[OtherEric]

Nothing to do with the GAC site; this is purely for my personal use:

What are the scarcity indexes of More Fun 108-127 (the post-hero run?)

Thanks in advance to anybody who can check that for me!

[cimmerian32]

108-115  Gerber 6
116-120  Gerber 7
121-124  Gerber 7
125,126  Gerber 6
127        Gerber 7

[OtherEric]

Thank you, Cimm.  Amazingly, out of the 3 I found recently two are 7's.  Not that any are really common. 

[bchat]

I've been meaning to ask about this somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.

Is there a website that has the Gerber Scarcity Index issue-by-issue, or at least title-by-title?  The only thing I've ever found online has been a listing of what all the numbers represent, but nothing more useful than that.

[JVJ]

Thank you, Cimm.  Amazingly, out of the 3 I found recently two are 7's.  Not that any are really common. 

I would venture to say that the Gerber Photo Journal rarity indexes were made obsolete by the arrival of the Internet, Eric.

1989 was prehistory in the Computer "age" and Gerber relied on his network of friends and dealers for the "rarity" values. Like the Price Guide, "rarity" equates with "price" to dealers, so I would also venture to speculate that many of those "values" were inflated to keep (or get) prices high.

Not to imply that those More Fun issues are common, just that there's room for debate as to just how rare they actually are.

Peace, Jim (|:{>

[cimmerian32]

Totally agree with ya, Jim...  the internet, with the proliferation of eBay, online auction houses, and dealer sites, has really made a lot of books come out of the woodwork.  The scarcity index, while not completely lacking in value, is somewhat skewed to a pre-internet collecting world.  Take it for what it is worth...  a RELATIVE scarcity index, circa 1989...

[OtherEric]

Agreed with both of you.  There is ONE book I own where I'm fairly confident the reputation for scarcity is accurate.  Which doesn't equate to how many copies survive; but just the relative scarcity.  That would be Sugar & Spike 1.

The usefulness of the Gerber is limited, dated, and flawed.  But it remains the only large-scale rating, and even if it's wrong on specifics it more often than not gives you a starting point.  Not that I needed that much; I knew More Fun was a scarce book.  But I was curious. Thank you again!

[narfstar]

Prize Frankenstein #21 is listed as an eight and shows up often. Three people in this group including myself had the Tops Comics rated an 8. It was hard to find but does show up. Wish I had a cover

[OtherEric]

Ok, just an odd follow-up to this; I was wondering if there was possibly another set of data I could find to compare.  I decided that the Heritage archives might be a good place to look; since they have easily accessible data for seven years or so on-line.  That lets us track at least how many copies have come up for sale at one high profile location.  (If anybody has access to the CCG census that would probably be another wonderful resource; but I don't have the access.)  None of this should suggest absolute numbers of copies, but it might give us some relative numbers.

Here are the numbers I got for More Fun 108-127; since they're the only books I had Gerber numbers on:

The Gerber 6 Books:

108: 2 Copies
109: 2 Copies
110: 1 Copy
111: 2 Copies
112: 1 Copy
113: 2 Copies
114: 1 Copy
115: No copy at Heritage
125: 5 Copies
126: 2 Copies

The Gerber 7 books:
116: 2 Copies
117: 2 Copies
118: 4 Sales (but 3 of those were the Mile high copy bouncing around)
119: 1 Copy
120: 2 Copies
121: 1 Copy
122: 2 Copies
123: 1 Copy
124: 1 Copy
127: 3 Copies.

I have no idea exactly what these numbers mean, though.  I strongly suspect we would get better results with a higher profile run; or a series with a greater diversity of scarcity numbers.  If anybody can suggest a run to look at I would be willing to pull sales numbers off Heritage; I think there is some meaningful information we can get from heritage on some runs.  Anybody have any suggestions?  Or CCG numbers they can throw into the mix?  (I personally doubt 115 is really the rarest of the late More Funs, but that could just be me.)