CGC now featuring newsstand copy designation 6 6

[Lazyboy]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:40 PM, valiantman said:

Here's the bottom line.

Some people DO pay more for some newsstands, despite all the whining and complaining.  A lot more.

Amazing Spider-Man #300 is still the most submitted CGC book of all time.

CGC 9.8 Amazing Spider-Man #300 is about $5,000 in direct edition and $18,000 in newsstand.

If the recorded sales on eBay are not representative. If the GPAnalysis records aren't a good sample, then that means there should be other places to buy newsstands in bulk, but we just haven't seen them in the marketplace.

No one leaves the chests of gold at the bottom of the ocean if they actually know where the ship is wrecked.

Talk is cheap. CGC 9.8 Amazing Spider-Man #300 Newsstand is not.

(...and no, I don't own one. It's not bias. It's data.)

Yet again, I'll point out that came AFTER the concerted misinformation campaign that suckered some people into believing Newsstands are far, far rarer than they actually are. There was no Newsstand market that even remotely resembled what we see now before that.

And if that price is accurate, somebody is in for a universe of hurt. Hell, the fools who paid $5000 for a copy of ASM 300 had better have a high tolerance for pain.

[Lazyboy]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:58 PM, MAR1979 said:

 

If you (slabdata )are able to scrape the new newsstand notation data then in a couple (? not sure how long) years time there should be a fair amount of date to model decent projections. Starting from the inception of the data date.  Please feel free to correct and expand on what I've said

They will have their own entries in the system like any other variant, so he'll have that data. But that data will still only tell us what people who use CGC sent to CGC and will undoubtedly be marred by CGC's constant mislabeling.

[Coverless 9.8]

When the direct market dies will those books more sought after too?!  

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:33 PM, Coverless 9.8 said:

When the direct market dies will those books more sought after too?!  

I did think of that too, churn it out, we need a new idea for a distribution! 

New mailman stamped for how many times it's been shipped without shaken comic syndrome. Only shipped to cgc and back once,  by a little old lady on a Sunday 

Original owner? I might pay for that! 

Edited September 28, 2022 by ADAMANTIUM

[MAR1979]

On 9/27/2022 at 10:22 PM, Lazyboy said:

They will have their own entries in the system like any other variant, so he'll have that data. But that data will still only tell us what people who use CGC sent to CGC and will undoubtedly be marred by CGC's constant mislabeling.

Might also show higher newsstand submissions than what was "estimated"....  Chuck and others maybe getting scared as over next couple of years the numbers will probably skew higher than their swags???

Edited September 28, 2022 by MAR1979

[valiantman]

On 9/27/2022 at 8:58 PM, MAR1979 said:

 

If you (slabdata ) are able to scrape the new newsstand notation data then in a couple (? not sure how long) years time there should be a fair amount of data to model decent projections. Starting from the inception of the data. Please feel free to correct and expand on what I've said

Well, the primary problem with the CGC Census will be what has been described already in this topic.

If there are 5,000 copies of a book already CGC graded, before CGC adds the Newsstand notation, then it would look like there are 100 newsstands and 5,100 direct editions if the next 200 submissions are 50/50 newsstand/direct.

Some claim on a 51:1 ratio of direct to newsstand from the CGC Census will be the easy number (and extremely wrong), and 1:1 will be harder to calculate, but more accurate.

What needs to happen is an evaluation of what is slabbed AFTER the Newsstand notation is added, which would clearly show that 200 copies were submitted since that date, where 100 were newsstand and 100 direct, for the example I've given. 

 

[valiantman]

On 9/27/2022 at 9:02 PM, Lazyboy said:

Yet again, I'll point out that came AFTER the concerted misinformation campaign that suckered some people into believing Newsstands are far, far rarer than they actually are. There was no Newsstand market that even remotely resembled what we see now before that.

And if that price is accurate, somebody is in for a universe of hurt. Hell, the fools who paid $5000 for a copy of ASM 300 had better have a high tolerance for pain.

CGC 9.8 ASM #300 has proven to be about 80 direct editions for every 1 newsstand in CGC 9.8 condition.

The multiplier is 3.6 when you compare $5,000 to $18,000. I'm not saying the comparison will always be 80-to-1, but it has been.

There are 22+ years of CGC grading and ASM #300 is the most submitted book of all time.

People can only participate in the actual market... not some theoretical market for unknown quantities that just haven't surfaced yet.

What should the market do with pricing on CGC 9.8 ASM #300 Newsstand (relative to the market price for Direct) that would make sense... in your opinion?

Edited September 28, 2022 by valiantman

[MAR1979]

On 9/27/2022 at 11:10 PM, valiantman said:

CGC 9.8 ASM #300 has proven to be about 80 direct editions for every 1 newsstand in CGC 9.8 condition.

The multiplier is 3.6 when you compare $5,000 to $18,000, but the availability is 80-to-1.

What should the market do with pricing that would make sense... in your opinion?

Recent sales have dropped to $4200 on the Direct Sale but I digress.  The only determiner is how much more rubes will pay to have a barcode rather than a disembodied Spidey head.  In my case for comics that I owned the newsstands as a child the amount is an additional 10%. Hmmm I think I just called myself a rube? Any higher than 10% and I go for the direct sale.

As for Direct Sale books I had as a child, in the rare case that my copies from back then I do not feel are candidates for a grading submission, I go after a direct sale graded.  I am "memory" based collector I seek what I remember, which is why CPV's are of rather low interest to me.

Edited September 28, 2022 by MAR1979

[valiantman]

On 9/27/2022 at 10:31 PM, MAR1979 said:

As for Direct Sale books I had as a child, in the rare case that my copies from back then I do not feel are candidates for a grading submission, I go after a direct sale graded.  I am "memory" based collector I seek what I remember...

I'm also a "memory" based collector, which is why I seek newsstands. My hometown had zero comic shops. There were no direct editions. There was not a place to buy bags and boards. The newsstand books I could buy were in the path of the misting nozzles for the produce in the grocery store. Newsstands in high grade were unicorns in my hometown. Buying direct editions with bags and boards in bigger cities seemed like cheating. 

[paqart]

On 9/27/2022 at 11:38 PM, valiantman said:

I'm also a "memory" based collector, which is why I seek newsstands. My hometown had zero comic shops. There were no direct editions. There was not a place to buy bags and boards. The newsstand books I could buy were in the path of the misting nozzles for the produce in the grocery store. Newsstands in high grade were unicorns in my hometown. Buying direct editions with bags and boards in bigger cities seemed like cheating. 

Same here, though in my case, the problem was spinner racks and careless handling at the 7-11. I also remember encountering subscription copies regularly, folded down the middle and some with an address label right on the comic.

Edited September 28, 2022 by paqart

[Pittsburgh]

The collectors who seem to be against the designation are coming off as very rude.  However you base your objections, calling other people "rubes" or "suckers" is quite sad if that's part of why you don't like something.

I enjoy newsstands and have actively sought them out for my collection.  I know that they can be harder to find but would never put an actual newsstand ratio in the listing (which I personally have never seen on eBay) if I ever sold.  To each, their own.  I completely respect paqart and valiantman for at least attempting to justify their reasoning. 

I'm happy that CGC will designate newsstands, but, as someone who has never sent in comics for grading (because I don't care to), I'll just keep collecting my raw versions. 

[Qalyar]

I hate that there's been so much rampant and unvarnished market manipulation with these books, because I do think the distribution format variants are worth collecting as their own entities. The people who've tried to argue that their books are worth $56146 because DM:NS print ratios are 2359:1 or whatever nonsense have obviously done a lot of damage to the public perception, though.

[Sigur Ros]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:46 PM, Pittsburgh said:

The collectors who seem to be against the designation are coming off as very rude.  However you base your objections, calling other people "rubes" or "suckers" is quite sad if that's part of why you don't like something.

No kidding.

It was ridiculous watching the name calling and the "it's all lies!"..."stop repeating that!!"...  followed by no explanation or supporting evidence.

Anyway, newsstands are worth more in most cases which is proven by people paying more.  Whether people like that or not, doesn't matter.

 

[ADAMANTIUM]

On 9/28/2022 at 12:31 PM, Sigur Ros said:

No kidding.

It was ridiculous watching the name calling and the "it's all lies!"..."stop repeating that!!"...  followed by no explanation or supporting evidence.

Anyway, newsstands are worth more in most cases which is proven by people paying more.  Whether people like that or not, doesn't matter.

 

I hope that it gets easier to speak about, we all have different research and experiences, yet to be civil was my goal.

[Sigur Ros]

On 9/27/2022 at 11:30 AM, Dr. Balls said:

This discussion jarred loose a few memories from the olden days. One, I had a fellow comic collector and shop owner who hated newsstands (in the 90s) because he felt the UPC cheapened the look of the book, and he always went for direct market books for his personal collection.

Same here.  I shopped at multiple LCS' so it was all direct.  But outside of that, at the conventions.. if there were 2 of the same book, I'd pick the one that didn't have the ugly bar code.  This was back when the ratios were more even and there was no NS premium.

Only times I did were when there was no option, or those ugly Marvel diamond price boxes were the only alternative.   Hate them more than I hated bar codes.

 

[Sigur Ros]

On 9/28/2022 at 1:33 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

I hope that it gets easier to speak about, we all have different research and experiences, yet to be civil was my goal.

Yea.

I wasn't including you in that BTW.  👍

[valiantman]

I'm fortunate (is that the right word?) enough to remember when discussion of newsstands first started on this board. Anyone who pointed out the availability in the visible market (like eBay) was immediately met with objections of "there is no difference" and "no one really cares" and "there's no way to know the numbers".

The pendulum has now swung the opposite way, and the objections are "people are overpaying for a small difference" and "people shouldn't care" because "the data isn't representative".

Do you know what doesn't care about these objections? The market.

If someone is lying, huckstering, carnival barkering the ratios into insane estimates and "causing" others to overpay, the market will correct it.  If there is plenty of supply, the prices will fall.  If there isn't enough supply, the prices will rise.

We don't need anyone to warn us that Incredible Hulk #181 isn't rare, despite what many sellers put in the item title and description. The market shows us every day.

If newsstands aren't anything special, then the market will prove it.  If they are significantly harder to find and the market reflects this fact over and over again, then no amount of "you're all wrong" comments will matter.

[FlyingDonut]

On 9/28/2022 at 1:31 PM, Sigur Ros said:

No kidding.

It was ridiculous watching the name calling and the "it's all lies!"..."stop repeating that!!"...  followed by no explanation or supporting evidence.

Anyway, newsstands are worth more in most cases which is proven by people paying more.  Whether people like that or not, doesn't matter.

 

I"m going to try one more time, then I'm just going to leave.

All of these things are true:
1) The marketplace has stated newsstands are worth more.
2) Collecting niche things is fun and rewarding and hard.
3) Buy what you like.
4) Collect what you like.
5) Newsstands - especially post-2010 - are remarkably harder to find than direct sale copies and there's a real push to get them from collectors.
6) There has been a steady lessening of newsstands printed compared to directs, both in real numbers and percentages
7) Newsstands in high grade are extremely difficult to find and the marketplace puts a real premium on them.
8) No one has any idea as to how many newsstands were printed.
9) There is no way to make a ratio of newsstands to directs that is based on anything but conjecture. We can make educated guesses, but even those guesses are just that, guesses.
10) People who push the ratio - not the concept that newstands are rarer (they are) or harder to find (they are) or are worth more (they are) but the ratio - as gospel are hucksters and trying to influence the marketplace.

 

[Qalyar]

Honestly, one of the things that makes me sad about -- not everyone, but broadly speaking -- the current state of our hobby is that the primary concern about everything is so often "what it's worth". I think that's what makes the discussion about these books so likely to become heated. And I know, this is a business, not a hobby, for a lot of people here (it used to be mine). But we're supposed to be collectors, too, right? And I think one of the really compelling things about the distribution variants -- especially at the ends of their timeline -- is the story they tell.

The early DM books, the ones with the slashed barcodes, exist because of the growing industry influence of dedicated comic book stores. The whole point of that distinction was that direct-market books weren't returnable; if they didn't sell, too bad, the store still had to deal with them. The comic store as many of us know it, with all those long boxes of back issues to browse through and discover, exists in a large part because of the financial gamble that those early slash-coded books represent. To some extent, we're here because of those books. And then, on the other end of the spectrum, you've got the late newsstands. Comic book stores had won; they hadn't just co-existed with returnable distribution, they pushed returnable distribution out of the market entirely. But those last, late newsstands -- sold mostly in mall bookstores, but also airport kiosks, convenience stores, and a handful of other outlets -- were the publishers still trying, even as finances turned against them, to reach out with their stories to people who would never think to walk into a store dedicated to the hobby. Or the smaller publishers along the way who gambled on allowing returnable distribution just to get wider exposure, facing the real risk that a bad month of returns might cost them the money they needed to stay in the game.

Yeah, there's a big stretch of time in the middle when major-publisher newsstand copies aren't really anything special, when the distribution was equal or close to it, where maybe the only thing one version has over the other is that direct market books were a little more likely to be sold to someone who cared more about their condition than their contents. But the rise and fall of distribution variants is the story of comics books' modern history, and we get to see it on the covers of the books we collect. Surely that's at least as worthy of our collecting attention as, say, books that are only special because of cover art that a specific retailer paid to have exclusive distribution rights to?

[valiantman]

On 9/28/2022 at 1:06 PM, FlyingDonut said:

I"m going to try one more time, then I'm just going to leave.

All of these things are true:
1) The marketplace has stated newsstands are worth more.
2) Collecting niche things is fun and rewarding and hard.
3) Buy what you like.
4) Collect what you like.
5) Newsstands - especially post-2010 - are remarkably harder to find than direct sale copies and there's a real push to get them from collectors.
6) There has been a steady lessening of newsstands printed compared to directs, both in real numbers and percentages
7) Newsstands in high grade are extremely difficult to find and the marketplace puts a real premium on them.
8) No one has any idea as to how many newsstands were printed.
9) There is no way to make a ratio of newsstands to directs that is based on anything but conjecture. We can make educated guesses, but even those guesses are just that, guesses.
10) People who push the ratio - not the concept that newstands are rarer (they are) or harder to find (they are) or are worth more (they are) but the ratio - as gospel are hucksters and trying to influence the marketplace.

Agreed on all 10 points.

We could spend the next 50 years calculating the ratios of newsstands to direct for various books at varying CGC grades and even if we get the same answers every time, it wouldn't be fact. It would be evidence that continues to support the conjecture and educated guess.

The problem is that books which really are 80 times harder to find (over and over) aren't necessarily 1:80 in reality (so it's not gospel), and there certainly isn't evidence they are 1:1,000 as some might exaggerate somewhere online, but the objection to the actual premiums being paid is also irrational.

People seem to be objecting to prices that aren't very extreme, as if it is completely ridiculous to pay 3.6 times the price for a book that's only turned up once in every 80 sales.  Should they be a similiar price? If not, then why is 3.6 too much? Why not 20 times the direct price? Why not 40 times the direct price? Is 3.6 really an insane multiplier?

What should the price be?  I keep seeing people say, "I might pay up to 10% extra", but a book that turns up once in every eighty sales is going to have a higher premium than one that turns up once in every three sales.

It's all math. It can't be 10% every time.

Edited September 28, 2022 by valiantman