Newsstand Comics 1 1

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

While the newsstands have started commanding more than their direct counterparts ( in most cases) there are some that are not that have started to realize even higher prices to be aware of when sorting. Depending on the titles . For example DC Universe Logo in the direct box can go for more . Some of the no Logo in the box examples from JC Penny , Pressman Variants , and other one off examples such as Adventures of Superman #443 Mall Variants.  ( Mall Logos in the direct box) There are also promotional and toy Variant that no not have UPC.

Considering you said 90% of the issues in the box are newsstand I would start with why were the 10% not? I know that some issues were tough to find in newsstand, and others there have not been one found, but just the same there may have been a specific reason for the collection to have those in it besides just a run filler copy. 

Also definitely want to touch on what was mentioned.  Mark Jeweler's Inserts placed inside of some of the books. In addition there were also some reader surveys.  These too can fetch a premium. 

As has already been mentioned research.  Especially when it comes to oddities those can be big money hidden in plain sight.

Good luck

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

Speaking of oddities when you are going through I would carefully check each book . Never know when you will find errors such as double covers, siamese pages, blank pages or panels, offset prints , covers in the centerfold. 

You never know what you may find. 

Edited January 28, 2021 by onlyweaknesskryptonite

[the blob]

While it does not make much of a difference for your typical 9.4 or less book, I think it could be subtle for many of these, particularly if they're not keys... perhaps the books sell a little faster, maybe someone is willing to pay a buck or two more, particularly when you get into the 90s.

I found that once upon a time the very early marvel direct editions sometimes have some of this going for them..slight price premium, faster selling. if you look on ebay the newsstands actually outnumber them by quite a bit...take ASM 165 for example .. newsies outnumber by about 10:1. but right now with everyone pushing newsstands as supposedly being rare, buyers are not going to understand that a direct from early 1977 is actually the one that is harder to find (not that hard, of course)

I love people pushing newsstand status on books that existed before direct versions, like ASM 161, 162, etc.

Edited January 28, 2021 by the blob

[justafan]

Basically unless it is a key anything before 1996 is not going to be worth much above its direct edition counterpart.  Maybe a dollar or 2 more but that doesn't stop folks from trying to get $5-10 or more if they aren't aware.  Direct editions only really began to overtake newsstand distribution  in 1986 albeit very slowly.  Prior to 1985, i would actually pay more for a direct edition.  By 1990 there is some data to suggest newsstands were far less distributed compared to direct editions but this was also during the run up of comic bubble so while the newsstand distribution may have only been around 25% or less of the overall market, we are talking about huge quantities of comics in the hundreds of thousands for some issues. 25% of a 400,000 print run for a single title is still 100,000 newsstand copies which dwarfs or equals the newsstand print runs of the 80s. 1994/1995 may have been the peak of print runs with the X-men #1, death of superman issues in the millions but after the comic market crash in the late 90s is also where you start to see not only the sharp decline in comics print runs but also distribution percentages in newsstands which fell to roughly 14% or less. Some issues only had print runs of 40,000 for a title. 

Outside of keys, the real value in newsstands is their scarcity from the year 2000 to 2013 when Marvel ended their newsstand distribution and some have different prices than the direct editions so they are considered price variants. Prior to that, look for the 75 cent and 95 cent Canadian price variants and mark jeweler, jc penny, and pressman variants. 

[the blob]

"Prior to 1985, i would actually pay more for a direct edition." I really don't think that would be true for any book that shops might have ordered extra of for spec purposes. That could be just about any X-Men book, Perez NTT when it really took off, Wolverine mini, any time Byrne started on a title (or Byrne books in general), the last few years of Miller DD, New Mutants 1/Alpha FLight 1... you get the idea. You can look on ebay and pretty easily get a sense of the ratio of news to direct for any given book.

[Lazyboy]

14 hours ago, justafan said:

1994/1995 may have been the peak of print runs with the X-men #1, death of superman issues

14 hours ago, justafan said:

 

but after the comic market crash in the late 90s is also where you start to see not only the sharp decline in comics print runs but also distribution percentages in newsstands which fell to roughly 14% or less.

Source? A credible source, please.

14 hours ago, justafan said:

Some issues only had print runs of 40,000 for a title.

When? Which titles? Did those issues have Newsstands?

14 hours ago, justafan said:

Outside of keys, the real value in newsstands is their scarcity from the year 2000 to 2013 when Marvel ended their newsstand distribution

Why? How scarce are they, exactly?

14 hours ago, justafan said:

some have different prices than the direct editions so they are considered price variants

No, they are not price variants.

14 hours ago, justafan said:

Prior to that, look for the 75 cent and 95 cent Canadian price variants

Canadian Newsstand editions.

14 hours ago, justafan said:

jc penny, and pressman variants

What do those have to do with Newsstands?

[justafan]

1 hour ago, Lazyboy said:

Source? A credible source, please.

When? Which titles? Did those issues have Newsstands?

Why? How scarce are they, exactly?

No, they are not price variants.

Canadian Newsstand editions.

What do those have to do with Newsstands?

boy you are about to go down a huge rabbit hole of research on newsstands.  I would recommend you dive into the numerous threads here on the CGC boards and websites dedicated to newsstands.  Get ready for losing 2 days of your life.

correction: death of superman was actually around the 1992 timeframe where millions were sold.

Sources: All of the sources I could provide are documented second or third-hand accounts so even if I provided the source which you can and eventually will easily google and find, it is still basically the word of the person printing/writing/interpreting their sources which comes from a couple of the Marvel execs at the time including the VPs of marketing/distribution/sales at Marvel during a conference or interview with the writers of research articles, web blogs, and a book about Marvel Comics on one end and Chuck of Mile High comics meticulously cataloging the count of newsstands to direct editions among his massive warehouse of books over the last 30 years.  Frankly I'm just too lazy to look them up again and I knew I shouldn't have even bothered throwing out those numbers because it is virtually impossible to isolate any one credible source but many will argue those sources are valid.  I just wanted to give an idea of when the decline of the newsstands began to precipitate. The problem is that those are the ONLY sources that actually bothered to look into the declining newsstand numbers over the last 30-40 years.  In absence of any actual credible source that disputes these numbers, I'm inclined to believe they are close if not ball park for the years.  Up to you whether you find them valid or not.

When? Which titles? again do your research. Use the comichron site. I once did a full search to hunt for what I believed to be the rarest of newsstands.  there's a list out on the web I think.  I've since long lost mine which was tailored for ASM. Comichron is spotty for the late 80's and early 90's years.

Did those issues have newsstands?  Yes, Newsstand editions for Marvel and DC exist for all regular (Cover Variants don't normally have a Newsstand edition) monthly issue titles for Marvel up until 2011 and only for some titles until 2013. DC persisted up to 1 year later before ending theirs. Newsstands were THE primary distribution method since the very beginning.  The Direct Market only started in the mid 70's with the Whitman comic packs and grew until the mid 80's eventually over taking newsstands.  The Direct Market was heavily favored by some execs at Marvel who saw a more reliable stream of purchases without the concern of returns which is what Newsstands were allowed to do for copies that didn't sell. By the mid 90's there were so many comic stores which received the direct market issues and Marvel had taken over its own distribution of comics it became the more profitable strategy.  Even after the crash, it is reported that a specific Marvel exec wanted to kill the Newsstand model altogether and basically succeeded.

Why?  How scarce are they exactly?

Because most non-key newsstand copies are considered just as common as their direct edition counterparts from VF/NM to Poor condition from 1980's to late 1990s.  you can always find them in a box.  In my hunts, I have never had a problem finding newsstand copies of each copy between those years.  Now the one caveat here is if they are in super high grade NM/MT CGC 9.8.  For that you may get a bump on a newsstand copy over direct edition just because folks know that there are fewer newsstands in general available than direct editions in those latter years.

Scarcity is debatable but newsstands up to 1995 are not scarce.  You can still find them in long boxes and dollar boxes. There are a few from 1996 to 2000 that are a bit tougher to find but still not scarce.  Now trying to find ones from 2001 to 2013 is a different story. And trying to find them in NM/MT 9.8, is the real challenge.

Newsstand price variants?  Oh yes there are.  Just check out this thread rabbit hole:

Canadian Newsstand Editions: yes you're right.  they are canadian editions but since they are so indistinguishable from the US copies, the ONLY way to distinguish them is via the price.

What do those have to do with Newsstands? Nothing.  they are just more rare to look out for.  Pressman, JCPenny variants are more rare than the newsstands in the late 80's and 90s.  They were promotional items that are highly sought after.

 

[Lazyboy]

13 minutes ago, justafan said:

Newsstand price variants?  Oh yes there are.  Just check out this thread rabbit hole:

 

 

That's not what you originally posted. Those are Newsstand price variants. But that's a very small number of issues. The thousands of issues for which Newsstands and Directs just happen to be priced differently are not price variants.

Here's the actual thread about those books, in which I have multiple posts:

 

[Lazyboy]

39 minutes ago, justafan said:

boy you are about to go down a huge rabbit hole of research on newsstands.  I would recommend you dive into the numerous threads here on the CGC boards and websites dedicated to newsstands.  Get ready for losing 2 days of your life.

...

...

Did those issues have newsstands?  Yes, Newsstand editions for Marvel and DC exist for all regular (Cover Variants don't normally have a Newsstand edition) monthly issue titles for Marvel up until 2011

 

I love it when fools try to educate those who are far more knowledgeable than them about a subject.

There are many, many Marvel and DC comics produced before 2011 that did not have newsstand distribution. There are even titles that began with full distribution and ended as Direct-only.

[paqart]

On 1/15/2021 at 8:47 PM, kilowatt said:

Thanks for your opinions. The condition on 80% of them are nice, NM or so. Old bags and boards, but present well when re-bagged. They span from around 1979 till the mid 90`s. I myself don`t really see the big deal. I understand the newsstand issues got handled more, so less books in nice condition,  but the UPC box to me is nothing. I think what I may do is keep the semi-key/keys that are newsstand, and dump the rest for a bit more on the back end. I just don`t want to be kicking myself down the line when I find out they blew up in price and I practically gave them away.

Newsstands become interesting to me starting in 1999. Sixteen long boxes of post-1999 newsstands would be very interesting to me. Before that, I don't pay a premium for them but at the same time, I avoid buying directs.

[paqart]

On 1/15/2021 at 11:22 PM, @therealsilvermane said:

Mm, not sure about that. 80's key books like She-Hulk 1, ASM 300, and Thor 337 are getting higher prices for the newsstand versions right now.

True, though those comics are either available in equal numbers as newsstand or direct, or the newsstands are slightly more common. In other words, a newsstand premium for those issues makes sense only if rarity is not the reason for a higher price.

[justafan]

On 1/29/2021 at 6:45 PM, Lazyboy said:

 

I love it when fools try to educate those who are far more knowledgeable than them about a subject.

There are many, many Marvel and DC comics produced before 2011 that did not have newsstand distribution. There are even titles that began with full distribution and ended as 

Sorry for being your fool. Same here but i try to let them off easy when they are genuinely trying to be helpful. 

 I was unaware of your expertise and genuinely trying to be helpful while at the same time trying to warn you and possibly others of the undertaking. And I think you've proven my point of just how deep and possibly contentious that rabbithole goes.  Just trying to answer your questions to the best of my knowledge. Sorry that yours is far superior to mine in this regard and could add nothing of value. Please disregard everything I posted previously and I'll defer to the experts and evidence presented thereafter.