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Lets see those BIG 10 centers and still 10 Centers

Started by frozentundraguy,

280 posts in this topic

rjpb

rjpb

Posted
Posted
I believe I read in an old issue of CBM that DC chose to boldly print "STILL 10 Cents" because some comic book compaines such as Dell were already charging 12 cents for their books. Then DC morphed into the larger 10 cents omitting the "STILL" because they knew the time would soon come at the end of 1961 that they would raise their price to 12 cents. Then they could use the same exact logo. I believe they were trying to use a bit of sales psychology here by leaving the logo the same but with a 2-cent increase. Moreover, in many (but not all) titles, DC provided an explanation to their readers (and by extension to their parents) for the increase. ( See Action Comics 285 for example).

 

I don't remember the timing, but as Hepcat noted, Dell jumped to 15 cents for a while, before returning to 10 cents and then increasing to 12 cents with the rest of the industry. The "Still 10 cents" would make the most sense if there were competing comics on the stands at the higher (15 cent) price. But I don't know whether the timing is correct for this explanation.

 

The timing is exactly right. Dell went to 15 cents with comics cover dated February 1961. DC went to the Still 10 cents logo with comics cover dated March 1961. Dell never dropped its comics back to 10 cents but did drop them down to 12 cents with the July 1962 releases. Dell's sales had of course nosedived when the other comic publishers held firm at the lower price points.

 

:preach:

 

Wasn't that the second time Dell bumped their price to 15¢ and then had to bring it down? They tested it out in 1957-58 IIRC. Uncle Scrooge must have really wanted those extra nickels.

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Sqeggs

Sqeggs

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It must have been the earlier attempt by Dell to raise the price to 15 cents that I was thinking of when saying they eventuallty reverted back to 10 cents. So, the sequence for Dell appears to have been 10 to 15 to 10 to 15 to 12. The 50% increase from 10 cents to 15 cents seems drastic.

 

I remember reading that during the early 1950s, Coke wanted to raise the price of their 6.5 oz bottles from 5 cents but vending machines at the time were able to handle only one coin. Coke thought a doubling of the price from a nickel to a dime would significantly hurt sales so they lobbied the Eisenhower Adminstration to begin minting 7.5 cent coins.

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rjpb

rjpb

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Posted
It must have been the earlier attempt by Dell to raise the price to 15 cents that I was thinking of when saying they eventuallty reverted back to 10 cents. So, the sequence for Dell appears to have been 10 to 15 to 10 to 15 to 12. The 50% increase from 10 cents to 15 cents seems drastic.

 

Apparently the 1957-58 attempt at a 15¢ cover price by Dell was limited to CA, AZ and NV and it's unclear if it covered all titles. The interesting thing is it went on for something like 18 months, so while ultimately unsuccessful, Dell didn't give up easily and were probably hoping other publishers would follow suit.

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Hepcat

Hepcat

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Posted
Apparently the 1957-58 attempt at a 15¢ cover price by Dell was limited to CA, AZ and NV and it's unclear if it covered all titles. The interesting thing is it went on for something like 18 months, so while ultimately unsuccessful, Dell didn't give up easily and were probably hoping other publishers would follow suit.

 

That would explain why I can find only one isolated Dell comic with a 15 cent price from this time period, that being Mickey Mouse 56 but not even every copy of Mickey Mouse 56:

 

Mike's Amazing World of Dell Comics Time Machine

 

(shrug)

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