Get Marwood & I

I wonder what order they printed them in...

This post might interest some of you guys:

Morning Its not often that you see a genuine eBay listing from an obvious novice with a hidden gem. Here is one such rare listing: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Collection-Of-Comics-1956-To-1965/164153426295?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Zoom in.... The seller has a rating of 4 and added this to his listing description along with some additional pictures once alerted: "UPDATE: I've been asked about the amazing fantasy no. 15 spiderman comic by many interested watchers. Just to let you know all know that it is complete and i have added pictures of it. I did some research and have counted all pages. Every page is there. I cant ad more pics for some reason so send me a message to request photos and I will be more than happy to help. I'm blown away with the response. Thank you everyone" It just shows that it can happen but also how unlikely it is that you would ever snag it cheap / under the radar. There must be so many people out there constantly scanning listings looking for scenarios like these. Fortunately for the seller, the cat is out of the bag and he should get a decent price. It raises a philosophical question for me. Is it right to profit off of another persons ignorance? If there were no comments / bids, I would have contacted the seller and told him to at least change the title to 'Amazing Fantasy 15' to ensure his listing gets the widest attention. Would that make me foolish? Many years back I spotted an ASM 35 cent variant for, as I recall, £4.99 on eBay. I waited for the auction to end and won it for the £4.99 - no one else spotted it / bid. It arrived, was a VFN or so and I sold it some time later for over £100. I have to say, I felt bad about it. The chap at work at the time told me I was being silly - I had earned the right to the profit by having a skill set - comic knowledge - and had put that skill set to use. It was the sellers loss that the didn't research properly, he said. And yet I felt bad. I often wonder what type of dealer I would have been had I tried to make buying and selling comics my business. I've come to the conclusion that I would almost certainly have been rubbish. It'll be interesting to see what the lot goes for in the end - the AF is a pence copy (hurray!) but has seen better days...

Lovely. Its a shame there aren't more people interested / commenting in threads like these. I'll keep an eye out for this one in future

Think once, Think twice. Think: never buy an issue of Clint.

Fair enough. Careful you don't die of poisoning from one of those fence splinters though.

It does, yes. What would you call them Shadroch, if you had the gun to your head?

Someone out there clearly likes Australian Barbies There's a joke in there somewhere...

What do we want! Proper verbiage! When do we want it! When we submit our cool internal misprint books for encapsulation! Trips off the tongue doesn't it

Morning Pence People A nice sunny day here in Englandville. Shame we're all on lockdown, but we need to stay safe. So a good time to crack on with updating the files at the Marwood Computer Centre or my spare bedroom as it is sometimes otherwise known. The Thorpe & Porter Indicia folders have had a huge overhaul and I've been reorganising, adding and updating. Here's page one of the updated Indicia Type Summary (see Morlar's Pence Palace of Doom) To summarise what's going on here, the time frame presented is May 1960 through to August 1960 plus October 1960. In each of the 5 month lines (May, June, July, August and October) are recorded all the Marvel comics - pence and cents - that exist with those cover months. So to take June 1960 for example, Marvel produced eight comic titles that month: A Date with Millie Battle Kathy Patsy & Hedy Patsy Walker Strange Tales Two-Gun Kid Wyatt Earp Those eight books can be sub-divided into three issue types: Four titles which exist with both US distributed Cents copies and 9d UK Price Variants - Battle, Patsy & Hedy, Patsy Walker, Strange Tales Two titles which exist with both US distributed Cents copies and L Miller UK regional indicias - Two-Gun Kid, Wyatt Earp Two titles which exist only with US distributed Cents copies - A Date with Millie, Kathy If you look at the key on the page you'll see what the (C) and asterisks indicate. So for the four titles which exist with both US distributed Cents copies and 9d UK Price Variants - Battle, Patsy & Hedy, Patsy Walker, Strange Tales - we can see that each has a (C) indicating that the book is confirmed to have the expected Thorpe & Porter UK indicia. The asterisk indicates that the Cents copy of the book is confirmed to not have a Thorpe & Porter indicia. For each issue on the chart I have files with images saved of the books in question and where applicable, both cents and pence are captured. They look like this: So we can see that two versions of Strange Tales #75 exist - pence and cents - and examples of their indicias are captured and recorded on the summary sheet. This helps a number of my research strands and helped to inform what pence copies should exist. Here's the updated Period 4 page: This is a key period as it shows that all but one of the 18 in scope 9d priced UKPVs have Thorpe & Porter indicias in both the pence and cents copies. This is the only period where this is so. The titles which have cents only issues however for the period do not have the Thorpe & Porter indicias which helps to explain why those books have no pence copies confirmed. For this period therefore, the existence of the UKPV directly affects the content of the US versions. Kid Colt Outlaw #96 below as an example shows that both cents and pence copies have a T&P detail in them: I find that very cool as it means that pence copies are responsible for details in the cents 'master copies' not only in respect of the presence of US Price Font Variations but also these indicia types It's something to do isn't it.... Look at that!

While we're here, for those that remember the posts, I'm still no nearer discovering who 'RV' were: I've found loads of examples of their stamp on cents Charltons dated around 1964 and 65 so whoever they were their copies have found their way out into the world in some considerable numbers: Here's a new one though - 'RW': That's a funky stamp isn't it? Very arty. Who knew that Roy Walker of TVs Catchphrase fame sold comics? (Thirty parnes!) I wonder if RV and RW knew each other..... Anyway, the L Miller 9d printed copies stopped with cover date December 1963. The earliest RV 9d cover stamp example I have is cover date February 1964 and I have examples for most months leading up to July 1965. So maybe 'RV' stepped in the distribution of some Charltons once L Miller stopped. Or maybe RV is just one prolific shop whose copies turn up whenever one of their old customers hits eBay. We may never know... But whoever they were, they liked the Horror Magazines too: I like that this copy has a stamp fight off between RV and T&P See ya

Morning Charlies Gorgo was on the telly this morning - the 1961 film, courtesy of 'Talking Pictures', a free to air TV channel available in Englandville. Made a right mess of London he did. I've got #1-15 of Gorgo now, and his Revenge. Only #16 - the final eligible pence issue - is currently in hiding, if indeed it even exists. I quite like Gorgo as it goes. "They devised a way to do it. They found a place to do it" But in the end they blew it. Rarrr! See ya

Some cool pictures there Bellrules - I love the Flash with the Spidey Hostess ad. As an ex-completist, I'd have had to buy that back in the day had I known it existed I think there's a big difference though between the 'proper' Gold Key Whitman copies you have shown here - i.e. those that carry the actual Whitman logo - and the Marvels being discussed which don't. I no longer have any of my old Spidey books to check, but I'd like to see someone post any examples of a Marvel comic with the diamond price box along with any internal differences, if such a thing exists (excluding the known Star Wars reprints). So, for arguments sake, do any of the ASM's have internal differences? If these two have identical ads, indicias etc, then are we all agreed that they were both printed at the same time? I've enjoyed reading all these posts here. For me, there are three elements: What exists Why it exists What to call it I think we all know what exists. There's a copy with a barcode and one with a blank UPC. That kind of thing. I think most of us can establish why it exists if we read the evidence closely. But we may never agree on what to call it. If I see someone say 'Whitman copy', I know what they mean. Ditto 'Early Direct'. Ditto 'Barry'. OK I made that last one up. I wouldn't call them 'Diamonds' though as has been suggested as there is already a known 'Diamond' in the comic industry - the distributor - so to call a book that would likely lead the uneducated to make bad conclusions. If I had a gun to my head, I'd shed my load. And then I'd go for 'Early Direct' edition.

I would prefer a qualified label myself with a note indicating the type of printing error - or a blue but with a full note. For me, these printing errors are desirable because they are so comparatively scarce. You can pick most 'regular' books up easily but some of these error books have only a handful of copies known - why have what everyone else has got when you can have something fairly unique! I 'Asked CGC' three times about my ASM #5. The first was deleted a few years back with no response. The second got a response which was 'Qualified with note' but was deleted / not published before I could save a copy. The third is below, from early last month: That got deleted too so it seems to me that CGC are reluctant to publish an official stance on these types of books. That's fair enough, it's their service, but I won't be submitting it as a result. There's no point having a cool one of a kind error and having it entombed in an unmarked slab is there!

That's a thing of beauty Littledoom. Internal printing errors are, of course, much harder to find than cover errors and that is a great one. CGC seem very inconsistent on their treatment of these - I have an ASM #5 with an internal printing error and they said they would place it in a blue holder with no note which I thought defeated the object somewhat. Anyway, nice book and thanks for sharing the video - here's a screenshot of it:

I love the date stamp You often find that - certain issues having multiple printing issues. ASM 182 and 188 were troublesome in that wonderful way

I'm sure I've posted this before, but I always thought the girl here was kneeling in fire, set by her torch wielding captors.

Is the colour missing from the shadow of the P in 'Spider-Man' on every copy FU? And by FU I mean First Upgrade of course

Indeed. Its not mine. Alas.

Fing h !

I would say it therefore depends whether you think a slab enhances the look of a book Eddie. If you think a slabbed book is a thing of beauty, then you'll no doubt think it worth slabbing one to display it. If you think a slab is an ugly plastic monstrosity though, which detracts from the star of the show, then there's no point slabbing them. Beware also Newton Rings. If you get one back with those on it they look pig ugly no matter how nice the comic underneath is.