Intro to Comichron - "Once something is known, it cannot be unknown"

Greetings Barragers,

I keep thinking about the most useful ways I've gone about hunting books that may have unrealized value yet become the next Invincible #1 or New Mutants #98. They are out there and I just don't want the A cover to account for said issue, I want the rarest version of that issue. What is the biggest reason for the first 15 books of the invincible series each being worth over 100+ dollars? Well first off the animated series has done very well but that leads to demand... the flip side to demand is supply and guess what they didn't print a bountiful number of, early Invincible issues.

Issue 1: Copies ordered by retailers: 10,800
Issue 2: Copies ordered by retailers: 8,506
Issue 3: Copies ordered by retailers: 7,350
Issue 4: Copies ordered by retailers: 7,558
Issue 5: Copies ordered by retailers: 6,774

I think you see the fade. Now take into account the number of first appearances that take place in so many issues of this series. The bigger the name of the appearance and the scarciety of the issue means money. Even though the deep series issues started to be printed around the 15k mark, many of these early big name drop keys were not so plentifully created.

Issue 19: Copies ordered by retailers: 9,660 (1st Battle Beast) High value: 350 on Key Collector

I want to walk through a couple of sample hunts and a methodology for using the website formerly known as ComiChron.

What is ComiChron you ask, well in short it's a count of book sales between 1984 - 2022. Towards the end of its run the site speaks to changes in the way distributors go about ordering that ultimately neutered the sites ability to tracks sales moving forward.

You can read more here: https://www.qualitycomix.com/learn/comic-sales-charts-rankings

The good news is we still have all these years worth of data but with another caveat, this is only tracking sales made in North America. We use all the free tools we can get!! I mean international issues are gaining steam but I don't want comics I can't read. So take it with a grain of salt and use it as you see best.

All that said, let me show you what I mean with a couple use cases to help it all sink in a bit easier.

Sample One : The curious case of Spider-Gwen's 1st appearance.

So me being a returning collector, I missed the bus for a good number of the more recent key issues and this book was one of them. Let's gather some details here and do some early comparisons against ComiChron. I'd like to know how many of these books are potentially in circulation. The Key Collector data listed above shows 2014. To see the month as well you have to click 'View Details", upon doing so we find the book was 'published' in November 2014 (CLZ shows SEPT). Let's step over to ComiChron and look for that month and year. To do this we go to the top of the page and click on the "Monthly Sales" link.

Now keep this in mind, really important, as per the google overlords description.

Publication Date (or In-Store Date) : This is the date the comic was actually released and available for sale.
Cover Date : This is the date printed on the cover of the comic book, which for many decades has traditionally been one to four months ahead of the actual publication date. This practice originated to give books a longer shelf life on newsstands before being considered "stale".

Pay attention to this when you're looking for your issue, I'll explain more as we continue since sites can get these confused...

Once we're in the month view we scroll down til we find our target month and year combo section:

Now taking into account cover date vs publication date, Key Collector actually lists the Cover date as the release / publish date. We have to look back into September to find the sales number for Edge #2 1st printing.

Here we can see a good number of this issue were printed. But did you notice in Key Collector they show 15 variants of this issue exist! Say whaaa. But hey be careful a good number of those are crappy 2022 'Facsimile' issues. If were going to invest in this book lets get the rarest one we can given at the end of the day people collect the rariants. If we exclude the trash variants, IE the Facsimile versions, we find that there were 4 reprints (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th) of this big key issue #2. Let's do what we did above and ID the publish date then step back and find the actual units printed totals. The 1st print showed a cover date of NOV 2014, with the actual total units released in the month of September, so let's assume a 2 month dip for each published date we find.

Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / NOV 2014 - 1st Print / Comichron lists : 54,415 Units
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / NOV 2014 - 2nd Print / Key Collector lists : 6,172 units (my math came out to 6,122)
* Since the 1st and 2nd print came out in the same month it appears the unit totals for issue two were left out but they listed the total units for the year 2014 which came out to be 70,107. 54415 + 9570 = 63985. 70,107 - 63,985 = 6,122
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / MAY 2015 - 1:25 / Wolfram Alpha shows 1/25 of 54,415 = 2176 Units. (Bonus stat)
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / JAN 2015 - 3rd Print / Comichron lists : 9,570 Units
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / APR 2015 - 4rd Print / Comichron lists : 7,705 Units
Edge of Spider-Verse #2 / MAY 2015 - 5rd Print / Comichron lists : 14,789 Units

Another factor I take into account is how far out from the 1st printings release are reprints being reproduced. In Gwen's case my comfort zone was the 2nd and 3rd printings. They are low count and reprinted almost on top of the original 1st printing. BUT, I really liked the lower count of the 4th printing and it wasn't too far out from 1st print drop, I saw one for a good price so I nabbed it. If I was buying at the current prices I'm seeing, I would deff be pulling down a second printing. Same month drop and only 6,100 printed. I really don't think people as a whole take into account units printed as a buying factor, thus it's a good way to buy books at an unrealized value.

Now take these counts into consideration when you're looking for your next pick up. This book as a whole has cooled off and the prices have gone down pretty nicely for all y'all opportunist.

Sample Two : The MYSTERIOUS Ms. Marvel (1st Series)

Ok to start the best Ms. Marvel generation hands down, is Vol. 2 version. > > > > > > > > >

But were going to look into the once chased first issue of Vol.3, the first solo series
of Kamala Khan. Now is a great time to buy many of these newer generation of heroes key
books. Especially now with origin story issues, I mean look at Absolute Batman issues 11 (Bane),
15 (Joker) see if it kick starts a drive for origin issues. So let's identify which of these Vol.3
#1 variants might be the hardest to find.

https://www.keycollectorcomics.com/variant/original/ms-marvel-3-1,30240/issues/

To be fair, of course the 2 incentive covers by Arthur Adams are going to be your gems but we're primarily chasing later printings here.

Ms. Marvel #1 / 1:50 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 2014 - Out of 50,286 that means 1005 issues. (00121)
Ms. Marvel #1 / 1:100 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 2014 - Out of 50,286 that means 502 issues. (00131) (then have him sign one!)

Key Collector is such a valuable tool but it's not perfect. If we try and ID the release date for issue 1 we find that KC is lacking the actual release date, again it shows an incorrect publication date. As observed these dates can be incorrect and the app depends on us, as third party users, to submit corrections as we find them. As shown below KC lists issue one as having a published / released date of JAN 2014. When I go into ComicChron it's not to be found.

This is where having multiple tools in our TOOL BOX makes a difference. I again reference my CLZ database given I was stepping backward in ComiChron trying to find the cover date month. Confirmed CK has a wrong release date. As per CLZ the actual release date was FEB 2014 and the cover date being APR 2014. Went into ComicChron to verify and buum (Yes, boom with emphasis) there it was in FEB.

Now that we've found the right month we can start looking into the later printings. I'm just going to stick to the dates shown in CLZ so I'm not hen pecking months looking for issues in ComiChron. This is how they all list out in terms of release dates.

Ms Marvel #1 / 1st Print (00111) ⋅ FEB 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 50,286
Ms Marvel #1 / 2nd Print (00112) ⋅ MAR 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 6,963
Ms Marvel #1 / 3rd Print (00113 / 00171) ⋅ APR 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 5,374
Ms Marvel #1 / 4th Print (00114) ⋅ MAY 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ 2,847
Ms Marvel #1 / 5th Print (None) ⋅ MIA !!
Ms Marvel #1 / 6th Print (00116) ⋅ AUG 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ ?
Ms Marvel #1 / 7th Print (00117) ⋅ NOV 2014 ⋅ Marvel ⋅ ?

The 3rd print has 2 variants, a yellow border and a B&W. KC said the On-sale date for the B&W is the same as Ms. Marvel #1 3rd printing yellow (APR 2014). KC says "Copies ordered by retailers: 8,221- combined total of Ms. Marvel #1 orders from April 2014 and May 2014". ComicChron looks to not separate variants released in the same month so I think the unit totals are both accounted for in the APR numbers. Adding to my assumption is the release date both CLZ and KC list for the 4th print being JUN 2014 not MAY. So we have a bit of speculation about the number shown for MAY 2014... is it the B&W version or the 4th print?

So we have a questionable 4th print, yet the plot thickens! There is no 5th printing to be found but they continued to created a 6th and 7th print. Given the missing 5th print period, ComiChron fails to have any release numbers for the 6th and 7th printings at all. I mean we have the release date but nothing but later issues of Ms. Marvel show up in the months these later printings dropped. Did you notice the UPC code for the B&W 3rd print? Funny enough "the 2 issues for the 3rd print are claiming the same release date" - CK, but the B&W var is listed like it's a 7th variant of the original printing. Read this POST for insight into UPC translation. If you go back and look at the variant UPC numbers for the original #1 you find this order.

00111, 00121, 00131, 00151

Looks like we might have had some covers dropped before FOC for this issue, more so my theory is the B&W variant was to be an original variant cover but they prob felt 7+? variants was a bit too ambitious. They simply forgot to modify the barcode for the issue. All the reprints are branded as such on the lower right of the main cover, the B&W issues says variant in the upper left.

As to how many of the 6th and 7th printings were created... I'm really not sure. I picked up a 4th print based on my logic explained above.

Sample Three : The Ice Creepy Man (1st Series)

So I like watching for Indy comics when they drop first issues of a title. You never know what might take off so I actually take a few moments and read the details blurb where they summarize these series. "The Ice Cream Man" is one of those series that has always stood out to me but skirts a line of Horror I don't usually get into but like it or not you prob know of this series. I mean the series already has multiple "image first" reprints.

Ice Cream Man #1 / 1st Print (00111) / Image ⋅ JAN 2018 ⋅ 9,454 issues released
Ice Cream Man #1 / 2nd Print (00112) / Image ⋅ FEB 2018 ⋅ 3,479 issues released

This issue has been talked up a bit that it was to be adapted into a TV series. Now that news came out a hot minute ago, but I think the momentum for this issue has been set to some degree. Now take into account how few of these issues exist and what the going price is currently. For less than half the 1st print price you can nab a 2nd print that came out a month later. Even better there were only about a third of them printed. Meets all the marks for taste, even with my huge disinterest for all things horror themed.

Currently there are a couple issues of this 2nd print selling on eBay for less than 60 bucks (including shipping), just make sure your watching out for those dirtbags that list a low 'buy it now' and then try and sneak an extra 20 dollars shipping in on ya.

These are just a few samples, I could easily go into many more that I've used ComicChron to sway my decision when picking issues I wanted for my collection. My goal is to have a million dollar collection without it ever containing an Action Comics #1. :)

Good luck in all your hunting efforts, til the next one.

Respectfully,

DD