How rare are modern newsstand editions? 6 6

[divad]

On 1/5/2022 at 4:47 PM, valiantman said:

When the direct market arrived, who was left buying newsstands?

People like me who didn't have a "comic book store " in their town or within 10 miles and no car. 

[divad]

On 1/5/2022 at 4:51 PM, valiantman said:

On 1/5/2022 at 3:42 PM, divad said:

You're drinking the CGC Kool-Aid - There are easily tens of thousands of collectors who have never submitted a book to CGC, and even more than that, that don't even know the difference between a Newsstand and Direct edition.

You're not even considering that before 1992 (or even later) collecting was pretty much a private affair.

How many of those tens of thousands of collectors have raw 9.8 newsstand Amazing Spider-Man #300?  It's not thousands. It's tens.

I like your conjectures - don't get me wrong, but sometimes you're the Jim Jones of statistics.

[divad]

How rare are modern newsstand editions?

In High Grade? Who knows? 

"Rare" is not the word to use. The scarcer ones are the late '80s to early '90s pre-internet tweeners. 

[Lazyboy]

On 1/5/2022 at 6:47 PM, valiantman said:

When the direct market arrived, who was left buying newsstands?

Collectors who didn't have easy access to comic specialty shops, which was not an insignificant number of people. Plus more casual buyers, obviously.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/4/2022 at 1:56 PM, valiantman said:

Unless it's a store-specific variant (of which there are now literally thousands), there's no reason any LCS would have huge stocks of newsstand books that they somehow locked up, just waiting for the 41st year after printing to dump them on the market. 

Could it happen?  Yes, just like the purple unicorn thing.

Is it likely?  Uh, well... you don't seem to like numbers and statistics, so I'll just go with "no".

Serious question: have you ever been to a comic shop that has back issue boxes?

I know it may not seem like a serious question, but your posts suggest that you haven't and are living in some special place that's cut off from reality.

[valiantman]

On 1/6/2022 at 2:02 AM, Lazyboy said:

Serious question: have you ever been to a comic shop that has back issue boxes?

I know it may not seem like a serious question, but your posts suggest that you haven't and are living in some special place that's cut off from reality.

Of course.

It is very hard to consistently find newsstand issues among comic shop back issues. 

Starting with the direct market, the comic shops never had those issues as newsstands, except for random books that might come in when they bought collections. 

Those aren't generally high grade, they're just random grades, usually about the same as the year they were published.  (1985 raw books are around 8.5, 1990 books are around 9.0, etc.)

[mr_highgrade]

On 1/6/2022 at 10:44 AM, valiantman said:

Of course.

It is very hard to consistently find newsstand issues among comic shop back issues. 

Starting with the direct market, the comic shops never had those issues as newsstands, except for random books that might come in when they bought collections. 

Those aren't generally high grade, they're just random grades, usually about the same as the year they were published.  (1985 raw books are around 8.5, 1990 books are around 9.0, etc.)

Absolutely true, I've been doing this for over 40 years and I rarely found any newsies in comic book shops. And when I did, they were mid grade at best.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/6/2022 at 9:50 AM, mr_highgrade said:

Absolutely true, I've been doing this for over 40 years and I rarely found any newsies in comic book shops.

Really? Maybe they all migrated up here. Because I've seen tons in shop floor stock, not to mention tons more on the few occasions that I've seen full (on-site) store stock. I've almost never bought a Newsstand edition specifically because it was a Newsstand, but I have a lot of them from my purchases over the years.

On 1/6/2022 at 9:50 AM, mr_highgrade said:

And when I did, they were mid grade at best.

Well, they certainly aren't all high grade, but then neither are the Directs.

[paqart]

On 1/6/2022 at 10:44 AM, valiantman said:

Of course.

It is very hard to consistently find newsstand issues among comic shop back issues. 

Starting with the direct market, the comic shops never had those issues as newsstands, except for random books that might come in when they bought collections. 

Those aren't generally high grade, they're just random grades, usually about the same as the year they were published.  (1985 raw books are around 8.5, 1990 books are around 9.0, etc.)

My LCS has about 100,000 back issues on the floor at any given time. Of those, the owner holds out newsstands for me. He does get them but most are from the 80's. Much more rarely he'll have NS editions from the 90's. Once, he had some uninteresting NS editions from around 2000. In the bins, he only has 1980's NS editions.

[paqart]

On 1/5/2022 at 10:15 PM, divad said:

I like your conjectures - don't get me wrong, but sometimes you're the Jim Jones of statistics.

Personally, I think there are thousands of NS ASM #300 out there, though likely fe in 9.8 condition. Try Catwoman 81 instead. There may only be a couple hundred NS copies of that in total, regardless of grade. Likely, they are in better shape than the NS ASM #300's, but in much smaller quantities.

[valiantman]

I think there's some confusion about my posts... I'm talking about percentages.

The availability of every book is already pretty well known... but what is the percentage that is newsstand? 

For the most common books, newsstand is always lower in the total, and the newsstand percentage in high grade is even lower.

ASM #300 isn't rare, but the market shows about 2% of CGC 9.8 (those already CGC graded 9.8) are newsstand.  98% direct editions on the CGC 9.8.  There are still thousands of ungraded ASM #300 out there, and there are certainly more potential CGC 9.8 newsstand ASM #300 out there, but we're looking at 98-to-2 (ratio/percentage) direct-to-newsstand on CGC 9.8 from all the data we have at this point. 

Counts will always rise... but what about percentages?

There's no way CGC 9.8 ASM #300 is shifting anywhere near 50% newsstand, it's at 2%.  Could it be 4%?  Sure.  Could it be 40%?  Absolutely not.

That's what I'm saying. We've finally got some data to put percentages on books in the market, we've got CGC census data to show that average grades (including undisclosed pressing and regrades) is falling for direct and newsstand, so there's not a reasonable scenario where our percentages for high grade newsstand are going to spike, unless there are direct editions which are simply not worth grading.

Spawn #1 is absolutely more "slab worthy" when it's a high grade newsstand, and has been for several years now, but it's still under 8% newsstand in CGC 9.8.

That 8% is probably too high versus the entire 9.8 population (graded and raw) for Spawn #1, but 8% is still a tiny percentage... even though it represents nearly a thousand CGC 9.8 newsstand copies.

2% and 8% are calculatable percentages for CGC 9.8 newsstand for ASM #300 and Spawn #1... 98% and 92% are very high percentages for direct editions.

The majority of books will always have fewer newsstand, by percentage.  The numbers on popular books already show this.

There's no mystery in the availability of any of these books by counts... the questions I'm answering are for newsstand percentages.

Edited January 7, 2022 by valiantman

[valiantman]

"Rare" in comparison to what... that's the real question.

"Rare" in comparison to a total in existence of 20 copies or fewer... that's one definition, but it hardly seems reasonable to apply to modern age comics.

"Rare" in comparison to other editions of the same comic... that's going to be a percentage question, not a count.

The "rarest blood type" is AB-negative, and it is "rarest" because it is the lowest percentage of all available blood types even though 48,000,000 people have it.

The "rarest edition" is usually a high grade newsstand, because it's the lowest percentage vs. low grade newsstand, high grade direct edition, and low grade direct edition, not because there are fewer than 20 in existence.

Edited January 7, 2022 by valiantman

[fastballspecial]

I can easily speak to comic shop since I have been to them all over the midwest and south. 
There are very limited newsstand copies in comic shops. You will never find a run of any title.
You might find 3 or 4 of a title on your best day. And usually they are not in great shape.

I have much more luck at Flea markets and Conventions. I hit on a large Spawn newsstand
collection at a convention last year and I think I found 25 and I was giddy. Same with other
newsstands I might get lucky and find 5 to 10 with one dealer at times. I never ever find that
in any comic shop I go to unless I am lucky enough to be there when a newsstand collection
comes in once and a blue moon. 

What I struggle to overcome is the viewpoint that high grade newsstands are hard in the 80s. 
Its just the sheer number of overwhelming print run in the 80s makes me believe the numbers
are still skewed some.

 

[valiantman]

On 1/7/2022 at 11:00 AM, fastballspecial said:

What I struggle to overcome is the viewpoint that high grade newsstands are hard in the 80s. 
Its just the sheer number of overwhelming print run in the 80s makes me believe the numbers
are still skewed some.

My viewpoint is that high grade newsstands are the hardest percentage for those issues, just like the rarest blood type is AB-negative even though there are 48,000,000 walking around.

[Corona smith]

On 12/20/2021 at 11:32 AM, paqart said:

looking at a comic like UF4, which regularly sells for $4k plus as a direct edition, most of the copies that could be made available for sale are already out there. I just did a check of UF4 on eBay and found 268 copies for sale. None were newsstands. The prices ranged form lows in the $400 range for lower grade copies all the way up to $100,000. Regardless how realistic that high price is, this comic does sell in the multiple thousands often.

Dinesh from Bad Idea sold a CGC 9.8 UF4 Newsstand for $25k. I believe he tripled or quadrupled what he paid for it initially. 

[paqart]

On 1/7/2022 at 11:29 AM, valiantman said:

"Rare" in comparison to what... that's the real question.

"Rare" in comparison to a total in existence of 20 copies or fewer... that's one definition, but it hardly seems reasonable to apply to modern age comics.

"Rare" in comparison to other editions of the same comic... that's going to be a percentage question, not a count.

The "rarest blood type" is AB-negative, and it is "rarest" because it is the lowest percentage of all available blood types even though 48,000,000 people have it.

The "rarest edition" is usually a high grade newsstand, because it's the lowest percentage vs. low grade newsstand, high grade direct edition, and low grade direct edition, not because there are fewer than 20 in existence.

One quick example of this is my tiny collection of slabbed newsstands. Until I get my 75 submissions back from CGC, I presently own 27 slabbed newsstands. Only one is a 9.8. The highest grade I usually find is 9.6. I have seen a few 9.8's that were either too expensive for me or a title I don't collect but for many that I do collect, I'm happy to pay the 9.8 premium. However, those comics are much harder to find than lower grades. Also, although print runs in the 80's were higher, I do not see that many more high grade newsstands from that era. More newsstands, yes, but not high grade. In my experience, the average newsstand from the 80's is going to be in the 6.0-8.0 range. I consider myself lucky to find 9.0's. Later newsstands, while much more difficult to find in any condition, seem more likely to be in high grade when found. The highest grades remain elusive but 9.4-9.6 are what I see fairly often for comics after 1999.

Now that I think of it, I've seen more 9.8 newsstands on this page than available for sale, most are posted by Mr_Highgrade (or so it seems).

[fastballspecial]

On 1/8/2022 at 10:55 AM, paqart said:

One quick example of this is my tiny collection of slabbed newsstands. Until I get my 75 submissions back from CGC, I presently own 27 slabbed newsstands. Only one is a 9.8. The highest grade I usually find is 9.6. I have seen a few 9.8's that were either too expensive for me or a title I don't collect but for many that I do collect, I'm happy to pay the 9.8 premium. However, those comics are much harder to find than lower grades. Also, although print runs in the 80's were higher, I do not see that many more high grade newsstands from that era. More newsstands, yes, but not high grade. In my experience, the average newsstand from the 80's is going to be in the 6.0-8.0 range. I consider myself lucky to find 9.0's. Later newsstands, while much more difficult to find in any condition, seem more likely to be in high grade when found. The highest grades remain elusive but 9.4-9.6 are what I see fairly often for comics after 1999.

Now that I think of it, I've seen more 9.8 newsstands on this page than available for sale, most are posted by Mr_Highgrade (or so it seems).

Completely true. I am lucky to find 9.4 copies at all,  a 9.6 copy is a very good day.

 

[darkstar]

On 1/5/2022 at 6:55 PM, fastballspecial said:

What about the argument money brings them out? I agree to an extent, but I am playing devil's advocate here.

 

Was there a better time than the past two years for people sitting on old comic books to go through them and list them for sale? 

[divad]

On 1/8/2022 at 5:39 PM, darkstar said:

On 1/5/2022 at 4:55 PM, fastballspecial said:

What about the argument money brings them out? I agree to an extent, but I am playing devil's advocate here.

 

Was there a better time than the past two years for people sitting on old comic books to go through them and list them for sale? 

The majority of collectors do not sell their books. They collect to collect. It's in their genes.

[divad]

On 1/6/2022 at 7:44 AM, valiantman said:

Those aren't generally high grade, they're just random grades, usually about the same as the year they were published.  (1985 raw books are around 8.5, 1990 books are around 9.0, etc.)

Everything you said was correct except this. This is totally unsupported conjecture on your individual assessment (which is anecdotal at best.)