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xcomic

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  1. WOW @Get Marwood & I, that was a really enjoyable read! Your why-they-exist discussion is very persuasive (and slots them into Type 1A in my mind); and in turn I find it fascinating that they still printed them with 15¢ instead of just going with 6p given the target market! I've got to say though, the part I found the most fascinating about these variants is those missing wraps and hence the missing 'full indicia' -- and that 'replacement one-liner' that exists print-run-wide on the bottom of the subsequent page. Just so unique and interesting, never seen anything like it, and I found myself grinning ear to ear while reading you present it all. BRAVO!
  2. Thank you for the help providing missing images for the guide!
  3. Bravo Gary and Steve!! :-) Just wanted to commend you guys and say Great Work! - Ben p.s. Attached below is something I think is cool, it was the idea of varyant555 to look through the GoCollect Top 50 hottest comics the other day to check which ones have corresponding Type 1A cover price variants -- turns out there are quite a lot with Australian price variants and Pence and Canadian too (did we miss any?)
  4. Truly fascinating stuff, great to see these examples laid out. This is the first time I've seen a "type 3" example -- that's quite awesome, and I completely agree with you that with this a printed difference (and clearly intended as an APV) that we must consider it one despite the mishap. A reader I recently had a great email correspondence with about APVs turns out to have owned a newsstand decades back (a "newsagency" in the local terminology), and he let me know they were sometimes required to put stickers on various comic books and magazines -- at times because they were mispriced but he also mentioned censorship as another reason, with the rules about offensive materials varying by state. (Although this may not have ever applied to APVs). But an interesting tidbit he shared was that the distributors would supply the stickers to them, and their staff had to actually stick them on. This would explain why sometimes we've seen copies lacking stickers, when the newstand staff missed any, either by mistake or on purpose (perhaps when a staff member themselves wanted to take a book home). Cool stuff! :-) - Ben
  5. Fantastic news, way to go Steve & Gary!! Courtesy of Arron, the below is the indicia page of his Captain America numbered on the cover with #407 but showing the cover artwork for #410, confirming that it is indeed #410. Arron also shared with me these missing APVs that follow, which you now may already have confirmed from Gary but here they are anyway just in case!
  6. These indicia scans were shared with me today by Paw K. The first is the Journey Into Mystery #65 Pence Price Variant: Second is the Tales To Astonish #16 "No Cover Price" Variant:
  7. Applause to @Brittany M. and the CGC team for your great decision to begin labeling the three categories of Type 1A's with "Price Variant" labels going forward! Applause to @Get Marwood & I for your successful efforts communicating with CGC on the matter, you are a true super-star in this niche of the hobby! This is a milestone moment for Type 1A variants; under the prior CGC labeling notation these US-published price variants were too often confused and conflated with the foreign-published later-reprints (by being given the same [Country] Edition name on their labels as those reprints). The new "Price Variant" labeling for Type 1A's going forward will distinguish them from the foreign-published editions in their labeling, which will surely advance collector awareness that Type 1A's by contrast are in fact true US-published 1st print originals from the original publisher manufactured at the same time with the same equipment (same ink, same paper) as their US-cover-priced counter-parts, then distributed in a foreign market with a different cover price (a way-different situation from being an edition published in a foreign country at a later time by a different publisher, and thus deserving of a different labeling treatment). As an avid collector of these price variants I am thrilled to learn of this new labeling news! The "first impression" a new/unfamiliar collector gets from seeing the CGC label can be a big deal as to whether they investigate the comic further or not; and now, with the go-forward Price Variant labeling, more collectors are sure to want to learn more. Another round of applause, and great thanks, for making this important change happen. Best, - Ben
  8. Hello newsstand collectors and hello again to any readers of this thread who may have been tuned in during pages 5-onward -- I follow up today to share with you all (and to append into the public record of the thread for anyone who reads it in the future), a link to the Official Press Release of the project I kept mentioning; the timing of online availability of our project is what appears to have sparked the "brouhaha" here in the first place (a sneak peek of the project has already been live on my blog for the past few weeks and regular readers have been sharing with their friends around the Internet). Gemstone has now published our press release to Scoop, officially announcing the release of our Type 1A Cover Price Variant Price Guide to the world -- here's a link to the article: http://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1012?ArticleID=202171 We hope this online guide (which costs $0.00 to use) will be of interest to all newsstand comic book collectors, especially those who may not have realized there was a 1980's "cover price variant window" during which two types of newsstand comics were produced instead of just one (this "window" and the second much-more-rare newsstand type it gave us, is the focus of our guide). Happy collecting to all and all the best! :-) Sincerely, - Ben
  9. Greetings fellow cover price variant collectors! Ben here, dropping in to share exciting news that I'm certain will be of great interest to everybody participating in this thread! I know some of you have already discovered our price guide project and gotten a sneak peek because it has been live on my blog for the past several weeks, but today marks a milestone: Gemstone has published our press release to Scoop, officially announcing the release of our Type 1A Cover Price Variant Price Guide to the world! Check it out: http://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1012?ArticleID=202171 Woo hoo! :-) I want to applaud all the collectors here in this thread for being so very far ahead of the curve of "hobby-wide" awareness of this type of variant and its compelling collectible appeal. You guys and gals caught on early. We think history will rhyme: Twenty years ago many people considered Jon McClure insane when he shared his 30 & 35 cent variant discoveries and articulated their appeal and future value potential, and today, such cover price variants are widely recognized and understood hobby-wide; The parallels to awareness about 75 cent variants (and other Canadian cover price variants) are absolutely striking, and we've now seen awareness rise to the level where our Guide is justified. And here's just one more parallel between the 1970's price variants and 1980's price variants: Jon McClure himself is one of the senior-most collaborators on our six person price guide team! It has been a privilege and a pleasure getting to know Jon and also each of the other fantastic collaborators over the course of all of us putting in the huge amount of time and teamwork that made this guide possible. The cost to use it is exactly $0.00. We hope you like it!!! Here's a direct link to it if you want to skip the press release and jump straight to the price guide itself: https://rarecomics.wordpress.com/the-2018-price-guide-for-1980s-newsstand-canadian-cover-price-variants-type-1a/ - Ben
  10. Stu, you're a funny guy, I genuinely mean that! I got a kick out of your comment here that I waved to. And I respect you for signing your name to your message sent to me over the blog, even if the profanity was unnecessary. Whether you'll believe me or not in what I'll say next I don't know, but: I did indeed call CGC but what I asked Christian about was whether a working email address was the only prerequisite to establishing a new anonymous handle. I didn't ask for anybody to be suspended. That would have been silly/meaningless anyway, you see that, right? So why would have have bothered to ask once the answer to my question had been confirmed? I may be wasting my time here trying to "append the public record" but I hope you can see why I chose to do so... Try to think what you would do if your real name was attached to fraud allegations in a public thread ingested by bots. It was either "append" or "let the public record stand" - those were realistically my only two choices. - Ben
  11. [xcomic has been communicating privately with new mediator]
  12. Thanks @revat, reading your post you definitely strike me as fair-minded, logical, objective, and also -- even without having read the full thread to have all the context -- still managed to nail where we are. Only if you are curious to do so, reading the thread will contain the answer to why I will not be directly communicating with RMA in the future, you will see why I made the offer I did, you will see the structural problems with the platform we are on, and you can make your own guess as to whether RMA will ever desire to come forward through a mediator as a named source in the hobby available to writers like me. - Ben
  13. Would you instead be willing to perform the role as a public service, or is your fee non-negotiable? - Ben
  14. I 100% agree with you. Please understand that part of my purpose is to append the public record. All of those here watching Movie #2 already know what will happen next, I just need it to happen so that it is established here and permanently affixed to the thread. - Ben