cosmic-spider-man

could the bag be reacting with the cover ink, I have thought about that also, but I recently bought a small lot of 70's Marvel's off ebay about 30 or so and I found that probably a dozen or more of them had exceptional gloss but these books were not in bags and I don't think they had ever been in a bag but I don't really know for sure . When I was younger I had a subscription to 4 or 5 Marvel comics they would come in these brown paper sleaves and ASM was always my favorite. Well at that time I had never noiticed any comic being all that glossy either from my subscriptions or all the ones I bought new from the spinner racks at my local supermarkets and drug stores, until I got my ASM #225 in the mail one day, it just had incredible Cover Gloss. The big blue guy and all the little Spider-men on that bright yellow cover really stood out and reflected the light. Well while writhing this I decided to get it out to have a look and it has been stored in a plastic bag since I got it new back in late 1981 and it still has unbelievable Gloss and is actually in very nice condition. So I am thinking it must have something to do with the ink application

Hi agian I back with another Production Question and hopefuly it is not as geeky as my last post hear . Well I was wondering just how is the ink applied to the printing plates I am especially interested in how the ink is applied to comic book covers hear is why over the years I have been collecting comics I have noiticed that every now and then I would find a comic that had just incredible cover gloss "it is like when you hold it edge ways to the light it just reflects so bright that the different color areas look like they almost glow and they really stand out from one another almost giveing depth to the cover" and then I see other copys of the same issue that look flat with almost no shine at all. Could this be due to the amount of ink applied to that comics cover? What got me thinking about this is I just found one of these super glossy comics at a local comic shop and when I got home with it I had another copy of the same comic that was just flat as could be and it doesn't look like it has faded or had much wear so I assume that it looked this way new, the same as most all of my comics looked when I bought them new. I just wonder why their are some that really stand out from the rest? Hear is the comic I just found you can't really see the cover gloss from the scan or how much better it looks than the other, all you can see is the colors are much richer on the glossy one, in fact spider-man's costume is purple on the glossy one and is very blue on the flat one.

Yea it sure looks that way I have to say that is the first one I have ever seen like that and I have seen alot of them. I always thought they just gave the grade for the best cover even if it is the outer cover.

pm sent Frank hope this will help you. I would like to see that comic. Also congratulation on those X-Men Darth great find I didn't see those. I have been again.

Now why am I posting all these printing errors on 35 cent Marvel price variants well I have always wanted to know if these were printed at the beginning of the print run or at the end. Well these Printing Errors that I have just posted " the four pages in the Howard the Duck #15 and the Captain America #212 with the missing Marvel Comics Group Logo" seem to suggest that these price variants were printed first and that Marvel corrected the problems before they printed the normal 30 cent print run . Well now for the other side of the argument, the 30 and 35 cent Marvel variants with the ghost of the original or normal price in the blue ink of the background now DiceX gave a great reason for this and I am sure it is correct. And I have one more argument that the price variants were printed after the normal print run. We were asking why some comics have two sets of staples a while back and it was explained that if the count of comics needed came up short they would take some from the discarded ones and fix them up to meet their number goal "includeing stapling a cover on one that didn't get a cover by hand" and this happened when the print run was done. Well I have seen four Comics with this Double staples and they were all price variants, two were 35 cent variants, one was a 30 cent variant that I just got, and the other was a Marvel Direct Market issue with the price in the white diamond. I now think that based mainly on DiceX explanation of the Ghost price that the Marvel price Variants were printed at the end of their print runs on both the 30 and 35 cent ones but I still not 100% on that and would like to hear anyones ideals on this that have any interest, expecialy DiceX and povertyrow.

Hear is another printing error on a 35 cent variant that I posted before thought I would repost it.

and the Last one with the pink error page 31

the one you have already seen page 18

Also from Howard the Duck #15

DiceX hear are all those pages from that Howard the Duck #15 Aug. 1977 that had the printing error on them the rest of the pages were normal.

I did call this guy and told him I was interested in finding out where these 35 cent variants were originaly sold and that you had got some from him. He said that he did remember buying those comics but that he didn't have time to talk right then. So I gave him my phone number and my email address and he said he would get in touch with me but I have never heard back from him. It would be cool to find out that SF was the fifth distribution area of these 35 cent variants but I don't know . Their is another board member from SF "realitytrip" and he is sure it is not. I would still bet that that fifth location is very close to SF at least in California . We will find out for sure some day I hope.

Congratulation on that Marvel Team-Up #60 that is the best deal I have ever seen on a openly listed 35 cent variant I almost bid $5 on it but decided not to. Good Luck in Nashville they do show up their from time to time I make the trip about once a month to look for them, found three the last time I went. Their are 5 comic book stores their and I have found variants at three of them all 35 cent ones no 30 centers though.

Hi; Frank I may have a couple of those I got some john Carters from MGD5 "I think that was his ebay name" and I think he won them on ebay just a few months eairler maybe from you but if those were the ones they have not been graded but they were very nice probably VF+. Shame about that Tarzan #7 .

Very interesting I will check that out when I get more time. But I am sure this is not the case on the Godzilla add error because their were 3 other pages in those comics with the pink printing error and the other 3 were all story pages I just posted the add page because it was really easy to see on that page. I will post one of the story pages with the error and a comparison with the normal one this weekend and you can see what I mean. I realy appreciate your input on this as I have no clue

Thanks DiceX that makes good sense. So the blue plate basically has the first black plate image worn into it from the extremes of printing 200,000 plus copy's and then when they run the second & possible third black plate with the price changes with the same blue plate the original black plate will show up in the blue plate. I going to check back through my examples of this and see if I can find evidence of this in other locations other than just on the price . Well I guess this answers a question I have wondered about for some time the normal price Marvel's of that time must have been printed before the price variants. But theirs still that Howard the Duck #15 with the pink Godzilla page I posted on hear a while back which was in all the 35 cent variants of that issue I have seen. Is it very likely that they may have changed the page plates after they had already printed most of the run without the error and just the last few 1000 or so had this error? I would have thought it would have occurred at the start of a run what do you think.

NO but I not by any means a expert on this to my understanding the front and back covers are printed all at once on the same sheet of paper along with the front and back of 8 other comics. But each Cover, back and inside adds all have seprate printing plates so their could be a printing error to one without it effecting the other but It would be cool to see another copy to compare it to. If you want some great info on this check out this thread link and maybe post your comic their DiceX & povertyrow knows the answers to all this kind of stuff and it is a great read.

auction link Wish I had seen that one first .

35 cent variant auction New record breaking price realized for openly listed 35 cent variant !!!

It sure looks like their is no issue number in that picture wonder if it was tampered with or just didn't show up . If I had seen that auction and by some amazing chance noiticed that the issue number was missing on that comic I would have bid on it to. Did he have any 35 centers ?

Yes Fastball I read those Tales of the Database on the Mile High sight a while back link I think that may be where I read their were something like 500 indepentent distributors back in the late 70's I will have to read it again sometime before long that guy can sure tell a good story very interesting stuff. I would say you could be right if anyone would knows who has production info on these variants it could be him .

Hi Fastball you sound alot like me the first time I saw those price variants and how much they went for I thought it was crazy and I would never buy any of those. But a few years back I finally completed my ASM collection and I lucked up and found a few ASM variants in hidden auctions and won them cheep. So then I had to have the rest of the ASM ones and then I found a few more and a few more and then I had a hole bunch and I was hooked and spent way to much time looking for these. The whole time I have been collecting these I have wondered just how rare are these comics and to this day no one knows or is talking. But I have my ideals on the subject and based on the distribution marks and that letter that flyingdonut posted on hear a while back it is fairly sure that these variants were only sold by 5 or 6 distributers and their was suposed to be something like 500 distributers back in the late 70's "not sure this is excately true" so that would mean that the numbers of variants should be something like 1% of the total print run so if this is ture all the price variants are very, very Rare compared to the normal verisions. But even at 1% some variants could have hade several thousand copys printed and some may only had several 100 and figuring that alot of them probably got destroyed some issues could be extreamely rare maybe less than 100 copys. Does anyone know if the comic factory had a limit to how few copys it would print before they would stop to change plates? Well all this is just speculation and could be totaly wrong, I would love to hear others thoughts on this. I read some where that the UK price variants were something like 2-5% of the print run so they are very rare wonder what % the direct market issues made up?

Hear is another example of the Marvel price variants with the GHOST of the orginal price in the background. It is a Captain America #214 and the ghost price is on both the Direct Market one and the 35 cent price variant I wish I had a UK one to see if it is also on it I would guess it is. any ideals?

I have another little production flaw that I have wondered about for some time. Their are several examples of Marvel price variants where their is a ghost of the orginal price where the variant price is. The best know example of this is the Amazing Spider-Man #155 on the 30 cent variant of this issue you can still see a ghost of the still only 25c in the blue ink behind the price. Well what I want to know is why can you still see the "still only 25c" ? When they printed several different price verisions of the same comic, did they just cover up the orginal price to make the extra plates for the other verisions and maybe the old price showed through a little bit? Weren't the price, tital, issue number and Marvel Comics Group logo at the top all just paste on's to the orginal art back in the late 1970's. If so would it not make more sence to just change the price box than to put one over the other? Is it safe to assume that on this ASM 155 that the 30 cent variant was printed after the "Still only 25c" one because of this, or is it still possible that the 30 cent one was printed first? I guess it could just mean the Still only 25c plate was made first but does that mean they were printed first? I hope my pictures are good enough to see the ghost and I have some more examples I can post if anyone is interested. I appreciate it if you guys could enlighten me on this Thanks Terry

Hi; Frank yea I see auctions all the time for Star Wars 35 cent variants that turn out to be those reprints no suprise most people just see the listing in Overstreet and think they have the variant. That happened to me back in the 80's I had seen that the 35 cent Star Wars #1 was very high in the price guide and I found one of those reprints at a flea market and for the longest time I thought I had the 35 cent variant I even told a few of my comic collecting friends I had one only to find out later I had a reprint but I had no way on knowing at the time.So I can't really say any thing about other's listing them as 35 cent variants they just don't know I guess. Frank did you ever get that Tarzan #7 with no issue number? could we see it?

Check this out Star Wars #1 35 cent auction A little to faded for my collection