Get Marwood & I

Kays catalogue

For most of us Mikey. Yes, I ended up buying back records that I'd only just sold a year or two prior. Powerful urge, collecting, isn't it. And slightly illogical at times.

Do you think it was lockdown - all those blokes of a certain age at home Googling, reliving their youth?

Because I sold two copies of it for relative pennies? See also ASM Dell Otto #667 - sold by me for £500, now on ebay for thirty one grand

It didn't work, PooPiece is still here.

Nope, I can't leave it Hi @dena 24 minute outage just now: It happens every day around the same time and has been going on for weeks. I had an email chat with Brittany about it the other day - is there anything further you can tell us? Should we all avoid this time for the foreseeable, or is there a fix on the horizon? I nearly lost a post about pence copies and we can't have that, surely?

If anyone was thinking "why not use the usual bold 10c font, if that is what they were used to using" on the second cents version of KCO #91, that would indeed be a reasonable question. We wouldn't be here if they had. Look at these five sequential Tales of Suspense pence copies though (30-34, images in order): No consistency is there - four different font types over five consecutive issues. My point being, consistency may not have been a significant preoccupation of the chap who made up the further cents price slugs on the 14 font variants. I'll leave it at that now.

@Jennifer F. Hi Jennifer - could you advise what a "heavy butterfly flared corner" is please? It's not a term any of us are familiar with. Thanks

I remember. Good luck with the Alans, Gary. Hope you get more than a few Alans for them!

It's the 'illogical' ones that rankle - the ones that go mad beyond reason, leaving you thinking that you should have known somehow that they would, being a 'comic expert' and all. Still, swings and roundabouts isn't it. Any Charltons in the 15K offload pile? They're definitely still £2 if so...

Every once in a while, yes. The covers are printed separately to the interiors, so you can see how it could go wrong on the odd occasion - here's an old Spidey of mine with Thor inside:

Yes, completely. Don't get me wrong, it's part of the hobby, books going up and down in value. And I don't want to sound all sour grapey, but I bought this for £15 just over ten years ago and sold it for a modest premium a few years later: The same with my Out of This World #17 As an experienced comic collector, my thinking was that they would never go significantly higher as they were reprints and, well, UK reprints have never gone that mad have they. And if they were going to, wouldn't they have by 2015 with all the interest, films etc? We all make mistakes, and we all sell things that years later we can't fathom what possessed us to do so. When they go mad like they have, I can't help but feel a little cheated. That's life though, isn't it.

I can - people are desperate to jump on the bandwagon it seems, and some of them probably don't realise the page is missing given that it is a repackaged reprint. They might think that is how it came, who knows. You're not alone. I find it vaguely depressing really, the recent prices. I feel lately in a lot of my threads that the magic of the books I've researched is slowly being replaced by the lust for what they can achieve in the current, frenzied market place. On a personal level, if I'm honest, I'm getting a bit tired of seeing books that I sold relatively recently, and reasonably, going for insane prices a few short years later. I can understand why an Alan that reprints AF15 might attract a premium. But a thousand pounds? It's a reprint. It's like there are no safe havens in the hobby anymore, no books left that you can research and collect quietly. Everything has to be worth a million.

Maybe the buyer didn't know that Gary - it doesn't exactly jump out at you in the listing, does it? Putting the grade notes in the 'item specifics' box is an unwise move in my view - I can see some buyers expecting to see a missing page noted in the main description text. What's the betting we see it relisted at some point....

Or not...

This has been discussed many times in this thread and others that I have created - it's the non-US price that puts some people off Serling. They understand 30c and 35c - it's their currency. They don't understand 9d and 8p. 'Purity' is key for many US (and UK) collectors I have found. I've tried my best to animate their interest of course but.... Also discussed many times in this thread and I don't think there was one set printing order myself, in the early days. What evidence did you discover in your research Finhead? I've presented a lot of scenarios over the years here which could imply the contrary. For example, have you read this?: https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/topic/412313-marvel-us-price-font-variations-june-1960-~-february-1961/page/6/?tab=comments#comment-11859679

I can imagine Alan shaking his head in wonder...

I'm sure it would've done much better if it didn't have the rusty staples. Fifth one I've seen now overall. The TGK #56 from the same seller, another Miller, should do better.

That harlot! Perhaps against expectations, the code in Australia must've been stricter

You're welcome Panto. I like the notion that the pence copies are the reason why the cents copies went loopy for a bit. Upset the apple cart. You've got t love pence copies, haven't you

Two speculative scenarios, in consideration of the above 'mistake' theory: Strange Tales #75: Cents printed first - hence a standard white 10c font set against a coloured background, the usual approach Pence printed second - the cents plate has the price scratched out and a 9d slug is added (hence a 9d in a white box) Additional cents compliment run next (re volumes mistake) hence 10c in white box That sort of works / makes sense. How about this one though? Strange Tales #81: Pence printed first Cents second - Pence plate scratched out / 10c slug added (hence white box) Additional cents compliment run (re volumes mistake) hence 10c in white box There aren't any cents copies of ST #81 with a standard white 10c set against a coloured background which was the norm. I don't think there are any examples of a cents price set in a white box against a background colour prior to the arrival of pence copies. So the pence being printed first could indicate why there wouldn't be one for ST #81. But the fly in the ointment - why two different cents fonts? If they were made second and third, then there would have been no need to amend the first use of the cents plate as it would have been already cents. But then look closely at the pence copy - you can see what looks like the ghost of a white circle which the pence price oblong overprinted, perhaps indicating it was itself an adjusted plate: So maybe the cents was first which would explain the second cents font if the pence was in the middle and the mistake I outlined was applicable? Did that make sense? Head scratcher isn't it

Morning Haven't been here for a while. I was thinking about mistakes yesterday, and how they manifest in comics. Mistakes happen in every walk of life, every industry. People are fallible - some, habitually. It is because of human error, and operational mistakes, that we have green Spider-Men... ...no Marvel Team-Up #81 pence copy... ....Thorpe spelled 'Thorp'.... ....and, still on indicias, US priced cents copies with Thorpe & Porter UK distribution data: Returning to the US price font variations of the thread title, we know they exist because I've documented 14 examples out of an eligible 91 comics in the applicable date range. If we look at Kid Colt #91, we have these three versions in existence: As my earlier less than subtle Wyatt Earp post illustrates, the printers had a simple task up until the pence copies were introduced. Every comic needed to be run off with the same 10c price slug, hence them being all the same, to one set volume. We know the covers and innards were printed separately making an easy scenario for the foreman (if that was his title) to manage - print 300K innards and 300K covers, priced 10c. Then the pence copies come along and the foreman has to make a calculation. Let's say that the instruction was "I want 300K Kid Colt #91's with 5% pence copies - the pence price is 9d". OK, thinks the foreman. He tells the chap who does the covers, and the chap who does the innards. The chap who does the innards thinks "5% of 300K = 15K so I'll print 315K innards". The chap who does the covers thinks "5% of 300K is 15K so I'll print 15K pence and 285K cents". Classic misunderstanding. When the covers come to be matched to the innards, the stapler man (I know all the industry terms) finds he's got 15K extra innards with no covers to put on them. "Dang" says the foreman, when he's told. So he tells the cover chap to print another 15K cents covers to satisfy the contractual obligation. Now the covers chap tells his plate making guy "I want another 15K of these, in cents" and hands him a pence copy. The plate guy thinks "OK", goes and retrieves the pence plate (they were printed second), scratches off the 9d (thin font) and replaces it with a 10c (thin font) equivalent. So we end up with 285K of these: 15K of these: And 15K of these: Now there could be a host of permutations and alternative possibilities in that theory but the central premise - it was a cock up - remains. This happens a mere 14 times over the period until someone decides to introduce an operational safeguard and then it never happens again. Not once. There would have had to be an error on top of an error for the four RK #17's of course (three cents versions), but how many times do you see that in life - someone makes a mistake, is asked to correct it, and they then make another. So my theory is that the US price font variations exist first and foremost because the pence copies were introduced - up until then it was the same print volume, the same 10c price slug, day in day out. The introduction of pence copies to the run changed the process, volumes, and cover price. And this generated a mistake or fourteen, until a regular systematic approach was adopted and everyone got the hang of print runs comprising different prices. Without going into too much detail, my research shows a greater % of 'original' bold 10c fonts vs the slim 10c fonts existing for some copies, and this strengthens my theory, I think. What do you think? Nothing mysterious - just a mistake. There are some holes you could pick, given the examples I've posted, but put it this way - can you think of a better reason why the variations exist? Hmmm

I don't know when the CCA seal was dropped for good without looking it up, but I think it's more likely that it is missing from Barbie #14 in error rather than by design / requirement. It was there 10 issues later.... I'm fairly sure it went on for years after that too...

....I was listening to some early Beatles albums yesterday morning as it goes. It reminded me of the time when I sang 'Michelle' on the karaoke in Trieste to an audience comprised half of Italians (the Bride) and half from Essex (the Groom). "Better than Paul McCartney" the Italian DJ declared. Not sure about that. Never be a best man at a half Italian / half English wedding if you can help it. I made what I thought was a good joke about the mix of one fine, cultured group, steeped in a rich history set against a beautiful landscape, and the Italians. 50% of the crowd thought it was funny. The other didn't. Even on translation. Funny people, the Essex. Anyway, nothing doing with Dell on the pence front - no new finds. I did spot these two though online, with quite unusual 6d stamps: I don't think I've seen those before, but they look Milleresque. Well, that's it for this time. See you in a year or so I suppose...

Didn't take long - Barbie fell foul of the code! You can always rely on Barbie it seems. Well, the Australian one anyway