A ROM Curator

Likely we'll land on there being 4 versions... DM (no CCC symbol) with no stickers; NS regular $2.50 printed with CCC symbol also with '08' barcode sticker; NS variant $2.75 price sticker also with '08' barcode sticker; and APV $4.40 price sticker with '11' barcode sticker. {you wouldn't count this as confirmed APV, I understand, but add it to your stickered subset} ...with an unlikely 5th version being APV $3.95 printed price {which you would count confirmed}. When you get your stickered copy, it'll be interesting to learn how easily they peel & if the parchment tears at all. I doubt you'll ever find a Newsstand without a barcode sticker (especially if it's difficult to remove without blemish), so they'd always get "Qualified Grade", I guess. Doesn't seem right & probably could be argued...so many NS parchments, Morbius, Nightstalkers, etc. have the same style barcode sticker.

Nice. I do have a picture of a Newsstand $2.50 with barcode sticker. I saved it from the internet in November 2019. There must be enough copies like this that CGC considers the price sticker version a "$2.75 Price Variant", right? I'm not super familiar with CGC "Qualified Grade"...is it because of the barcode sticker? It makes more sense to me that the Newsstand version was originally "manufactured with sticker attached to BACK cover" BY Marvel. Very soon after they decided to increase the price (error correction? opportunism?) & rather than pulp or do a 2nd Printing they made a price sticker. As long as we're speculatin', why not.

I'm having a blast. I think I only had the GR #40 parchment cover back in the day, bought at a comic shop but sold away long ago. We glossed right over the fact that the GR/B #13 AUS price sticker says Oct instead of the expected Nov, even though they got the 11 correct on the barcode sticker! Wonder if the AUS price printed on the parchment underneath (would be $3.95 I guess?) correctly says Nov below it? I wouldn't be able to resist peeling it up partially to see, if I had one. Actually, the sticker's big enough it could be covering all the US price info as well as the tell-tale CCC symbol. Hmm, what does a US Newsstand version have in place of the "Direct Market"-labeled barcode on the inner first page? I won't have time to search it out 'til tonight at the earliest. I bet the outer barcode stickers don't have anything underneath them, just blank parchment like the Direct Market versions. If there was another '08' barcode sticker under the '11' barcode, we'd probably be able to detect uneven edges where they surely couldn't've placed it perfectly over top it.

I only have the same picture of GR/Blaze #13 and I'd guess it's a sticker because of its slightly crooked placement. I don't have any version of the Independence Day book and was also searching online for the indicia, to see if it showed a month i.e. August, or just 1996. I hadn't thought of the possibility of it being a local printing, so definitely, comparing indicias will be essential to full confirmation.

I found this APV ASM #358 back cover barcode a few months ago, then spliced it with the decent front cover scan I already had: Please reciprocate by showing your pics of: Adventures Of X-Men/Spider-Man #5, Punisher #42, Spider-Man #33, and What If #40. The only wraparound barcodes I'm missing are Infinity War #3 & 5 and Stryfe's Strike File #1. Are there others besides them you're looking for? Looking at my list, 352 total have a minor aspect yet to verify; either the annual issue number is unknown for the found photo's barcode being cutoff/covered/blurry, or I haven't seen the original polybag that I expect exists. Differently than your list, I count as confirmed: Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits Of Vengeance #13, Marvel Milestone Edition: Amazing Spider-Man #1, Wolverine #57, X-Force #2 (those 4 have production stickers that I assume are "how they were done"), and ID4: Independence Day deluxe reprint (aka TPB...which is how it was solicited, but they seemed to have treated it more like a special format comic, or at the very least as a newsstand-available item, unlike any other TPBs(?)). Clipped from Marvel Vision #9 (cover date Sep1996, released 6/26/1996): There are many APVs that I consider yet possible to be found which you probably do not, based mainly on the solicit dates of 11/2 & 11/9/1993: notables include Nova #1, Scarlet Witch #1 & Starblast #1, and I'll mention Spider-Woman #3 (11/9) since you just posted about it. That rounds up everything that jumped out at me as I caught up reading this thread & compared our current findings. Stay safe & healthy, ---A ROM Curator, Gary Martin, Jr.

~* Merry Christmas APV Peeps *~ That Alf was an especially nice gap-filler, and funny how the UPC-numbers-changer forgot to paste on (or crank the dials or whatever) the new two-digit '03' over the '12'. All other titles in the month got the increment, and all other Alf issues that we've seen were correctly done. Keep 'em coming in the New Year!

My guess is that a prime example of a sticker supplied by the distributor would be the big UPC barcode label that appears on the 2 covers I just posted. They're all the same numbers so you can imagine the staff had a stack of them on hand, and perhaps were at times instructed to place one on the upper part of the cover as well, though 2 per comic seems overkill eh? I've saved images of this UPC label on 43 different comics so far, including on titles that don't have APVs (e.g. Silver Sable & The Wild Pack #19); cover dates range from US Oct1993 to Jan1995, some spanning the 1994 gap between APV waves.

The thrill ain't gone yet, whether it comes to discovering a New Title...or completing one! (after finding Spider-Woman v2 #2, I searched for #1 & 3 {11/9/93 release date}, without success)

Hi! Gary Martin, Jr., here, thankful that I found this topic online a few weeks ago (a culmination of years of solo research) and that Steve so graciously accepted my assistance (we knew from jump that it would help, but WOW how many titles did we button up to completion or darn close to it?? pretty cool to realize). And very pleased to report that after all the behind-the-scenes back-and-forth comparing of notes, we stand today at the matching number of 1,269 found APVs. So I commend us, including all you other collaborators, on a job well done so far! Happy holidays, --A ROM Curator, Gary Martin, Jr.