Unaccounted and spoiled after printing...

[Unca Ben]

I have always known that many people collected comics, many of whom were older than me (at the time) and could afford multiple copies and better storage.

In the late 1990s when I first started exploring eBay, Greg Manning auctions, Heritage auctions, etc., I was amazed at the sheer volume of high and higher grade back issues that were available.

 

In the Statement of Ownership in ASM #47, cover dated April of 1967; the net press run was 534,493. Total paid circulation was 362,700. Office use, left-over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing was 171,733. Other Statements of Ownership in ASM had similar numbers. Other Marvel titles with lower print runs (other than FF) still had high numbers of unaccounted copies.

 

Could some of these unaccounted copies, well over a hundred thousand copies of each title per month, help explain so many high grade copies surviving? I have heard of the warehouse finds but these seem to be only particular issues. I have always wondered if these reported unaccounted copies are some of the high grade raw and encapsulated gems that we now pursue.

 

Just curious.

 

[slym2none]

Interesting question...

 

 

 

 

-slym

[binarysunrise]

I am trying to think what you would need 170,000 copies of ASM #47 for "office use." The only thing I can think of is that it must have been "Fort Day" in the Marvel bullpen.

[nmtg9]

Thats a great question. Left-over and Unaccounted copies.....

 

Presumably some of these did end up in warehouses but obviously not all of them. Where does the practice of returning copies with the top part of the cover ripped off fit into this?

 

I wonder if these copies were destroyed or recycled (?) by the printers. Was recycling practiced back then?

[Unca Ben]

As I reread my silver-age collection I run across this Statement of Ownership fairly often. It has two sets of numbers (usually close in value) one set says "single issue nearest to filing date", and one set which says "average number for preceding 12 months" meaning these amounts of copies were left over/unaccounted for every month; year-in year-out. That's an awful lot of books with top parts of covers torn (if these were included in the "unaccounted" number).

I suspect these books never saw a spinner rack or newsstand binding bundle. No spine bends, blunted corners, etc.

Maybe they were all destroyed. But why constantly over-print so much each month? Marvel published about 15 plus titles a month at that time? That's 1.5 to 2 million books a month unaccounted for, and potentially destroyed? I've heard they paid for printing press time, not actual copies printed, but still...

[Unca Ben]

I am trying to think what you would need 170,000 copies of ASM #47 for "office use." The only thing I can think of is that it must have been "Fort Day" in the Marvel bullpen.

Wow. Building forts and reading comics!! That's what being a kid is all about! Thanks for bringing back the fond memories!

[Zonker]

As I reread my silver-age collection I run across this Statement of Ownership fairly often. It has two sets of numbers (usually close in value) one set says "single issue nearest to filing date", and one set which says "average number for preceding 12 months" meaning these amounts of copies were left over/unaccounted for every month; year-in year-out. That's an awful lot of books with top parts of covers torn (if these were included in the "unaccounted" number).

I suspect these books never saw a spinner rack or newsstand binding bundle. No spine bends, blunted corners, etc.

Maybe they were all destroyed. But why constantly over-print so much each month? Marvel published about 15 plus titles a month at that time? That's 1.5 to 2 million books a month unaccounted for, and potentially destroyed? I've heard they paid for printing press time, not actual copies printed, but still...

 

Absolutely. Hence the demise of newstand distribution: the publishers routinely printed twice as many copies as they expected to sell. It was all about presence on the newstand hopefully driving some incremental, spontaneous purchase. And, in fairness to their business model, most of their costs were fixed in terms of creating the comics and setting up the print run. The cost of letting the printer run off several thousand extra copies was pretty small in the big scheme of things.

 

I've seen other ownership statements that split out the "returned" or "unsold" numbers (which were huge) from the "office use, spoiled or otherwise unaccounted for" (which were much more modest).

 

All the unsold newstand distribution copies were fully returnable from the retailer to the distributor for credit. The problem was, who wanted to pay the return shipping for unsold copies? At first the solution was to cut off the top part of the front cover as proof the unsold copy was destroyed. These are the copies you see for sale these days, and yes, it does represent fraud in the distribution system way back when.

 

But at some point (early 70s) they couldn't even be bothered to strip off the cover logo, and so retailers simply signed an affadavit stating they had destroyed the unsold copies, now credit my account please. This is where the fraud really took off. Retailers or distributors could get their costs reimbursed and simultaneously resell the "unsold" copies to collectors. The Mile High II warehouse was one result, but many of us suspect there were many many more examples of books falling off the truck and winding up in collections. It has been further speculated that many of the hot artist books of the 1970s suffered cancellation in part because their distribution was disrupted or at least under-reported by the massive fraud in the pipeline.

 

Chuck covers this pretty well in his Tales of the Database series on the Mile High website.

[Unca Ben]

Thanks for the info, I'll check out the Mile High website you mentioned.

Regarding my initial post, do you think some (or a lot) of these unaccounted copies could be the high grade gems of today?

[iggy]

Semi-OT: I now work with someone who used to work at Marvel in their promotions dept. (creating sneak preview sheets to be distributed at LCS's, etc.). He said that everyone who works there from the mailroom on up gets a copy of every issue they print every month. So he said most people there just had stacks and stacks of comics piling up. Nice perk!

[BillBreck]

At first the solution was to cut off the top part of the front cover as proof the unsold copy was destroyed.

 

I used to buy remainder copies for 6 cents when I was a kid. There was this one used book store that had tons of them. My friends and I would spend a few hours going through the stacks, and end up with a pile of comics for a few bucks. Those were the days.

 

[Zonker]

Regarding my initial post, do you think some (or a lot) of these unaccounted copies could be the high grade gems of today?

 

(thumbs u

[the blob]

a friend tells tales of remainder copies (top 1/4 torn off) of ASM 1 being available in large quantities at used book/magazine/junk stores for like 50 cents a pop or something in the late 60's in NY. i wonder where they all went? did they become victims of amateur (or pro) restoration?

[jools&jim]

 

Back in the '70s, many of those remaindered/stripped-logo books then had the rest of the front cover stripped from them in "back-room" operations, and were subsequently re-distributed and sold as coverless comics in bagged, "2 comics for 25 cents" pre-packs at convenience and discount stores. Crooked as hell...but I read some very cool books that way! By 1979 or so when I stopped reading and collecting for the first time, I'd say I probably had over 400 coverless SA and BA comics, which my friends and I read over and over and over again...

[JohnT]

Back in the '70s, many of those remaindered/stripped-logo books then had the rest of the front cover stripped from them in "back-room" operations, and were subsequently re-distributed and sold as coverless comics in bagged, "2 comics for 25 cents" pre-packs at convenience and discount stores. Crooked as hell...but I read some very cool books that way! By 1979 or so when I stopped reading and collecting for the first time, I'd say I probably had over 400 coverless SA and BA comics, which my friends and I read over and over and over again...

 

Yeah, the used book store where I bought comics in the 70's had boxes and boxes of coverless SA books. I think they were a dime a piece.

[Subliminal]

I was watching Electra Glide in Blue with Robert Blake yesterday that has a few scenes with comic books in it including a recitation of a Space Rangers story.

There was one scene where a few old guys were fighting over a Batman book and one guy was beating the other guy over the head with a fistful of rolled up books.

 

So that might explain some of the office,unaccounted and spoiled numbers.

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

And if anyone thinks "stripped" copies is endemic only to comics, think again. This is precisely why the "stripped" statement appears near the Imprint page of nearly every book published.

 

The one that says "WARNING! If you purchased this book without a cover, please be aware that this may be STOLEN PROPERTY that was reported destroyed to the publisher. Neither the writer, publisher, nor printer received payment for this book."

 

Or some form of that.

[slym2none]

I used to run a newsstand, and our parent company would let us read and keep all the magazines, comics, and even paperback books we wanted - all we had to do was strip the entire front cover off so they could claim it as a return.

 

I had stacks of PB books without front covers that ended up in a bonfire, and would just throw the magazines away.

 

I never stripped the cover from a comic, though.

 

 

 

-slym

[RockMyAmadeus]

All this talk about stripping is making me uncomfortable...

 

 

 

 

[Ogami]

Is it acceptable to judge a coverless book?

[Subliminal]

All this talk about stripping is making me uncomfortable...

 

 

 

 

Feeling ill-equipped ?