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About FlyingDonut

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    Sold first CGC book on eBay, & all I got was this stinking title

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  1. You keep saying that not being able to know what stores ordered is an opinion. That isn't opinion, unless you went to every comic store in North America and they told you.
  2. But that assumes static ordering patterns, which doesn't happen. Your scenario assumes that each store orders the number of variants required to get the 100s or 1000s. If there are 10 little stores that order 100 copies, each will get the 1:100 variant, but no one will get a 1:1000 variant, so that 1,000 of the 150,000 books won't have an associated even ratio number variant.
  3. Exactly correct. If there's a 1:1000 variant - just as an example - and 20 stores order 50 copies of the book, the number of 1:1000 variants for those 1000 copies of the regular book will be zero.
  4. The fact remains that you have no idea how many stores ordered the number of books required, and you cannot extrapolate from the ratio number. If you want my opinion, my opinion would be that there are many more low number chase variants (1:10, 1:25) in existence for hot books than people believe and many less high number (1:100, 1:1000, etc.) in existence. That would be an opinion.
  5. Um, yes I did. There is no way to reasonably estimate numbers because you do not know ordering patterns for stores. You have no idea how many stores ordered the number of items required to obtain the variant - that is not an opinion, that is a fact. Your method assumes static ordering patterns, which is simply not the case.
  6. Actually it isn't. The ratio number - even if you knew the exact number of books printed has NOTHING to do with the number of the variant being made. It has to do with the number of variants a retailer can get. To make this simple. I am the publisher of Smegma Man. We have a SUPER DUPER crossover issue #50, where Smegma Man meets up with The Flying Load to fight injustice! We're going to offer four chase variants on this, a 1:10 cover by some big artist, a 1:25 cover by another big artist, a 1:50 by another big artist and a super special 1:500 with a cover by JACK KIRBY! Amazing, since he's dead! AND because we're awesome, we're going to tell you EXACTLY what our print run will be - we're going to print 100,000 copies of this bad boy! OK - how many copies of each variant are we printing? You cannot answer this question, because you don't know the ordering patterns of individual stores. If ONE store ordered all 100,000 copies, they would get 10000, 4000, 2000, and 200....but you don't know what a store will order. In this example there would probably be a lot of 1:10s and 1:25s and a smaller amount of 1:50s and a few 1:500s - but you can't possibly make a number of individual copies because you don't know what the ordering pattern is, and you'd have to factor in the number of variants on top of the order. I have it on pretty good authority that the Jim Lee 1:5000 Batman book had a print run of about 45 - but who knows. Its a mystery. I can tell you that when a store orders 5,000 copies of a book to get the chase variants, DC is your friend.
  7. High number variants pay for themselves if you know what you're doing. If - for example - you wanted to get the 1:5000 Batman book with the Jim Lee sketch cover, you had to order 5,000 copies of the Batman book. Assume you're getting a 50% discount, so you're looking at (roughly) $8K The Jim Lee sketch cover sells for $4K. You also now have five 1:1000 variants, ten 1:500 variants, 20 1:250 variants, 50 1:100 variants, etc etc etc. All of these move. I don't understand why a store wouldn't order the 5,000 copies. You're printing money - and anything you do with the actual book is gravy.
  8. I think so. It is a very speculative play, but one I think you should do.
  9. I don't think it made the marketplace bigger. It made people increase their prices.
  10. 1. I'm very old 2. Yes. I was dealing at shows and through the CBG starting at 13. BUY X-MEN.
  11. All of these points are true, and all of these points can be the same at all times. 1. I am searching high and wide for newsstand copies. I believe they will have a significant market appreciation, the later the better. 2. The "rarecomics" site is garbage. Just garbage. There's data on there that is simply wrong on multiple levels. 3. People pushing newsstands are looking to line their pocketbooks. I see you, Chuck Rosanski, I see you, Benjamin Nobel. 4. There's absolutely no way to determine what a "print run" for a newsstand was. When I try to get a ratio, I think you can start at about 15% of the print run with that dropping to 1-5% by the end, but no one knows what the print run was. All numbers that are being thrown around are at best informed speculation. 5. I think we can make informed speculation as to the number of newsstand copies made by counting the number of Barnes and Nobles and doing some anectodal thinking. If there were in 2017 (the last newsstand year) 627 Barnes and Nobles, it would go to reason that there would be at least 3,035 copies of an individual book - five copies per store - based on looking at a Barnes and Noble newsstand and counting the copies of a magazine, and probably double that, just to account for spillage and return.. Note that this number is ONLY a guess. That doesn't count any other outlets, but I think a 650 number, just as one that has come out there, is way way way low. 6. That doesn't mean that there are 3,035 copies of a book in existence - but I think the numbers that are put out there are really low. I think they're also put out there by people who are trying to make a buck. Are newsstand books - especially post 2010 - ridiculously hard to find? Yes. Should they have a premium? Yes. Are they being pumped by people who are shady at best? Yes.