Books you just cant find in the Wild 22 22

[RockMyAmadeus]

I think we can all agree that opening up an OPG and pointing to something in it and saying "look! I discovered it!" would not be considered a valid claim of discovery in the field of comic books...

[Mapleleafvann]

This, for some reason, just got a whole lot more interesting.  Kind of like;  "why would anyone need some rope?" interesting.....

[paqart]

14 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

I have asked you for documentation of any of the claims you have made. 

Aha, well, I've already answered that then so you can consider the matter closed. You know that I looked at rarecomics to learn about the comparative rarity of newsstand vs direct edition comics after around 1990, ComiChron for print run estimates, and my own original research, conducted by deep-diving into auction sales. Everything else is what I know from my own history or what I was told by other comic book industry pros. That's it, question answered.

[paqart]

23 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

What is the OPG in which "Korea My Home" first appeared...?

Not sure. It would have been some time around 1986-1988

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 minutes ago, paqart said:

Aha, well, I've already answered that then so you can consider the matter closed. You know that I looked at rarecomics to learn about the comparative rarity of newsstand vs direct edition comics after around 1990, ComiChron for print run estimates, and my own original research, conducted by deep-diving into auction sales. Everything else is what I know from my own history or what I was told by other comic book industry pros. That's it, question answered.

"rarecomics" is not a reputable site, Comichron does not include print run information (other than what is stated in the various Statements of Ownership) and cannot be used as a reliable "estimate" of print runs, and as I said before, lots of people come here and say whatever they want, and when asked to prove it, either say some version of "I don't have to prove myself to you" or "the information is out there, you look it up"...neither of which are acceptable as documentation for anything.

As I said before, if you have documentation supporting your claims, it would be very much appreciated by many people here, including myself. Thank you for your kind consideration.

[paqart]

1 minute ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

"rarecomics" is not a reputable site, Comichron does not include print run information (other than what is stated in the various Statements of Ownership) and cannot be used as a reliable "estimate" of print runs, and as I said before, lots of people come here and say whatever they want, and when asked to prove it, either say some version of "I don't have to prove myself to you" or "the information is out there, you look it up"...neither of which are acceptable as documentation for anything.

As I said before, if you have documentation supporting your claims, it would be very much appreciated by many people here, including myself. Thank you for your kind consideration.

You have my answer.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Just now, paqart said:

You have my answer.

I do, thank you.

[paqart]

42 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

I've never really heard of taking credit for discovering something "at a price level." That's certainly a new one to me. Guess I haven't been around comics long enough.

I hate to say it but your infatuation with this subject has intrigued me. For that reason I decided to try and find the Nobel/McClure reference you are talking about. I found one, and this is it, from Nobel's WordPress page "In a previous post, I had mentioned finding out that a January 1998 article by Jon McClure in issue #55 of Comic Book Marketplace magazine is widely credited by collectors as the “catalyst” for widespread awareness of 35¢ price variants." Is that what you are referring to? If it is, then he is not claiming that McClure discovered this. He is pointing out that he (Nobel) learned of it from someone who mentioned McClure's article. He also mentions that McClure is "widely credited", which means "by others, not myself". Also notice what he is reported to have been widely credited with: for being the "catalyst", not the "discoverer" for widespread awareness, not simply "awareness." I don't see here any justification for the umbrage you seem to have taken by the fact that Overstreet apparently published notification of the existence of these variants years before Nobel learned of them through an article written by someone else. This is very much how I could be described as the person who "discovered" Korea my Home, but Philip Levine gets credit (or Overstreet) for "widespread awareness" of it.

I just found another post by Nobel on this. In it, he credits Overstreet with publishing a notice about the price variant twenty years before McClure wrote about it, but does credit McClure with widening the audience for information on the subject. Again, this is unlike what you have claimed.

Edited October 10, 2019 by paqart

[RockMyAmadeus]

https://rarecomics.wordpress.com/the-2019-price-guide-for-1980s-newsstand-canadian-cover-price-variants-type-1a/

If we want to fiddle with the meanings of words, then it can be said that it was OVERSTREET HIMSELF, and not McClure, who can be credited with the "widespread popularity" of these books.

Again: this is but one example among many; this really isn't the thread to be dissecting examples of why the "rarecomics" blog is disreputable.

 

[paqart]

11 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

this is but one example among many

One of many examples of what? This doesn't look like an error to me. It looks like Nobel accurately identified his source for some information on this type of variant. He then accurately points out that the information was made available in an Overstreet price guide 20 years earlier, and presumably every other guide since then. Describing Nobel's site as "disreputable" for completely accurate reporting seems like a stretch to me. It appears that you want Overstreet to get credit for the fact that Noble learned something about these variants from an article written by McClure, because the article likely drew on information published originally by Overstreet. This isn't a stolen valor issue, as you seem to be portraying it. I've learned that Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian from reading an article about him in the New York Times back in the late eighties. That is not a claim that either I or the writer of the article "discovered" Seinfeld. Most likely, his mother is the best person to make that claim, or his writing partner Larry David, or the producers at NBC that got the show made. Sorry, I don't see this as an example that supports your position that Nobel's site is somehow dishonest, or to use your word, "disreputable."

Edited October 10, 2019 by paqart

[RockMyAmadeus]

10 minutes ago, paqart said:

One of many examples of what? This doesn't look like an error to me

You asked for examples of inaccurate information. I have now provided you two. If I go to the effort of providing more, are you willing to consider them, or is your mind already made up...? It appears to me that your mind is already made up, despite your earlier claim of having "no horse in this race", so if that's the case, let me know, and I won't go to the effort.

16 minutes ago, paqart said:

He then accurately points out that the information was made available in an Overstreet price guide 20 years earlier, and presumably every other guide since then. Describing Noble's site as "disreputable" for completely accurate reporting seems like a stretch to me

Agreed. That's why I didn't do that.

16 minutes ago, paqart said:

It appears that you want Overstreet to get credit for the fact that Noble learned something about these variants...

That is not accurate.

[paqart]

2 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

That is not accurate.

Okay, then I have no idea what you are getting at here. I don't see anything inaccurate about what I've seen Nobel write on this subject, so I simply don't believe that your characterization is accurate. Maybe he made the claim elsewhere but then you wrote in an earlier post that he was made aware of this issue and he didn't correct it. Maybe what I found is the correction. If so, it also doesn't support your contention that his site can't be trusted on the basis of these items you describe as errors. Besides, you can completely ignore Nobel and ComiChron and see for yourself what the rarity is of these newsstand comics. This thread is about comics that are hard to find in the wild, and these late newsstand variants certainly are hard to find, regardless which explanation you accept as the reason. Just today, I went to a comic book store, searched every box for any ASM newsstand variant between issues 500-700 and found a total of zero. Although I wasn't looking for lower issue numbers, I don't think I saw anything until the 300's or so.

[RockMyAmadeus]

3 minutes ago, paqart said:

Okay, then I have no idea what you are getting at here. I don't see anything inaccurate about what I've seen Nobel write on this subject, so I simply don't believe that your characterization is accurate. Maybe he made the claim elsewhere but then you wrote in an earlier post that he was made aware of this issue and he didn't correct it. Maybe what I found is the correction. If so, it also doesn't support your contention that his site can't be trusted on the basis of these items you describe as errors. Besides, you can completely ignore Nobel and ComiChron and see for yourself what the rarity is of these newsstand comics. This thread is about comics that are hard to find in the wild, and these late newsstand variants certainly are hard to find, regardless which explanation you accept as the reason. Just today, I went to a comic book store, searched every box for any ASM newsstand variant between issues 500-700 and found a total of zero. Although I wasn't looking for lower issue numbers, I don't think I saw anything until the 300's or so.

On the "rarecomics" blog, Mr. Nobel reports that Jon McClure "discovered" the 30 and 35 cent variants. That is not correct.

Everything else isn't relevant. And that is but one example of false information reported on the "rarecomics" blog. It's a good idea to completely ignore sources that contain so much inaccurate information and bad reasoning as to do more harm than good.

Aside from that, as I said before, I haven't seen anyone claim that newsstand versions of books from about the mid 90s to the end of the programs are anything but uncommon/rare/scarce/(insert whatever adjective one feels is appropriate here.) 

In fact, I said this the other day:

 

[paqart]

11 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

On the "rarecomics" blog, Mr. Nobel reports that Jon McClure "discovered" the 30 and 35 cent variants. That is not correct.

Everything else isn't relevant. And that is but one example of false information reported on the "rarecomics" blog. It's a good idea to completely ignore sources that contain so much inaccurate information and bad reasoning as to do more harm than good.

Aside from that, as I said before, I haven't seen anyone claim that newsstand versions of books from about the mid 90s to the end of the programs are anything but uncommon/rare/scarce/(insert whatever adjective one feels is appropriate here.) 

In fact, I said this the other day

Okay, well I don't see what you're talking about as far as Nobel is concerned. I saw two items mentioning McClure, neither one used the word "discovered" and one explicitly pointed out that Overstreet printed information about the price variants twenty years before McClure wrote about it. Maybe he makes the claim you are talking about somewhere else but not in the posts I saw. Regardless, it sounds like we agree on rarity so I no longer see any point in discussing Nobel. That's it for me on that subject.

[RockMyAmadeus]

3 minutes ago, paqart said:

Okay, well I don't see what you're talking about as far as Nobel is concerned.... Maybe he makes the claim you are talking about somewhere else 

You may have missed the post, about 6 posts up, that contains the information I'm referring to. If you scroll back a bit, you'll see it.

[paqart]

8 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

You may have missed the post, about 6 posts up, that contains the information I'm referring to. If you scroll back a bit, you'll see it.

Aha! For some reason I thought that was from the Overstreet site, not Nobel's. Okay, fine, but to me that doesn't look like anything more than Nobel trying to write the entry as concisely as possible. Every reporter who has ever talked to me for a story has managed to get some part of it wrong but it is clear it is not intentional. In this case, it looks like he is trying to sum up what he has written elsewhere on the blog, which clearly agrees with everything you said on this subject, but in condensing the message has also inexpertly captured the essence of that information. Another way to write it simply might be, "drew widespread attention to 30 and 35 cent price variants". I don't see this as a serious error, in the sense that Overstreet himself likely didn't discover it either, and for all we know, McClure, who is a "senior Overstreet advisor" is the one who told him about it twenty years earlier. Now it is your turn to find out if it happened that way or not.

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 hours ago, paqart said:

in the sense that Overstreet himself likely didn't discover it either, and for all we know, McClure, who is a "senior Overstreet advisor" is the one who told him about it twenty years earlier.

It's a relatively well known story; McClure called up Overstreet and told him there was something he (Bob) didn't know about Marvels of the 70s. Bob said "that's impossible, there's no publisher as studied as Marvel!" (this is me paraphrasing McClure paraphrasing Bob.)

When McClure told him of the extent of the 30s and 35s, McClure either asked to be made an OPG advisor, or he was rewarded as such by Bob for the "discovery."

So, no, McClure wasn't the one who told Bob about it 20 years earlier. I imagine McClure was a kid at that point.

If anyone can claim to have discovered them, it is the guy who wrote in to Marvel/Sol Brodsky about Star Wars #1, to which Sol responded that they were test versions, with a print run of around 1500 copies.

[divad]

OMG 

[Second Blight]

[paqart]

6 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

It's a relatively well known story; McClure called up Overstreet and told him there was something he (Bob) didn't know about Marvels of the 70s. Bob said "that's impossible, there's no publisher as studied as Marvel!" (this is me paraphrasing McClure paraphrasing Bob.)

When McClure told him of the extent of the 30s and 35s, McClure either asked to be made an OPG advisor, or he was rewarded as such by Bob for the "discovery."

So, no, McClure wasn't the one who told Bob about it 20 years earlier. I imagine McClure was a kid at that point.

If anyone can claim to have discovered them, it is the guy who wrote in to Marvel/Sol Brodsky about Star Wars #1, to which Sol responded that they were test versions, with a print run of around 1500 copies.

I’ve read this several times and it looks like you wrote that McClure told Overstreet about the price variant but McClure didn’t call Overstreet to tell him of the variant. Did you type in the wrong name? Anyway, this piece of obscure history doesn’t look like a sound basis to claim that Nobel is somehow suspect.