AJD

On 4/30/2024 at 1:30 AM, Yorick said:

See that box on the top left with the differing country prices... 

On 5/1/2024 at 6:37 PM, rakehell said:

That was actually the bit that confused me. 

You'll like this one then.

On 4/30/2024 at 11:33 PM, Point Five said:

The idea of e.g. three players in 4th place duking it out for 6th place is pretty funny.  

I hadn't thought of that possibility, but that could be hilarious. Let me see, do I get more points for grading this apparently 6.0 book at 0.5, or 10.0...

1.5, maybe 1.8 on a good day

On 5/1/2024 at 10:21 AM, zzutak said:

Yeah, this stumped me as well.  It doesn't seem straight enough to be a color-breaking crease, it's too wide in spots to be a simple scratch, and it's wholly contained within the yellow portion of the coupon (so it's probably not scanner related).  I haven't seen this anomaly on other copies of this issue, so it's probably not a printing plate defect, and ink roller blemishes are generally not diagonal.

I have no clue, although it does not appear CGC treated it as a defect deserving of a grade deduction.

I was pretty sure it was a production defect, only on the grounds that I thought it would be hard to generate a defect like that after the event without some other damage somewhere. Yeah, pretty shaky logic.

That's it. That's the post.

FWIW, those look like Korean War vintage uniforms on the Americans, so likely some time after 1950. Even more FWIW, that might not be a cover layout - there doesn't seem to be a lot of space for a title, price and logo. A story title might fit there though, so this could be a splash page.

On 4/27/2024 at 12:37 PM, Hepcat said:

I don't believe any of those are still in regular publication. Therefore they'd fit my definition of "abandoned properties".

Ahem

On 4/29/2024 at 3:09 AM, shadroch said:

I didn't know they reprinted the newspaper strips. I've been looking for a newspaper arc from around 1965-66 where the Phantom battles The Roman who killed Jesus.  It was my introduction to the Spear of Destiny.

Any idea if that was reprinted down there?

It almost certainly was. And there's even an index of the comics that covers that period. Not being a collector, I don't have the index volume. @Duffman_Comics - do you have it, or know someone who does? The trouble is you probably have to know the story arc title.

Edit: The printed index probably isn't necessary. There's an online Phantom Wiki that lists all the daily and Sunday stories. You can click through the story title and the page (usually mostly blank, unfortunately) has a set of hyperlinks to reprints from various countries. None of the titles suggest the Roman soldier story, but they are all a bit generic anyway.

Edit the second: the complete dailies and Sunday strips have all been collected into books, and the Kindle versions are pretty cheap on Amazon, so you could get the 1965-66 volumes and see if you find your story.

On 4/29/2024 at 1:30 AM, Robot Man said:

It means, is it hard to find the earlier issues there? 

They pop up rarely, but I think I've seen most of them at some stage - I don't really track them though. To make life more complicated, back in the 90s the publisher started including replica copies with the annuals. The replicas of #1 and #2 were pretty similar to the originals and I've seen a few scam attempts on ebay - "I don't know much about this comic but I know it's very old"... #3 had a small 'R' printed on the cover villain's cufflink and I saw one for sale as an original 'with one small ink stain on the cover'. Guess where the ink stain was? From #4 on they have a barcode, so are easy to spot.

A tough book to grade. I have a similar standard Uncle Scrooge that has a tape pull about that size and it was a CGC 6.0, which I think sits about right. I'll be interested in what others have to say about it.

On 4/26/2024 at 2:24 PM, scburdet said:

Might be pressable to 7.0/7.5

Sounds about right

Apropos nothing in particular...

On 4/22/2024 at 1:57 AM, Hepcat said:

 I strongly disagree.

I don't see how anyone but DC should have the right to Superman and Batman these days.

 

So would you support Shakespeare's great great great... ... great grandchildren still charging people royalties for any use of his words, plots or characters, or even preventing anyone doing a resetting of his works? I think the existing laws already protect creators more than is probably required to continue to provide an incentive to create.

That looks a lot like a reasonably common heraldic motif of a cross with crossed swords behind. A bit of Googling shows versions with Maltese crosses, Celtic crosses  and even the Bulgarian Air Force circa 1940 used a similar image (below)! So I'd say that's almost certainly been put there by a previous owner who happened to own the stamp, possibly as a 'this one is mine' mark, rather than a store or distributor.

On 4/23/2024 at 7:54 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I'm glad you said that as I thought I was the only one who undergraded it. I went for 7.5 too, but on the basis that I'd call it a 7.0, so CGC would go higher. 

There were three of us at least with 7.5 on that one. I have CGC 6.5s that have smaller flaws.

How about a slightly off model Felix from an Australian GA house ad?

On 4/22/2024 at 1:12 PM, BlowUpTheMoon said:

That label was meant for an invisible book.