1970 Top Sales Comics from Statement of Publication - Total Paid Circulation 1970 1 1

[Zonker]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:02 AM, shadroch said:

Of course, there was affidavit fraud; it was an industrywide issue as the mob loved cash operations, but to argue it only affected good artists like Adams X-Men is ridiculous.  Why were speculators streaming hordes of X-Men books while his highly acclaimed Avengers run sold so well? In an industry moved by first issues, people suddenly started holding books like X-Men 56 and Green Lantern 76 for good art.

I believe for both you and me, this was a bit before our time.  Beerbohm (RIP) had a colorful history on the boards here, but I'm trusting his recollection on this point is valid:

[shadroch]

You brought up Beerbolm paying 20 cents a pop for  Conan 1s that cost 15 cents, and now use his statement that he and others were buying out distributors' allotments.

How does that relate to your allegations that people were buying stuff out the back door? A California dealer buying 600 copies of a book at a premium from someone in Nebraska seems to indicate he was unable to find anyone closer.  So much for distributors selling out the back for pennies.

You say that Bob was buying 200 copies of X-men a month.  Semi-useful information, but how many copies of Spider-Man was he buying? Was he only buying a few select books or was he buying the whole line of comics?  The information you supplied doesn't answer that.  As I read it, he was buying 200 copies a month of  X-Men and increased it when Adams took over. By 1972, Beerbolm was involved in several shops. He must have been buying hundreds of copies of most books, especially since they were all returnable.  Non-returnable books were still a year or two away.  

I still don't see what any of this has to do with affidavit fraud.

 

[Zonker]

Your first objection was that buyers could legitimately purchase wholesale at 8 cents a book, so why risk doing something shady to get them for a few cents more cheaply out the back door?  My response offered a couple of examples of hot then-recent comics selling for only a few dollars each back in the day, so the difference in paying 8 cents legitimately versus paying something less than that could make a significant difference in the profit margin.  Also, Beerbohm's recollection of paying 20 cents for Conan #1 offers a possible motive for whoever his supplier was.  If that supplier reported the 600 copies as sold, then perhaps the supplier made $72 off of Beerbohm.  But if the supplier reported all 600 as unsold, he suddenly makes $120.  Tempting, right?  And as noted above, these are 1970 dollars, not 2024 inflated dollars.

Then your second objection was that nobody speculated in premium artists at that point in time, instead the interest was all in new #1s.  My response was to show Beerbohm's recollection that Adams' arrival on X-Men caused him to start speculating on that title.  The way I read it, he started with Adams' first issue #56 at 200 copies, and increased it from there.  This was all pre-Direct Market, at this point he was buying to flip, not to stock a retail establishment.

I think we agree that affidavit fraud occurred.  Chuck's Mile High 2 accumulation is the existence-proof.  Personally, I'm agnostic whether affidavit fraud was enough by itself to move the needle to cancel the Adams or Kirby books, but I think it is an interesting theory to explore.  

Edited May 19 by Zonker
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[The humble Watcher lurking]

On 5/19/2024 at 1:10 PM, Zonker said:

And as noted above, these are 1970 dollars, not 2024 inflated dollars.

To put into the 1970`s perspective this was minimum wage in 1970.

1970

• U.S. minimum wage: $1.60
• In 2020 dollars: $10.92

https://www.gobankingrates.com/money/economy/minimum-wage-year-were-born/

So buying those hot artists and number 1s at 10 to 20 cents a piece and then selling them to the back market for a dollar to two dollars a piece was a great deal back then. Those comic book dealers in the know were cleaning up. 

 

[Zonker]

Here's the relevant section from Beerbohm's CBA article

[shadroch]

On 5/19/2024 at 6:17 AM, Zonker said:

I believe for both you and me, this was a bit before our time.  Beerbohm (RIP) had a colorful history on the boards here, but I'm trusting his recollection on this point is valid:

Out of curiosity, how do you choose when to believe a person whose past postings show an unusual relationship with the truth?  I liked Bob and enjoyed listening to his stories, but his views often contradicted reality. 

[Zonker]

On 5/25/2024 at 10:15 AM, shadroch said:

Out of curiosity, how do you choose when to believe a person whose past postings show an unusual relationship with the truth?  I liked Bob and enjoyed listening to his stories, but his views often contradicted reality. 

A fair question.  

First, I'm always suspicious when someone is the hero of their own story.  So, if someone like Chuck Rozanski or Stan Lee (or, in fairness, Jack Kirby), says something that makes them look good, I become more skeptical.  Here, it is not clear what's in it for Beerbohm to shade the truth-- is he trying to show what a savvy speculator he was, and therefore he's smarter than the rest of us?  Seems a long way to go for not much benefit.  Now if I had been following more closely some of the board's controversies with Bob (Obadiah Oldbuck, right?) I might have a different opinion.

Second, it helps if what someone is saying is consistent with other witnesses.  In the CBA article Beerbohm is quoting heavily Neal Adams' views.  But then Adams does have a motive for exaggerating his own popularity or explaining the commercial failure of some of his projects, so your mileage may vary.  Still, the Adams/Beerbohm narrative is consistent with what other people are quoted as saying about the chaotic nature of commercial decision-making at DC in the early 1970s (people like Dick Giordano and Irwin Donenfeld suggest the sales data wasn't very good at that time). 

Finally, the fact that Beerbohm's recollections made it into print in CBA does carry some weight with me.  I'm under no illusion that Jon Cooke employs an army of fact-checkers, but Cooke does frequent the con circuit, and would no doubt get grief from that community if he regularly published pieces that didn't have at least a ring of truth about them. 

[shadroch]

Bob says he was buying 200 copies of X-men because of the art. Without knowing how many copies of other books he was buying at the time, that isn't particularly helpful.   

There is no doubt that comic book sales were manipulated and abused by the system, but I see it as an overall problem, not one that only affected a few books.  Comics and the mob were closely tied throughout the history of the industry.  When Congress started investigating the mafia in the 1950s, the newsstand magazine business collapsed as distributors shut down rather than open their books.  Kinney was a company run by a known mafioso, and they bought DC because of it was a cash cow.   The Justice Department broke up the company because of its bookkeeping procedures, price fixing, and corruption.  

[Zonker]

On 5/25/2024 at 1:13 PM, shadroch said:

Bob says he was buying 200 copies of X-men because of the art. Without knowing how many copies of other books he was buying at the time, that isn't particularly helpful.   

 

200 was apparently teen-aged Bob's 1968 speculation benchmark.  Here is his previous paragraph for more context:

So, he was treating the first Adams X-Men as if it were a new #1.

 

 

[shadroch]

There was heavy speculation on the 1968 #1s. Dealers at NY shows in the mid-70s still had hundreds of new copies of those books. I remember wanting a Cap 100 and having hundreds to choose from. I don't remember there being any demand for the Fourth World books, but I wasn't paying any attention.  

In the summer of 176, I picked up my first golden age collection, which included Classics 43, a book considered scarce. That Thanksgiving Con, I offered it in trade to various dealers.  I ended up bartering a deal for $X amount of X-Men.  I walked away with fine copies of X-Men 21-43 and NM 56 to 70ish.   I'd only read a couple of the Adams issues before then.  I liked them in their original uniforms or variants of it. I also thought ripping off the name Sauron was Bush League.