How rare are modern newsstand editions? 5 5

[Lazyboy]

On 1/8/2022 at 9:56 PM, divad said:

I concede to the extent that all of the HG Newsstands I own are worth twice as much as their equivalent direct editions . . . 

You're thinking way too small!

[darkstar]

On 1/8/2022 at 10:57 PM, fastballspecial said:

Where you been? Seems like you have been gone a long time.

 

Yeah this whole pandemic thing basically eliminated my ability to source books locally and online ordering, outside of single issues, is just not worth the hassle anymore. 

[paqart]

DC's Catwoman #39 (2002 series) was published January, 2005. The next issue, #40, came out the next month, February, 2005. In my collection, I am missing newsstand editions of #1, 3, 18, 26, and 40-83. Looking at that prompted me to wonder if there was anything special about the publication dates of #39 and #40. That is, did DC change the percentage of newsstands to directs printed to a lower figure starting in February. 

To try and figure this out, I first went to the Comichron site to see how many direct edition copies were estimated for those months. Based on their data, there was no meaningful change in printed copies between those dates. The numbers started going up with #53:

title	issue	year	month	est. units
Catwoman	39	2005	1	24,113
Catwoman	40	2005	2	23,114
Catwoman	41	2005	3	22,002
Catwoman	42	2005	4	21,025
Catwoman	43	2005	5	20,815
Catwoman	44	2005	6	21,570
Catwoman	45	2005	7	20,850
Catwoman	46	2005	8	20,701
Catwoman	47	2005	9	20,697
Catwoman	48	2005	10	21,091
Catwoman	49	2005	11	21,257
Catwoman	50	2005	12	24,137
Catwoman	51	2006	1	22,673
Catwoman	52	2006	2	21,946
Catwoman	53	2006	3	28,470
Catwoman	54	2006	4	28,923

This doesn't tell us anything about newsstand copies but it does tell us that the overall print run hadn't gone down by so much that issues after #39 should be harder to find than issues 1-39 (never mind that I've never seen a #1 or #3). I also checked Detective Comics, Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and Incredible Hulk during the same period. One thing caught my eye; Supergirl #1 had a second and third printing. Catwoman #53 had a second printing. So did Detective #817 and Wonder Woman #219. Aren't second and third printings rarer than first printings?

Comichron had the answer. They have estimates based on orders for second and third printings.  Based on their numbers, second printings are rarer than first printings, and third printings are rarer than both. Even better, they have numbers based on the same data they use to estimate first printings. Therefore, the ratio of second or third printings to first printings should be fairly accurate, even if the underlying data is incomplete. 

Next, I went to eBay and counted availability of first, second, and third printings, as well as newsstand editions of first printings, of the four comics I identified that had second and third printings. The results show that sellers have posted more first printing directs than anything else, they have posted fewer first printing newsstands than anything else. This suggests the possibility that newsstand first printings are more difficult to obtain than second or third printings. See attached file for a clean illustration of the numbers.

The most extreme example is Supergirl #1 from 2005. The number of estimated (direct) units sold by Comichron is 123,361. They estimate 3,256 2nd printings, and 1,920 3rd printings. On this basis alone, the 2nd and 3rd printings are significantly more rare than the first printing, at 2.64% and 1.56% of the first print run, respectively. Even better, they all have different covers, and the third printing has what is in my opinion the most interesting cover. Keep in mind that those percentages work out to an absolute ratio of 1:38 (2nd printing) and 1:64 (3rd printing). This has nothing to do with market availability. These numbers represent the maximum availability based on estimated units ordered. 

A count of available versions of Supergirl #1 (2005) on eBay demonstrates how different estimated ordered unit numbers can vary from availability. There were 103 Direct first editions, 31 direct second editions, and 18 direct third editions. All told, that is 152 direct editions of Supergirl #1. There were no newsstand editions available on eBay when I checked. This finding is similar to what I have seen in earlier searches for this comic. There is, however, one difference: the newsstand supply appears to be drying up. I have on earlier occasions found 1 newsstand edition out of 150 directs but haven't seen any this month. The supply of first, second, and third printings of the direct edition appears stable over time. Meaning, the available supply today is not meaningfully different from what it was last year. The supply of newsstands today is meaningfully different than last year.

What does this tell us about print runs and availability? As far as availability is concerned, it is easy to see that the newsstand edition of Supergirl #1 (2005) is less common than the 1:64 3rd printing. How much less common is hard to say because no copies were found out of the 152 copies checked. For a comic that was printed at a ratio of 1:100, one wouldn't necessarily expect to find one out of every 100 issues. In that example, my preference would be to look at 500 comics, find 5 newsstands in that group, and then say it has a 1:100 rarity relative to the direct edition. This sample size isn't big enough to determine whether the newsstand version of this comic has a 1:100 rarity but it cannot rule it out either. It is large enough to posit that the rarity ratio isn't less than 1:64.

There is another wrinkle to this. Despite the absolute ratio of 3rd printing directs to 1st printing directs (1:64), 3rd printings of this comic appear in a ratio of about 1:8.44 or 11%. The second printing is almost double that, at 1:4.9 or 20%. The estimated number of ordered units is out of sync with market availability. The 3rd printing appears on eBay about 8 times as frequently as would be expected based on orders, and the 2nd printing also appears almost 8 times as frequently as expected based on those same numbers. The newsstand, however, doesn't appear at all. Based on this information, an argument could be made that the newsstand would also appear 8 times more frequently than its actual ratio to the direct first printing would suggest. 

If that ratio was 1:100, then one would expect to see 12 newsstands in addition to the 18 3rd printings, 31 2nd printings, and 103 first printing directs in this sample of 152 copies of Supergirl #1. Instead, there are none. If the ratio was 1:500 instead of 1:100, and newsstands appeared 8 times more often on the market than order numbers suggest, then one would expect to see 2 copies for every 152 available. However, there are none. Below is the formula used to determine this:
=SUM(SampleSize*MarketMultiplier)*(1/RarityRatio). This translates to =SUM(152*8)*(1/500).

Using this formula, to bring the predicted availability to 1, the ratio of direct editions to newsstands would have to be 1:811 or higher. For the observed quantities to match predictions based on this formula, counting zeroes as ones, the rarity ratios would have to be: Detective Comics #817: 1:289, Catwoman 53: 1:198, Wonder Woman 219: 1:395. The number of units in the samples affects the results. The fewer copies in the total sample, the lower the ratio is. The larger the sample size is, the more precise the prediction is. On that basis, the Supergirl prediction/rarity calculation should be the most accurate because it had the largest sample (152 compared to 90, 37, and 74, respectively).

If the true ratio of newsstands to directs for Supergirl #1 is approximately 1:800 as this suggests, there may have been less than 200 copies of this comic distributed at newsstands. That doesn't make sense if newsstand sales are expected to contribute meaningfully to overall sales. If newsstand availability was perceived as a courtesy to the venues that sold them and their customers, as opposed to a profit center, it might make sense.  

A look at Diamond's customer list in 2013 shows 2,638 accounts. That is a few years after 2005, when the number of stores was reportedly less than 2,000. However, it is a firm figure as opposed to an estimate. If that is about how many stores were in the US when Supergirl #1 was first published with 123,361 orders divided among those stores, then each store could have ordered 46 copies each. Some, of course, likely ordered less, while others ordered more. This suggests that an average order of 46 copies of a single issue per store was "good" by DC's standards. This is because Supergirl #1 was the 6th best selling comic of the month by units, and the 5th best-selling comic by dollars.

In comparison, DC published Swamp Thing #22 in the same month as Supergirl #1. According to Comichron, there were 8,892 estimated orders of that issue. If there were 2,638 comic book stores at that time, no store could have ordered more than 3 copies unless other stores ordered two or less. If this quantity was sufficient to justify a print run, it suggests that acceptable print runs for newsstand comics could be fairly small, amounting to as few as 3 copies or less per venue. It may be that in the current era of digital presses, having a certain number of newsstand editions printed alongside a number of directs is as trivial as a few keystrokes on a computer to change the UPC code for a percentage of the run.

It is also possible that modern newsstand print runs equal or exceed direct edition print runs. I don't believe it is true but for the sake of argument and entertainment, let us consider an extreme example. Let's say that the known direct orders of a comic are 100,000 issues but the unknown newsstand orders are one trillion comics. Let us also say that we looked at eBay items for sale for this comic and found 152 direct editions available (as with Supergirl #1) and zero newsstand copies (as with Supergirl #1). That would suggest either that many of those copies exist but are not for sale or that the vast majority of those comics were destroyed. The more reasonable explanation for the real world scenario we see is that the percentage of available newsstands reflects that they are a small percentage of the full print run.

In addition to the factors discussed so far, we also have to consider survival rates of these comics. Newsstand editions are returnable upon destruction (defacement of the cover). A certain number of newsstands are destroyed this way every month if unsold. Non-comic book store venues are famous for storing comic books improperly. This can lead to severe damage while they remain in the store. After purchase, because they are typically not bought by collectors, even more comics are damaged due to improper handling and storage, or thrown away. With this in mind, earlier observations about available copies on the market make more sense. 

Is it possible that the true market availability of the newsstand Supergirl #1 is not 1:100 but 1:800? It hardly seems possible but there is some justification for thinking so. If this argument resembles the actual market availability of the comics reviewed, it suggests that newsstand availability is currently exaggerated on sites like eBay, based on how popular or unpopular a comic is. That is, they are over-represented relative to the numbers printed, not under-represented.
 

Edited January 17, 2022 by paqart
To entertain the Nameless One

[Lazyboy]

On 1/16/2022 at 6:51 PM, paqart said:

This is because Supergirl #1 was the 6th best selling comic of the month by units, and the 5th best-selling comic by dollars. in comparison, DC's Omac Project #3, published in the same month, had only 2,974 orders. That translates to slightly more than one copy per store. And yet, they published it anyway. In that month, DC published ten titles in numbers so small that if all stores ordered them, they couldn't have received more than 2 copies each. Some titles didn't have enough copies printed to go around at the rate of one copy per store.

There are currently (as I write this) 106 copies of Omac Project #3 on eBay. None are newsstands. Indeed, none of the hundreds of issues of Omac Project available at the time I checked were newsstands. Does this mean that DC opted to not publish a newsstand edition due to low orders? Or was it published in such tiny numbers that few non-comic book stores received a copy? DC also published JLA #116 in the same month as Supergirl #1. According to Comichron, there were 3,386 estimated orders of that issue. If there were 2,638 comic book stores at that time, no store could have ordered more than 2 copies unless other stores ordered one or none. And yet, there is a newsstand edition of that comic. Three are available on eBay right now. What that means is that DC was willing to print a newsstand edition, understood to be a fraction of the direct printing, for a comic with so few orders in the direct market that if every store ordered it, no store could have 3 copies or more, and most would have only 1.

JLA #116 is not a popular or expensive comic, yet there are more available newsstand editions of that comic than the far more popular Supergirl #1. This suggests that collectors are not waiting for an explosion of interest in newsstand editions to unleash their copies on the market. Rather, it suggests that collectors are buying newsstand editions of the more popular collecting targets as fast as sellers post them, in ever dwindling numbers due to a tiny supply. It also suggests that DC did not attempt to meet a minimum order threshold to justify the expense of printing a newsstand edition. If that were the case, they wouldn't have printed any copies of JLA #116, the Omac Project #3, or a number of other direct edition comics. It may be that in the current era of digital presses, having a certain number of newsstand editions printed alongside a number of directs is as trivial as a few keystrokes on a computer to change the UPC code for a percentage of the run.

Maybe you should look 3 and 4 spots, respectively, under Supergirl 1 on that chart. JLA and OMAC Project (along with many other Infinite Crisis tie-ins) were hot at the time, which is why their reorders show up on the charts months later.

Even if you had picked issues that actually had small DM orders, some of those sold as well or better through the newsstand channel. Nobody printed Newsstand editions based on Direct orders, they printed them based on Newsstand sales (either actual previous or prospective).

This is (another reason) why you have zero credibility and nobody should even briefly consider your ramblings as anywhere near valid.

[Warlord]

When you say that you checked for available copies on ebay, are you only checking/counting those that are currently for sale?   I'd want to check Sold copies as well if I wanted to understand the quantities of any issues that are moving through ebay.

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 1/16/2022 at 9:52 PM, Warlord said:

When you say that you checked for available copies on ebay, are you only checking/counting those that are currently for sale?   I'd want to check Sold copies as well if I wanted to understand the quantities of any issues that are moving through ebay.

Add completed as some may not be currently listed, did not get relisted , and did not sell. 

[Warlord]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:17 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Add completed as some may not be currently listed, did not get relisted , and did not sell. 

Yep, good point!

[paqart]

On 1/16/2022 at 10:52 PM, Warlord said:

When you say that you checked for available copies on ebay, are you only checking/counting those that are currently for sale?   I'd want to check Sold copies as well if I wanted to understand the quantities of any issues that are moving through ebay.

I did check completed and sold copies but the numbers are too small to be of any use. For many modern comics, there are zero sold newsstand copies for the 90 day window you see by default when looking at the sold history. For instance, for Supergirl #1, there were 25 sold direct first printings, 5 sold direct second printings, 0 sold 3rd printings, and 0 sold newsstands. For Catwoman #53, there were 15 direct first printings, 3 direct second printings, and zero newsstands. Detective #817 had 7 sales of direct first printings and 1 sale of a newsstand first printing. Wonder Woman 219 had 9 direct first printings, 2 direct second printings, and 1 newsstand first printing (which I bought).

Edited January 17, 2022 by paqart

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 1/16/2022 at 10:20 PM, paqart said:

I did check sold copies but the numbers are too small to be of any use. For many modern comics, there are zero sold newsstand copies for the 90 day window you see by default when looking at the sold history. For instance, for Supergirl #1, there were 25 sold direct first printings, 5 sold direct second printings, 0 sold 3rd printings, and 0 sold newsstands.

If they were specific searches for those terms . I could see that.

The issue that I see is how many do not get listed that way or are lumped into lots. Also a lot of misspelled or in wrong category.  I too search a LOT on MANY different platforms and have landed a lot more of the harder to find books buried.  

[paqart]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:24 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

If they were specific searches for those terms . I could see that.

The issue that I see is how many do not get listed that way or are lumped into lots. Also a lot of misspelled or in wrong category.  I too search a LOT on MANY different platforms and have landed a lot more of the harder to find books buried.  

Tell you what, try a search for these comics using your method and see what you find. The numbers may be different but see if they work out to the same ratios. I should add that I too look on other sites. I use eBay for this example because I find it is faster to look through eBay listings than, for instance, HipComic, where stock photos are used so often that the results are unreliable. Also, I do not search for "newsstand" or any variant of the word. Too many sellers don't mention it.

 

Edited January 17, 2022 by paqart

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 1/16/2022 at 10:27 PM, paqart said:

Tell you what, try a search for these comics using your method and see what you find. The numbers may be different but see if they work out to the same ratios. 

I am not trying to say that your ratio is  off or say that I could do better.  

I greatly appreciate the amount of research and work you have put into this and do find it interesting. I also really enjoy your passion for these and seeing all of the amazing books you find.  

I was only trying to offer ways that might net more refined result although this would take a lot more as some very general searches do get very cumbersome.  

On average I scan through 3,000 new listings each day just with the search term  "superman " in a very broad search . There is so much garbage to sort through.  

As I said I can definitely appreciate the effort you have put into assembling the data you have. 

[paqart]

Quote

Maybe you should look 3 and 4 spots, respectively, under Supergirl 1 on that chart. JLA and OMAC Project (along with many other Infinite Crisis tie-ins) were hot at the time, which is why their reorders show up on the charts months later.

Good gracious, you are right about this one comic. I was tracking reorders for all the others but for this one, I skipped it. There an additional 93,994 orders in June, 2005. I'll update accordingly.

For the record, here is how the reorders are recorded in my spreadsheet:

 

title	issue	year	month	est. units	add'l sales	total units
Catwoman	39	2005	1	24,113		24,113
Catwoman	40	2005	2	23,114		23,114
Catwoman	41	2005	3	22,002		22,002
Catwoman	42	2005	4	21,025		21,025
Catwoman	43	2005	5	20,815		20,815
Catwoman	44	2005	6	21,570		21,570
Catwoman	45	2005	7	20,850		20,850
Catwoman	46	2005	8	20,701	1016	21,717

I realize you weren't attempting to be helpful but you were regardless. Thanks and congratulations.

[paqart]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:35 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

I am not trying to say that your ratio is  off or say that I could do better.  

I greatly appreciate the amount of research and work you have put into this and do find it interesting. I also really enjoy your passion for these and seeing all of the amazing books you find.  

I was only trying to offer ways that might net more refined result although this would take a lot more as some very general searches do get very cumbersome.  

On average I scan through 3,000 new listings each day just with the search term  "superman " in a very broad search . There is so much garbage to sort through.  

As I said I can definitely appreciate the effort you have put into assembling the data you have. 

Yes, there are a lot of ways to do it. The bottom line is that different methods, if consistent, should yield similar ratios.

BTW, thanks to our friend-who-shall-not-be-named, I modified the earlier post, using Swamp Thing 22 as an example of a title with low orders that was worth publishing regardless. There were no copies of it available as newsstand editions on eBay, and the same for the rest of the title. It may be that because it was Vertigo or it had low sales that they didn't make a newsstand edition but the fact that it was offered at all gives an idea what is considered an acceptable number for DC.

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

When you said supergirl #1 2005 you were referring to these correct. 

 

Edit add tag @paqart

Edited January 17, 2022 by onlyweaknesskryptonite
Add Tag

[paqart]

On 1/17/2022 at 12:24 AM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

When you said supergirl #1 2005 you were referring to these correct. 

 

Edit add tag @paqart

Yes. Where did you find these? I don't recognize the interface.

Edited January 17, 2022 by paqart

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:31 PM, paqart said:

Yes. Where did you find these? I don't recognize the interface.

Ebay right now. 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

The Churchill are on ebay but through MCS and the Turner just sold , but it was  relisted  from the week prior at $25 and no sale, but then relisted for $20 bid NR and sold with only 1 bid.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/16/2022 at 10:41 PM, paqart said:

Good gracious, you are right about this one comic.

Um, that's two comics, on which you wrote paragraphs of nonsense based on your ignorance and false perception.

On 1/16/2022 at 11:06 PM, paqart said:

Swamp Thing 22 as an example of a title with low orders that was worth publishing regardless. There were no copies of it available as newsstand editions on eBay, and the same for the rest of the title. It may be that because it was Vertigo or it had low sales that they didn't make a newsstand edition

Vertigo Newsstands are all but non-existent. That's issues, not copies. As such, they have absolutely nothing to do with this topic.

On 1/16/2022 at 11:06 PM, paqart said:

but the fact that it was offered at all gives an idea what is considered an acceptable number for DC.

... in the Direct Market, which is again irrelevant to the topic. The math for selling 9000 Direct copies is not at all the same as it is to sell 9000 Newsstands.

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

Reason the interface looks different is I am on mobile and using the app with my phone that also has a custom setup for layout colors/etc. 

[Lazyboy]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:39 PM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Ebay right now. 

So he can't even browse feeBay properly?

Like I said: zero credibility.