Get Marwood & I

I was, yes, Ken, back in the day. I collected only Spider-Man titles, appearance and promos. Ended up with about 8,000 comics doing it. @The lips it can be very enjoyable and rewarding to go after one title or character. I had an absolute blast collecting Spidey until the modern variant proliferation rot set in, and certain dealers started to price certain books illogically, effectively killing it off for me. I downsized to Amazing Spider-Man only and ended up with a near full set of ASM #1-800 with all variants (cents, pence, Australian, Canadian etc). Then I sold the lot. Now I collect pence copies for Charlton, Dell, Gold Key & Kings, largely in support of research but, in the case of Charlton - genuine love. I find them enchanting beyond measure. And putting the Marvel Miller collection together was great fun. The old cliché is right - collect what you want, how you want, as long as you can afford it. Don't feel guilty or fraudulent. If you love what you do, that's all that matters and bollocks to anyone who tells you differently. P.S. One last thought, speaking from experience, what you are mad into today, you may not be tomorrow.

Similar scenario here, @Garystar Gary: My old pence and cents copies of ASM #108: Very similar print quality and registration on both as you can see. Here is a second cents copy that I picked up however with, what looks like to me, the ink / plates applied in the wrong order: I'm guessing the black plate would always be applied last, as that 'frames' everything. The copy above looks like the colour plates was applied over the black. So which came first? Alright, I put the NDS copy in for a laugh. And definitely not this one:

Niiiice Got any more, Bob...? https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/120389-archie-cover-price-variants-15-centers-exist-1962-1963/?do=findComment&comment=11276220

Top man! I remember the seller, Zilla, from my old Spidey completist days. They always had great stuff - nice Marvel Feature up too. Thor 247 brings us up to 107 confirmed books now: Two more Thor's to find, theoretically - #242 and 244: Keep looking Andy - you're very good at finding these

I've owned two of them, down the years, green Thing FF#110s. I got one at a fair cheap. It's a really cool book. Without knowing explicitly what the physical operational process was, it's difficult to say which came first and I can think of a way for both cents and pence to have been printed first and still generate the FF#110 cents error: Cents run first - the error starts the run, is noticed and corrected, cents continues, plate change for pence Pence run first - pence starts the run without problem, plate change for cents, that is messed up, generates the error copies, is noticed and corrected, cents run completed A printing expert (from the 1960's/70s) might laugh at my theorising there, based as it is on logic, and not practical knowledge. I've looked at a lot of printing scenarios to try to make a determination - here's another: Cents Pence Why would the 'ghost' of the pence blank price box show on the cents copy? When you look at the books that surround it though, you can't determine an order as there is a logical, reasonable explanation for it happening either way. I know that printing experts have commented in this and other threads. But their expertise was of later printing production methods. Someone would need to be aged 100, and have a great memory, to be able to say what they did in Sparta in the early 1960's. I can theorise logically, but sometimes logic isn't what happened. It's fun to speculate, but until a video surfaces showing someone preparing the plates, presses and making the mid run changes etc in 1962, we may never know exactly what they did, or in what order.

You can never come back to this forum. No more friends. Nothing familiar.

This from the link: C. C. Melvin Ike, Principal at Blackstone, said: “As thematic investors, we look for exceptional entrepreneurial teams succeeding in growing markets, and CCG is a great example. We have been closely following the rise of the global physical and digital collectibles industry for several years and we were drawn to CCG because of their leadership role in the categories that they serve, and Blackstone’s ability to grow the platform through both organic and inorganic initiatives. We look forward to working together to help the company continue and even accelerate its impressive growth trajectory. But we'll be shutting down that shy little chat forum as it's full of fruitcakes”

https://www.cgccomics.com/news/article/9253/

Yes. One Camberwell Carrot = 14 US Price Font Variants

I don't know what possessed me to send such an infantile letter in the first place. It was like I could barely be arsed and he still replied Contrary to the opinions of some, I think he loved receiving and replying to letters. Absolutely loved it. No Strummer I'm afraid Gary - it would only Clash. Here's your beer though

....'trivial' he says, all my work...

I tried Mr Ditko when he was still with us, but he wasn't interested...

Yes, they're all taken from Heritage scans, graded books. Scans and photos always differ. I'll just have to win the lottery, buy them all, and get my magnifying glass out....

....here we go, three of the same JIM #64 font types - all have slightly different box edging due to printing variances: That makes it very difficult to judge them against the alternate cents font and the 9d copies.

Good point, and same here. I've got a few examples where the overlay of ink appears to be different on the same copy / font type - I'll try to post an example shortly

Gents, your thoughts please - I have threads all over the place and they keep crossing over due to the various links. Most of what I have posted above should sit in the Price Font thread - it's here re the pence order of printing aspect. Should I mothball all my threads now, and create one for all my research strands, or keep them separate?

Almost certainly, I think. The chart doesn't lie - three example titles: Journey into Mystery - no UKPV for #61 and, surprise surprise, only the usual bold cents font exists Kathy - no UKPVs, the usual bold cents font only on all copies Kid Colt - 90, 92-94 no UKPVs - the usual bold cents font. UKPVs - cents font changes There are 91 books in the price font variation window, from first to last known cover date. Of those 91, 40 have UKPVs. Of those 41, 14 have cents price font variants (i.e. more than one cents type). Of the 27 others, having only one cents version, the majority of those have a 'non-standard' cents font (see JIM #59, 62 & 63 in the above table, to illustrate). So even where there is only one cents font, the presence of the pence copy seems to have stopped the usual cents bold font being used. To my mind, that leans towards the pence being printed first, as if the cents copy was the starting point it would surely have a standard 10c bold font which would then have been scratched off for the pence copy. Did that make sense? I'm convinced the presence or non-standard cents fonts, and the 14 multiple cents font examples, are the result of procedural hiccups and errors - nothing more. As I said earlier, difficult to put it all into words

Not having the comics in hand is a slight issue - I get your point about trying to see which white box is bigger etc. It's quite difficult going from online images, especially at angles. I can't afford to buy them all to do a detailed comparison though (would love to have bought that priceless X-Men I posted, to inspect that closer). Zooming in with what I've got, which would you say was first here, if this was one plate scratched off twice? The pence box looks the cleanest, yet has the yellow and red visible around the edge - colour bleed / plate placing could be a factor: The wonky font looks like the last one, as it sort of breaks out of the perimeter in places. This is quite a difficult thing to debate in writing. There's a lot I want to say, and discuss, but it's really hard to do so as you have to add pictures and crops and summary documents and everything. I keep looking, to see if I can see the smoking gun, but there always seems to be a reason to doubt any hypothesis that I come up with. And of course, not knowing explicitly what they did doesn't help. I don't know, for example, if there was one printing plate, two or three. One plate started with one price, that was then scratched out and a second price added, etc. I've read lots of stuff about it, but usually from a later period. As I've always said, there was likely no consistency in those early days. It may have been different every time, until a uniform process bedded in. The anecdotal evidence that I have seen down the years indicates that a single press could handle the volume. The covers were printed separately remember, so I don't know if it would have needed more than one to complete the job. With lots of comic titles in train, why would you split one issue across more than one printer if you didn't need to? I don't know. Your A/B scenario is plausible in theory. So many suggestions are plausible, though. There always seems to be more of one cents type than the other, my research shows, which indicates a possible large cents run with a small additional cents and pence run as being what happened. Hence my sequential big cents, little pence, whoops, a few more cents theory of earlier. I find this all fascinating of course, and I'm glad that you two have chimed in this morning. A three-way beer one day, to discuss it might be needed. I could talk for hours. It takes a lot of time and effort to put these posts together and I lost one yesterday due to the ongoing board issues. I think I've put enough out there to at least show that there is a reasonable chance that some, if not all, UKPVs were first in the printing queue. I posted a thread last year, I think, asking "would it matter if it were proven that UKPVs were printed first?". The resounding answer was no. So maybe I'll just satisfy myself with knowing that I did all I could from a computer table in England to try to drive out some conclusions. The ultimate conclusion, however, is that the books are all part of the same end to end print job so it doesn't really matter which came first. It's not going to change anything, either way. It's just a curio from the past, that keeps me immersed in the comics I love. I think I have made the argument conclusively though, that the cents price fonts only exist because the pence ones were introduced. So not a bad service to the history of the books. Until we meet in that fictional bar boys....

My review crossed over into the Marvel UKPV thread, regarding the order of printing, but here is a post which shows that one of the Price Font variation issues has a UK Thorpe & Porter indicia in both cents versions: I'll make a point of checking the others in time, to see if there are any surprises.

For those that are following this, I checked the second applicable US Price Font book - JIM #65 - and all three copies have a UK Thorpe & Porter indicia: 9d Copy: Version A 10c Copy: Version B 10c Copy: Which doesn't help much with my order of priority theory. See ya!

Cheers boys - the version you both have appears to be the predominant one, which is in line with one of my order of production theories. I'm sure one of the wonky font versions will turn up online with an internal image soon. Edit: I checked another of the price font variation books this morning - JIM #65 - and all three copies have the UK Thorpe & Porter indicia (9d, 10c and wonky 10c) so it's back to the drawing board....

Shall we go for the life, Reggie, starting tomorrow?

That's ninety nine and a half thousand more than most of mine

Whilst recognising a slight difference in the comparative scale of achievements, that is more or less where I am at with all my pence research now. Nothing left to report. Pass the tissues, sniff....

You're not being naive. It's the second attempt I've seen by CGC to 'normalise' production problems in an attempt to protect their business, and themselves, from valid complaints. First Newton Rings are 'normal and acceptable' and now case scuffs. It is not their call to say what a paying customer may or may not find acceptable. Car dealers don't tell customers that scratches on new cars are to be expected and, therefore, 'acceptable'. It's a very poor tactic in my opinion, and should be beneath them. I'm sure Jennifer is just the messenger, however.