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Valiant Newsstands of Solar, Magnus, Bloodshot, and X-0 seems to be the rarest of all comic production company newsstands....
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37 posts in this topic

I haven't found any graded ones of the four main valiant titles mentioned above in over a year on ebay. I have found some raw copies but are tough to find in nice condition...As a reference Spawn #1 newsstands are thought to exist in a ratio of 1:100...to make things more challenging to collect newsstands is that they are often in less condition than their direct sales counterparts....I have seen rarity newsstand valiant ratios of 1:300 to their direct sales and some of the late Bloodshot books were printed at around 10,000 copies thus presumably  less than 50 newsstands of some of these late bloodshot issues exist which seems awfully low...try finding some and you will see what im talking about....wanted to see what other fellow valiant fans have encountered...I have almost all valiant books ever produced preunity and post unity in mutiple copies...(they have great stories and great art making for some high collecting quality comic books)...i didn't even know valiant had newsstand until about 6 months ago so I know these things are pretty tough to come by...

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On 7/15/2022 at 11:14 PM, pirog said:

I haven't found any graded ones of the four main valiant titles mentioned above in over a year on ebay. I have found some raw copies but are tough to find in nice condition...As a reference Spawn #1 newsstands are thought to exist in a ratio of 1:100...to make things more challenging to collect newsstands is that they are often in less condition than their direct sales counterparts....I have seen rarity newsstand valiant ratios of 1:300 to their direct sales and some of the late Bloodshot books were printed at around 10,000 copies thus presumably  less than 50 newsstands of some of these late bloodshot issues exist which seems awfully low...

50 copies ?  In the mid 1990's that would been negative revenue.  Not sure what the minimum amount would have been then but no way only 50 were printed and distributed.

@valiantman might have a more accurate estimate and more info. if not then no one will :)


I was a big Valiant fan until just after Unity. For me it fell off a cliff.  Too bad the "Shooter" era for me was something special.  My top 3 favorite issues are Solar 10, Shadowman 1 and X-0 4.

 

Edited by MAR1979
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On 7/15/2022 at 11:42 PM, MAR1979 said:

50 copies ?  In the mid 1990's that would been negative revenue.  Not sure what the minimum amount would have been then but no way only 50 were printed and distributed.

@MAR1979 I think the newsstands were just printed to test or pilot the "non-comic store" market and therefore not expected to generate much revenue and they also experimented with different paper stock for SOME of the newsstands...at least this is what I have read

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On 7/16/2022 at 12:42 AM, pirog said:

@MAR1979 I think the newsstands were just printed to test or pilot the "non-comic store" market and therefore not expected to generate much revenue and they also experimented with different paper stock for SOME of the newsstands...at least this is what I have read

50 also isn’t enough for a test.

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On 7/16/2022 at 6:57 AM, JTLarsen said:

50 also isn’t enough for a test.

Agreed! Back then I serious doubt Valiant would have run less than 1000. Which still may have been under minimum print run?

Once valiantman joins the convo we'll likley have the facts

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On 7/15/2022 at 11:14 PM, pirog said:

I haven't found any graded ones of the four main valiant titles mentioned above in over a year on ebay. I have found some raw copies but are tough to find in nice condition...As a reference Spawn #1 newsstands are thought to exist in a ratio of 1:100...to make things more challenging to collect newsstands is that they are often in less condition than their direct sales counterparts....I have seen rarity newsstand valiant ratios of 1:300 to their direct sales and some of the late Bloodshot books were printed at around 10,000 copies thus presumably  less than 50 newsstands of some of these late bloodshot issues exist which seems awfully low...try finding some and you will see what im talking about....wanted to see what other fellow valiant fans have encountered...I have almost all valiant books ever produced preunity and post unity in mutiple copies...(they have great stories and great art making for some high collecting quality comic books)...i didn't even know valiant had newsstand until about 6 months ago so I know these things are pretty tough to come by...

Trying to apply ratios to figure out the Newsstand print run of a book printed in low numbers is a flawed methodology. It might work for books with much larger print run, where you have a decent sample size from which to make estimates. As pointed out, it doesn't make financial sense to print 50 copies of a book (unless you're marketing it a limited edition and charging a premium).

Valiant experimented with Newsstands foe about a year and a half, but only 2 titles (Bloodshot and X-O) are confirmed to have Newsstand Editions for that full period. For some titles there are only about a year's worth. There are a couple of price variant amongst the Newsstand Editions. There is also a decent time period where the possibility of Newsstand Editions exist for a large number of titles (since they all had barcodes then) but for which no known Newsstand Editions exist. More info:

http://www.valiantfans.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23543

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On 7/16/2022 at 6:22 PM, Lazyboy said:

I hope Jordan Peele doesn't think I'm ripping him off, but here we go:

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

image.thumb.png.1b6c3c2702b783a50cb0eb2fca18be3f.png

Edited by pirog
clarification
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On 7/16/2022 at 5:30 PM, pirog said:

Bloodshot late issues around 10,000 print run...factor in the newstand scarcity and you virtually have something that only a few on the planet can collect...CAPISH???

Factor in what Newsstand scarcity? All the numbers you posted are complete and utter garbage with no relation to reality. How are there so many of you people who believe these absurd, made-up numbers from lying, self-serving, dumb :censored:?

Even the print runs from the site in your image are suspect for the issues with newsstand distribution, because they're probably based on the available Direct distribution (estimated) numbers, which obviously do not include Newsstands.

Do I know how many Newsstands were printed and distributed? Do I know how many Newsstands are still out there or where they are? No, but unlike you, I understand that I don't know that and don't believe ridiculous nonsense.

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On 7/16/2022 at 7:00 PM, Lazyboy said:

Factor in what Newsstand scarcity? All the numbers you posted are complete and utter garbage with no relation to reality. How are there so many of you people who believe these absurd, made-up numbers from lying, self-serving, dumb :censored:?

Even the print runs from the site in your image are suspect for the issues with newsstand distribution, because they're probably based on the available Direct distribution (estimated) numbers, which obviously do not include Newsstands.

Do I know how many Newsstands were printed and distributed? Do I know how many Newsstands are still out there or where they are? No, but unlike you, I understand that I don't know that and don't believe ridiculous nonsense.

the numbers for the Rai's 3 and 4 and harbinger 1 are right at what I remember them to be back in 1992 when they were first released....now exact numbers are ALWAYS tough but these numbers are most certainly within the BALLPARK actual number i would say...if you have a "better picture" of the reality to the numbers please share...

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On 7/16/2022 at 5:28 PM, pirog said:

image.thumb.png.1b6c3c2702b783a50cb0eb2fca18be3f.png

The Bloodshot numbers are from Comichron, for direct edition numbers from Diamond Distributors.

Example: Bloodshot #49 is estimated at about 9,800 made, which comes from the 12.7 index on Comichron for February 1996, where each index is estimated to be 660 copies.  12.7 times 660 = 8,382

https://comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/1996/1996-02Diamond.html

Valiant (Acclaim) was exclusive to Diamond at that point, so the 9,800 estimate for direct editions is possibly too high, since 8,382 is the Comichron estimate and it's about 15% lower than the 9,800 estimate showing on the Valiant site.

Again, we don't know how many Valiant newsstands were originally printed, but that's much less important than looking at how many are available 25 years later. Unless someone finds a pile of unsold newsstand issues in some warehouse, the Valiant newsstands didn't survive by the thousands... so it's possible only a few hundred still exist today.  It really makes no difference if there were 100,000 or 1,000 of some book twenty-five years ago, if only hundreds exist today then only hundreds exist today.

Edited by valiantman
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On 7/16/2022 at 7:34 PM, valiantman said:

The Bloodshot numbers are from Comichron, for direct edition numbers from Diamond Distributors.

Example: Bloodshot #49 is estimated at about 9,800 made, which comes from the 12.7 index on Comichron for February 1996, where each index is estimated to be 660 copies.  12.7 times 660 = 8,382

https://comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/1996/1996-02Diamond.html

Valiant (Acclaim) was exclusive to Diamond at that point, so the 9,800 estimate for direct editions is possibly too high, since 8,382 is the Comichron estimate is about 15% lower than the 9,800 estimate on the Valiant site.

Wow...nice knowledge addition to this post...I read alot of your posts regarding valiant books and probably have tripled my knowledge regarding them so far...for sure the late bloodshots as well as other late valiant books are nice to "collect" from a scarcity standpoint...the newsstands of some of these valiant books are very tough to come by especially in nice condition (as you pointed out)...sometimes a "collectible" can be "too scarce" to reach a critical mass so more than just a handful of people can enjoy...i.e. you need a collector base to further thrive the collectibility of things...i looking forward to the bloodshot Part 2 movie hopefully coming out soon as well as others...this helps the valiant universe of characters as EVERYONE can partake and know such as Marvel and DC stuff...enjoy your evening Mr. Valiant

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Looking at popular early-to-mid-1990s books like Spawn #9, where CGC has been separating the newsstand issues for several years in the CGC census, we can see that CGC has graded more than 6,000 copies of Spawn #9 since mid-2013, and just under 10% have been newsstand. 

http://www.cgcdata.com/cgc/search/title/:Spawn:/desc/no/issue/9/label/all/orderby/year/variants/yes/census/220712/censusprior/130701/

It seems reasonable that Image was trying to sell at least 10% above their direct edition numbers at newsstands in the early 1990s.  It's also true that newsstand books (overall) might sell about half as many copies as they printed, then unsold books were returned for credit.  If 10% newsstands are actually being submitted to CGC for Spawn #9, then perhaps 15% or 20% were printed (with around half selling and half being returned/destroyed/etc.). Alternatively, perhaps the newsstand books returned for credit didn't get destroyed and the 10% being submitted to CGC represents both sold and unsold newsstands.

Either way, it's clearly wrong to suggest anything like a 1:100 ratio with Image newsstands in the 1990s. It's more likely that it was 1:5 to 1:10 at the time, and still closer to 1:10 surviving (for CGC submissions) today.

When it comes to CGC 9.8 graded copies of Spawn #9, specifically the 2,700 copies graded since mid-2013, only 3.2% have been newsstand (versus 10% newsstand CGC submissions overall).  Still not a 1:100 ratio, but closer to 1-newsstand-for-every-30-direct when comes to graded Spawn #9 CGC 9.8 (and about 1-newsstand-for-every-14-direct for CGC 9.6).

It's likely that Valiant would have tried something similar to the Image newsstand program in the same 1990s timeframe, and perhaps up to 20% were newsstand at the time. So it's reasonable to assume there were at least 1,000 or 2,000 copies of each Valiant newsstand book printed, but they don't show up anywhere near 20% for raw books today. 

Few of the Valiant issues would have had thousands of newsstands survive until today, but it's not hard to find books like Visitor vs. The Valiant Universe #1 newsstand (which had 70,000 direct editions, so perhaps 14,000 newsstands were printed if 20% is about right), and probably a few thousand of that newsstand issue still exist today. That particular Valiant book isn't really worth submitting to CGC, but it's interesting to note that 23 copies of the Visitor vs. the Valiant Universe #1 have been submitted to CGC and 20% have been newsstand.

CGC will not separate newsstand editions for Valiant, except in the (maybe five) other cases where cover price for the direct edition was $2.95 and newsstand was $2.50. So far, CGC hasn't even separated those.

Edited by valiantman
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On 7/16/2022 at 6:30 PM, pirog said:

Bloodshot late issues around 10,000 print run...factor in the newstand scarcity and you virtually have something that only a few on the planet can collect...CAPISH???

I think when you want to assert credible confidence, maybe first figure out whether “capish” is an actual thing.

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