ROLANDO2 Posted August 19, 2017 Share Posted August 19, 2017 Hello. I am fairly new to collecting and was wondering do you guys differentiate between New Stand Editions vs Direct Editions when buying and selling your comics. Is the News Stand Edition more valuable or rarer? Thanks for your remark/opinions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadroch Posted August 19, 2017 Share Posted August 19, 2017 (edited) It depends on the year. I'll buy any Big Diamond Marvel I find, as they were a very small fraction of the print run. In the 80s, Direct copies and newsstand are pretty much interchangeable, except some issues have completely different covers for the two markets. Spider-Man Annual 21 and Man of Steel #1 come to mind, but there are others. By the late 90s, newsstand copies are in the minority and some are scarce. Marvel and Dc did a few books with nine or ten cent cover prices for the Direct market and the newsstand copies were supposed to be regular price but a few of the special prices escaped into the newsstand run. These are scarce. Also, a few companies that were almost exclusively Direct did small newsstand distribution in their home areas. Now did it in Chicago, Comico did it in Pennsylvania, Modern did it in NY. These are very hard to find, but there isn't much demand for them either. However, the spread in price some large dealers ask for the two is insane. Edited August 19, 2017 by shadroch Tony S 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony S Posted August 20, 2017 Share Posted August 20, 2017 Great answer Shadroch. I wish more people collecting newstands understood that a newstand issue from 1978 isn't scarce. It's the direct editions that were scarce at that time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hitmandm Posted September 22, 2017 Share Posted September 22, 2017 There are two main drivers in rarity: Print Run and scarcity (survivability). Early on, the direct editions were a much lower print run. But Direct editions went from the publisher into the mail and to the collector who was pretty good at preserving the condition. In a news stand edition, early on, they were more plentiful, but the supply chain really damaged high grade comics as they went from hand to hand and into the metal racks. Their survivability in higher gardes are difficult to find. So if you are collecting like 9.2 or 9.4 and below, there is not a big difference from the mid 80's and earlier between the two.Later the NS editions became a much lower print run and are therefore NS will be rarer. But in the later issues, the NS are very hard to find and blow away the direct editions in both print run scarcity and survivability. If you are a 9.8 collector like me, it is always news stand....always. Eventually the general collecting public will realize the scarcity of the NS editions in high grade and they will easily outperform and hold their value compared to direct editions. mr_highgrade 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystafo Posted September 22, 2017 Share Posted September 22, 2017 9 hours ago, hitmandm said: There are two main drivers in rarity: Print Run and scarcity (survivability). Early on, the direct editions were a much lower print run. But Direct editions went from the publisher into the mail and to the collector who was pretty good at preserving the condition. In a news stand edition, early on, they were more plentiful, but the supply chain really damaged high grade comics as they went from hand to hand and into the metal racks. Their survivability in higher gardes are difficult to find. So if you are collecting like 9.2 or 9.4 and below, there is not a big difference from the mid 80's and earlier between the two.Later the NS editions became a much lower print run and are therefore NS will be rarer. But in the later issues, the NS are very hard to find and blow away the direct editions in both print run scarcity and survivability. If you are a 9.8 collector like me, it is always news stand....always. Eventually the general collecting public will realize the scarcity of the NS editions in high grade and they will easily outperform and hold their value compared to direct editions. WTTB! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...