The most common production flaw in DC bronze?

[etanick]

I graded and sold a few thousand books in the past 1.5 years and I finally concluded that for early DC bronze from 1970 to 1974 or so, nut sack creases are very common. I just graded 300 DC bronze from those 4 years and about 15% of the 300 books have that flaw..unreal. I have seen them on Marvel Silver and Bronze books but it is quite shocking to see how often this flaw showed up on my DC collection.

 

Is this an anomaly isolated to my set of books? or is it a common production problems for the DC during the early 70's?

 

[maraxusofkeld]

What do these look like?

 

[bababooey]

What do these look like?

+ 1

I came back to this thread hoping someone would ask that or a sample would be posted - I'll be damned if I'm going to google search that.

[BrianR]

Its another name for printer's crease. Yes, there are a quite a few DC's with this, as well as popped staples from what I see.

[Jeffro.]

Yeah, I was going to ask, "what's a nut sack crease?" but I'm frightened by the answer I might get.

[Jeffro.]

I graded and sold a few thousand books in the past 1.5 years and I finally concluded that for early DC bronze from 1970 to 1974 or so, nut sack creases are very common. I just graded 300 DC bronze from those 4 years and about 15% of the 300 books have that flaw..unreal. I have seen them on Marvel Silver and Bronze books but it is quite shocking to see how often this flaw showed up on my DC collection.

 

Is this an anomaly isolated to my set of books? or is it a common production problems for the DC during the early 70's?

 

That's interesting data. What would be even more interesting would be to know if the defect affects a particular issue moreso than other issues.

[etanick]

my camera just can't capture these flaws well enough to show example but a good example is

 

G.I. Combat 171 and 174 are example of the frequency of this problem.

 

In addition to nutsag creases, printer creases are even more common...I dare say 20% or more have printer creases. The majority of the DC bronze books I have are horror and war books so I can't speak outside of those two genres. It is quite telling when 1 out of 5 books I graded so far either has nutsag creases or printer creases. Both production flaws are never on the same book as far as I recalled.

[kimik]

my camera just can't capture these flaws well enough to show example but a good example is

 

G.I. Combat 171 and 174 are example of the frequency of this problem.

 

In addition to nutsag creases, printer creases are even more common...I dare say 20% or more have printer creases. The majority of the DC bronze books I have are horror and war books so I can't speak outside of those two genres. It is quite telling when 1 out of 5 books I graded so far either has nutsag creases or printer creases. Both production flaws are never on the same book as far as I recalled.

 

It is the same for superhero books as well. I have found that staples punched through covers are more prevalent on DC bronze books (e.g. 1 out of every 3 copies of Strange Tales #209 or 214 I have bought in OO collections/stashes over the years have this staple issue).

 

In addition, DC's tend to be way worse for centering issues from this period as well. There are a ton of them with that fugly white stripe down the side.

[etanick]

my camera just can't capture these flaws well enough to show example but a good example is

 

G.I. Combat 171 and 174 are example of the frequency of this problem.

 

In addition to nutsag creases, printer creases are even more common...I dare say 20% or more have printer creases. The majority of the DC bronze books I have are horror and war books so I can't speak outside of those two genres. It is quite telling when 1 out of 5 books I graded so far either has nutsag creases or printer creases. Both production flaws are never on the same book as far as I recalled.

 

It is the same for superhero books as well. I have found that staples punched through covers are more prevalent on DC bronze books (e.g. 1 out of every 3 copies of Strange Tales #209 or 214 I have bought in OO collections/stashes over the years have this staple issue).

 

In addition, DC's tend to be way worse for centering issues from this period as well. There are a ton of them with that fugly white stripe down the side.

 

absolutely agree on that production flaw too. Add this to the other 2 flaws and 1 out of 3 books are likely to have 1 or 2 of the production flaws I mentioned.

 

 

..I never paid much attention until now but no doubt there are much more production flaws with early bronze DC than Marvel. Quality control during these early 70's with DC must have been done with bongs in hands.

[kimik]

my camera just can't capture these flaws well enough to show example but a good example is

 

G.I. Combat 171 and 174 are example of the frequency of this problem.

 

In addition to nutsag creases, printer creases are even more common...I dare say 20% or more have printer creases. The majority of the DC bronze books I have are horror and war books so I can't speak outside of those two genres. It is quite telling when 1 out of 5 books I graded so far either has nutsag creases or printer creases. Both production flaws are never on the same book as far as I recalled.

 

It is the same for superhero books as well. I have found that staples punched through covers are more prevalent on DC bronze books (e.g. 1 out of every 3 copies of Strange Tales #209 or 214 I have bought in OO collections/stashes over the years have this staple issue).

 

In addition, DC's tend to be way worse for centering issues from this period as well. There are a ton of them with that fugly white stripe down the side.

 

absolutely agree on that production flaw too. Add this to the other 2 flaws and 1 out of 3 books are likely to have 1 or 2 of the production flaws I mentioned.

 

 

..I never paid much attention until now but no doubt there are much more production flaws with early bronze DC than Marvel. Quality control during these early 70's with DC must have been done with bongs in hands.

 

There is a huge discrepancy in the production quality between the two publishers during that period. Based on the OO collections/speculative hoards I have come across the past decade or so, Marvel had DC beat by a wide margin in the production quality department.

 

That being said, the one flaw I saw more with Marvel was crooked right edge miscut books. Some were at a 15-20 degree angle.

 

[Silver Surfer]

Most common flaw? That's an easy one, the writing.

[ft88]

MVS cut out. Flaw due to production IMO.

 

Some of the 15 cent marvels have bent staples. Both my copies of ASM 84 have that problem - along with the roller mark going up to the staple.

[ft88]

Clearly the MOST common though are the corner flecks on the $1 DC Giants.

Maybe 10% don't have that issue?

[sakaridis]

It is the same for superhero books as well. I have found that staples punched through covers are more prevalent on DC bronze books (e.g. 1 out of every 3 copies of Strange Tales #209 or 214 I have bought in OO collections/stashes over the years have this staple issue).

Strange Adventures, surely.