Total Existing Copies of Hulk #181

[Vikingreed]

If my math is right (and I ain't saying it is...) it looks like with 7,219 #181s graded so far, a measly 5% of those ended up at 9.6 and up.

 

Do you guys feel there are still a lot of high grade copies out there to be slabbed?

I hope so, . I need more 9.8s so the price tag comes down (sorry 9.8 owners...).

 

Any chance of that happening, or is that pond fished out and empty?

Or is it the people who still own those high grade 181s like them just fine raw in their longbox, so they aren't going anywhere?

 

I would like to hear your all's thoughts.

 

[kimik]

If my math is right (and I ain't saying it is...) it looks like with 7,219 #181s graded so far, a measly 5% of those ended up at 9.6 and up.

 

Do you guys feel there are still a lot of high grade copies out there to be slabbed?

I hope so, . I need more 9.8s so the price tag comes down (sorry 9.8 owners...).

 

Any chance of that happening, or is that pond fished out and empty?

Or is it the people who still own those high grade 181s like them just fine raw in their longbox, so they aren't going anywhere?

 

I would like to hear your all's thoughts.

 

There are plenty of HG copies in OO and lapsed collector collections that have not been slabbed. The demand is what keeps prices high, not a shortage of supply.

[kimik]

+1

 

There are still a ton of copies of Hulk #181 out there that have never been slabbed for the simple reason that dealers can get slabbed prices for raw copies at shows. Why waste the time when you can move them that fast at the slabbed price?

 

There are also tons of copies out there that aren't in the hobby so to speak. They're in OO collections or lapsed collector's long boxes (purchased out of the back of a Marvel book in the 1980s)

 

The lapsed collector collections that were stopped in the mid/late 80s and early 90s are starting to surface locally. These are great to find as they are usually tight and flat due to being stored in long boxes for so long. Naturally pressed........

[MK Ultra]

I'm moving to Canada, eh!

[the authority]

+1

 

There are still a ton of copies of Hulk #181 out there that have never been slabbed for the simple reason that dealers can get slabbed prices for raw copies at shows. Why waste the time when you can move them that fast at the slabbed price?

 

There are also tons of copies out there that aren't in the hobby so to speak. They're in OO collections or lapsed collector's long boxes (purchased out of the back of a Marvel book in the 1980s)

 

The lapsed collector collections that were stopped in the mid/late 80s and early 90s are starting to surface locally. These are great to find as they are usually tight and flat due to being stored in long boxes for so long. Naturally pressed........

 

Purely anecdotal but my brother has 4 copies he has owned since the late 70's. I doubt he will ever sell them. I know several people with copies that are in personal collections. I think there are a lot of them out there but I don't think we'll see a ton of them on the market.

[Vikingreed]

Makes sense.

I wouldn't let them go either.

 

I love this book.

[Vikingreed]

I would love to see a short box full of them like someone posted earlier.

I would probably fall down.

[divad]

+1

 

There are still a ton of copies of Hulk #181 out there that have never been slabbed for the simple reason that dealers can get slabbed prices for raw copies at shows. Why waste the time when you can move them that fast at the slabbed price?

 

There are also tons of copies out there that aren't in the hobby so to speak. They're in OO collections or lapsed collector's long boxes (purchased out of the back of a Marvel book in the 1980s)

 

The lapsed collector collections that were stopped in the mid/late 80s and early 90s are starting to surface locally. These are great to find as they are usually tight and flat due to being stored in long boxes for so long. Naturally pressed........

 

Purely anecdotal but my brother has 4 copies he has owned since the late 70's. I doubt he will ever sell them. I know several people with copies that are in personal collections. I think there are a lot of them out there but I don't think we'll see a ton of them on the market.

 

A recent New Yorker article about hoarding made the following point:

 

"By 2050, according to the Census Bureau, the number of Americans age sixty-five or older will be about eighty-four million, almost double what it was in 2012. That's forty million more people who could end up on the porch holding the plastic bag that the newspaper was delivered in and saying to themselves, 'Maybe I should hang on to this.' "

 

[howlingdog]

How many have had the stamp cut out?

[Superman2006]

In case anyone is interested, here are how the results to date across my Gold, Silver, and Bronze forum polls about the estimated total copies still in existence for Action #1, AF #15, and Hulk #181 respectively;

 

 

Weighted Average estimated total copies still in existence*:

 

Action #1: 279

AF #15: 15,384 (or approximately 55 copies of AF #15 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

Hulk #181: 82,282 (or approximately 292 copies of Hulk #181 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

 

 

*Note: The last poll option for each poll was "10 x current graded copies or more". For purposes of calculating the weighted averages shown above, I assumed that responses in this category were evenly distributed between 10 x and 20 x the current graded copies. If I were to instead assume that responses in this category were evenly distributed between 10 x and 15 x the current graded copies, we would get the following slightly different results (as you can see, no major change);

 

Action #1: 265

AF #15: 14,081 (or approximately 53 copies of AF #15 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

Hulk #181: 71,220 (or approximately 268 copies of Hulk #181 for every 1 copy of Action #1)

 

 

FYI - Total count of responses for each poll (through 9:00 p.m. CST today):

Action #1: 102

AF #15: 140

Hulk #181: 93

[markseifert]

There were 200K of this issue sold when originally released?

 

Fwiw, rjpb's comment on paid circulation is probably pretty accurate.

 

Statement of ownership in issue #175 gives 187,318 average with "Actual number sold for issue nearest filing date" at 209,124.

 

So, 200k is probably a pretty good number to work with.

[piper]

Does 70k of 200k still in existence make sense for a BA book?

[markseifert]

Does 70k of 200k still in existence make sense for a BA book?

 

I have to say, I think it doesn't. '74 is still pretty early in the serious fandom/collecting era, and 35% is a high number.

 

It's just a guess, though. I assumed that it's not impossible that 10 percent of AF 15 survived, but if that's true for a book from 1962, is it so outrageous to consider that 35% of a 1974 book survived? Given the rise of fandom in the meantime, it might not be outside the realm of possibility.

 

It seems unlikely, but... maybe not impossible. .

 

A quick look at comichron indicates a steady decline in numbers from the mid-60s through the mid-70s. I didn't look at everything, but there were NO exceptions on the superhero titles I did look at.

 

However, the burst of fandom activity around 1970 (+/- a couple years)... Overstreet, CBG, Major cons, etc, etc... seems to imply that readers were becoming collectors and probably saving their comics at a significantly higher rate than they were a decade prior.

[jimjum12]

ALL copies still exist..... but in varying degrees of entropy and degradation. GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

[piper]

Does 70k of 200k still in existence make sense for a BA book?

 

I have to say, I think it doesn't. '74 is still pretty early in the serious fandom/collecting era, and 35% is a high number.

 

It's just a guess, though. I assumed that it's not impossible that 10 percent of AF 15 survived, but if that's true for a book from 1962, is it so outrageous to consider that 35% of a 1974 book survived? Given the rise of fandom in the meantime, it might not be outside the realm of possibility.

 

It seems unlikely, but... maybe not impossible. .

 

A quick look at comichron indicates a steady decline in numbers from the mid-60s through the mid-70s. I didn't look at everything, but there were NO exceptions on the superhero titles I did look at.

 

However, the burst of fandom activity around 1970 (+/- a couple years)... Overstreet, CBG, Major cons, etc, etc... seems to imply that readers were becoming collectors and probably saving their comics at a significantly higher rate than they were a decade prior.

 

Totally agree with your thoughts. 35% seems too high and how many still have their MVS.

[piper]

ALL copies still exist..... but in varying degrees of entropy and degradation. GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

 

[Artboy99]

Does 70k of 200k still in existence make sense for a BA book?

 

I have to say, I think it doesn't. '74 is still pretty early in the serious fandom/collecting era, and 35% is a high number.

 

It's just a guess, though. I assumed that it's not impossible that 10 percent of AF 15 survived, but if that's true for a book from 1962, is it so outrageous to consider that 35% of a 1974 book survived? Given the rise of fandom in the meantime, it might not be outside the realm of possibility.

 

It seems unlikely, but... maybe not impossible. .

 

A quick look at comichron indicates a steady decline in numbers from the mid-60s through the mid-70s. I didn't look at everything, but there were NO exceptions on the superhero titles I did look at.

 

However, the burst of fandom activity around 1970 (+/- a couple years)... Overstreet, CBG, Major cons, etc, etc... seems to imply that readers were becoming collectors and probably saving their comics at a significantly higher rate than they were a decade prior.

 

Totally agree with your thoughts. 35% seems too high and how many still have their MVS.

 

Can say the same thing about a higher percentage. Is it too far fetched to assume that 50% of all the Hulk 181's still exist?

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

ALL copies still exist..... but in varying degrees of entropy and degradation. GOD BLESS...

 

-jimbo(a friend of jesus) (thumbs u

Ah, but how many can be convincingly identified as a Hulk 181? I'd say anything that burned up in a fire couldn't. Same for anything that was thrown in the trash and has been sitting in a landfill for ~40 years.

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

Wow.

I had no idea.

 

That's why comics are so expensive today. Inflation adjusted form 1974 comics should be around $1.20 now. And even though they have slicker paper now, the manufacturing costs are probably even lower than they were in the 70s ( inflation adjusted), as full color hardbound coffee table books are more affordable now than their heavily black and white counterparts were in the 70s.

 

The main way to pay for the creative production when sales drop to a third or less than what they once were, is to triple the retail price.

I understand this line of thinking, but there's some facts you're missing. In the late-'80s/early-'90s, the price of the cheaper paper that comics used to be printed on increased significantly, so much so that it didn't make a big difference in costs to move to the glossier paper, which is why you saw that move. At an image panel at NYCC, Kyle Higgins mentioned that he was working on a special issue of C.O.W.L. (which I think is issue #6) in the style of a '60s comic. Since I work in production in the graphic arts, I had to ask whether the issue was going to be printed on newsprint. He responded that he would have loved to replicate the production process of the era as well, but the "cheap" paper is actually now *more* expensive that the paper currently used. So, even if the price of coffee table books are cheaper (I don't know if that's actually true, but let's go with it), the same doesn't apply to the costs of producing a comic the same way it was done prior to the 1980s.

 

That in itself is probably a highly underrated factor in the decline of comics. Once they were no longer cheap entertainment, it became harder to create new fans that didn't already have some other connection to comics fandom. Personally, I may have never gotten interested in comics if I wasn't stopping by a local comic store in the mid-'80s for Doctor Who stuff. You could still find spinner racks in 7-11s and stationery stores in my neighborhood at that time, but they were slowly disappearing it seemed.

[Vikingreed]

Spinner racks...