How rare are modern newsstand editions? 6 6

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:44 PM, Lazyboy said:

So he can't even browse feeBay properly?

Like I said: zero credibility.

I wasn't suggesting that. His post says from the time he took the data.

 

Side note : Currently there are only 2 copies listed of the Churchill both at MCS . Only that 1 Turner that sold on December 29 from a relist that did not sell on December 21. Still that is only 3 copies in the 90 days an record sits on ebay . 

[onlyweaknesskryptonite]

Let me elaborate.  

My original intention of asking is due to the fact I have several Turner Cover books including Supergirl #1 , however when I tried looking,  I only found direct copies. 

So I figured I would search to see if I could find any of them. Unfortunately I only saw the previously sold one and the two Churchill books for that Large price. 

I only posted those to confirm. 

[paqart]

On 1/17/2022 at 12:58 AM, onlyweaknesskryptonite said:

Let me elaborate.  

My original intention of asking is due to the fact I have several Turner Cover books including Supergirl #1 , however when I tried looking,  I only found direct copies. 

So I figured I would search to see if I could find any of them. Unfortunately I only saw the previously sold one and the two Churchill books for that Large price. 

I only posted those to confirm. 

Got it. For the record, I started buying every newsstand copy of any issue of Supergirl I saw, as long as the price was reasonable about 3 years ago. To date, I have 8 copies of the Turner #1 and 4 copies of the Churchill #1. However, I haven't seen one for about 4-5 months. Admittedly, that one in December got by me, partly because I've been focusing on Catwoman 1 and 3 (2002), which I've been looking for since 2019. As for the whole series, I still don't have that. Like Catwoman, the later issues are tough to find. I have gotten a lot closer to completing the run recently but until I get the package in the mail, I don't count it.

The underlying point of all this is that these may well be much rarer than 1:100, while at any given time that is already true. In other words, you can't count on finding one of these whenever you feel like looking. In contrast, every time I've looked, including now, I have been able to find (but can't afford) comics like ASM#1, Hulk #1, etc from 1962-63.

[Warlord]

On 1/16/2022 at 11:20 PM, paqart said:

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).

You're putting in a lot of effort!  Thanks for the info. 

[FlyingDonut]

I realize this is old in this thread but the point about there being more HG copies of newsstands of keys is most likely correct. I can confirm that me and other collectors/flippers that I worked with/knew at the time bought every newsstand copy that we could find of the following books three weeks after the direct ones dropped: Wolverine 1, Fantastic Four 232, Thor 337, ASM 252, Secret Wars 8, Batman 428 (this was the book that had the highest fast pop), ASM 300 (it wasn't because of Venom, it was because of the cover), Man of Steel 18, and Superman 75. We weren't buying books because of "keys" - we were buying books that were either first of super hot artists (Wolverine and Byrne FF) or cool covers.

They're all gone, of course, but I had probably 500 newsstand ASM 300s that went directly from racks into bags/boards/boxes. Mrs. Donut still remembers driving around hitting 7-11s in Northern Virginia. She wasn't Mrs. Donut at the time and, given those trips, it is surprising she became so.

The Batman 428 was, just anecdotally, a nearly guaranteed $15 profit on every book - I did a show the Saturday after the book was available on newsstands and was selling them as fast as I could put them out for $20

[fastballspecial]

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

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.
 

Your data is finding what many of us have suspected for a long time. That being said I encourage you to revisit your 
numbers periodically to get a better grasp. Once you have some data points over a year you can really start to 
a better complete grasp. The 1/100 concept was pulled out of thin air so this is a much better idea. Ideally we can 
never get completely accurate, but this will help over time immensely. I think if you can show availability over time
it gives a much clearer picture. There will always be copies that slide thru by not listing correctly or in sets. 

[paqart]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:00 PM, fastballspecial said:

Your data is finding what many of us have suspected for a long time. That being said I encourage you to revisit your 
numbers periodically to get a better grasp. Once you have some data points over a year you can really start to 
a better complete grasp. The 1/100 concept was pulled out of thin air so this is a much better idea. Ideally we can 
never get completely accurate, but this will help over time immensely. I think if you can show availability over time
it gives a much clearer picture. There will always be copies that slide thru by not listing correctly or in sets. 

This is why I post these things every once in a while. I do search sets also btw (and did for this) but if it doesn't include a shot of the bar code, I don't count it as direct or newsstand.

The part of this analysis that I think is most important is this:
1) We have the numbers for direct first, second, and third printings

2) The numbers show descending orders

3) Both second and third printings appear on the marketplace 8 times more frequently than their proportion to first printings would suggest

4) Newsstands appear in the marketplace less frequently than second or third printings

5) If newsstand availability on the marketplace follows the same trend as second and third printings (8x over-representation), they are far more rare than has previously been suggested, possibly as high as 1:800.

6) Titles with low orders and the number of Diamond accounts show that DC is willing to print comics that cannot reach every outlet in significant numbers unless other outlets don't order any copies. This calls into question the argument that DC wouldn't bother printing less than a certain number of comics.

The bottom line is that estimates that late newsstands account for 1% of the total print run, may be true but survivability of those same comics may be around 10% of that number, or .01% of the total run. Add in the rarity of high grade survivors, and we have an explanation for why these show up so seldom on the market.

Star Wars #1 in 1977 had a huge print run of around 1,000,000, but there were supposedly only 1,500 copies printed of the 35 cent variant. That is a 1:666 ratio. That means it is possible that modern newsstands, some of them anyway, are not only more rare than that as a proportion of the total print run but in absolute numbers as well because the comics had much smaller print runs.

This wouldn't matter if there was no demand for modern comics but that is not the case. With a newsstand edition of almost everything published since 1979, there is a newsstand version of almost every key published. More than that, filmmakers tend to mine more recent storylines, such as the Winter Soldier, thus creating keys out of scarce moderns.

[mr_highgrade]

On 1/16/2022 at 7:51 PM, paqart said:

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.
 

I was actively buying newsies at that time period and I don't ever recall seeing any Supergirl or Catwoman comics.

I did pick this up though. 

 

 

 

 

 

[FlyingDonut]

On 1/16/2022 at 7:51 PM, paqart said:

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.
 

There's a lot of words above, but note that the Catwomans (anyway) do exist, if that was ever an issue.

[paqart]

On 1/17/2022 at 4:56 PM, FlyingDonut said:

There's a lot of words above, but note that the Catwomans (anyway) do exist, if that was ever an issue.

The issue isn't whether they exist, they do. Someone has this issue for sale right now on eBay for around $180. The only thing that keeps me from buying it is that I don't want to spend so much on such an awkward cover. That said, it is the only newsstand Catwoman after issue 39 available for sale on eBay as of when I looked most recently. On that occasion, I went all the way to the end of the listings, which was something like 18 pages at 50 listings a page. It is possible that a couple of the sets had newsstands in them but they weren't visible in the photos. I've also seen #64 and #53, both times before I got interested in the series. Having said all that, I have serious doubts about #1 and #3. Given the availability of every issue around them (hard to find but possible to find), I'm surprised I haven't seen them yet. Even Mile High doesn't have them listed. Like me, their online catalog skips right over them by offering #2 and #4, and then many of the next few dozen before drying up around #40.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

This is why I post these things every once in a while. I do search sets also btw (and did for this) but if it doesn't include a shot of the bar code, I don't count it as direct or newsstand.

The part of this analysis that I think is most important is this:
1) We have the numbers for direct first, second, and third printings

We have some numbers for those.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

2) The numbers show descending orders

3) Both second and third printings appear on the marketplace 8 times more frequently than their proportion to first printings would suggest

4) Newsstands appear in the marketplace less frequently than second or third printings

Later printings were ordered by people who sell comics. If demand for the issue dropped between ordering and arrival, the stores were stuck with those copies but still want to sell them, because that is what they do. Most Newsstands were not (initially) purchased by people whose business it is to sell comics.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

5) If newsstand availability on the marketplace follows the same trend as second and third printings (8x over-representation), they are far more rare than has previously been suggested, possibly as high as 1:800.

feeBay is still not the marketplace. It is merely a small, but highly visible piece.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

6) Titles with low orders and the number of Diamond accounts show that DC is willing to print comics that cannot reach every outlet in significant numbers unless other outlets don't order any copies. This calls into question the argument that DC wouldn't bother printing less than a certain number of comics.

Again, selling a relatively small number to the Direct Market is vastly different than printing enough to sell the same amount through the newsstand channel.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

The bottom line is that estimates that late newsstands account for 1% of the total print run

There exists no such credible estimate. Not even close.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

Star Wars #1 in 1977 had a huge print run of around 1,000,000

That is for all printings.

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

 but there were supposedly only 1,500 copies printed of the 35 cent variant.

Source (I mean a reliable, credible one)?

On 1/17/2022 at 1:32 PM, paqart said:

With a newsstand edition of almost everything published since 1979, there is a newsstand version of almost every key published.

Not really, no. There are lots of comics since then that didn't have newsstand distribution, including many keys and other popular comics.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/17/2022 at 11:22 AM, FlyingDonut said:

I realize this is old in this thread but the point about there being more HG copies of newsstands of keys is most likely correct. I can confirm that me and other collectors/flippers that I worked with/knew at the time bought every newsstand copy that we could find of the following books three weeks after the direct ones dropped: Wolverine 1, Fantastic Four 232, Thor 337, ASM 252, Secret Wars 8, Batman 428 (this was the book that had the highest fast pop), ASM 300 (it wasn't because of Venom, it was because of the cover), Man of Steel 18, and Superman 75. We weren't buying books because of "keys" - we were buying books that were either first of super hot artists (Wolverine and Byrne FF) or cool covers.

They're all gone, of course, but I had probably 500 newsstand ASM 300s that went directly from racks into bags/boards/boxes. Mrs. Donut still remembers driving around hitting 7-11s in Northern Virginia. She wasn't Mrs. Donut at the time and, given those trips, it is surprising she became so.

The Batman 428 was, just anecdotally, a nearly guaranteed $15 profit on every book - I did a show the Saturday after the book was available on newsstands and was selling them as fast as I could put them out for $20

MSH Secret Wars 8? Really?

Anyway, you've seen and bought a lot of comics. Do you agree with the assertion that others have made that Newsstands are nearly impossible to find in back issue stock?

[FlyingDonut]

I think we can make a relatively informed guess as to the minimum number of newsstand copies there were for any single copy based on the number of Barnes and Noble stores in 2013 - the last outlet for newsstand comics. There were 675 stores, so what do we think, five per store? That's 3375 total books, which is far far far more than 1%.

[FlyingDonut]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:19 PM, Lazyboy said:

MSH Secret Wars 8? Really?

Anyway, you've seen and bought a lot of comics. Do you agree with the assertion that others have made that Newsstands are nearly impossible to find in back issue stock?

I think post 2000 newsstands are nearly impossible to find in back issue stock as comic store back issue stock is just rotating amongst comic stores and there's no real injection of books into the system. Newsstand pre maybe 1995 are very easy to find. I would argue, actually, that the scarcer copies of early 80s books would be the direct sale covers (ducks).

and absolutely on Secret Wars 8 - ASM 252 had come out eight months earlier. It was free money. Please, however, do not buy the retconning that Marvel Team Up 141 was a big book then. It was not.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/17/2022 at 4:20 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I think we can make a relatively informed guess as to the minimum number of newsstand copies there were for any single copy based on the number of Barnes and Noble stores in 2013 - the last outlet for newsstand comics. There were 675 stores, so what do we think, five per store? That's 3375 total books, which is far far far more than 1%.

Don't forget Canada, which still had newsstand distribution, but didn't have B&N.

[divad]

On 1/17/2022 at 2:24 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I think post 2000 newsstands are nearly impossible to find in back issue stock as comic store back issue stock is just rotating amongst comic stores and there's no real injection of books into the system.

Agreed, as in zero. They have enough of their own books to sell.

[divad]

One of my Barnes & Noble rack purchases:

[divad]

On 1/17/2022 at 2:25 PM, Lazyboy said:

Don't forget Canada, which still had newsstand distribution, but didn't have B&N.

7-11's? or the equivalent?

 

[FlyingDonut]

On 1/17/2022 at 5:25 PM, Lazyboy said:

Don't forget Canada, which still had newsstand distribution, but didn't have B&N.

Correct, but the B&N number is a number that we can show as a specific number. I don't know how many Canadian outlets there were so whatever the number is will only be higher than that.

[Lazyboy]

On 1/17/2022 at 4:24 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I think post 2000 newsstands are nearly impossible to find in back issue stock as comic store back issue stock is just rotating amongst comic stores and there's no real injection of books into the system.

Oh, I don't doubt that they are generally harder to find as they get more recent, because that is expected for the reason you mentioned.

On 1/17/2022 at 4:24 PM, FlyingDonut said:

Newsstand pre maybe 1995 are very easy to find.

Yes, that is my experience as well. Even after that, I've seen a fair number and have quite a few despite nearly never specifically seeking them out. 

On 1/17/2022 at 4:24 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I would argue, actually, that the scarcer copies of early 80s books would be the direct sale covers (ducks).

On 1/17/2022 at 4:24 PM, FlyingDonut said:

and absolutely on Secret Wars 8 - ASM 252 had come out eight months earlier. It was free money. Please, however, do not buy the retconning that Marvel Team Up 141 was a big book then. It was not.

I don't buy that MTU was a big book then, but from what people have said, I didn't think MSHSW 8 was particularly hot when it came out either. If you look at the comic shop ads that were in comics back then, #8 was just another issue from the highly-popular series, and those guys certainly had no problem quickly jacking up the prices on hot issues (like ASM 252).

If you were able to load up and sell them, that's your experience and I don't doubt it, but that issue doesn't seem to fit with the others you mentioned, even more so than a few of the others that aren't the instant mega-hits that everybody knows about.