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Doc Collection?

Started by mr_highgrade,

16 posts in this topic

Martin Sinescu

Martin Sinescu

Posted
Posted

The "Doc Collection" he references is, in fact, a stout collection of late-era newsstand copies covering both Marvel and DC. A seller, who dubbed the collection name, has been moving them on eBay and is based in Metro Atlanta. He seems to have gotten them from a collector in North Georgia who was buying multiple copies of many titles. i've bought mostly Batman, but also some DD and Wolverine, from this collection and they typically have ranged in 9.0-9.6 condition.

 

The linked blog really features a lot of exposition to an unnecessary extent. God bless him for wanting to prove a point about newsstand copies, but 28 examples with photos, charts and statistics (based on Chuck facts) to prove a single point is overwhelming. It's like he brought a B-52 to a knife fight. Was nice to see a pic of the Canadian Newsstand of Batman 423, though, so that was worth the price of admission.

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

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You're just jealous because he makes your wall of text posts look like the minor league :baiting:

 

 

:whee:

 

I'm just amazed at the damage that this misinformation and distortion does.

 

And people just eat it up, for their own agendas.

 

Look at this:

 

http://www.ebay.com/sch/hirivercomics/m.html?hash=item51e96ff298%3Ag%3A-n4AAOSw65FXreFY&item=351808778904&_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=newsstand&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2046732.m1684

 

This seller did tremendous damage to himself...it's not worth listing single books for $1, or selling them for $1-$2. But, you'll note, he/she puts the (garbled) verbiage from Chuck's nonsense in his listings.

 

Amazing.

 

"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" - Mark Twain

 

 

 

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

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Here's my reply, but it is "awaiting moderation", which means it probably won't appear.

 

You’re starting with a VERY flawed foundation: relying on Chuck Rozanski’s “estimates” to come to hard numbers about what is.

 

Those numbers aren’t accurate, and it’s very easy to see how and why. Consider: in 2005, Barnes & Noble, just a single magazine retailer in the US and abroad, had 681 stores in operation. They were, and continue to be, a retailer of newsstand comics. According to Rozanski’s “estimates”, and your analysis of those estimates, there were only between 1760 and 2060 newsstand comics printed of ASM that year.

 

So, even if B&N only ordered A SINGLE COPY of each of those books, that accounts for 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire print run of the newsstand run…? But B&N didn’t order a single copy, and where some stores may not have carried them (and most, if not all, of them did), they would have ordered far in excess of your estimations here.

 

Obviously, when you take into account that there are still thousands of newsstands across the US and Canada which still carry newsstand comics, and more in 2005, you can see where Rozanski’s numbers completely fall apart.

 

And where does Rozanski get his numbers? He doesn’t say. Why? Because he wants to SELL these “rare” newsstand copies for a PROFIT.

 

Marvel wouldn’t have printed only 2,000 or so newsstand copies of ASM in the mid-00s. That’s simply beyond reason, common sense, and tradition. Rozanski is wrong, but doesn’t care, mainly because Rozanski is SELLING YOU something.

 

Yes, SURVIVAL is a different argument, but print runs? It makes no sense whatsoever to print only 2,000 copies of ANY book, but especially the flagship Marvel character’s book, in 2005 for distribution to the entire North American newsstand market.

 

 

 

 

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

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Perusing even further, I see that his articles are riddled with the same inaccuracies that infect many of these "blogs" like the plague.

 

Here's my response to the "Canadian Newsstand Variant" article:

 

You say "the later the publication year, the more difficult it will be to find."...and then base that on Chuck Rozanski's very, incredibly loose "estimations" of the "size" of the newsstand market at the time.

 

But your statement isn't necessarily true, and there's no way to prove it.

 

You also state that "gross sales" and "net sales" has to do with the returnability of newsstand books. This is not true. Sales are SALES, not DISTRIBUTIONS, and newsstand SALES accounts for books that are reported SOLD...not returned, which obviously haven't been sold at all.

 

Your "fill in" numbers are estimations which are, themselves, estimations of estimations. Looks good to those who don't know better, but doesn't work when carried out...obviously it doesn't work for 1989, which you didn't include, and that's just based on Chuck's own numbers.

 

You also don't consider the relative value of books from those years (1982-1988), nor do you mention the fact that Marvel, which accounts for the vast bulk of submissions of books from the 1980's), stopped printing Canadian newsstand variants in 1986 (except in passing at the beginning of the article), and how this impacts your "percentages."

 

Further, your "distribution percentages" are based on the entirely made-up idea that the population percentage has anything but the loosest correlation to print runs. So, you say "well, in those years, Canada was 9.8% of the population, so if you use Rozanski's (totally made up, remember) numbers, you arrive at these percentages"...which totally ignores the fact that you don't really know if those numbers are even close to being accurate. You use the broadest and most unrelated "estimates" there are, then try to come up with accurate estimates based on what you and Chuck and others think "sounds good", with no actual REAL data to support any of it at all.

 

You also don't mention the OTHER Canadian newsstand price variants, like Archie, that exist during this time period.

 

Remember: Chuck's numbers come from information that he obtained, as HE HIMSELF admits, in the EARLY 80's. How, then, can that information be used to estimate what was happening in 1987, for instance...? The market had VASTLY changed between 1982-ish and 1987!

 

Don't you think this information is important?

 

Why does it matter...? Because people, like Chuck, are trying to sell people something. There's nothing wrong with selling something, but selling it under false pretenses...knowingly or not...hurts people.

 

In this case, you have a whole lot of "interesting" numbers, that just happen to be totally erroneous.

 

Sigh.

 

The Straight Dope has as its tagline "Fighting ignorance since 1973...it's taking us longer than we thought."

 

 

 

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

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Interesting conversation going on...

 

Thanks for reading and commenting! In reply to some of the points you raise:

 

Questioning Rozanski’s information and motives is fair: Having healthy skepticism is always a good idea and you’re right that as the owner of one of the largest comic retailers, Rozanski literally profits more if collectors are willing to pay premium prices for newsstand comics. Furthermore, breaking out newsstand comics was a huge undertaking for Mile High and therefore a huge investment of man hours that he had to finance — and so we would be wise to presume he wants a return on that investment. But that undertaking also gave him an important piece of information: after breaking out every issue between direct edition and newsstand, his inventory system tells him exactly how many copies he has in stock, of each version. Not just issue by issue or title by title but publisher by publisher and year by year.

 

When I first read/reacted to his 2013 newsletter revealing all of this, my own skepticism was mostly with that 1% level at the end, and yet I actually find it plausible because of that quote from Gabriel that at one point (which would have been around 2010-2011) Marvel ended newsstand sales to all newsstand outlets except B&N and BAM. That made me do the same kind of count you did, where I looked up B&N’s public SEC filings, pulled up an annual report, and looked at their store breakdown. One thing I had noticed in the report I looked at is that B&N’s store count included some college campus stores… would they have sold comics in campus stores? I’m not sure. Would they have sold comics in all stores? Again I’m not sure, I just don’t know enough to say “yes” or “no” but really, either answer sounds believable to me… I.e. if someone confidently told me: “B&N had a comics section in every store” I would have no reason to disbelieve that, but similarly if someone confidently told me: “B&N retailed comics in about half their stores” that too sounds reasonable to me so I would have no reason to disbelieve it.

 

The number of copies per store is also a question where I’d believe a range of answers. One of the points you made which I completely agree with is that ASM was one of Marvel’s best selling titles… It should not be forgotten that Rozanski was estimating a Marvel-wide distribution percentage which would have varied issue by issue and also title by title. Presumably some titles were direct market exclusives, which would also have skewed the total distribution percentages by type (i.e. if we were to tally the total comics Marvel sold in a given year, and some of those sales were direct market exclusives, that would cause the newsstand percentage for the year to be a little smaller than if looking at the newsstand percentage of just ASM). Would every Marvel title have made it to every B&N store? I suggest it is very reasonable to presume some of the lesser titles would only have been distributed to the most highly trafficked B&N locations.

 

With regard to incentives/motives, I’ll point out too that retailers of direct edition comics have had an opposite incentive — it has historically been in their interests to downplay newsstand rarity and keep those collectors shopping in their stores. Some of Jim Shooter’s writings reveal a distinct bias among Marvel executives to support the shops, for example vehemently opposing the idea of any kind of newsstand exclusive. Quote: “Kalish vehemently opposed a newsstand exclusive. She vehemently objected to any support of any kind for the newsstand. She claimed that the Direct Distributors and shop owners would see any such things as betrayal, rise up in anger and retaliate against Marvel.”

 

Your point about newsstand survival is also critical — and also may have influenced Rozanski’s own estimates if he derived them in part by that internal database he formed… because the copy count he would have had in stock is by definition only surviving copies. How many returns were there? What happened to those returns (were they pulped, sold to another outlet, etc?) Is Rozanski subtracting returns?

 

The main point I would make in response to your comment is that I’m much more interested in the “cold hard CGC census numbers” because they reflect all of those considerations — how many were printed, how popular the title, how many sold through, how many survived — and very fortunately for collectors, CGC has decided to “break out” newsstand copies in three basic instances that I’m aware of: (1) Manufacturing difference such as the paper used [examples: Spawn Batman, Spawn #9, Pitt #1], (2) When the UPC code “mis-identifies” the comic in error [example: X-Men Origins: Deadpool], and (3) During the window where newsstand copies were regularly priced at $3.99 while direct edition copies were priced at $2.99 [example: ASM #607].

 

If you examine the CGC census data for some of these, the numbers corroborate Rozanski within reasonable margin especially when allowing for certain more popular titles to have higher assumed percentages.

 

And finally, I’d argue that even if Rozanski is off in his estimates, there’s no way he’s off on the general question of which version is more rare as you get to these later years: Newsstand copies are more rare no matter how you gauge it, whether you gauge by Rozanski’s estimates, whether you gauge by the relative rarity numbers reflected in CGC’s census data, or whether you gauge it by actual availability in the market. On that last point, consider ASM #607. I for one would certainly like a NM newsstand copy. Can you find me one? I have had an eBay alert set up for years… these things are impossible to find. Here is what the CGC census looks like as of today:

 

ASM_607_census

 

The percentage of total copies that are newsstand falls well below Rozanski’s percentage. But how will this CGC census data “fill out” over time? Some day in the future if there are 1,000 direct edition copies on census by then, how many newsstand copies will we see? Will it be in line with Rozanski’s percentage/estimate? We’ll find out! I for one think that for this variant and others like it where CGC breaks them out, the rarity we’ll see reflected in the CGC census numbers will be relatively in-line with Rozanski’s estimates. But I concede that any print run analysis is going to strictly be estimation and with any estimate you’ll find people who think it is reasonable, people who think it is too high, and people who think it is too low.

 

And finally let’s not forget that at some point of low print run territory if the print run is 1,000 or 2,000 or even 3,000 that’s a variant I want to own if my choice is the low print version or the direct edition version, especially if the market prices are close, as they are today [where you can find newsstand copies out there for sale at prices close to their prevalent direct edition counterparts].

 

Thanks again for reading and sharing your comments!

 

Best,

– Ben

 

 

Your comments in quotation marks:

 

" Would they have sold comics in all stores? "

 

That doesn't ultimately matter; the point is that B&N had hundreds of stores in 2005, and B&N was only ONE seller of newsstand comic books...there were still thousands of stand-alone newsstands around the continent that also sold newsstand comics in 2005. The point is that your figures per issue of 1760-2060 printed are so far off the mark, they're not even close.

 

No offense, but I don't think you understand the newsstand market or how it worked/works. Publishers print far in excess of what they believe they can sell, with the expectation that sell-through will be much less. They do this because it costs not much more to print 500,000 copies as it does 300,000 copies.

 

Most comics have had, since the late 90's, sell-throughs at the newsstand of 15-25%. But does that mean Marvel was only printing 8,000-10,000 copies for newsstand distribution? Or worse, does that mean that Marvel was only printing 1760-2060 copies, as you claim, and only 170-500 copies were being sold? Of course not. Such numbers would be laughably small for Marvel to print.

 

But there's a way easier proof to show that your numbers are wildly, radically off:

 

http://www.comichron.com/titlespotlights/amazingspiderman.html

 

That's the "title sales" at Comichron. Notice the last couple of years reporter: 2005 and 2008.

 

Look what it says for 2005: "(RETURNS) 35,241"

 

Look what it says for 2008: "(RETURNS) 17,515"

 

Do you see that? Those are RETURNS, which for the Direct market aren't possible. Every single one of those 35,241 and 17,515 returned were NEWSSTAND copies.

 

And, if the sell-through at the newsstand was 15-25%...and probably a little better for ASM...then that means, at a MINIMUM, Marvel printed 41,000-47,000 copies for the newsstand...and, interestingly enough, this corresponds precisely with the stated print run of the entire issue: 150,833.

 

Now, granted, we're not talking about surviving copies...obviously, attrition for the newsstand is going to be substantially higher...but it's more than safe to say that Marvel printed far, far in excess...with actual documented proof to demonstrate that...of your numbers.

 

Again, no offense, truly, but your information is based on the severely estimated numbers of a single retailer, whose position it is to SELL those books at a premium.

 

"One of the points you made which I completely agree with is that ASM was one of Marvel’s best selling titles… It should not be forgotten that Rozanski was estimating a Marvel-wide distribution percentage which would have varied issue by issue and also title by title."

 

You have focused on a point that I was not making. They are unrelated points. The point about ASM being one of Marvel's best selling titles was merely to demonstrate that the folly of your numbers is evident when one only looks at the numbers for B&N for that one title, and had nothing to do with Rozanski's numbers.

 

"With regard to incentives/motives, I’ll point out too that retailers of direct edition comics have had an opposite incentive — it has historically been in their interests to downplay newsstand rarity and keep those collectors shopping in their stores.:"

 

You're talking about two entirely different and completely unrelated subjects. "Newsstand rarity" is a BACK ISSUE concept, not a NEW ISSUE concept. Why would a retailer of new Direct market comics in 2006, 2009, 2014, 2016 be at all concerned with the rarity, or lack thereof, of various BACK ISSUE newsstand copies from years gone by? They wouldn't. Not only would they not, but if they were also back issue dealers, they would have access to BOTH types of back issues, through normal channels of business as a back issue dealer.

 

Nobody cares about "newsstand rarity" when the books are new, because 1. the books are new, and readily available, most of the time, from either source, and 2. nobody knows "how rare" the newsstand copies will later become when they are new.

 

In the past, since the advent of the Direct market cover markings program, retailers benefitted from the DM because those books arrived 2-3 weeks BEFORE the newsstand copies. There was no premium placed on EITHER version; that is, essentially, a 21st century phenomenon. "Newsstand rarity" wouldn't have mattered, and didn't matter, one bit to the collector who was buying new books in the 70's, 80's, and 90's.

 

"Some of Jim Shooter’s writings reveal a distinct bias among Marvel executives to support the shops, for example vehemently opposing the idea of any kind of newsstand exclusive. Quote: “Kalish vehemently opposed a newsstand exclusive. She vehemently objected to any support of any kind for the newsstand. She claimed that the Direct Distributors and shop owners would see any such things as betrayal, rise up in anger and retaliate against Marvel.”"

 

Well of course. The newsstand was the competition of the Direct market, and publishers of the 80's didn't want to upset the apple cart. This should come as no surprise to anyone. But it still has nothing to do with the back issue newsstand market.

 

"The main point I would make in response to your comment is that I’m much more interested in the “cold hard CGC census numbers” because they reflect all of those considerations. If you examine the CGC census data for some of these, the numbers corroborate Rozanski within reasonable margin especially when allowing for certain more popular titles to have higher assumed percentages."

 

No, this is also inaccurate. The numbers don't corroborate Chuck's numbers, because 1. CGC hasn't bothered to differentiate newsstand issues through their entire existence, until very recently, which means the examples you give are swallowed up in the larger census number, and 2. the books aren't worth submitting, for the most part, and in no way can the census be used to reflect anything but the broadest, least useful information. If they corroborate Chuck's numbers, it is only by accident.

 

The census CANNOT be used in the manner in which you are trying to use it. It is too young, and the data too broad, for it to be of such use.

 

"And finally, I’d argue that even if Rozanski is off in his estimates, there’s no way he’s off on the general question of which version is more rare as you get to these later years: Newsstand copies are more rare no matter how you gauge it, whether you gauge by Rozanski’s estimates, whether you gauge by the relative rarity numbers reflected in CGC’s census data, or whether you gauge it by actual availability in the market. "

 

I'm not disputing that in the slightest. Clearly, as we leave the 80's and venture into the 90's, the newsstand market clearly diminishes.

 

But by what percentage?

 

No one knows.

 

Chuck thinks he knows, but again: he's TRYING TO SELL THESE BOOKS AT A PREMIUM. It is, therefore, in his interests to make the numbers as small as he possibly can, to convince the most people that what he's charging is worth it. Have you seen what he charges for newsstand books? And, have you seen what those books sell for on eBay? There's a substantial difference in almost every case.

 

After all....125,000 newsstand copies extant vs. 130,000 Direct copies extant means the newsstand is "more rare"...but what does it matter at that point?

 

"whether you gauge by the relative rarity numbers reflected in CGC’s census data,"

 

You CANNOT gauge these numbers by the census. It's simply not possible, and probably won't be for another 20-30 years...if at all.

 

"On that last point, consider ASM #607. I for one would certainly like a NM newsstand copy. Can you find me one? I have had an eBay alert set up for years… these things are impossible to find. Here is what the CGC census looks like as of today:"

 

2009 was towards the end of the Marvel newsstand wrap-up years. I suspect they're out there, and I also suspect that they're sitting in boxes somewhere, unknown to the majority of people who have them.

 

"And finally let’s not forget that at some point of low print run territory if the print run is 1,000 or 2,000 or even 3,000"...

 

They're not, and never were. It's not worth Marvel's time to print 1,000, 2,000, or 3,000 copies of ANY newsstand book, and never was. As you can see, Marvel printed tens of thousands of copies of ASM newsstands until 2008. They certainly weren't printing much fewer by the time they abandoned the newsstand altogether.

 

It wouldn't make any sense.

 

 

 

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RockMyAmadeus

RockMyAmadeus

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Yes, I "sound" a bit "harsh", but this isn't a random comment on a message board. This man has posted misinformation in his blog, purposely or no, that people use to make financial decisions, and he doesn't really understand what he's talking about.

 

To his credit, though, he did post my comment, and respond. Glad to be proven wrong in that regard.

 

I don't know how to format there, though. Is it the same as here?

 

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