PGM Journey into Mystery 76 & 82

[rjpb]

JIM 76 price variant OW pages - light tanning on back cover

 

 

 

 

JIM 82 cream pages

 

 

[VK]

76 - 5.5 due to blocked out price, etc. 7.5

 

82 - 8.0 sweet book

[rjpb]

76 - 5.5 due to blocked out price, etc.

 

 

It's printed that way - an early price variant - harder to find than the 10¢ version.

[VK]

76 - 5.5 due to blocked out price, etc.

 

 

It's printed that way - an early price variant - harder to find than the 10¢ version.

 

It is a Black Circle variant. Your's appears to be Corrected version #1. It's the 10 cent version that is rare, as none are known of as far as I know. Now that I know more about it, I'd give it a 7.5.

 

Here is the explanation from St. Louis Comics:

 

"These variants were published by Marvel back in January 1962. Apparently Marvel wanted to up the price on their monthly titles to 12 cents but didn't want to wait for the Februrary 1962 titles to start. So they chose 3 titles from January to start the price increase.... those titles were Gunsmoke Western, Journey into Mystery and Love Romances. All the other titles that month had 10 cent covers (maybe these all came out the last week of the month).

 

When these titles where printed they initially they had a 10 cent price in a white circle just like all the other titles that month. However, they were supposed to have a 12 cent cover price. The printers evidently discovered their mistake after a good number were already printed. The now incorrectly priced comics were then "fixed" by blacking in the price circle and printing the correct 12 cent price near the circle. Journey into Mystery #76 has the price in the "M" probably because the brown cover near the circle would obscure the price somewhat.

 

The printers then continued with the rest of the run with the correct 12 cent price in the white circle. There are still some questions left unanwered i.e. were these some kind of price increase variants? Did any of the 10 cent priced versions make it out of the printers? Post any info you might have in the Variant Mafia forum and good hunting."

 

http://stlcomics.com/gallery/blackcircle/

 

Other variants include: Love Romance #97 and Gunsmoke Western #68.

 

Corrected version #2:

 

Corrected version #3:

 

[rjpb]

Thanks for posting - I was thinking of the traditional circle 12 versions, when I wrote 10¢.

I did not know about the other two books - cool stuff.

[Bomber-Bob]

IMHO, the extensive BC tanning on the first book will keep it in the 7.0 range.

The JIM 82 has a badly abraded upper left corner, 6.5, maybe 7.0 .