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Newsstand variants of variants and other variants of variants found
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47 posts in this topic

OK. So you’ve been collecting variant covers. Staying in tune with all the releases. Keeping a checklist and comparing with your friends to make sure you haven’t missed anything. Maybe you’ve even been crazy enough to try to collect newsstand variants in addition to direct sales variants. Well sorry friend… you probably don’t have them all. “What the H E double hockey sticks?!?”… you say? Read on!

 

OK… this is a little nutty but I’ve managed to find all but seven newsstand issues of Batman, Detective Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman, Action Comics and the original Justice League of America. In addition to having almost all the newsstand issues, I also have all the direct sales copies of these titles. Direct sales issues were sold in comic book shops whereas newsstand issues were sold in book stores such as Barnes & Nobles, Waldenbooks, and regular newsstands. As I compared direct sales issues with newsstand issues, I’ve found that there have been a very few cases where more than one variation of an issue was released in newsstand format. For you viewing pleasure, here’s the ones I’ve found (and let me apologize for not rotating all these photos...I just didn't want to take the darn time to do it):

 

Action 695 (this comic book appears to have a regular newsstand issue and a deluxe newsstand issue). I question if the deluxe Action 695 was really a newsstand issue or instead did some store just slap a UPC sticker on it? The sticker on my 695 is nearly identical to size and style as my Superman 75 2nd printing newsstand issue, so I think the deluxe Action 695 was actually sent to the newsstands with that sticker on it. I would love to see a few more before I conclude that they really went to the newsstands with the deluxe format. Right now I only know of two stickered copies.

 

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Batman 686 (two variations were released to newsstands). (Note: a newsstand copy of the Kubert cover sold today on ebay for $28)

 

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Superman 100 (deluxe and non-deluxe versions were released to newsstands). See photo below. I’ve noticed that the black deluxe cover was also used for the 100th issues of Wonder Woman, Flash and Justice League (and that both deluxe and non-deluxe versions of all those centennial issues were released to newsstands). See example of Justice League 100 in photo below.

 

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Superman 215 (two variations were released to newsstands).

 

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Justice League (1987 series) 100 (deluxe and non-deluxe versions were released to newsstands).

 

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In addition, all millennium variants were released in both direct and newsstand formats. See example of Superman 75 above. I have not found the newsstand variants of the millennium issues of Justice League 1 and Action Comics 252. If you have either of those, please contact me as I would love to make note of them in my database.

 

 

OTHER NEWSSTAND ODDITIES:

 

Action 526 – Some direct and newsstand issues had a slick ad in the centerfold. Some direct and newsstand issues did not have this ad. Upon close inspection, you can see that the ad was not just “pulled out” of the comic book. I can only guess that they ran out of the slick ads when they printed Action 526 or failed to include the ad in some issues due to some sort of error. I’ve seen several copies that do not contain the ad.

 

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Also, there were some newsstand issues that came out with errors on the UPC. In these cases, it appears as if the printer printed a UPC sticker to place on the cover to fix the error before it was sent to newsstands. If you find any of these stickered comics, you can usually see the error on the original comic book by shining a strong flashlight behind the cover and looking at it from the front. Following is a list of those issues and the error on the original UPC.

 

Batman 582 (very hard to see, but the original newsstand printing had the number “7” below the bar code, which I found by rubbing the sticker off of one copy and comparing it to stickered copies. Note that two different stickers were made for newsstand copies of Batman 582).

 

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Superman 677 (the original newsstand printing had the number “08” above the bar code, whereas the stickered copies have the number “77” above the bar code. On this comic book, you can easily see the error behind the sticker because the sticker is fairly thin).

 

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Action 759 (the original newsstand printing had the number “10” above the bar code whereas stickered copies have the number “11”. Action 759 is the only error issue where I’ve been able to find unstickered error copies. I’ve yet to find unstickered copies of newsstand variations of Batman 582, Detective 802 and Superman 677.

 

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If you start looking for these newsstand comic books, you might be surprised at how hard they are to find, especially issues dated after the 1990s. After 3 years of searching cons, local shops and ebay, the only newsstand variants I haven’t seen yet are Batman 706, Detective Comics 814, 815, 829, 862, 868, and Action Comics 895. If you have any of these newsstand issues, I would love to see a scan. And if you decide to pursue newsstand collecting, prepare for a gigantic easter egg hunt and good luck!

 

Kirk Ticknor

Edited by Cpt Kirk
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By the way, I found a non-stickered copy of TEC 802 newsstand. Somehow this copy got out the door with part of the bar code missing. Not sure how the store was able to ring it up and sell it with a portion of the bar code missing.

 

Of the other newsstand issues that had errors on the bar code, I've only seen the Action 759 without the sticker on it. I haven't been able to find copies newsstand copies of Superman 677 and Batman 582 without the sticker on them.

 

p.s. In the titles of Batman, Detective, Superman, and Action Comics, I have found newsstand issues of every single issue except Batman 706, Detective 829, 862, 868, and Action 895. If you see a newsstand variant of those issues, I would love to hear about it.

 

 

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By the way, I found a non-stickered copy of TEC 802 newsstand. Somehow this copy got out the door with part of the bar code missing. Not sure how the store was able to ring it up and sell it with a portion of the bar code missing.

 

Of the other newsstand issues that had errors on the bar code, I've only seen the Action 759 without the sticker on it. I haven't been able to find copies newsstand copies of Superman 677 and Batman 582 without the sticker on them.

 

p.s. In the titles of Batman, Detective, Superman, and Action Comics, I have found newsstand issues of every single issue except Batman 706, Detective 829, 862, 868, and Action 895. If you see a newsstand variant of those issues, I would love to hear about it.

 

 

Update: Now the only newsstand issues I haven't found are Detective 868 and Action 895 (I'm almost sure they exist, since there are about 1300 newsstand variants in the titles of Action, Superman, Detective and Batman, and I've found all but two of them)

 

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On several of those newsstands aren't those just store UPC stickers? I didn't think that DC put those on books before they sent them to newsstands.

 

That is the first copy of a Millennium book that I have seen that is a newsstand copy.

 

Some of those high grade newsstand copies do sell well because they get bent to hell on newsstand racks most of the time.

 

Edited by Fastballspecial
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Fastballspecial said:
On several of those newsstands aren't those just store UPC stickers? I didn't think that DC put those on books before they sent them to newsstands.

 

That is the first copy of a Millennium book that I have seen that is a newsstand copy.

 

Some of those high grade newsstand copies do sell well because they get bent to hell on newsstand racks most of the time.

 

Thanks for pointing this out. We believe that the pre-printed UPC stickers that were placed on the error copies of newsstand comics were placed on the comic books by DC's printing company.

 

As basis for that belief, take a look at the sticker that was placed over the error bar code on Superman 677. I've seen at least 10 copies of the newsstand version of Superman 677 and they all had the exact same sticker on them. If stores placed their own UPC sticker on the comic book, then the stickers would look different. To me, it seems pretty obvious that the printer realized his error, and then just placed the stickers on those comic books rather than reprint the entire comic book. The sticker would have been a much cheaper solution. Furthermore, a lot of those stickers have a DC Comics logo printed directly on the sticker... a store sticker would not have that.

 

What is really hard to find is a copy of an error UPC code that has never had a sticker placed over it. At least 5 copies of the Action 759 newsstand issue have been found without a sticker (the printer must have accidentally let some of those out the door). On the other hand, I've seen at least 10 copies of the newsstand Superman 677 variant and they all had the exact same sticker placed over the bar code. I thought it was a small miracle to find the TEC 802 error bar code without a sticker (reason: first of all, the newsstand issues of TEC's from 800 and up are extremely hard to find, the bar code would not have been functional on the error copy because part of the bar code would be missing, which means a sticker was needed.... so how that one got out in circulation is beyond me.)

 

p.s. I've seen several newsstand variants of those Millennium editions. The only two I have not yet found are Action 252 Millennium and Justice League 1 Millennium. If anyone finds those two newsstand variants, please send me a PM.

Edited by Cpt Kirk
error correction and ad info
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Hey I didn't want to start a whole new thread so I thought I'd post here.

I was at my local Walmart and found some DC 3-Packs. mainly Rebirth issues, but you can only see the top comic. I was wondering if anyone has bought some of these and opened them? Are the other issues #s 2 and 3 of the series or are they random issues? Also note that these are variants as they have no cover price. The Harley Quinn & Deadshot comic is a variant of Harley Quinn 21.

 

Harley-Quinn-and-Deadshot-1-Comic-Book.jpg

 

Batman-1-Dc-Rebirth-Walmart-Exclusive-Plus-2.jpg

 

If this has been discussed elsewhere already, my apologies. Apparently these have been out for awhile but I just came across them ( I don't go to Walmart very often unless I have to). I looked up some on eBay, but I didn't see any that were opened other than the top comic.

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Hey I didn't want to start a whole new thread so I thought I'd post here.

I was at my local Walmart and found some DC 3-Packs. mainly Rebirth issues, but you can only see the top comic. I was wondering if anyone has bought some of these and opened them? Are the other issues #s 2 and 3 of the series or are they random issues? Also note that these are variants as they have no cover price. The Harley Quinn & Deadshot comic is a variant of Harley Quinn 21.

 

Harley-Quinn-and-Deadshot-1-Comic-Book.jpg

 

Batman-1-Dc-Rebirth-Walmart-Exclusive-Plus-2.jpg

 

If this has been discussed elsewhere already, my apologies. Apparently these have been out for awhile but I just came across them ( I don't go to Walmart very often unless I have to). I looked up some on eBay, but I didn't see any that were opened other than the top comic.

 

There is a pretty lengthy thread on these Walmart packs on collector's society. And yes, I have opened quite a few of these packs, especially since they only cost $5. So the top comic book in each pack is a special edition (not the newsstand version, even though the front comic book in this pack looks like a newsstand edition). Each of those special edition comic books has the words "special edition" added to the title in the indicia. The other two comic books in the pack are just regular direct sales versions of random comic books. I appears as if those two direct sales comics were overstock, and someone decided to sell them off in these packs. I think it would be interesting to find the persons who had the idea to produce these packs, and get the rest of the story.

 

By the way, these packs came out in two waves. The packs you have shown on this thread are from the most recent wave, and each comic book on top is a rebirth issue. These packs seems to be very easily found in most Walmart stores. The first wave came out around April or May of 2016, and they were much harder to find in my opinion.

 

Bottom line: These packs contain more dratted variants!

 

Edited by Cpt Kirk
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OUT OF THE BOX QUESTION SINCE WERE DISCUSSING NEWSTANDS:

 

 

If there rare in high grade, at what grade does the rarity start? 7.0? or is it just a 9.8 kinda thing...?

 

also at what point is the following graded book rare...I ask because I just got a Silver Surfer #4 CGC 8.0 ordered, and I'm wondering, since that may be a cover hard in high grade, at what grade does the rarity begin? it's probably different for every book,....? I asked in Silver Age Forum, but I'm just curious if I got the right grade....looked for the Silver Surfer #4 thread but couldn't find it through "search".... :)

thanks any help is appreciated (thumbs u

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OUT OF THE BOX QUESTION SINCE WERE DISCUSSING NEWSTANDS:

 

 

If there rare in high grade, at what grade does the rarity start? 7.0? or is it just a 9.8 kinda thing...?

 

also at what point is the following graded book rare...I ask because I just got a Silver Surfer #4 CGC 8.0 ordered, and I'm wondering, since that may be a cover hard in high grade, at what grade does the rarity begin? it's probably different for every book,....? I asked in Silver Age Forum, but I'm just curious if I got the right grade....looked for the Silver Surfer #4 thread but couldn't find it through "search".... :)

thanks any help is appreciated (thumbs u

9.8 is really where you will see a price separation, if there is one, between direct and newsstands.

 

It's not hard to find them with minor imperfections. It's the near perfect copies that command attention, depending on the title and issue.

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Interesting, THANKS

No problem. To be clear, my response only applies to modern and copper age books. Before then, there were either only newsstand editions or the newsstand books far outnumbered direct market copies.

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Interesting, THANKS

No problem. To be clear, my response only applies to modern and copper age books.

 

I understand, I was mainly asking about Newstands..... the SS#4 was a different subject, that I shouldn't have probably mentioned in the Modern forum.

 

Many thanks, that helps cause I see a lot on ebay advertising "newstand" that aren't 9.8 and was curious as to if a plot was afoot lol

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