Get Marwood & I

Yep. For every 667 and 678 there's a hundred variants that bomb, sometimes within months.

You'll have to change your name to 'wasafan'

I still haven't found a Thor #19 regular newsstand edition on ebay anywhere. It seems to be rarer that it's (theoretically) infinitely rarer $2.49 version! I've spent a little time recently looking again for these. I don't think we're ever going to find a $2.29 / $2.49 priced newsstand for a title that's not on my summary list. I think this was a six title experiment, and a fairly haphazard one at that given the double sized issues prevalent slap bang in the middle of the dates. The likelihood that we would find 27 copies across only 6 titles, and none across all the others - including well collected titles like Wolverine - seems too unlikely to me. Even with their comparatively small numbers, these are recent books and someone at some point would put one up sooner or later. It's not like they are from 1960. So unless one or more of our American researchers is holding out on me, six titles is where I think this will stay. It's a shame I don't live in the US, or have the same ebay.com results that US based searches bring up. I'd find em, if they were out there...* *(Note, that's not me 'bigging myself up'. That's me admitting I have no meaningful life to speak of the time to do it )

I've tidied up my signature line a bit and it now has links to all my pence threads, in order, for those that are interested: Here's the latest current confirmed pence printed price figures: Marvel - 3,017 confirmed pence priced variants (with very few more expected to be found - updated 'missing list' coming soon following my price font variant post today) DC - 839 confirmed pence priced variants (all known copies believed to be recorded) Charlton - 395 confirmed pence priced variants (of a potential 832 issues) Dell - 191 confirmed pence priced variants (of a potential 424 issues) Gold Key - 97 confirmed pence priced variants (of a potential 168 issues) Archie - 21 confirmed pence priced variants (of a potential 48 issues) King - 17 confirmed pence priced variants (of a potential 24 issues) Which means I have evidence of 4,577 first printing pence priced US comics at the moment - 11 up on the last update

I'm afraid we are having technical difficulties this morning so the Grand Gold Key Opening will now be shown at a later date. We promise to return to your featured programming as soon as possible. Here is some incidental music in the meantime:

Afternoon. There are some pence existence pontifications in my post in my sister thread here: Later this week I will post a full analysis of which as yet undiscovered pence copies I believe are likely to exist with my reasons why. Stay tuned, if pence books are your thing

Morning I don’t update this thread often so here’s a brief summary for any new readers before we get into the nitty gritty. During my early pence variant research I spent a lot of time looking online at the price boxes of 1960’s Marvels. You get quite attuned to it after a while and anything that looks different starts to jump out at you even during cursory scrolling. During the search I noticed a Journey into Mystery #60 with a different US price font to the other copies I’d seen. Even though that was nothing to do with pence research (albeit, as it turns out now, it maybe was / is) I started to gather examples as a separate research strand. I like anything out of the ordinary to be honest and couldn’t find anything about it anywhere else online at the time (I’m not claiming to be the discoverer of these variations by the way – I see now that they have been noted before here and there – but I do believe I am the only person who has wasted spent any meaningful time documenting them). I started up a thread here on the CGC boards in 2016 and there was some good debate. Unfortunately, most of the images I used were put up via Photobucket, and they all went when PB ‘did the dirty’ on its faithful users. So I started this new thread and took full advantage of the new boards direct picture uploading feature (the single best thing that ever happened here functionality wise I think). I’ve been building up a picture over many years now, on and off, and have put various documents together to present the images in a structured way. Some of them I lost in a file download calamity. But I like to put images next to each other to see if any patterns jump out and they usually do. So the latest incarnation of my research findings exists in the form of an excel spreadsheet. Here are the headlines so far. During the cover months dated June 1960 to February 1961, Marvel were producing the following 20 titles: You can’t open them files by the way, it’s just a picture. Sorry. I have plotted all the price box images I have gathered for all 20 titles over many years on the spreadsheet in the following format – shown below are the first three titles only (so I can fit it clearly on the page for you to see): As you scroll along and look at each title, and the price fonts used, you start to see common patterns from which you can start to make reasonable assumptions. And to be clear, that’s all they are – speculative assumptions. I am not claiming any of what follows to be concrete proof of anything – just, hopefully, interesting hypothesising, based on the facts of what I have so far found to exist. It’s quite difficult to explain this kind of stuff clearly in writing – it would be so much better if I could talk you through it in person, with us both looking at the spreadsheet. But we can’t do that because I’m antisocial. So here is a list of bullet points instead: My research includes any comic with a pence printed price, and any comic with a US cents printed price produced between the cover date ranges in which I have found US price font variations. The pence copies are included because I believe their existence is connected to the existence of cents price font variations. The earliest comic I have found with a US price font variation is cover dated June 1960, I have found no titles with a variation prior to that date, but I suspect that one or more may exist for May. I will explain why later. The last comic I have found with a US price font variation is cover dated February 1961. From March 1961 onwards, every title I have researched has only one US price font type per issue leaving only two possible types – pence (where produced) and cents. 91 comics span the cover dates in question across the 20 titles. Of those 91, I have found 13 issues which have US price font variations straddling 6 of the 20 titles. These comics are: Battle #70 Journey Into Mystery #60, 64 & 65 Rawhide Kid #17 Strange Tales #75, 76, 77 & 81 Tales to Astonish #14 & 16 Two Gun Kid #54 & 55 If I work back from cover date April 1960 every issue for all 20 titles has this same ‘bold’ US cents font: We know that the first pence priced copies are cover dated May 1960. These are Gunsmoke Western #58 and JIM #58. Both have a corresponding bold US font only. From June 1960 however, when pence copies really get going, we see for the first time a new US cents font – the ‘tall font’ like so: This gives rise to my theory that the reason the ‘new’ US font exists is because of the existence of the pence price. The coincidence is too great – years of the same bold US font come to a halt within one month of pence copies appearing. As followers of my pence threads will know, I have been researching what pence copies exist for Marvel for over 10 years now. What does and does not exist from the early 60’s on is fairly concrete now. There is little chance of a book from, say, the 1970’s appearing. I’ve been looking too long. But for the early months of 1960, when pence books first began, it is still possible that a pence copy has yet to be found for one of the 20 titles that Marvel were producing at the time. In my Marvel pence thread I maintain what I call a ‘missing list’ which is essentially a list of these early books that have yet to yield a pence copy. In the last two years, a handful have appeared and they are often the only copy ever to have been seen - my copy of 'My Girl Pearl' #7 is a good example, being the only copy I have ever seen: Using the font variation spreadsheet, you can start to see why pence books have yet to be – and may never be – found. Take a look at the three titles below: All have no pence copies found. All have bold US cent fonts only. The two features seem to lend themselves to each other. Now look at My Girl Pearl (which restarts at issue number 7 after a long lay off): I have only found issue #7 with a pence copy. Lo and behold, the corresponding cents copy is not the expected bold font. The remaining copies, for which no pence book has been found, are the bold cents font. See the pattern? So, if we look at Battle #70, we see a US bold font and a US tall font. This leads me to believe that a pence copy may yet exist. The presence of the additional tall font, when viewed against other examples, gives reasonable cause for speculation that a pence copy will surface (even though it is the last issue in the title - see Wyatt Earp #29 which is also the last issue for a long period, yet has a pence copy): Look at Kid Colt Outlaw. A popular title, and one which logic indicates will likely have survived in collections in greater numbers than ‘My Girl Pearl’ would have: We can see straight away that #90, 92, 93 and 94 have no pence copies, and all have only bold US fonts. It’s that pattern again. Where pence books exist, for 91, 95 and 96, the cents font is the ‘tall’ font on two of them. Annoyingly, from a pattern perspective, 95 has a bold US font beside it. But this shows that nothing is cast in stone. Nothing is hard and fast. But this always happens in research I find - the overall picture is certainly intriguing. Still on the Kid, in this extract from my Marvel Pence Priced Variants spreadsheet, you can see how the Kid Colt pence 'gaps' match two other titles exactly (in yellow): So if you add that to the font variation pattern you can present a fairly compelling argument for why you have never found the missing pence issues – they are exceedingly unlikely to exist. Back to the US price font variations. If we look at Rawhide Kid here we can see no less than three different US price fonts. Plus a pence copy to make four: One of the three is the US bold font. I can kind of see how that may have been run off first. Then a plate change to run the pence copies. Then that plate breaks, or they forgot to print enough US copies, so a new US font plate goes on. Etc. But three US fonts? Why on Earth would that be? The general consensus I have found is that there were no reprints at this time. Anecdotal evidence suggests that all the books were produced in one run, in the same place, at the same time and in much greater quantities than were allegedly needed. Those that have contributed to this and my previous thread have speculated why there should be, in this case, four different prices / fonts if the one print run assumption is true. But could a piece of history be missing? Could RHK #17 have been so popular that a second or even third print was run? Could that fact have been lost in the ether down the years? But why would a subsequent printing necessitate a different font anyway? Why not use the same bold font for all printings? Anyway, if you have persisted to the end of this post – well done. It was a long one, even for me! I hope you found it interesting though and I hope you can see the potential link between the existence of pence copies and the US cent variations. I don’t mind one bit if someone comes along with a backed up explanation and it is nothing to do with what I have speculated here. Next up – further examples, a list of all the different fonts I've found (bold, tall, short, etc), the link to the existence of ‘Thorpe & Porter’ indicia details on US only priced copies, which muddies the waters still further, and maybe something about the three titles of the 20 which L Miller took over. All good fun

So they've solved the rings but the new issue is cross contamination with their taxidermy business? Will this thread ever end!

Dang. Did they find the drugs?

Up up and away! Oh, that was Superman wasn't it.

Please find someone else to interact with. There are hundreds of other posters on this board to choose from. Thank you.

Get it on, that's a shlong, get it on

That's a lorra feet.

Where's Cilla Black when you need her.

Ha! Anyway, I was only mucking about with you. I'm pretty sure, as the Joker, you - and James - both got that. Just though I'd try something different tonight. Liven the place up a bit with some social engineering. It would've been legendary if you both became board buddies.

You're supposed to be ignoring him kav.

Kiss!

Yes. There needs to be more love on the boards James. And kissing. You should kiss each other, to show. Kiss. Kiss! KISS THE BIG UGLY SHARK!

I'm trying to be match maker. People will recall the day this great friendship was cemented kav.

What if I commanded you to get on? A board first. Two members, going at it, then in a beautiful moment they stop and become firm friends. What about it? Say something nice James. Make the first move. Go on.

That's not helping James

Nice work Elmer. Given that I used to triple board / double mylite my Spidey's this lot would've needed their own garage. So glad I'm out of the completist game. Actually, a little part of me is insanely annoyed that I don't have them all