Get Marwood & I

Thorpe & Porter don't seem so bad now, after reading that shadroch.

I don't know about the mob, but the UK distributor Thorpe & Porter got up to some shady dealings with remaindered books. Instead of destroying them, they would repackage them with a new cover and sell them like so: Crafty buggers.

Jeepers Roy, what are you doing in here! I feel like I've had a royal visit or something Yes, the pence is on the right of the screen in the interior shots. As far as I know, the covers were printed separately so the interior quality may not be overly relevant or provable. It would be nice if we had an expert on board from the old printers days. Along with the question of which books were printed first, pence or cents, it would be nice to get an explanation for all the other nuances I plague the boards with - Miller indicias, Thorpe & Porter indicias in cents books, font variations etc. There must be someone alive who worked at Sparta that someone knows. Thanks for popping in and showing an interest

Super book @Dr Zen I'll have a go. The flaws do stand out somewhat, but much of the book looks great. So it's a tricky one. If I was putting this on eBay, I'd call it a 4.0.

Hulk thinks book nearer 4.0. Crease big and obvious, like Hulk. Hulk likes book though. But not puny Wolverine, who Hulk will beat every time.

I made the same point in my pence thread earlier today Roy. I'm not aware of any conclusive proof, but if the pence copies were run off first they would in theory be less likely to have chipping. Only in theory though.

Don't dis the two tone Har

You can be sure whenever a hero does visit Europe, every monument the country is known for will be in the same panel

Me too. Nice and carefully mind.

Oh, no, is there!? I've been using a hammer and chisel. Oh, bowl locks!

= lazy

CGC do not appear to display any interest in the finesse of the hobby from what I can see. I have tried to get them to recognise a number of variants through various means and they don't even have the courtesy to respond. So I assume that they are not genuine comic lovers, with a desire to lead the way in research and accuracy, and just exist to make money. They could do both of course, but that would require a modicum of class.

Spot on liz. Obtusely lazy. Look at all the bother in that car crash of an original art thread where scans of the back may have headed off WW3. Not including clear scans of front and back of a collectible suggests the same mentality to me as not putting adequate protection in for shipping. Some things are just patently obvious, and I tire sometimes of those who make excuses for not doing what any reasonable person would do or expect them to do.

Morning Harry! I've seen it mentioned here and there. Never seen it substantiated though, and it's probably one of those things we'll never know now, like why font variants exist, cents copies have T&P indicias and why Miller got some titles. One of them had to come first I suppose. Whether it was the pence run, or the cents, or it was alternated, it probably doesn't matter. Although whichever came first would have had less chance of chipping, and deeper colours... Anyway. Fancy a game of spot the difference?:

Back from a comic buying trip I hope? Just remembered I had two of the ST #5's at one point. This one looked more in keeping with the kind of condition you might expect!

Lovely stuff! Maurice indeed did a great job. Very simple, yet striking and, as you say, faithful. It seems anything with a pence price is scorned upon, alas. Still, we love them so who cares. And I know all about the condition of AUS books, having put together that ASM price variant run But yes, back to AJD (AUS, ASM, AJD, this could catch on)

I agree, they should. Maybe they don't because; A) you would then see that horrific immovable sticker that they tend to put on the back of the cases B) they work on the assumption that you can see the grade and page quality on the front label, so the back is arguably 'guaranteed' / 'irrelevant'. Which is one of the reasons I gave up on graded books when I used comiclink and others to build an ASM run some years back. We all know that two copies of the same book may grade the same, but can look significantly different. That is why the term 'eye appeal' exists in the hobby. By not showing that back cover you are implying that the grade is all that matters. I received many books that I was disappointed with when I flipped them over and looked at the back. If you're buying a comic, often for large sums of money, you need to see front and back and the CGC label should refer to any issues inside (e.g. writing, which I found in quite a few books that I later opened up, including an AF15) I grew to distrust graded books. And I would never buy one now if I couldn't see the back. Apart from that, everything's great!

Indeed! What's a NA Jim?

Key word 'had'

Isn't it! And no chipping either @paul747. And yet, despite coming off of the same presses at the same time, and being considerably rarer, it commands barely half the price of the cents copy. Someone got themselves a bargain there....