valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 (edited) Does anyone have their Gerber Photo-Journal handy? Mine's packed away somewhere. I'd like to compare the CGC Census numbers to the comic survival rates that were estimated in the beginning pages of the photo-journals (if I'm remembering correctly). Edited January 25, 2018 by valiantman jason327 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoldCap Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 Is this what you're talking about? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 I thought I remembered seeing some chart of estimates for comic survival rates... overlapping lines representing years/decades on a rectangular graphic. 30%, 50%, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrooge Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 valiantman and shortboxed 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 That's the one - THANKS! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrooge Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 (edited) Let me know if you need anything else. Edited January 24, 2018 by Scrooge jaybuck43 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 It's kinda hard to see the orange percentages on the left of the chart. Are they 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, 10%, 2%, 1%? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrooge Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 (edited) Yes. I thought it was weird as a scale but you are reading them correctly except for 25%, the scale actually says 20%. Edited January 24, 2018 by Scrooge Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scrooge Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 Btw, it's 20%, not 25%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 1 minute ago, Scrooge said: Yes. I thought it was weird as a scale but you are reading them correctly. Right, it's a "violation" of good practice for graphing, but it is what it is. We are talking about a serious approach to documenting funny books. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bc Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 18 minutes ago, Scrooge said: Wow - that drop from '54 to '62 is staggering. Not that the increase from '38 to '44 (another 8 year window) is any less impressive. If we updated this to modern times, would the "Total Comic Books Published per Month" continue to flatline? Or was there another decline after the '90's implosion that would drop us below levels last seen in '37? I know from your other graphs that a large percentage of slabbed books are modern - you thinkin' of trying to merge the two data sets? -bc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 (edited) 2 hours ago, Scrooge said: I have corrected the vertical bars to make them standard, rather than "squished" with 2% on the bottom two bars and 25% on the top two bars in the Gerber original, now every orange bar is 10%, every gray bar is 5,000,000 comics. Edited January 24, 2018 by valiantman shortboxed and Sqeggs 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aardvark88 Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 Interesting that this is not your normal supply and projected demand graph. Did Gerber select Amaz Fant #15 (1962) as the nexus of enough supply surviving from the lower end of title print run? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rjpb Posted January 24, 2018 Share Posted January 24, 2018 44 minutes ago, aardvark88 said: Interesting that this is not your normal supply and projected demand graph. Did Gerber select Amaz Fant #15 (1962) as the nexus of enough supply surviving from the lower end of title print run? As I recall the estimated distribution of AF #15 was somewhere between 100,000 and 130,000 copies. If it had the projected10% survival rate charted, that would mean in excess of 10,000 copies still exist. Superman sold over 800,000 copies of each issue at this time according to Comichron, meaning there should be on average around 80,000 copies of each issue still floating around, and the average distribution is put at 300,000, meaning 30,000 copies. These numbers indicate that early 60s books are about as common as books from the last couple of decades, though obviously not in the same grades. If this chart is at all accurate, the number of surviving issues of late 1960s Spiderman issues, should be about 4X the total print runs currently being published. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 24, 2018 Author Share Posted January 24, 2018 1 hour ago, aardvark88 said: Interesting that this is not your normal supply and projected demand graph. Did Gerber select Amaz Fant #15 (1962) as the nexus of enough supply surviving from the lower end of title print run? I think Gerber is using the "rise of Marvel" in 1962 with readers who kept those early issues as a turning point for survival, with 1965 and 1967 having even more collectors putting their copies back. aardvark88 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 25, 2018 Author Share Posted January 25, 2018 19 hours ago, valiantman said: I have corrected the vertical bars to make them standard, rather than "squished" with 2% on the bottom two bars and 25% on the top two bars in the Gerber original, now every orange bar is 10%, every gray bar is 5,000,000 comics. If you "do the math" from these 1990 estimates, you multiply the monthly amount times 12 to get annual published, then you multiply the annual published total by the estimated percentage still existing. The result looks like this: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 25, 2018 Author Share Posted January 25, 2018 (edited) Throw the CGC Census (as of 2018) on there and see what we get... Obviously, the CGC Census isn't a perfect reflection on what exists... it's a reflection of what exists, is slab-worthy, and has already been sent to CGC for slabbing. I need to add the "key" - light green is CGC Census (and the right side numbers are CGC Census), blue is the Gerber Estimate (and left side numbers are Gerber). Edited January 25, 2018 by valiantman path4play, Scrooge and Sqeggs 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 25, 2018 Author Share Posted January 25, 2018 (edited) (same graphic as above, with the color coding explanation included on the graphic) Note that we're looking at millions in blue and ten-thousands in light green... so the number of "slabbed copies" in 2018 is about 0.07% (for 1956) to 5.68% (for 1940) of the Gerber estimated surviving books in 1990. Edited January 26, 2018 by valiantman shortboxed 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sqeggs Posted January 25, 2018 Share Posted January 25, 2018 20 hours ago, bc said: Wow - that drop from '54 to '62 is staggering. Not that the increase from '38 to '44 (another 8 year window) is any less impressive. If we updated this to modern times, would the "Total Comic Books Published per Month" continue to flatline? Or was there another decline after the '90's implosion that would drop us below levels last seen in '37? I know from your other graphs that a large percentage of slabbed books are modern - you thinkin' of trying to merge the two data sets? -bc Be interesting to see what fraction of the falling number of comics printed in the late 1950s were Dells. I would guess it would have been very high -- 50% maybe? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
valiantman Posted January 25, 2018 Author Share Posted January 25, 2018 (edited) I believe that there are individual books that are "skewing" the numbers for certain years, for example, 1974 has a spike for the CGC census because of Hulk #181. I may try to remove the top book outliers to see if the trend for CGC slabbing (apart from obvious big books) is a closer match to the pattern Gerber predicted for 1990 survival. EDIT: It does make a difference for the mid-1970s, but overall, it's not a big difference. Edited January 25, 2018 by valiantman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
