Newsstand Variant Comics: Everything you need to know!

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Here are some timestamps for the different topics discussed in this video:
1:09 History of Newsstand comics
4:58 How they’ve evolved
13:28 Values

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Transcript:
Newsstands are a type of variant that are just now beginning to get the attention they deserve. This video is an in depth look at 3 important aspects of newsstand editions: how they originated, how they evolved over time, and all the important aspects of values. With values, we’re going to look at everything from which issues are extremely hot, to which ones to avoid paying too much for, to how to find them for direct edition prices. I’ll also put timestamps in the description so you can jump to any one of these topics if you want.

So first, lets look at what newsstands are, and a bit of their history. Newsstand editions vs direct edition comics is all about the distribution model used for those book. That’s really what we’re talking about here. It was never intended to be a variant of the comic, or to impact the collectability of the books, but it absolutely has. Prior to 1976, almost all comics were distributed with a newsstand model. What this meant was, retailers could return unsold copies of the books for a full refund. Very early on they realized that sending back the entire book was not sustainable because of the shipping cost so what they started doing was having the retailers tear off the covers of unsold books and return just that. This is where the scarcity of newsstands really began because virtually all unsold copies were destroyed. In comparison, in today’s market, unsold copies go into storage or the dollar bin. This is also where the scarcity of high grade newsstands began because the only copies of newsstand that weren’t destroyed went to customers who probably bought the comic to read in the first place.

So the first iterations of newsstand editions was the blank barcode box. Newsstand editions had the standard barcode, while the direct edition versions had a blank box where the barcode would be. Amazing Spider-man 157 was the first issue in the ASM series that had a newsstand and direct edition. They are so rare in direct edition that I couldn’t find any pictures with the blank barcode box. The first issue in the ASM run that I could find this on was asm 174. The blank box wasn’t received well so they transitioned to the bar code strike through. A popular ASM issue with this version is ASM 194, first black cat. This is the direct edition with the strik through, and this is the newsstand with standard barcode. This also wasn’t received well so they transitioned to a spidey head in the barcode box for direct editions. The first issue they did this with was ASM 202. From there they switched it up to all kinds of different things in the barcode box.

The three most important aspects of value with newsstand books is popularity of the book, scarcity, and condition. Generally speaking, 9.8 newsstands are much harder to find. So if you have a scarce newsstand, in 9.8 condition, on a super popular book, you have a gold mine. Ultimate Fallout 4 comes to mind, with a most recent sale of a 9.8 @ $8,1000 about 800% more than the regular first print at the time. Other times you can find newsstand editions for the same price as direct even though they are way more rare if it’s just not that popular of a book. There seems to be an exponential relationship to popularity of the book and value. For example, a book that not popular might fetch the same or slightly higher than the direct edition. But the more popular the book, the value goes exponentially up. UF4 is the best example of this.

People are still sleeping on this type of variant. Keen buyers can spot them for direct price. Example of 40 year veteran. Part of the problem is CGC not recognizing and no real numbers around the variants. But the market shows up general numbers.