How much of a premium are we talking for newsstand issues v/s direct editions? 10 10

[mr_highgrade]

Here's one that you'll never find in any grade. 

 

 

[paqart]

On 5/18/2014 at 1:40 PM, RockMyAmadeus said:

But they did miss an absolutely golden opportunity, for only a little more work. If certain copies are worth more depending on their distribution status...and they are, on both ends of the spectrum (DM vs newsstand)...then they've cut off that market difference. And "it's DIFFERENT!" is what drives any market.

I wonder if, now that they are noting the difference, the early slabs that don't note the difference will be worth more?

[RockMyAmadeus]

7 minutes ago, paqart said:

On 5/18/2014 at 10:40 AM, RockMyAmadeus said:

But they did miss an absolutely golden opportunity, for only a little more work. If certain copies are worth more depending on their distribution status...and they are, on both ends of the spectrum (DM vs newsstand)...then they've cut off that market difference. And "it's DIFFERENT!" is what drives any market.

I wonder if, now that they are noting the difference, the early slabs that don't note the difference will be worth more?

I don't imagine they will ever change their stance on typical newsstand copies. 

[paqart]

47 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

I don't imagine they will ever change their stance on typical newsstand copies. 

You mean newsstand copies that aren't price variants? Because they are already noting the difference on price variant newsstand editions and labeling them as newsstand copies. I was referring to those, because CGC hasn't always noted that difference but now they do.

[Lazyboy]

3 hours ago, fastballspecial said:

On 9/29/2019 at 10:19 PM, Lazyboy said:

Annuals seem to be mostly ignored in general, even more so than regular run filler. Newsstands are just a different version of something almost nobody cares about.

Hold on to that newsstand hate it will keep you warm. 

Collect what you like, but don't criticize others for having fun chasing them.

  Are you illiterate?

Seriously, how is your response related to that post?

 

[paqart]

3 hours ago, mr_highgrade said:

Here's one that you'll never find in any grade. 

 

 

I did a quick check on this. For today, at a minimum, you are correct. I’ve been trying to find a run of newsstand red Hulks but so far have only three issues or so. Hard to find indeed!

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 hours ago, paqart said:

You mean newsstand copies that aren't price variants? Because they are already noting the difference on price variant newsstand editions and labeling them as newsstand copies. I was referring to those, because CGC hasn't always noted that difference but now they do.

Yes, if there is some material difference between the Direct and newsstand editions, they'll note them. I was referring to the fact that CGC didn't note newsstands from the very beginning, which they should have. Maybe 75% of the time, it doesn't matter, but that 25% is not insubstantial. 

[Get Marwood & I]

11 hours ago, paqart said:

Funny thing about that is that Giant-Size and Specials don't have the same stigma. I think the reason is that the annuals were often written and drawn by new creative teams being tested but the Giant-Size and Special issues were drawn by the regular creative teams on the book.

I actually preferred the Giant Size ASM's to the annuals myself for that reason so you've got something there. 

[paqart]

19 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I actually preferred the Giant Size ASM's to the annuals myself for that reason so you've got something there. 

Me too. I just bought The ASM giant-size run from 1 (Dracula guest star) to 4 (Punisher guest star). Love the group. Also, hate to say this, but I drew a story for a Daredevil annual, because I was new to the business as an artist. It was fun to draw Daredevil but as a collector I wouldn’t be interested in the issue.

[Get Marwood & I]

5 minutes ago, paqart said:

Me too. I just bought The ASM giant-size run from 1 (Dracula guest star) to 4 (Punisher guest star). Love the group. Also, hate to say this, but I drew a story for a Daredevil annual, because I was new to the business as an artist. It was fun to draw Daredevil but as a collector I wouldn’t be interested in the issue.

Well you can't just leave it at that paqart! An actual comic artist posting here? We need to see pictures  

Show us your old DD artwork. Go on. 

 

I'm popping out now by the way. So if you do post some, and, having asked for it, I don't respond, don't take it as an insult! I'll be back...

[paqart]

1 hour ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Well you can't just leave it at that paqart! An actual comic artist posting here? We need to see pictures  

Show us your old DD artwork. Go on. 

 

I'm popping out now by the way. So if you do post some, and, having asked for it, I don't respond, don't take it as an insult! I'll be back...

It’s easier to send you to my website, www.paqart.com . As you’ll see, I worked as an editorial artist making illustrations for magazines and books, then a comic book artist at Marvel and DC. My claim to fame in comics is Harsh Realm, which became a TV series. Then I worked in video games as a 3D artist, in film (on Space Jam, Spider-man, Daredevil, and others) as a CG artist, then an art director in video games, a fine artist, started a school in the Netherlands for game developers, wrote a bunch of non-fiction books, some scientific journal articles, got my PhD at King’s College, London, and now do commercial photography. I still miss comics. It is a great medium from an artistic perspective but doesn’t do a very good job of paying the bills. For example, it is an unusually successful comic book artist that makes more than $50k/year, but that is the starting salary for most CG artists. Also, there are only a few hundred regularly employed comic book artists in the country, but tens of thousands of CG artists. Also, there are fun perks to working outside of comics, one of which is that you can hire comic book artists to do production design. In that way, I’ve hired Kyle Baker, Mike Royer, Dan Spiegle, Bernie Wrightson, and a couple of others.

A note on my website: I make no claim to having been a great comic book artist when I was working in that industry. At best I was a beginner with some potential. I think I would be good at it now but am out of the industry at this point. To see why I say this, take a look at my storyboards page.

Edited October 9, 2019 by paqart

[Get Marwood & I]

35 minutes ago, paqart said:

A note on my website: I make no claim to having been a great comic book artist when I was working in that industry. At best I was a beginner with some potential. I think I would be good at it now but am out of the industry at this point. To see why I say this, take a look at my storyboards page.

Thanks. I'll have a good rummage around later. A quick glance at the comics page suggests you may be being a little harsh on yourself....which I like 

[fastballspecial]

19 hours ago, paqart said:

I was unclear with the sentence that referenced a 100:1 ratio. In that sentence I was referring to approximate rarity, not value or price. Since the rest of the paragraph is about price, I can understand why you might have read that as a "fair price". The number is a rounded average of some of the highest rarity indexes I've seen in the database. The "rarity index" is my way of determining whether an asking price is attractive for a comic. It is calculated based on a number of variables but should be read as the expected number of direct edition copies available per newsstand copy. For example, Amazing Spider-Man #700: On Heritage, 13 copies have sold. All are direct, all are above 9.2. On eBay, 146 were offered on the day this was checked, of which 8 are newsstand editions. The rarity index for that issue is 13, indicating 13 direct copies for every newsstand copy. Issue 606 is comparatively harder to find. Out of 10 sales at Heritage and 101 offered on eBay (111 total) none are newsstand editions. That makes for a rarity that can't even be calculated because it requires division by zero. Add to that a print run estimate of 708 copies manufactured in newsstand form, and you have a rare comic. There are a lot of newsstand copies like that. For all of them, I round them down to 100.

Yes that is much better explaination. That ratio number though is going to change with every book though right? It could go up or down.

 

[Lazyboy]

22 hours ago, paqart said:

Similar to point 2, it appears as if publishers radically increased the ratio of direct comics vs newsstand comics when they thought they had an issue likely to appeal to collectors. An example of this is Amazing Spider-Man 252 (1984). This issue showed up in 385 auctions at Heritage. Of those, 184 were direct editions, 201 were newsstand editions. My take on it is that although there is a statistical difference, where newsstand copies are less common than direct copies, it is so close that there shouldn't be a premium for either version. Contrast that with Amazing Spider-Man 238 (1983), published a year earlier. Based on print run percentage estimates, this comic should be the same rarity or even less rare in newsstand form than #252. However, it is more than four times rarer. Out of 136 auctions, 109 were direct editions, 27 were newsstand editions.

My guess is that the disparity is because of two things. Firstly, Marvel had no way of knowing in advance that Hobgoblin would be anything more than another run-of-the-mill villain at the time they published #238. Therefore, it had a normal direct/newsstand split for a superhero comic of that year, making it four times rarer than the direct counterpart. Secondly, Marvel could predict that #252 would attract serious interest because of the introduction of the new black costume, so they changed the ratio enough that approximately equal numbers of both variants survived.

How do you expect to have any credibility on the subject of Newsstand comics if you don't even understand that the reason for the abundance of Newsstand copies of books like ASM 252 is due to the fact that the book was instantly hot and a sellout rather than larger amounts being printed?

[Lazyboy]

20 hours ago, mr_highgrade said:

I just checked the census on Spidey #529 (2006) for example, and found 1,909 Direct Editions and only 19 Newsstand Editions. With 1,167 Direct Editions in 9.8 and only 2 Newsstand Editions in 9.8. Just saying. 

It's a very good idea to ignore the fact that over 1400 copies were graded before CGC separated Newsstand editions for that issue if you want to push a certain agenda. Just saying.

[paqart]

49 minutes ago, fastballspecial said:

Yes that is much better explaination. That ratio number though is going to change with every book though right? It could go up or down.

 

The ratio is different for every book. Also keep in mind that sample size has a lot to do with how well it generalizes to the population of comics printed in any given print run. The higher the sample, the more reliable the number. That said, by the time you hit 2010, there are a lot of comics that get rounded down to 100:1. Here are some random examples:

ASM #252 (1984), 385 auctioned, app 250,000 print run, that means that the sample size is good for 95% confidence, plus or minus 5%, meaning that the rarity index for this issue is reliably expected to fall between 90%-100% accurate. The rarity index is .98, meaning the newsstand version is slightly more common than the direct version but because it falls within the margin of error, they are statistically identical with this sample size. A larger sample size would be needed to refine the figure. On this basis, I wouldn't buy a newsstand copy of ASM 252 on the basis of presumed rarity.

ASM #300 (1988), 290 auctioned, app 325,000 print run, sample size good for 95% confidence with 6 point margin of error. Not as good a sample as ASM 252 but good enough to determine whether the comic is rare enough to justify a multiplier. For this issue, the rarity index is 5.47, thanks to a very low number of newsstand editions (n=13 above 9.0, n=30 below 9.2, total n=43). This indicates that direct editions of ASM 300 are five times as common as newsstand editions regardless of condition. If you are only looking for 9.2 and up, the rarity index goes up to 13.00. On that basis, it is worth a premium for rarity. How much of a premium is the question. If you charged 5x the going rate for this comic in low grades or 13x for high grades, it would be prohibitively expensive to most collectors. 

ASM #700 (2013), 146 offered on ebay, 8 of which are newsstand copies, app 262,626 print run (based on adding up Diamond sales for the four months sales are recorded for this issue), sample size for this has a 7 point margin of error, showing that less data degrades the results. Still, 7 points is better than none.Rarity index for this comic is 18.25, or 18.25 direct copies for every newsstand copy offered. That is a very high rarity, easily justifying a rarity premium. It is a highly collectible title, character, issue number, story, has a good cover, good interior art by popular artists, and is a "00" milestone issue, all of which contribute to making this what should be a sought after and valuable issue. Personally, I'd rather buy these than ASM 300 because the upside is better and the cost at the moment is substantially lower. I can get ten or more of these for what a single copy of ASM 300 would cost.

 

[paqart]

1 hour ago, Lazyboy said:

How do you expect to have any credibility on the subject of Newsstand comics if you don't even understand that the reason for the abundance of Newsstand copies of books like ASM 252 is due to the fact that the book was instantly hot and a sellout rather than larger amounts being printed?

That is pretty much what I wrote.

Edited October 10, 2019 by paqart

[mr_highgrade]

2 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

It's a very good idea to ignore the fact that over 1400 copies were graded before CGC separated Newsstand editions for that issue if you want to push a certain agenda. Just saying.

So, how many of those 1400 copies would you say are newsstands? 

[RockMyAmadeus]

4 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

On 10/8/2019 at 5:51 PM, paqart said:

Similar to point 2, it appears as if publishers radically increased the ratio of direct comics vs newsstand comics when they thought they had an issue likely to appeal to collectors. An example of this is Amazing Spider-Man 252 (1984). This issue showed up in 385 auctions at Heritage. Of those, 184 were direct editions, 201 were newsstand editions. My take on it is that although there is a statistical difference, where newsstand copies are less common than direct copies, it is so close that there shouldn't be a premium for either version. Contrast that with Amazing Spider-Man 238 (1983), published a year earlier. Based on print run percentage estimates, this comic should be the same rarity or even less rare in newsstand form than #252. However, it is more than four times rarer. Out of 136 auctions, 109 were direct editions, 27 were newsstand editions.

My guess is that the disparity is because of two things. Firstly, Marvel had no way of knowing in advance that Hobgoblin would be anything more than another run-of-the-mill villain at the time they published #238. Therefore, it had a normal direct/newsstand split for a superhero comic of that year, making it four times rarer than the direct counterpart. Secondly, Marvel could predict that #252 would attract serious interest because of the introduction of the new black costume, so they changed the ratio enough that approximately equal numbers of both variants survived.

How do you expect to have any credibility on the subject of Newsstand comics if you don't even understand that the reason for the abundance of Newsstand copies of books like ASM 252 is due to the fact that the book was instantly hot and a sellout rather than larger amounts being printed?

As lazyboy points out, the reason you find ASM #252 in roughly equal amounts in the back issue market is because everyone and their mother ran out to buy the book when it came out. Since newsstand distribution was always 2-3 weeks after Direct market distribution during that time period, when #252 proved to be a (surprise, even to Marvel) success....the first sellout for ASM since #121-122....everyone rushed to the newsstands to scoop up the copies there when they finally hit.

As opposed to the normal 60-70% returns you'd have for newsstand distribution (and, generally, subsequent destruction), books like ASM #252 likely saw less than 5% returns...which accounts for their commonality on the back issue market. It had nothing whatsoever to do with Marvel "changing any ratio" of any kind.  Marvel simply did what they'd been already doing for 45 years.

This became common practice. It's why you see books like Thor #337, Batman #428, Superman #50, Ghost Rider #1, Superman #75, and other books that were instant sellouts at the Direct market have relatively large numbers of surviving newsstand versions.

[RockMyAmadeus]

4 hours ago, Lazyboy said:

On 10/8/2019 at 7:34 PM, mr_highgrade said:

I just checked the census on Spidey #529 (2006) for example, and found 1,909 Direct Editions and only 19 Newsstand Editions. With 1,167 Direct Editions in 9.8 and only 2 Newsstand Editions in 9.8. Just saying. 

It's a very good idea to ignore the fact that over 1400 copies were graded before CGC separated Newsstand editions for that issue if you want to push a certain agenda. Just saying.

This cannot be overstated:

The CGC Census is COMPLETELY USELESS for determining surviving copies of Newsstand vs. Direct editions, because it DOES NOT DISTINGUISH between them for most of the history of CGC.

It's unfortunate, but that's the path CGC chose, and we have to deal with that fact.