Census Numbers 1 1

[Croatbag]

Is the census always artificially high? I'm not including raws that are still floating around waiting to be graded, but rather people who crack slabs and resubmit.  When this is done unless the person were to somehow report it to take off the census, I assume that the book would end up as 2 entries in the census? True or false? 

[Lazyboy]

True. If people don't send in labels from books that get cracked out, they remain as part of the count.

[Cat]

It's just a matter of how much you think it's affected the census. Certain books, probably a decent amount (relatively speaking) like your ASM 300's, other rarer books, maybe not so much. 

[OuterBanks]

It’s hard to say which ones have been cracked and resubmitted - when I think about scarcity of books I also think about the overall print run.  TMNT1 has a notoriously low print run (less than 10K?).

It’s hard to say - some books have very high print runs and high census counts (Wolverine 1) - how much of those are resubmission?  I have no idea.

[OuterBanks]

 

Also - low census count might mean people haven’t bothered to get it graded.  Take a look at Flashpoint with 150 graded copies:

https://comics.gocollect.com/guide/view/976505

That comic has a low count and doesn’t sell much.  What if the new Flash movie changes that?  I’d bet that census count would climb into the thousands - this is a book sitting around in a lot of people’s collections that they haven’t bothered to get graded because they don’t think it’s worth the effort.

So I tend to rely on the print run of the comic to understand it’s scarcity along with the census number.

 

[MatterEaterLad]

The census numbers are definitely distorted, but how many resubs is anyone's guess. 10%? More for AF15 and X1 because of the popularity of those books?

AF15 - 3,400

Avengers 1 - 4,500

FF 1 - 2,500

Hulk 1 - 1,800

JIM 83 - 2,000

TOS 39 - 2,400

X-Men 1 - 5,300

The interesting thing is how scarce Hulk 1 is compared to the rest. 

[valiantman]

11 hours ago, Croatbag said:

Is the census always artificially high?

Yes

The number of actual CGC slabs is always equal or lower than the number on the CGC Census.

If you're in the market for a book on the CGC census in a particular grade, the CGC Census could be too high because:

1) There could be unreported resubmissions, so fewer actual copies are in CGC slabs

2) The slab could have been opened, so fewer are still sealed in their CGC slabs.

3) The book could be destroyed (fire, flood, etc.).

If none of these have happened, the CGC Census is correct (equal to CGC slabs in existence), but if any of them have happened, the CGC Census is artificially high.

The CGC Census may be too low compared to the number of (raw) copies still in existence, but the CGC Census is never too low when discussing the number of CGC slabs. 

(FYI, faster CGC Census data is provided at CGCdata.com with CGC's permission since 2003.)

Edited July 8, 2021 by valiantman

[valiantman]

9 hours ago, OuterBanks said:

It’s hard to say which ones have been cracked and resubmitted - when I think about scarcity of books I also think about the overall print run.  TMNT1 has a notoriously low print run (less than 10K?).

3,000 copies is traditionally quoted and "documented" as early as 1986 in Turtlemania. 

3,275 has more recently been reported with 275 being the number of extra copies remembered to have been printed in case of damages.

My theory is that each box may have contained 275 copies, so an extra box for damages would be 275 extra but if all the boxes were full...

12 full boxes at 275 each would be 3,300 copies with exactly 10% extra for damages. 

Those numbers (12 @ 275 = 3,300 for 110% of 3,000) are "clean" and seem more likely than 9.17% for damages with a partial box of extras, while also explaining why 275 was being remembered as an important number.

At any rate, it's (at least) 3,000 to (no more than) 3,300 printed, and some number of those have undoubtedly been destroyed in the past 37 years.

Edited July 8, 2021 by valiantman

[OuterBanks]

7 hours ago, Bob Loblaw III said:

Not really. It was the second best selling comic for that month at around 90,000 copies.

https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2011/2011-05.html

I'll take that bet. No way the census climbs from 150 copies to over 2,000 copies even if a movie is a blockbuster. It doesn't help that the Flashpoint storyline was garbage. Pandora as deus ex machina was just lazy writing.

 

On the first point - you’re actually making my point which is that there is a high print run of 90K but a low census count.

UF4 has > 10K in the census - did a bad storyline stop that from happening?  That census count climbed based on speculative interest alone IMO - the movie buzz, speculative ideas that UF4 is the next AF15 (which is laughable to me) etc…

I’m noticing golden age comics and DC comics picking up in price so I don’t think it’s impossible that something like Flashpoint (new movie coming out) could go up in value.

My only point is that you can’t go on census number counts alone to understand scarcity.  

[lizards2]

On 7/7/2021 at 8:05 PM, Croatbag said:

Is the census always artificially high? I'm not including raws that are still floating around waiting to be graded, but rather people who crack slabs and resubmit.  When this is done unless the person were to somehow report it to take off the census, I assume that the book would end up as 2 entries in the census? True or false? 

I've probably cracked out about 300-400 slabs (judging by the crates of outer wells in the garage, and knowing about the crates of outer wells I gave to another boardie), and never a label has been sent to CGC. I've also bought at least 100 deslabbed books..., maybe more.

[HotKey]

I think on your older books, 1980s and back the crack and resubmit % is closer to 10% of the census. 

On newer stuff like UF4, NM98 and ASM 300 I would bet its closer to 20%+.

[THE_BEYONDER]

Let’s not forget about all the blue label books that get cracked for Signature Series resubs.   That number is not insignificant.