Aman619

Simplest test: if the inside of the covers are glossy, they are counterfeit. Dave printed as cheaply as he could. The counterfeiters had access to cover stock gllossy on both sides, and never noticed their error.

Heres a quicker way to organize it all. It's not the usual alphabetical solution, with all titles in issue order. That's a "Final solution", but with the random state of your collection, why not treat each box as a collection. Number the boxes. Then list every book in that box. Enter them all in a spreadsheet, box by box as you go along. You Just need publisher, title volume, issue number and most importantly BOX NUMBER . If you do it a box=x at a time it will go smoothly. When end you are done you can tackle putting the titles back together in order. You sort the spreadsheet to see how many issues you have for each title, or even letter of the alphabet. This will assist you in leaving enough room for each title. use the spreadsheet to locate each and every comic by box number! And go get em. Later on if you grade the books etc, just add data to the spreadsheet.

You guys are getting soft... so easily convinced. "hey Dude, I can get you a toe! Amateurs!" love that line..

That’s the 64 thousand dollar question, and the the answer is somewhat in flux. To date pence copies and all foreign editions were lumped together, because the understanding was that they were all printed overseas, at a later time from the US editions. but it’s feeling like many if not all the pence versions may have actually been printed on the same presses as the US editions, and, possibly only hours later. Should this be the case, or, should collectors now - for whatever reason - consider them on a par with the US editions, their values may increase dramatically.

Here’s a quick video. Skips a bunch of steps, (like the separation process) and it’s a modern print job, the “plates are no longer made of metal!) but gives you a visual of the process and the enormous size of the presses etc.

Ok. Maybe I explain assuming everyone knows about plates, and film separations. Before you get to the “plates” that the presses actually print from, they work with “film separations”. Separations are the process by which the b/w artwork, text, lettering, logos and coloring instructions all get combined photographically (stripped) into four sheets of film negatives, one for each ink color: cyan/blue, magenta/red, yellow/yellow, and black. These film negatives ( so called because they are reversed; white areas will print in the ink color) are then exposed onto the metal plates, where acids eat away the areas that are not supposed to transfer ink to the paper (picture tiny raised area like tiny mountaintops, that receive ink as they brush up against the ink rollers...) anyway... you can keep working with the separations , making changes and versions of the covers all you want. This is all done way before you go on press. So in Chucks scenario, they have 5 plates ready before they begin. 4 plates C, M, Y, K for the US edition. Plus N.A. extra Black plate they they will swap out at some point in the print run. And as I mentioned earlier if the variant price or whatever was in a color area of the cover, they would need 8 plates ready before beginning. However, because they were swapping out ALL the plates, the variant covers would be - in reality - basically a NEW print setup, and wouldn’t really have to be done the same day etc due to the longer delay. But, perhaps since the artwork would be identical, they probably have some advantages to getting the variant cover printing done right away while the press has been inked and ready... so the answer your question, yes, extra plates are necessary. And the reason you can see a bit of the twelve cents is because of sloppy stripping. I alluded to this earlier, saying that this was just cheap work. Perfection was not in their minds.

Oh, and to Ryan’s question about the sequence of the covers variations based on the leftover pieces of the 12c marking? In a court of law, this would not be considered proof, because the error is in the pence plate itself. No matter which order they were printed the error would show up! They could have been printed a year apart too ... what’s in the plates appears on the comics. my guess though is that they took care of the larges runs first so long as the time between runs was quick. This is because it takes some time on every new press job, to get the inks up to proper strength, and to balance each ink color with the other inks until they get the desired effects that match the approved matchprint proof client signed off on. this happens with the press running full strength! Churning out printed sheets that are looks horribly bad and wasting paper. Therefore, once they are all set, they lock it in and want to let it run without making more changes as long as they can. This would argue for doing the bigger US press run version first. After changing just the black plate they could pretty quickly be back up to speed. And because the US version is the clients main concern. but technically, they could print the smaller run first. But if small enough the pence run would only take a blink of the eye! No time for a break while it’s running, so human nature says to me they set up the large and longer print run and deal with the stupid foreigner still later after a pint or two.

Hello! As to the Spidey cover price box question... yes I agree the little mark is from the leftover uncleared up 12c price . Reworking plates on crappy comics never warranted the same attention to detail as higher priced quality jobs would. As to chucks story, he may be right, but HE IS ONLY describing covers with prices on White areas. In these cases you need only create a pence version of the black plate, and stop the presses, swap it in place of the cents black plate, and carry on. However, when the price is in a color or art area, ALL affected plates need new pence plate versions. Hence the white boxes they used as a solution.) ...And ALL plates must be swapped out. But if his info is correct that the pence copies were indeed printed as a second batch here in the states, then the only difference is the time between press runs to swap 4 plates not one. to wrap up, all four inks are always printed at the same time for every cover. They do not run already printed covers back through the press. Lining them up etc is not worth the time trouble and expense... cheaper to just roll more blank paper stock hrough the press and print all the colors together in the same pass. The paper waste is incredible but an acceptable cost of doing business. At least nowadays not all of it ends up in landfills, like our Keurig cups do!

It’s a shame that sellers of these great war books hold out for prices that have come and gone.

Both of those collection are complete, but not in grade. It would take many more thousands of run filler comics to catch up to the top collections in which the major keys are in high grade.

Same old blatant self promotion.

If you've still got the book handy, count how many pages were affected. Should be 4 or 8... can't recall the folio patterns off hand, but they printed 8 pages , front and back, facing every which way so that when cut and folded up they become a 16 page section of the comic book. And the green pages won't be consecutive. Juts picture you have a piece of paper big enough for 4 pages of a comic. Picture you will print the back too, that's 4 more pages, total of eight. Now imagine that you will fold it in half, and in half again down to comic book size... finally, now figure out which pages would have needed to have been printed upside down, so that after two folds, they are ALL right side up. youncan try this at home. Take a blank sheet any size. Fold it in half twice. Now place it like a comic book on the table, with the spine on the left. Number the pages 1 thru 8 so they all read correctly . When you unfold it, you'll see how the platers must piece the film together so that the correct pages all line up correctly, and are in order on the plates. i seem to recall that comics may have been printed 8 up on large rolls of newsprint. Os each comic needed only two sheets of 8 pages (printed front and back) to make a 32 page comic.

The reason for the green interiors is that the red and blue plates got swapped for each other. Yellow and black stayed correct. magenta plus yellow gives you red. but blue plus yellow becomes green. Sh it happens on cheap press jobs. Cause who cares. Depending on what percentage of the run was done when they caught it determines a reprint, or just ship em.

The Curators were near perfect specimens too, so I'm thinking the quality of a collection of books has more to do with the collector than the location they were shipped to. I bought book soff the stands randomly back then, and some were perfectly centered and others weren't.

Don't think it really works like that. To follow your argument, that early in a particular press run the blades of the trimmer are sharpest leads to the idea that they must change the blades after every print run. That just doesn't ring true. Maybe changed once a week depending on the pressloads that week. So the books with the chipping were "luck of the draw" casualties... like driving a shared car the day the tires blow out. and why would the smaller print run go first? the multiple covers would have been printed separately from the newsprint interiors, ganged 4-up together on larger sheets. Then rough trimmed and added to the machines that assembled the covers to the insides. I'd think they would load the machines with comics parts (covers and interiors) by territory making the bundles of finished comics all come out together, easier for shipping.

One element of what differentiated the Marvel universe from D.C. At the time was that Stan circulated the heroes into the other titles, and then the villains too. No one had done that before to the extend he did in the early 60s

Nothing directed at you, just the general concept of assigning "great meaning" to random circumstance based on letter count or numerology etc... it can be a fun exercise, until people take it too seriously, or assign intention.. that's all.

I don't even know if you're serious. Why would Stan ever care what issue number they introduced anything? Certainly in the early days when they were struggling and just trying to stay in business putting out their line of comics, there's no way they'd hold up a new wacky idea of character for a certain issue number! But by the late sixties, or when the second generation of creators took over there might have been some conscious homage numbering going on... they could coast and do clever stuff like that in the 70s, and beyond.

How is this different from picking any random number then checking to see which key issues match that number? There was no plan or grand design in Stan's head. Just banging out a dozen books each and every month to meet the deadlines. numerology is fun, and leads to meaningless connections. China and Ghana both have 5 letters... wow. In this case, they match only in English, another aspect rarely taken into consideration in these things.

I'm wondering where the list of keys was put together from. Is it from Overstreet? Some online database? I'm assuming it wasn't just cribbed from one source. But when comparing its entries to Overstreet I see many many notable books not listed in the app. Not the biggest keys of course. I'm talking about $30 books in runs where nearest issues are 3-6 bucks. These are books worth pulling or looking for too and including if the goal is to leave no valuable book behind.

Must be Doug who is trying to get what he thinks it's worth you mean.

This new season continues the same slowing down , long reverential scenes, camera lingering on faces, flowers, trees etc etc. they need to go back to moving the plot. Less self glorifying the characters trying to fan empathy etc. problem really is that after so long, 8 seasons or 170 issues, the zombies are not a threat, just an annoying nuisance. And the thrust of the show like the comic is turning to nation building. Who really wants to read a comic, or watch a show about rebuilding society, with recurring interruptions of bad guys popping up for drama, and to kill off some lesser characters every now and then?

Here's what I'm trying to say, down and dirty. When the best books in the hobby sell for hundreds of 1000s , we marvel at how far we have come as a hobby, but we EXPECT IT. But when a (let's face it) lousy 5.0 double in price overnight? That sis hocking and attention worthy. There HAS to be some reason why because a 5.0 isn't worth 50 grand! And then when it happens again, a frenzy starts where lots of people need to get a copy now!

Ok fixed. 123456789

I think what's being glossed over here as to what spiked the AF 15 market, is how different the 9.2-9.4 market is from the 5.0 market. When 9.2s and 9.4 sell for ever increasing numbers, for most people it's just like reading about how the rich people live. Going from 200k to 400k is interesting, exciting maybe, but to most of us like reading about which yachts millionaires are buying. plus, most of us expect the high grade best examples of the key books to keep rising and rising into crazier numbers because they ARE the best copies of the best books. But it's when a low middle grade copy that has usually been left in the dust by the highs falluting sales at the top end jumps up one hundred per cent higher with one book.... people sit up and take notice. Usually spiking HG copies have far less effect on five point os So whether the HG copies catulaly caused the five point o copy to double in price or not, it was thta five point o sale that fueled other mid grade copies to suddenly heat up too. In other words, we expect HG copies to double overnight... not average copies that had only been moving up slowly, btw my keyboard suddenly won't let me type numbers right now. Bites.