{"id":5989,"date":"2008-02-27T22:58:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-27T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2020-07-28T03:09:14","modified_gmt":"2020-07-28T03:09:14","slug":"sales-figures-and-speculation-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/27\/sales-figures-and-speculation-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Sales figures and speculation: The demand for supply data"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: right;\"><i><span style=\"font-size: small; font-weight: bold;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;\">by John Jackson Miller<\/span><\/span><\/i><\/div>\n<p>\nIn a post about <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/pwbeat.publishersweekly.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/27\/the-continuing-obsession-with-sales-figures\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">the publication of sales figures<\/a> <\/strong>on  Heidi MacDonald&#8217;s blog, she brought up a number of ways that they do  matter, above and beyond serving as water-cooler (really web) discussion  fodder for fans. It recalled to me one of the reasons I thought it  would be interesting to include them in the <strong>Standard Catalogs<\/strong>  a few years back, integrated within the price guide listings. One  benefit infrequently mentioned applies directly to the  comics-as-collectible crowd: As supply levels have become better known,  speculator frenzies like we saw in the black-and-white boom and in the  early 1990s may have become less likely \u2014 or at least, better informed  by reality.<span class=\"DNNAlignleft\" id=\"dnn_ctr990_ContentPane\"><span style=\"font-family: inherit; font-size: small;\"><span id=\"dnn_ctr990_MainView_ViewBlog_lstBlogView_ctl04_lblDescription\"> <br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/02\/199108XMen1-1.jpg\" width=\"204\" \/>I stress \u201cmay.\u201d I\u2019d like to think that the one customer who famously had his retailer order 5,000 copies of the \u201cadjectiveless\u201d <strong>X-Men #1<\/strong>  in 1991 would have been deterred, had he known that there were 7-8  million more copies out there, but maybe nothing would have stopped him.  (I doubt he would have put his money into 5,000 <strong>different<\/strong>  comic books, in any event.) But bubble markets tend to harm even those  who don\u2019t participate in them \u2014 as many retailers from the last crash  can attest \u2014 so I have to think that having information out there is a  good thing for everyone. Fewer people burnt is fewer people burnt out \u2014  and less collateral damage, we would hope.<\/p>\n<p>Today, much of the  immediate-aftermarket attention in new comics is now confined to the  limited edition variant market, differently from the early 1990s \u2014  possibly just because buyers better know (especially from eBay) how many  of the &#8220;regular versions&#8221; exist with relation to observable demand. There  may be some safety for the industry in that, as the collectible new  comics tail is less likely to wag the entire new-comics canine. In  1991-3, it did!<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by John Jackson Miller In a post about the publication of sales figures on Heidi MacDonald&#8217;s blog, she brought up a number of ways that they do matter, above and beyond serving as water-cooler (really web) discussion fodder for fans. It recalled to me one of the reasons I thought it would be interesting to &#8230; <a title=\"Sales figures and speculation: The demand for supply data\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/27\/sales-figures-and-speculation-demand\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Sales figures and speculation: The demand for supply data\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5990,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14,43],"class_list":["post-5989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-1990s-sales","tag-speculation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5991,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5989\/revisions\/5991"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/comichron.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}