The Invincible Iron Man 21 Variant/Mis printed cover?? 1 1

[bricksandbamboos]

Hi everyone, 

    I found this issue of Iron Man, but instead of having the 15 cent price it shows " 1 / - " ....Can't seem to find any information on it. Anyone know if this was some type of error/variant + would it make it significantly more valuable than the regular version of issue #21 (1969)? 

 

    Thanks! ...Jon 

[LowGradeBronze]

This is a UK price variant. One shilling or twelve old pennies was the price. Identical to the US copy with the exception of the price box. (Later UKPVs had other slight changes: in the mid 1970s the banner that reads Marvel Comics Group on US copies read Marvel All-Colour Comics, along with the pence price.) Hope this helps. 

The value is neither more nor less than the cents priced copy in my opinion. There were less UK priced copies though, leading some to view them as a fun variation to collect. The way people view them now has certainly improved. They used to be viewed as inferior. While many UK collectors enjoy having the 'original' cents copies, the UK priced comics hold their own in desirability now.

Earlier UK priced comics had 9d, then 10d as the price increased. Then a shilling as you have there. Then after our currency became decimalised in 1971 comics were printed with 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p, 10p, 12p, 15p etc as prices increased. By Marvel 25 anniversary there were dual priced marvels, in fact I believe they showed US, Canadian and UK prices in the stylised M logo.

For quite a while the US comics that landed on our shores were stamped with a purple inked price stamper t&p with the price. T&P being Thorpe and Porter the 'sole UK distributors'. There is a thread in the Silver Age section of this forum devoted to the UK Distribution of US Marvels if you want to see more ink stamped examples! 

Edited May 10, 2023 by LowGradeBronze

[bricksandbamboos]

On 5/10/2023 at 2:33 PM, LowGradeBronze said:

This is a UK price variant. One shilling or twelve old pennies was the price. Identical to the US copy with the exception of the price box. (Later UKPVs had other slight changes: in the mid 1970s the banner that reads Marvel Comics Group on US copies read Marvel All-Colour Comics, along with the pence price.) Hope this helps. 

The value is neither more nor less than the cents priced copy in my opinion. There were less UK priced copies though, leading some to view them as a fun variation to collect. The way people view them now has certainly improved. They used to be viewed as inferior. While many UK collectors enjoy having the 'original' cents copies, the UK priced comics hold their own in desirability now.

Earlier UK priced comics had 9d, then 10d as the price increased. Then a shilling as you have there. Then after our currency became decimalised in 1971 comics were printed with 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p, 10p, 12p, 15p etc as prices increased. By Marvel 25 anniversary there were dual priced marvels, in fact I believe they showed US, Canadian and UK prices in the stylised M logo.

For quite a while the US comics that landed on our shores were stamped with a purple inked price stamper t&p with the price. T&P being Thorpe and Porter the 'sole UK distributors'. There is a thread in the Silver Age section of this forum devoted to the UK Distribution of US Marvels if you want to see more ink stamped examples! 

Thanks for the information/history lesson, much appreciated! I've seen some other UK price variants, just never with the 1/- before...Really appreciate you taking the time to answer my question. Learned something new today! 

Have a good one! ..Jon 

[LowGradeBronze]

Happy to share! By the way if you search individual issues on the MyComicShop website, if there is a UK price variant they show it in the search results. Referring to my first post above, same applies for DC comics but they started printing UK priced comics later than Marvel did. All adds something extra to this little hobby of ours .