Aman619

The answer comes when you do the math. Add up what it will cost: shipping, pressing, grading fees, plus shipping again.. the calculate how much an upgradei would increase the value of the book. If increase does not cover the upgrade costs, don’t bother. There are other issues at play, but basically this is how you decide. If the book will stay with you for many years, higher grade is better to have. But if flipping the book, or selling it, why lose money?

Why wouldn’t it be important? A single upgrade proves you case ... but a double upgrade (or more). is a slam dunk win for you. No?

Tough to categorize each to fit the question... to me Deadman stands out as the most ORIGINAL concept. He is DEAD. THAT EVER BEEN DONE BEFORE?

Im saying that anyone who needed to sell their Action 1 has had the last 10 years to do so, as prices jumped to 300K (remember when that was a crazy cool sale?) up to a million.. or 6 figures for ANY copy. If they held onto them through the run up, chances are they don't feel a strong urge to unload now either.

Crowzilla - good points! Action 1 et al prices from decades ago seem ridiculously cheap today... but 30 years ago, they cost real money too! So the guys who HAD the cash to buy the best comics then HAD ample funds... and chances are, still do today. So selling one of them now, one set of many and one that has done very well -- and continues to do well -- is NOT the first thing to let go of! The collectors who luckily bought one back then who DIDNT have sufficient means to hold onto them probably sold them long ago, same as modern collectors often jump from grail book to grail book, selling one to buy the next because of limited funds.

But those spirals made turning pages a chore. If this stays flat I’ll like it plenty. But can’t fold it os you just have the left handed page only anymore. The spirals allowed that.

Am I reading this wrong? It should be Creators, not executives. Stan Lee Jack Kirby Siegel Shuster Golden Age Great of your Choice”

well, the Guides ARE collectibles. just check the last few pages of each book, where the Overstreet Price Guide PRICE GUIDE lists them all with prices. Collecting every cover etc used to be a thing.

Sucks to be powerless. Or coverless!

I called four local stores today. Three didn’t know what book I was asking about! The other didn’t order any. I finally found a store, run by old time retailers who had a few copies. They ordered a handful of soft covers and ONE HC each. i too used to get each cover, but just one is fine now, picked up the GL softcover Guide , plus the Big Book that I can actually read without a magnifying glass. Seriously.

i saw the same gibberish! but I had my tinfoil hat on so I didn't make the connection!

yes obviously running toy ads in comics were a part of their budget. But they spread the money around, and Im saying that comics advertising was steady but a smaller part of the mfg. entire marketing budgets due to its limited reach and effectiveness. But definitely part of the equation. Circulation was a few 100,000 even for the top sellers: Superman, Batman. (Marvels were way behind until 1968 iirc... didn't Spidey FINALLY catch DC in the 70s at the earliest? 1960 top selling comics: http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1960.html 1965 top selling comics: http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1965.html 1967 Top selling comics: http://www.comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1967.html Marvel vs DC Sales in the 1960s: http://zak-site.com/Great-American-Novel/comic_sales.html

The price of the toys being expensive really has little to do with buying ads in comics. That money bought TV ads. That’s where the kids were. Not reading funnybooks, shunned by parents and cool friends!

I get all that. But if comics were such a great venue for toy advertising, they would have had a lot more ad pages. There were other slicker kids publications back then too. And remember too that comics were everywhere, but very few of us read them regularly. I only ever had a handful of friends who collected. A small number. Comics were definitely NOT cool the older you got. Readership picked up in the summertime with free time, camp etc.. but in the sixties, comics were sell8ng less and not in the mainstream as much as we might like to remember them being.

Sure the comics ads were a nice source of income for DC and Marvel. And they always wished they could get a lot MORE ads. As periodicals, no reason that couldn’t add 8 more pages (a signature) just of ads... IF only there was enough demand. There’s no set policy about editorial to ad page counts. You print what you got. id think the toy manufacturers probably had the upper hand in buying the ads, not the comics publishers, and were satisfied with what they received for the rates they paid. Enough to keep buying them all those years, comics being marketed solely to kids in the sixties limited the pool of brand advertisers too. No cars, cigarettes, cosmetics, etc where the real money is at.

Good points. While yeah the advertiser might have said we only buy in lots of a million, so print more! Clearly he’d be a fool if he thought that would lead to more sales and eyeballs for his ads. but there are other reasons Marvel or DC might overprint an issue ... wish we have more info how many and why.

Marwood, I think your discoveries related to the pence copies has proved multiple pressings with plate changes. I’d lean toward multiple scheduled press runs all in the same day. Marvel would have received the pence orders, and planned the runs and told the printer how many of each they needed. The printer would just bang em out with short breaks to swap out the black plate and fire up the presses again. Very little make ready to delay. So they weren’t like a second printing by demand etc as we see them now. But these Marvel “error” books happened years later after marvel ceased printing foreign books for their overseas partner distribs.. I can’t recall any mid Silver Age book that was reprinted, or warranted it. But JJ has spoken with those who were involved, so I’m thinking he has some inside info on the subject. and yes I am remembering a full sized comic inserted whole into the newspapers, not a specially produced giveaway. Newspapers are larger than magazines — much larger back then — so a 7x10” comicbooks posed no problem as an insert. It would have been cheaper too for Marvel, once they committed to inserting a giveaway comic to just overprint the regular comic, as opposed to creating a new shape etc like the Eye giveaway. For over fifty years now (wow) I have always thought of the newspaper insert whenever I see the Shocker cover, but, in fairness, memory. being fungible over time, I could be misremembering this. Anybody else recall?

haha I got 5 out of 6 correct so thats pretty good!

Marwood... maybe thats the reprint I remember. But I wasn't "hip" to EYE magazine at all back then, and I recall it as a full size comic insert. And 46 was dated March 1967 and the EYE mag is dated 1969, so maybe Stan just loved the Shocker! As some of the artists and writers who worked with/for Stan have speculated, since Stan created so few heroes and villains ON HIS OWN, he was partial to the ones he DID create!

Can’t remember... I was a wee lad then. Just that it was a pretty big step for little Marvel, who was still a big underdog to DC at that point

Google “offset printing hickies”

Printers call color loss dotted areas “hickies” . Stuff gets on the paper so that ink is transferred but never reaches the paper, leaving a gap in ink coverage exposing the white paper stock.

JJ. I remember Spidey #46 (Shocker cover) was given away as an insert in local newspapers when it came out. So I’d think that 46 would be in much greater supply than other issues. Maybe 46 was given away in MY area and 45 was in other parts of the country? Have you ever heard about this giveaway promotion?

The key to all these questions of variations in the printed comics I always go back to that comics were nearly the lowest of the low quality printed jobs around. Probably just above supermarket handouts. The printers did a professional job only as much as the clients cared about. Print em And ship em to the kids. Lots of sloppy product was produced and sent out, and nobody noticed or cared... until collectors and grading started to look closely many years later. and this casual attitude is nearly always to blame for what we find, and try to figure out “wha happened?”

this ones clearly a printing error, but I don't have a specific explanation. the black plate printed only in a few random areas... so something on press cause the ink to not adhere to the plate in most of the cover image. closest I can come is that if the plate was partially wet (with water) the oil based ink would not stick to the plate in those areas... but thats all I got here!