 4.04:1

ASM 344: HA 31:1

 

 

 that's a lot of info  as far as newsstands, specifics have to many unknowns for me to try and nail it down. The "general idea" of "perceived" availability is enough for me. It's a niche, until it's not, but there is a long way to trail. I don't know that nailing down specifics will really help, but if it was ever published, I'm sure that it could help with statistics and such...... I don't do charts myself, so I'm not too worried about it  

[paqart]

7 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

 that's a lot of info  as far as newsstands, specifics have to many unknowns for me to try and nail it down. The "general idea" of "perceived" availability is enough for me. It's a niche, until it's not, but there is a long way to trail. I don't know that nailing down specifics will really help, but if it was ever published, I'm sure that it could help with statistics and such...... I don't do charts myself, so I'm not too worried about it  

Because of the check I did to write my last post, I decided to buy a couple more slabbed ASM 301's and 299's. Just a quick perusal of what was available, I'd say they aren't super hard to find but they are less common than directs. Despite that, their prices so far are close to the price for direct editions. I prefer the bigger upside with later issues but these are cool to have, regardless. Just so you know, I am currently tracking 657 newsstand comics, so I have a lot more data than you might think from my previous post. Also, of the four key McFarlane ASMs (298-301), my favorite is 301 because it is the hardest to find as a newsstand edition.

Edited October 22, 2019 by paqart

[ADAMANTIUM]

1 minute ago, paqart said:

Because of the check I did to write my last post, I decided to buy a couple more slabbed ASM 301's and 299's. Just a quick perusal of what was available, I'd say they aren't super hard to find but they are less common than directs. Despite that, their prices so far are close to the price for direct editions. I prefer the bigger upside with later issues but these are cool to have, regardless. Just so you know, I am currently tracking 657 newsstand comics, so I have a lot more data than you might think from my previous post.

No worries

when it comes to copper age, I look at it as there's possibly less newsstand than direct, and with the amount of well preserved key issues, any little niche helps

at least when it comes to perceived value, the book in a comfortably priced grade is satisfactory for me "most" of the time

 

[Hollywood1892]

Do they have price variants for every single comic?

I know that the price variant for a spawn one in 9.8 is about $250 dollars

[paqart]

1 hour ago, Hollywood1892 said:

Do they have price variants for every single comic?

I know that the price variant for a spawn one in 9.8 is about $250 dollars

No. For most comics, the direct and newsstand pricing is the same. Another difference is in the way they are manufactured. For instance, using newsprint instead of fancier paper for newsstand editions.

[Hollywood1892]

36 minutes ago, paqart said:

No. For most comics, the direct and newsstand pricing is the same. Another difference is in the way they are manufactured. For instance, using newsprint instead of fancier paper for newsstand editions.

What is also interesting is national price variants ie Canadian...is there a lower print run?

[paqart]

24 minutes ago, Hollywood1892 said:

What is also interesting is national price variants ie Canadian...is there a lower print run?

As I understand it, Canadian variants are considered part of the American print run for the issue but they make up a tiny percentage of it. I've bought a few of these but have a hard time keeping track of them because they look so much like all the other (American) comics.

[Lazyboy]

5 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Also ASM #606's newsstand edition is priced differently than the direct edition is a price variant .. and is noted on the label similar to #607...

Fixed. As was usual, there's a direct edition and a newsstand edition. Any other differences between the two are trivial.

5 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Look at it this way, they're similar to the 30 cent and 35 cent price variants of the bronze age books that people collect

No, not at all.

[paqart]

6 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

Fixed Corrected to suit my taste. As was usual, there's a direct edition and a newsstand edition. Any other differences between the two, such as different cover images are trivial uninteresting to me, 

No, not at all They aren't similar because a $3.99 or $5.99 price variant, not to mention the .09 cent, 150 cent, $2.29 and $2.49 price variants are different amounts of money.

 

Edited October 22, 2019 by paqart

[Lazyboy]

1 minute ago, paqart said:

I'm a clueless clown.

Well, I can't disagree with that!

[ADAMANTIUM]

9 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

Fixed. As was usual, there's a direct edition and a newsstand edition. Any other differences between the two are trivial.

No, not at all.

They're priced differently, so yes "at all", I didn't say the reasoning was the same, but thanks for clarifying my statement suggesting you knew what it meant

I collect them for the reasons I stated...

Edited October 22, 2019 by ADAMANTIUM

[paqart]

Just now, Lazyboy said:

Well, I [paraphrased] guess I just don't have it in me to make a witty reply!

 

[Lazyboy]

2 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

They're priced differently, so yes "at all", I didn't say the reasoning was the same, but thanks for clarifying my statement suggesting you knew what it meant

I collect them for the reasons I stated...

The price difference is trivial (which, for the benefit of certain people in this thread, doesn't mean uninteresting, just unimportant). There were two versions of the issue made, for separate markets, which are significantly different in ways other than the price. The defining difference is Direct vs. Newsstand.

The BA 30/35c price variants differ only in cover price. That is the defining difference.

[ADAMANTIUM]

16 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

5 hours ago, ADAMANTIUM said:

Look at it this way, they're similar to the 30 cent and 35 cent price variants of the bronze age books that people collect

No, not at all.

and are you trying to "clarify" why "I collect them?" an exercise which is unfruitful, you could have just added your statements and it wouldn't have been objectionable to me.

But to understand what "I" mean, ask questions, that is how a conversation works

The difference between Newsstand and Direct was already stated. Why I collect them is the price variant, which is what it is called on the cgc label. If you have a problem with cgc, ask questions to them then.

I collect price variants, sometimes a newsstand is noted on the label other than a "price differentiation" and I was quick to point out the reason I collected ASM #606 was the price newsstand...