• When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

The Whitman Thread
15 15

Started by Brock,

608 posts in this topic

jas1vans

jas1vans

Posted
Posted
On 1/24/2023 at 7:23 AM, bellrules said:

I can’t get over what some of those books sold for. Man I wished I had a US address. 

I took a look and was going to bid on the Buck Rogers book and a few others. With under 3 seconds Buck blasted into space from $30. I just laughed as it closed at $183.29. I couldn't even finish making my, much lower than selling price, bid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
BCR

BCR

Posted
Posted
On 12/21/2020 at 6:52 AM, Brock said:

As @bellrulessays, it’s a controversial topic.

My personal opinion is the same as his, that the fat diamond Marvels were distributed through multiple channels, INCLUDING Whitman. Others argue that the fat diamond Marvels were EXCLUSIVELY distributed by Whitman.

Neither side has been able to show direct evidence of their perspective, so it remains one of the great mysteries (of which there are several) associated with Whitman.

It also tells us that even though this happened just 40 years ago, when some of us were already active collectors, Whitmans were so underrated and undercollected that nobody bothered to document the specifics. That lack of original interest from collectors is part of why thye’re Starting to be so valuable today...

We have persons who were working at Marvel at the time who've stated pretty clearly that the fat diamond printings were produced for Whitman to distribute. It's certainly POSSIBLE that some of that product ended up in the "direct market", but think about the fact that even the guys over at Mile High have pushed the erroneous (factually incorrect) claim that the Whitmans were "reprints". If they were receiving that version of the books, if those were "just the direct market versions", why would they have ever claimed that the '77 Whitman Variants are reprints? They would only have the intellectual capacity (e.g. ignorance) to make that claim, if they themselves never received those versions of the comics, and only later saw those books show up in Whitman packs. From their (the direct market's) perspective, they "must have been" reprints (even though we know that they are, in fact, first printings).

It really feels like this should be settled by now. There's just no evidence left that points to the fat diamond printings of the '77 Marvel Comics being anything other than comics printed specifically to be distributed via their partnership with Whitman. The LATER diamond variants are a totally separate animal.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites
bellrules

bellrules

Posted
Posted
On 1/24/2023 at 9:31 AM, jas1vans said:

I took a look and was going to bid on the Buck Rogers book and a few others. With under 3 seconds Buck blasted into space from $30. I just laughed as it closed at $183.29. I couldn't even finish making my, much lower than selling price, bid.

Yeah. The sci-fi books did well. Most of the cartoon ones (including popeye 158 which I think is the rarest of the Whitmans) sold for less than grading costs 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted
On 1/26/2023 at 4:00 PM, bellrules said:

Yeah. The sci-fi books did well. Most of the cartoon ones (including popeye 158 which I think is the rarest of the Whitmans) sold for less than grading costs 

Let that be a lesson to eBay sellers everywhere... Prohibiting buyers from outside the US means that the seller misses out on money, because you and I are not running up the price.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)
On 1/25/2023 at 5:54 PM, BCR said:

We have persons who were working at Marvel at the time who've stated pretty clearly that the fat diamond printings were produced for Whitman to distribute. It's certainly POSSIBLE that some of that product ended up in the "direct market", but think about the fact that even the guys over at Mile High have pushed the erroneous (factually incorrect) claim that the Whitmans were "reprints". If they were receiving that version of the books, if those were "just the direct market versions", why would they have ever claimed that the '77 Whitman Variants are reprints? They would only have the intellectual capacity (e.g. ignorance) to make that claim, if they themselves never received those versions of the comics, and only later saw those books show up in Whitman packs. From their (the direct market's) perspective, they "must have been" reprints (even though we know that they are, in fact, first printings).

It really feels like this should be settled by now. There's just no evidence left that points to the fat diamond printings of the '77 Marvel Comics being anything other than comics printed specifically to be distributed via their partnership with Whitman. The LATER diamond variants are a totally separate animal.   

Hi, and welcome to the discussion! More ideas and input are always welcome!

I'd love to hear more about the "persons who were working at Marvel" and their information. I think we've seen some comments, sometimes secondhand, from Jim Shooter, but I'm not aware of others. Do you have some source you could share? There's mixed feelings in the Whitman community about the Shooter comments themselves... they would be more credible coming from, say, Phil Seuling on the distribution side, than from someone in editorial. Of course, they cannot be completely dismissed, either.

I think the big thing I would point out here though is that the argument is not usually Whitman vs direct on the fat diamond question, but "Whitman exclusively" vs. "Whitman and others", as there do seem to have been some other players in the repackaging game at the time.

Gold Key and DC both produced Whitman-branded variants, so we know they were exclusive to Whitman. With a couple of notable exceptions, Marvel did not. The important question is "Why is that?" The fat diamonds were certainly distributed by Whitman, but there does not appear to be any evidence (currently) that they were exclusive to Whitman.

I'd love your take on this!

Edited by Brock
typos
Link to comment
Share on other sites
mrlatko

mrlatko

Posted
Posted (edited)

I don't have any horse in this race, so just trying to educate myself.  I'm reading here and in the other thread that many believe these diamond variants are just early direct market versions that were also distributed by Whitman but weren't exclusive to them.  Why in this case does CGC then indicate that this is from a multi-pack?  How would they know this?  Is it because of the year it came out?  Thanks for any insight.

Screenshot_20230131-211333.png

Edited by mrlatko
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted (edited)
On 1/31/2023 at 10:29 PM, mrlatko said:

I don't have any horse in this race, so just trying to educate myself.  I'm reading here and in the other thread that many believe these diamond variants are just early direct market versions that were also distributed by Whitman but weren't exclusive to them.  Why in this case does CGC then indicate that this is from a multi-pack?  How would they know this?  Is it because of the year it came out?  Thanks for any insight.

This is a great question. I think the first thing to remember is that CGC is not always correct on their labels... They do their best, and they know an awful lot, but they are a grading firm and not a research firm. As you can see a few posts back, one relevant Whitman example is that the DC Whitman registry set contained (until the last day or two) a large number of books that don't actually exist. As our knowledge about Whitmans is fragmentary, so too is CGC's, and sometimes they make errors of judgement based on incomplete information.

My guess in this instance is that CGC recently decided they needed to find a way to differentiate fat diamond Marvels from others on the label, and settled on "multi-pack edition" as a way to do this.

There's some logic to this, in that when we find Marvel multi-packs from this era, they usually contain fat diamond editions. From there, it's a short leap of logic (but potentially a faulty one) to say "All these loose fat diamond editions must have originally come from multi-packs, too." However, we have no evidence for that latter assertion, only speculation.

In fact, as I think about the relative scarcity of DC Whitmans, or even Gold Key Whitmans in this period, vs. fat diamond editions, it's clear (as I make a sweeping generalization) that fat diamond editions are much more common than Whitmans. This may be circumstantial evidence that fat diamond editions were far more broadly distributed than Whitmans. We know that a few books (Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica 1-3, Micronauts 1-3, etc.) were massive multi-pack successes, and very common as fat diamond editions. It's harder to explain why copies of (say) Thor or Fantastic Four fat diamond editions are so much more plentiful than Whitmans of the same period without resorting to wider distribution explanations.

The idea that all newsstand copies are "returnable editions" while all diamond editions, fat and skinny, are "non-returnable editions" appears (to me at least) to be the most compelling explanation of this pattern.

Edited by Brock
Link to comment
Share on other sites
mrlatko

mrlatko

Posted
Posted
On 2/1/2023 at 10:03 AM, Brock said:

This is a great question. I think the first thing to remember is that CGC is not always correct on their labels... They do their best, and they know an awful lot, but they are a grading firm and not a research firm. As you can see a few posts back, one relevant Whitman example is that the DC Whitman registry set contained (until the last day or two) a large number of books that don't actually exist. As our knowledge about Whitmans is fragmentary, so too is CGC's, and sometimes they make errors of judgement based on incomplete information.

My guess in this instance is that CGC recently decided they needed to find a way to differentiate fat diamond Marvels from others on the label, and settled on "multi-pack edition" as a way to do this.

There's some logic to this, in that when we find Marvel multi-packs from this era, they usually contain fat diamond editions. From there, it's a short leap of logic (but potentially a faulty one) to say "All these loose fat diamond editions must have originally come from multi-packs, too." However, we have no evidence for that latter assertion, only speculation.

In fact, as I think about the relative scarcity of DC Whitmans, or even Gold Key Whitmans in this period, vs. fat diamond editions, it's clear (as I make a sweeping generalization) that fat diamond editions are much more common that Whitmans. This may be circumstantial evidence that fat diamond editions were far more broadly distributed than Whitmans. We know that a few books (Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica 1-3, Micronauts 1-3, etc.) were massive multi-pack successes, and very common as fat diamond editions. It's harder to explain why copies of (say) Thor or Fantastic Four fat diamond editions are so much more plentiful than Whitmans of the same period without resorting to wider distribution explanations.

The idea that all newsstand copies are "returnable editions" while all diamond editions, fat and skinny, are "non-returnable editions" appears (to me at least) to be the most compelling explanation of this pattern.

Thanks!  Makes sense that the new notation could just be wrong and maybe a place-holder like you said for all diamond editions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted
On 1/23/2023 at 1:12 PM, picon3 said:

Do you have a link? I can’t find the seller using his eBay name. Thanks, Paul.

The US-only seller with all the high grade slabbed Whitmans is back at it... all his auctions seem to be starting at $9.99, and there's definitely many of the 8-12/1980 Whitmans again.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/115706734158

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted

Same seller, and another stack of high grade 8-12/80 Whitmans this week:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115711921883?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11021.m43.l3160&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=7f6da6a822b440b2986d802e51c0a530&bu=43155438028&ut=RU&exe=0&ext=0&osub=-1~1&crd=20230221014612&segname=11021

This guy is missing out on a lot of easy Canadian money...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Brock

Brock

Posted
  • Author
Posted

And our Whitman seller is at it again...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115711925814?hash=item1af0f7de36:g:N5QAAOSw5G1j8794&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoLdFDiua6kha97SYxULjgtoQJc4ddVzniazQTr71r69oHWPfI1J%2Fby9lhMGt4yY8kVQCEhFcBj1JDE%2FOdqkLog7CBtdWEzeAs0oiaTpHuduggWjzqArZfZ2PA2tkAWPxGdvQ0g9AByxQJ%2B7yiSzpbXi1ZzIZ7HSGOzkswxf0E8NEzqY%2B8%2FBM7A5WBtFSo5NGETjn0r2RcsnchmScuSPIAzw%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR47c_bPSYQ

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
15 15
Go to topic listing