What percentage of the total available is slabbed in big money books?? 0

[Qalyar]

21 minutes ago, valiantman said:

One alternative would be to use a book like ASM #300 - with almost 25,000 CGC submissions and ask whether 25% - 30% is reasonable or significantly too low.

We know that mid and low grade raws are plentiful, and perhaps all grades are plentiful since 25% - 30% would mean another 55,000 to 75,000 are "out there".  Is there reason to believe it's 100,000 more raws?  If so, then the estimate would only shift to 20% already graded, and not a significant drop from 25%-30%, as far as percentages go.

ASM300 is fun to look at because we have some real (approximate) numbers to work with because of the statement of ownership is ASM315. ASM300 almost certainly outperformed the yearly average, so we can skew the SOO numbers a tad higher.

There were north of 450k copies physically printed. I'm gonna guess that ASM300 was the print run leader for the 12 month period. Let's say 500k. However, a lot of those didn't sell and were this newsstand retailer returns. Let's guess that ASM300 had better sell-through than average, and there were this 150k returns. So we're starting* with a pool of 350k potential sold copies.

Survival rate for the direct market copies was probably pretty good. And there's reason to hope the newsstand copies have better survival than usual for the era. Do we think a 50% survival rate is plausible? Certainly older books can't even dream of a 50% survival rate, but maybe? Let's run with that for the moment.

That gives us 125k potentially extant copies... which would mean there are literally 100k raws out there. So maybe that's high, or we pushed the ASM315 SOO averages too high for ASM300 because of the power of hindsight. But even taking a hatchet to those expectations, the idea that ASM300 is sitting at around a 25% slab rate seems like a realistic order of magnitude estimate. The pressure to grade these books isn't as high as for the biggest dollar pieces, and with less chance of restoration and shenanigans than with older books, there's a more liquid market for raws. So there is probably still a solid pool of high grade ASM300 raws, but there's certainly a larger pool of low grade copies, traded as run fill and readers and copies for people unable or unwilling to pay the $WTFBBQ prices this book yields for pretty copies.

This book is very much not rare. It demands high prices due to popularity alone.

* Some percentage of retailer returns are "destroyed" rather than actually destroyed. In particular, because of various breakdowns in the process, some issues of some titles have significant numbers of returns that leaked back into the market in violation of disposal contracts. It is literally impossible to know how many ASM300 returns survived, so I'm pretending they didn't.

[valiantman]

@Qalyar so we know it's 30% for TMNT #1 (1984) and you're OK with the idea of 25% for ASM #300 (1988), and the experts/concensus have Golden Age major keys at 50%.

I just don't see Silver Age major keys like AF #15 being significantly below the 40% range... certainly not 10% or whatever is being implied by some in this topic.

[Lazyboy]

You guys are nuts. Just completely

Only 125k extant copies of ASM 300? Yes, attrition is (almost) always a factor, but not to that extent for a book from 1988!

[drotto]

1 hour ago, Lazyboy said:

You guys are nuts. Just completely

Only 125k extant copies of ASM 300? Yes, attrition is (almost) always a factor, but not to that extent for a book from 1988!

I think all modern books will have significantly lower % slabbed.  Unlike GA, SA, and some BA books, this group is only viewed as slab worthy if it is a 9.6 or 9.8, after that the value plummets. Really modern slabbers are chasing 9.8's. I would bet only 30% to 35% of these books when they hit the store shelves even had a chance to be high grade. So instantly 65% of any given print run is not worth it to slab. Add to this, that people in the 90's and 2000's were not searching copies on shelves for the best looking copies.

[lou_fine]

19 hours ago, drotto said:

Add to this, that people in the 90's and 2000's were not searching copies on shelves for the best looking copies.

Why in the world not, especially if you are a comic book collector.  

I remember buying comic books off the shelves of my LCS bck in the mid-70's, and like almost every other comic book collector at the time, would always try to cherry pick the best copy for my personal collection.  

Edited February 28, 2021 by lou_fine

[BigLeagueCHEW]

5 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Why in the world not, especially if you are a comic book collector.  

I remember buying comic books off the shelves of my LCS, and like almost every other comic book collector at the time, would always try to cherry pick the best copy for my personal collection.  

Agreed, pluck the best ones. My LCS had everything bagged and boarded. Most were already in 9.8 range.

[Qalyar]

6 hours ago, lou_fine said:

Why in the world not, especially if you are a comic book collector.  

I remember buying comic books off the shelves of my LCS, and like almost every other comic book collector at the time, would always try to cherry pick the best copy for my personal collection.  

Even well into the modern age, a lot of people really were/are just readers, not.collectors. Also, a surprising amount of people honestly seem to hold the weird opinion that high grades are only worth chasing in valuable books. Which then rapidly leads to problems when Random Man's origin in Forgettable Dreck #17 becomes the next hot film book...

[Lazyboy]

21 hours ago, drotto said:

I think all modern books will have significantly lower % slabbed.  Unlike GA, SA, and some BA books, this group is only viewed as slab worthy if it is a 9.6 or 9.8, after that the value plummets. Really modern slabbers are chasing 9.8's. I would bet only 30% to 35% of these books when they hit the store shelves even had a chance to be high grade. So instantly 65% of any given print run is not worth it to slab.

Nobody is talking about average issues here.

21 hours ago, drotto said:

Add to this, that people in the 90's and 2000's were not searching copies on shelves for the best looking copies.

Of course they were. Not everybody and not necessarily to the same degree, but they weren't doing it any less then than at any other time.