Books you just cant find in the Wild 22 22

[Lazyboy]

58 minutes ago, paqart said:

Anyway, this piece of obscure history doesn’t look like a sound basis to claim that Nobel is somehow suspect.

Here's a sound basis to claim that Nobel's site is very suspect.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 hour ago, paqart said:

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.

1. I don't know what to tell you. What I wrote is consistent and clear. No wrong names typed. You said in an earlier post that (and I am paraphrasing): "Maybe it was McClure who told Overstreet 20 years earlier" (in 1978.) No, McClure told him in 1998. 

2. I never suggested this particular anecdote was a "sound basis to claim that Nobel is somehow suspect." I've already given you three examples of inaccuracies on the "rarecomics" blog. I asked you earlier if you were willing to consider further examples, or if you had already made up your mind, and you did not reply. It seems to me that you are willing to defend the "rarecomics" blog, despite the evidence, despite you saying you "had no horse in this race", no matter what. 

[RockMyAmadeus]

15 minutes ago, Lazyboy said:

1 hour ago, paqart said:

Anyway, this piece of obscure history doesn’t look like a sound basis to claim that Nobel is somehow suspect.

Here's a sound basis to claim that Nobel's site is very suspect.

Lazyboy's link is worth checking out for reasons why the "rarecomics" blog is disreputable. It's incredibly unfortunate that this misinformation, inaccuracies, and poor/unsound reasoning has had such a widespread effect on the hobby. 

[paqart]

15 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

I wasn't making an argument that a title wouldn't be continued if it was unprofitable: I am making any argument that the method of distribution wouldn't be continued if it was unprofitable, which ultimately proved to be the case for Marvel in 2013 and DC in 2017

What this looks like to me, with no insider knowledge of the situation at all, is this: Marvel and DC had existing agreements or relationships with newsstand customers that they didn't want to violate by cutting all of them off without warning. Instead, they phased out newsstand distribution by steadily reducing the number of newsstand editions distributed. Alternatively, it could be there were diehard fans of newsstand distribution at the publishers who insisted that newsstand distribution continue. To placate them, or because they had too much influence to be ignored, newsstand editions continued despite the perception or the reality that they lost money on them. Either way, your logic argument can be countered with other logical arguments. Absent any direct knowledge of what happened, these arguments are effectively equal. I've definitely seen CEOs and executive committees commit to decisions that in retrospect harmed their companies financially, so it wouldn't be the first time in history that ever happened. The same goes for company in-fighting causing a split decision.
A funny thing about all of this is that I have always felt that direct distribution effectively ruined American comics. I have always resented direct distribution, and now that I know how to distinguish between direct and newsstand comics, am uninterested in buying any direct editions again, and will be selling all the ones I have to get them out of my house. The reason I don't like the direct distribution method is that it focused the publishers on the collector market to the detriment of the non-collector casual reader market. As distribution leaned more and more heavily toward the collector market, we saw comics that were aimed at a general audience disappear. Before long, everything published was designed specifically for the customers of comic book stores, which for a long time had the stigma of being on about the same level as head shops. When I was a kid, many parents I knew didn't want their kids to visit comic shops, nor would they bring them to one. Things are different now that comics can't be found anywhere else, particularly now that comic shops often sell other things like toys and games, but the damage has been done.

My favorite genres of comic books effectively ceased to exist, or in only severely altered form, after direct distribution completely dominated the industry. Humor comics are especially missed by me, but also anthologies, westerns, romance, and others. In Japan, where manga sales dwarf American comic book sales, the number of genres extends well beyond superheroes. I also miss comics that are designed to be read and thrown away. They are cheap but can be enjoyed more easily because readers don't have to worry about damaging a five dollar magazine. Because of the changes wrought by direct distribution, actual sales overall have gone down. Television, video games, and movies have undoubtedly taken their cut out of the comic book market but they might have happened later  without direct distribution.

In the world of video games, I used to get marketing reports every month. One thing I always found interesting was that the audience for video games at the time was identical to the majority of the comic book-buying audience. At the time, it was thought that it couldn't expand beyond those customers, so more product had to be sold to the same people, much as Marvel and DC did in the early nineties. Then, Myst was released. It outsold everything else, and most of the customers were non-traditional. They skewed heavily toward senior citizens, who found the game interesting, inoffensive, and nice to look at. They liked the slow pace of the game, in contrast to younger players who preferred fast-paced games. There was a wonderful lesson there, that the market could be much bigger, but it was largely ignored. Later, Nintendo started making games that went after non-traditional audiences and did well with them. The comic book industry might want to try the same thing sometime, but part of that would involve going back to some form of newsstand distribution, so that comics are more readily available to casual readers.

[paqart]

3 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

It seems to me that you are willing to defend the "rarecomics" blog, despite the evidence, despite you saying you "had no horse in this race", no matter what

It isn't that I'm trying to defend rarecomics, I just don't see this item about McClure as an inaccuracy, let alone something worth mentioning. I agree, now that I've looked at your screen cap, that McClure is identified as the "discoverer" of the 30/35 cent price variant but elsewhere in the same blog Nobel explains the situation pretty much exactly the way you did. I don't think his use of the word "discoverer" is an intentional misrepresentation nor do I think it has to be viewed as a misrepresentation provided one accepts that Nobel is crediting McClure with raising awareness of the variant to a meaningful level.

The start of newsstand distribution in the mid-seventies rather than 1979 is an inaccuracy that should be corrected or a note made about it on rarecomics. You suggest that Nobel's 1979 start date is connected to the appearance of the strike-through barcode. According to you, the diamond shaped price box could be used to distinguish the difference between direct and newsstand. Makes sense to me as a legit error that should be corrected. Again, I do not see this affecting the overall credibility of Nobel's argument. It isn't as if I walk away from his site thinking, "McClure discovered the 30/35 cent price variant, not that Overstreet bozo, and direct editions started in 1979, not when I remembered them in 1977 or earlier, as can be seen by the strike through bar code in the first direct editions as opposed to the diamond-shaped price box advocated by some guy on the Internet." What I do think after reading his pages is this, "Newsstand comics published after around 2000 are harder to find than direct editions. After 2010, they are extremely hard to find. You can spot the difference between the two by looking for the bar code up until it was used in both versions, after which you can look at the bar code itself, or for the words 'direct edition' to distinguish them." So after all this back and forth, I don't see any reason to complain about Nobel's over-arching message, which is correct, despite some small discrepancies that have no impact on his conclusions, and upon which none of his conclusions are based. 

I get the impression that Nobel's site irks you somewhat because of perceived or actual discrepancies, but he does perform a valuable service. Without his page, I wouldn't have spent a couple thousand dollars on these newsstand variants over the past five weeks or so. I'm sure the people I bought them from were happy to have the sales. I happened to enjoy the hunt immensely, and I'd like to think that is good also. I do wish I hadn't bought some of the earlier slabbed newsstands that I got, now that I did my own checking and discovered they are less uncommon than I initially thought. For example, I picked up a slabbed Daredevil 168 (first Elektra), thinking it was a good newsstand target. Then I made my database and discovered that Daredevil 181 is a substantially better target. The newsstand DD 168 appears to be almost twice as common as the direct variant but newsstand DD 181 is almost eight times less common than the direct version. However, compared to DD V2 #21, I'd much rather have that over either of the other two because it is so much harder to find.

At the moment, I have one slabbed DD 168, one slabbed DD 181 and two raw DD181's, and one DD V2 #21. The most recent one is the only copy I found for sale after looking for a few weeks. The DD 168 and DD 181's were among several I could choose from. You could say that I was influenced the wrong way by Nobel's site to get some of these earlier issues. I think it happened, to be frank. That said, I don't hold it against him because we're not talking about a lot of money and I have learned better since then. Besides, it wasn't his charts that swayed me, but his comment that mishandling resulted in lower survivability, even of issues with higher print runs. It turns out he is probably right about that but it pays to check each issue individually instead of buying any key newsstand edition under the assumption they all survived in approximately equally low proportions compared to their direct counterparts.

My problem with pre-2005 newsstands is that although it is true that many are harder to find than directs, the survivability varies significantly from issue to issue. It is so complicated to track that I prefer the simplicity of going for the later ones, which are all hard to find to about the same degree. There are a few, like ASM 700, that are slightly more common than nearby issues, but for a 20:1 ratio to be "common", I remain interested. From what I've seen, a 20:1 ratio is indeed about as common as the later issues get, while others appear to clear the 100:1 hurdle.

 

Edited October 10, 2019 by paqart

[valiantman]

21 hours ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

22 hours ago, paqart said:

When you have 115 copies of a comic auctioned and none are newsstand comics, you cannot extrapolate that none of the comics in the print run are newsstand comics. However, if you have industry estimates of 2%-1% newsstand comics for any given print run for the period, one can say that 115 auctioned direct and zero auctioned newsstand supports both of those numbers. When you have dozens of examples like that, the sample size is large enough to describe the population of comics in question. For instance, if you look up ten ASM issues in the 600-700 issue range, there are more than ten that will return results that support a 1-2% newsstand figure that have sold more than 100 times. That gives you a sample size of 1000+ to cover 2,000,000 comics, if you assume each of those copies of ASM had 200,000 copies printed. To determine whether those 1000 samples accurately represent the target population of 2m comics at a 99% confidence level with a confidence interval of 4 (meaning the true number will lie between 95%-100%), you would need 1040 samples, which is about what can be found by spending a few hours looking up auctions for those comics. These aren't seat of the pants estimates. They are statistically valid at levels higher than what is needed for pharmaceutical companies to release potentially dangerous drugs on the market.

Our resident statistician, @valiantman can do a far better job at addressing this than I. 

I'll give it a shot.

If 115 copies of a comic are auctions with zero newsstand editions, it may be true that none are newsstand editions, but statistical sampling and confidence intervals would say that you can only be 95% sure that the actual percentage of newsstands is between 0% and 9% assuming the total population in existence is between 3,000 and 3,000,000.  It's a good sample to have 115, but doesn't narrow the actual percentage to the 1% to 2% range.  

Your example of 2,000,000 comics with a 99% confidence level that the interval is plus-or-minus 2% that 98% of them are direct editions would need 4,136 samples randomly-selected from the 2,000,000.

https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/

While the math exists to make these calculations from the samples of data, there's no "proof" that the samples are randomly-selected, because we don't know what factors contribute to a book's likelihood of being put into an auction.  We can safely assume that a book is more likely to be put into an auction if it is in the inventory of a retailer who frequently uses auctions (vs. the likelihood that a book will be put into auction if it is in a box in a closet at a collector's parents' house), but we can't put any numbers to that assumption. 

For all we know, the distribution of the books caused the majority of direct editions to end up in geographies where high-speed internet is normal (because comic shops are normal there), while newsstands may have ended up in the "one-store-with-everything-from-gas-to-groceries-to-graphic-novels" in the tiny towns still waiting for high speed internet to arrive even in 2019.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the percentages for direct editions and newsstands in the marketplace, because all samples from the marketplace are valid representations of the marketplace (with associated statistics intervals, etc.), but "in the marketplace" cannot be substituted for "in existence".

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

2 minutes ago, paqart said:

<snip>

 

I don't have the desire to go through your post (which will shock some) correcting your misconceptions and mischaracterizations. That may change, or it may not.

If you don't understand why inaccuracies and misinformation and the staunch refusal to correct them is a problem, especially in a "blog" that presents itself as a legitimate source of information, I can't help you. The issue isn't individual inaccuracies, and why you think they don't matter or aren't a big deal. The issue is that the entire site is filled with "information" that isn't accurate, in multiple ways, in multiple places, and which Mr. Nobel has both 1) been informed of, and 2) refused to correct.

As others have already said, the degree to which these inaccuracies exist renders the site not just useless, but harmful, in that it leads people...and you are a good example, here...to carry around misconceptions and errors that then have to be corrected...which takes a lot more time and effort than starting with a blank slate. When you have to UNLEARN false information, you're starting in a hole from which you have to dig out.

You don't see that as a problem. It very much is.

[paqart]

1 minute ago, valiantman said:

it doesn't matter if we're talking about the percentages for direct editions and newsstands in the marketplace, because all samples from the marketplace are valid representations of the marketplace (with associated statistics intervals, etc.), but "in the marketplace" cannot be substituted for "in existence"

Yes, and that is all I am interested in here.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 minute ago, valiantman said:

I'll give it a shot.

If 115 copies of a comic are auctions with zero newsstand editions, it may be true that none are newsstand editions, but statistical sampling and confidence intervals would say that you can only be 95% sure that the actual percentage of newsstands is between 0% and 9% assuming the total population in existence is between 3,000 and 3,000,000.  It's a good sample to have 115, but doesn't narrow the actual percentage to the 1% to 2% range.  

Your example of 2,000,000 comics with a 99% confidence level that the interval is plus-or-minus 2% that 98% of them are direct editions would need 4,136 samples randomly-selected from the 2,000,000.

https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/

While the math exists to make these calculations from the samples of data, there's no "proof" that the samples are randomly-selected, because we don't know what factors contribute to a book's likelihood of being put into an auction.  We can safely assume that a book is more likely to be put into an auction if it is in the inventory of a retailer who frequently uses auctions (vs. the likelihood that a book will be put into auction if it is in a box in a closet at a collector's parents' house), but we can't put any numbers to that assumption. 

For all we know, the distribution of the books caused the majority of direct editions to end up in geographies where high-speed internet is normal (because comic shops are normal there), while newsstands may have ended up in the "one-store-with-everything-from-gas-to-groceries-to-graphic-novels" in the tiny towns still waiting for high speed internet to arrive even in 2019.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if we're talking about the percentages for direct editions and newsstands in the marketplace, because all samples from the marketplace are valid representations of the marketplace (with associated statistics intervals, etc.), but "in the marketplace" cannot be substituted for "in existence".

 

That's why you're the boss. 

[valiantman]

3 minutes ago, paqart said:

4 minutes ago, valiantman said:

it doesn't matter if we're talking about the percentages for direct editions and newsstands in the marketplace, because all samples from the marketplace are valid representations of the marketplace (with associated statistics intervals, etc.), but "in the marketplace" cannot be substituted for "in existence"

Yes, and that is all I am interested in here.

"In the marketplace" is all that you are interested in... or "in existence"? 

[paqart]

9 minutes ago, valiantman said:

Your example of 2,000,000 comics with a 99% confidence level that the interval is plus-or-minus 2% that 98% of them are direct editions would need 4,136 samples randomly-selected from the 2,000,000.

https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/

I was using a 4% confidence interval, not 2%. You are right for 2% but not the 4% figure I used and failed to update in my post. Not your fault obviously but wanted to clarify what happened. As for a random sample, that part is assumed. It could be done by randomly selecting ten issues between 600-700 of ASM, or just any consecutive group of ten, also randomly selected. As for confidence levels, at 95% and a 3% confidence interval, 1067 would be good enough to generalize to the full population. The trick is finding issues that have 100 copies for sale at any given time. BTW, looks like the sample size calculator you used has almost identical results to the one I used: https://surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm . I mention that for those readers who might be interested to know that our method wasn't that different, apart from the 4/2 typo.

[paqart]

11 minutes ago, valiantman said:

"In the marketplace" is all that you are interested in... or "in existence"? 

Only interested in marketplace copies. The "in existence" copies may as well not exist if they aren't in the marketplace.

[valiantman]

5 minutes ago, paqart said:

21 minutes ago, valiantman said:

Your example of 2,000,000 comics with a 99% confidence level that the interval is plus-or-minus 2% that 98% of them are direct editions would need 4,136 samples randomly-selected from the 2,000,000.

https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/calculating-sample-size/

I was using a 4% confidence interval, not 2%. You are right for 2% but not the 4% figure I used and failed to update in my post. Not your fault obviously but wanted to clarify what happened. As for a random sample, that part is assumed. It could be done by randomly selecting ten issues between 600-700 of ASM, or just any consecutive group of ten, also randomly selected. As for confidence levels, at 95% and a 3% confidence interval, 1067 would be good enough to generalize to the full population. The trick is finding issues that have 100 copies for sale at any given time. BTW, looks like the sample size calculator you used has almost identical results to the one I used: https://surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm . I mention that for those readers who might be interested to know that our method wasn't that different, apart from the 4/2 typo.

I understand.  Randomly-selected between 600-700 could be important if there was a sudden shift in the percentage of newsstands (such as the loss of a supplier/distributor), but generally speaking, it shouldn't matter which issues are selected as long as they're close in date.

More important than which issues are randomly-selected would be "how were the books in the auction selected" - which was mentioned as being more-likely-to-be-auctioned if they are part of a frequent auction dealer inventory (vs. random collector's old collection).

The most important thing, though, is that you're only interested in the percentages of direct editions and newsstands "in the marketplace" - which I agree is well-represented by sampling the marketplace itself.

However, the further apart the values for direct edition and newsstand get, the more the likelihood of auctions over-representing whichever is more valuable, and the higher the likelihood that new copies will come to market.  All auctions represent some version of "worth my time" and "not worth my time" which is driven by prices.

The primary objections to these types of discussions of (or articles on another website about) direct editions and newsstands are that people often equate "in the marketplace" with "in existence" when they can't be interchanged like that.

[paqart]

17 minutes ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

As others have already said, the degree to which these inaccuracies exist renders the site not just useless, but harmful, in that it leads people...and you are a good example, here...to carry around misconceptions and errors that then have to be corrected...which takes a lot more time and effort than starting with a blank slate. When you have to UNLEARN false information, you're starting in a hole from which you have to dig out.

FWIW: there are much easier ways to correct misinterpretations than the method you've adopted here. I taught at university for twelve years and can say that berating students (for instance, by using ALL CAPS) does not encourage them to pay attention. The best answer you could have given, that would have answered all of my questions, satisfied your desire to correct the record, and left everyone happy with much less effort, would have been to write something like this,

"You should be aware that some elements of the rarecomics site are incorrect. For instance, newsstand distribution started in 1976/1977, not 1979. The strikethrough box does identify direct editions, but that isn't the purpose of the strikethrough. This is important because there is a different way of identifying directs by looking at the price box. There are some other inaccuracies in there, so you might want to double-check whatever information you glean from that site."
Instead, you intimated that Benjamin Nobel was a dishonest person whose site promulgated false and misleading information. I am immediately suspicious that any claim of that type is motivated by personal animus, making me far less likely to believe it at the outset. Every answer you gave solidified my impression that you were emotionally invested in the issue and that also made your answers less convincing to me. Again, the frequent use of ALL CAPS had a serious detrimental effect on the credibility of everything you wrote.

In the end, it is fair to say that there are some inaccuracies on the site. There is no indication that any of it is malicious or less than innocent. Therefore, while I accept your contention that legitimate errors exist, I do not accept the idea that the site is dangerous or that Nobel has some kind of serious character flaw that makes him and everything he writes inherently untrustworthy.

[valiantman]

11 minutes ago, paqart said:

Only interested in marketplace copies. The "in existence" copies may as well not exist if they aren't in the marketplace.

Agreed, except, as mentioned, when the prices on particular books go up... the marketplace generally sees an influx of what was always in existence.  Spawn #1 newsstand vs. Spawn #1 direct is a really good example.  Original "in the marketplace" percentages for Spawn #1 newsstand were much lower than the current percentages "in the marketplace" while the "in existence" numbers for both haven't changed.

[paqart]

2 minutes ago, valiantman said:

However, the further apart the values for direct edition and newsstand get, the more the likelihood of auctions over-representing whichever is more valuable, and the higher the likelihood that new copies will come to market.  All auctions represent some version of "worth my time" and "not worth my time" which is driven by prices.

On this subject, I am using ebay to check availability of these comics. Although it is literally "an auction", it is a different form of auction than is found at Heritage Auctions. At Heritage, you won't find many copies of any issues of ASM after around 500 or so because they aren't worth enough to auction. On ebay, you can find quite a few of these, in numbers between around 50 on the low end to well over a hundred. My impression is that ebay does a good job of representing the marketplace because one finds practically anything that can be sold there, including things that most collectors don't think are worth the time, trouble, or expense of auctioning at a place like Heritage. Also, you see a lot of non-slabbed raw comics, which I think is important to sampling the marketplace. Those comics rarely appear at Heritage, and only when they are either high value or part of a group.

[RockMyAmadeus]

15 minutes ago, paqart said:

FWIW: there are much easier ways to correct misinterpretations than the method you've adopted here. I taught at university for twelve years and can say that berating students (for instance, by using ALL CAPS) does not encourage them to pay attention. The best answer you could have given, that would have answered all of my questions, satisfied your desire to correct the record, and left everyone happy with much less effort, would have been to write something like this,

I am not a teacher, and this is not a classroom. You (the generic "you") can either accept the information given and consider it as a matter of personal pride and dignity...or be offended and reject it because you're offended, because someone didn't approach you the way you demand and imagine you ought to be approached.

One reaction is laudable. The other is juvenile.

At the risk of offending you further, you're not paying attention. As I already said, Mr. Nobel was approached professionally and as a colleague. He chose to be offended and reject the information. Why do you assume otherwise?

Who does he hurt? Me? No. He hurts the people he claims to want to help. And why? Who knows? I suspect it's because either he enjoys being considered an "authority", or he is deliberately misinforming others for his personal gain.

Tell me...have you been getting private messages from others on this and other subjects in which you and I have engaged...?

Edited October 10, 2019 by RockMyAmadeus

[RockMyAmadeus]

By the way...the teachers I respect and admire most in my life, from whom I learned the most by far, were the teachers who didn't coddle their students, who told them the unvarnished truth, and didn't candy coat anything because they were afraid of offending the sensibilities of people who had no right to have such sensibilities in the first place.

 

[valiantman]

Just now, paqart said:

7 minutes ago, valiantman said:

However, the further apart the values for direct edition and newsstand get, the more the likelihood of auctions over-representing whichever is more valuable, and the higher the likelihood that new copies will come to market.  All auctions represent some version of "worth my time" and "not worth my time" which is driven by prices.

On this subject, I am using ebay to check availability of these comics. Although it is literally "an auction", it is a different form of auction than is found at Heritage Auctions. At Heritage, you won't find many copies of any issues of ASM after around 500 or so because they aren't worth enough to auction. On ebay, you can find quite a few of these, in numbers between around 50 on the low end to well over a hundred. My impression is that ebay does a good job of representing the marketplace because one finds practically anything that can be sold there, including things that most collectors don't think are worth the time, trouble, or expense of auctioning at a place like Heritage. Also, you see a lot of non-slabbed raw comics, which I think is important to sampling the marketplace. Those comics rarely appear at Heritage, and only when they are either high value or part of a group.

Definitely true.  Much like the CGC census is a reflection of "worth slabbing" and "not worth slabbing", Heritage is a reflection of "worth sending to Heritage" and "not worth sending to Heritage"... and Ebay is the same.  The difference, of course, is that many books which aren't worth slabbing and aren't worth sending to Heritage are worth putting on Ebay, but anytime Book A is worth $20 and book B is worth $5, you can be sure that there is not a good representation of the percentages for Book A and Book B in existence. Book A is more likely to show up on Ebay, and be over-represented "in the marketplace".  If for some reason Book A stayed $20 but Book B inched closer to $20, you'd see a different breakdown for the percentage of Book A and Book B on Ebay ("in the marketplace"), and that's whether we're talking about direct and newsstand for the same comic, or two completely unrelated books A and B.  "Worth ebaying" is a thing driven by dollars, always skewing the marketplace toward higher value books.  Yes, there are plenty of $0.01 comics on Ebay, but they don't represent as well as $20 books.

[paqart]

4 minutes ago, valiantman said:

Agreed, except, as mentioned, when the prices on particular books go up... the marketplace generally sees an influx of what was always in existence.  Spawn #1 newsstand vs. Spawn #1 direct is a really good example.  Original "in the marketplace" percentages for Spawn #1 newsstand were much lower than the current percentages "in the marketplace" while the "in existence" numbers for both haven't changed.

Agreed on Spawn #1, curious if this generalizes much beyond that. The reason is that Spawn #1 was a heavily collected mega-event in comics. Most comics don't have the attendant publicity that one did, had significantly lower print runs, and *probably* had lower survival rates. Inevitably, comics will trickle into the marketplace over time but will they do so in numbers significant enough to meaningfully alter the rarity of a newsstand comic? For instance, Wolverine V2 #67. That comic wasn't heavily promoted like Spawn #1 and is legitimately very hard to find in any condition. Is there any reason to believe it would suddenly become less rare if its price shoots up? While it is likely that dealers will become motivated to check their stock, most won't have any because most or all of their recent comics were bought through their distributor, who gave them direct editions. Everyone else, who bought at book stores or newsstands, are less likely to learn of the increase in value and thus, less likely to bring their comic to a shop. My guess on this is that you'd be looking at an increase in the number of newsstands in the market but not enough to alter their overall rarity more than a percentage point or two. What happened with the Star Wars #1 35 cent price variant? How many of those suddenly became available after the comic's rarity became established?