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Marvel Australian Price Variants
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648 posts in this topic

On 2/2/2021 at 4:20 PM, the blob said:

oh lord, another thing to go blind looking for, yay! I am not going to read this whole thread, but golly, what was the financial incentive for this? how many were they possibly selling a month per book, 200, 300, 500, 1000? I understand the UK, bigger country (and I see plenty of pence copies here, they are no doubt low print runs*, but not close to 30/35 cent variants), rains a lot, lots of indoor reading time, I can understand Canada .. the land of John Byrne and frozen comic nerds ... but Australians are out and about playing sports, doing outdoor stuff, riding kangaroos, cooking shrimp on the barbie, swilling fosters...I don't think of that being a place for comic nerdery.

There's an APV summary here blob, if you don't want to read the whole thread, although it's more about what exists than why / print numbers:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/blogs/entry/4916-marvel-australian-price-variants/

Australians seemed to like their Marvel comics as much as we in the UK did. They have their own reprint titles (Yaffa) and of course the price variants of this thread which went largely unnoticed for many years but seem to be gaining a bit more attention now. 

Quote

* with that said, it occurs to me that unlike the U.S. where 50%+ of the copies at the newsstand went unsold and many were pulped, what happened in Canada, UK, and Australia? It would seen crazy to me to ship 1000 copies of some comic a billion miles away to Australia and then destroy unsold copies ... OTOH, these being hard to find (perhaps?) perhaps they had a very good sell through rate?

I speculate about such things in my various pence threads blob, what happened to the unsold UK imported copies. There are different opinions and recollections as you would expect, but nothing concrete. And it may have varied by region, and date. I think in the main the imported pence copies just hung around until they were sold or bit the dust. In some instances in the sixties, unsold books were repackaged in annuals and remaindered compendiums by Thorpe & Porter, one of the main UK distributors. Illegally, apparently.... :eek:

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This is quite interesting I thought - a version of Secret Defenders #7 with a correcting price sticker:

s-l1600.thumb.jpg.c6fda96c8e6c51e03014f1795d80d5c8.jpg

It's the US newsstand copy, corrected to $1.75 as the price underneath was printed at $1.25 in error.

The link to our APV's is the sticker, and shows that the approach used with our various APV examples was also used in the States:

72887282_MMEASM1AUSCopyBCrop.jpg.272e95a902e54d9a5736a1027f0331b7.jpg1027981513_XF2eBay2.thumb.jpg.a69add01f40023c1801724669133e4ab.jpg212172264_122AUS(Sticker)Crop.jpg.3c831bf8fd3cff4d6e1397505c40940f.jpg611109663_X-Force3AUSPriceSticker(01AUSBarcode)-ExampleCCrop.thumb.jpg.cd1730d1463f316d06071614652e049a.jpg

Here's the actual APV copy while we're at it:

7b.thumb.jpg.bfcafc4c096e22b64b7728eeb9e813d7.jpg

Lots of versions of that book to collect then, if you're a completist... :grin:

 

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Afternoon :)

Courtesy of our same eBay seller, clearly a fan, we have two more Barbies to add today, bringing us up to 1,318 confirmed APVs:

27.thumb.jpg.21efe0554b139a3a4ab1bccc7c9f7dde.jpg 36.thumb.jpg.59350a138e1a8e443e1b3a5c54a0b432.jpg

Now number 36 is a particularly good one to have found because it showed up a mistake (dun-dun-duuuhhhhhhn!) on my spreadsheet. I had both Barbie and Barbie Fashion stopping at issue #35 for some unknown reason. So the two books not only increase the APV total but the 'actual issues in the APV cover date range':

barb2.thumb.PNG.7c3a969eeca044cc3a1308c59136eebd.PNG

 

Issue #36 mirrors the BF #35 in its positional loneliness, but strengthens the possibility that all the others could exist too. They're just evidently very scarce titles. 

Here are the revised issue plottings for both:

barb.thumb.PNG.dd8aeeb17156147be9539fe3206c373b.PNG

I doubt if any exist beyond #36 given our known APV April 94 absence scenario, but you can clearly never say never, eh?

All good fun :bigsmile:

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Being an Australian kid in the early 90's I have a good run of APV's of Daredevil and G.I. Joe until I switched over to buying from a local comic shop. At the time Aussie newsstands were seen as a lesser comic to the direct market stuff (At least from my experience) In retrospect I wish I had kept on with the newsstands but hindsight and all that. I would love to have a nice scanned cover gallery to reference. Might scan my own books for fun sometime. Great work on this thread. It has been a blast reading through it. 

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23 hours ago, Darkglobe1977 said:

Being an Australian kid in the early 90's I have a good run of APV's of Daredevil and G.I. Joe until I switched over to buying from a local comic shop. At the time Aussie newsstands were seen as a lesser comic to the direct market stuff (At least from my experience) In retrospect I wish I had kept on with the newsstands but hindsight and all that. I would love to have a nice scanned cover gallery to reference. Might scan my own books for fun sometime. Great work on this thread. It has been a blast reading through it. 

Thanks DG - glad you enjoyed it.

I added Barbie Fashion #25 to the list the other week so we're up to 1,319 now :headbang:

25.thumb.jpg.875d94f8b1e24722c25f1bd622dbba89.jpg

And at the risk of this turning into a full blown Barbiefest, here's a nice bagged #1:

1338328307_1Bagged.thumb.jpg.db381d48e56d0bb416a074b7ee7a375b.jpg

Conceived in the US, printed in Canada, sold in Australia! Wonder what the free gift was. 

 

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The Squish/No Squish Chronicle:

Before and After as promised

Sent this in for press & re-grade. I wasn't sure what to expect as I had read a wide variety of opinions on HALO grading. hm Then I get the news that it can't be pressed due to the 3D cover, :facepalm: (guess I'm a little behind the curve). :insane: 

SilverSurfer_50APV.jpg?width=1920&height

In this instance the HALO grade was spot-on. (thumbsu

SilverSurfer50cgc9.6APV.jpg?width=1920&h

Highest graded on the census! :acclaim:

 

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2 minutes ago, Dr. Dank said:

Great book

I just found this in my boxes and wondering if I should have it graded

It's not a AUS variant but never seen a 3rd print before 

20210327_221610.jpg

If it's a 9.8 candidate yes, otherwise probably not. 2c

Still a cool book.

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On 3/28/2021 at 5:52 AM, ramrod44 said:

The Squish/No Squish Chronicle:

Before and After as promised

Sent this in for press & re-grade. I wasn't sure what to expect as I had read a wide variety of opinions on HALO grading. hm Then I get the news that it can't be pressed due to the 3D cover, :facepalm: (guess I'm a little behind the curve). :insane: 

SilverSurfer_50APV.jpg?width=1920&height

In this instance the HALO grade was spot-on. (thumbsu

SilverSurfer50cgc9.6APV.jpg?width=1920&h

Highest graded on the census! :acclaim:

 

That is both an outstanding APV and also encouraging that the HALO classification matches up to CGC.  Thanks for sharing!  

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For the APV community if you have not seen this already there are some interesting Comic Plates from the same seller for Australian Price Variants.

I included the link for the most valuable with the APV UXM 282.  A bit of comic history!

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AUSTRALIAN-MARVEL-X-MEN-282-WHILCE-PORTACIO-ART-THIBERT-COVER-PRINTING-PLATE/124651793465?hash=item1d05d36c39:g:JbEAAOSwPdZgW92M

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On 3/30/2021 at 8:39 PM, TK2 said:

For the APV community if you have not seen this already there are some interesting Comic Plates from the same seller for Australian Price Variants.

I included the link for the most valuable with the APV UXM 282.  A bit of comic history!

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/AUSTRALIAN-MARVEL-X-MEN-282-WHILCE-PORTACIO-ART-THIBERT-COVER-PRINTING-PLATE/124651793465?hash=item1d05d36c39:g:JbEAAOSwPdZgW92M

They're cool aren't they, TK2. I like anything to do with the original production process. Good spot.

848695773_285ppcrop(2).thumb.jpg.0d3f6ec43ea761a7eca498e55f97d764.jpg282.jpg.9ca694dc4914c9530edab82265cbc3de.jpg969584889_285ppcrop.thumb.jpg.4c72f858499378b4a5af59ae363c4499.jpg

 

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I just found this thread. Wish I found it about a month ago, which was when I went back to my collection that has been dormant since the '70s to catalog it properly. 

Anyway, I have been bag-and-boarding all those old comics when I found a few that had Australian prices printed on them. So these would definitely have been from the '70s, not the '90s as stated in this thread. But now I don't even remember which ones they were so would have to go back through about 20 boxes to find them.

Also I found a couple from pre-1966 that had pence prices. Most of the comics sold in Australia then had US prices and local newsagents put a 10c sticker over the price. So not sure if these were some UK books that were shipped here so they could be sold with pre-decimal currency pricing or found their way here by some other means.

Edited by Albert Thurgood
fixed typos
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On 6/2/2021 at 11:54 PM, Albert Thurgood said:

I just found this thread. Wish I found it about a month ago, which was when I went back to my collection that has been dormant since the '70s to catalog it properly. 

Anyway, I have been bag-and-boarding all those old comics when I found a few that had Australian prices printed on them. So these would definitely have been from the '70s, not the '90s as stated in this thread. But now I don't even remember which ones they were so would have to go back through about 20 boxes to find them.

Also I found a couple from pre-1966 that had pence prices. Most of the comics sold in Australia then had US prices and local newsagents put a 10c sticker over the price. So not sure if these were some UK books that were shipped here so they could be sold with pre-decimal currency pricing or found their way here by some other means.

Post some pictures Albert, if you can - be nice to see what you have. 

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This is only the second example I've seen of the AUS sticker corrected Wolverine #57 - a better image too than the previous one in the files:

357898764_57(2).jpg.e25d36397d707dca1c99a824588aa538.jpg

57.jpg.6208452a1a6053e5cdf237148ee4d0ad.jpg

The barcode has the US issue number '08' - it would've been an '11' if it were a proper printed APV. It's nice to think that someone in production cared enough to make the stickers to ensure the Australian readers got their copy. Or maybe they had to, to fulfill the (allegedly under the radar) contract. Who knows....

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