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King Kong - 1976 Treasury Size - HG Unread Copies!
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17 posts in this topic

Been quite a while since I've done a sales thread, but I came across an awesome find this past week and thought I would share some of the goodies.

Standard rules. No probies or HOS. Paypal preferred. Domestic shipping $10. No international -- sorry. :takeit: trumps all PMs.

So last week I picked up an case of 24 of the Whitman King Kong treasury size comic from 1976, including the original box that folds up to make a store display. THis was one of my all time faorite books as a kid and I read my old copy to pieces many years ago. So this was a huge nostalgia find for me. :cloud9:

Obviously I'm keeping a few for myself, but I don't need 24 copies. So I'm going let a few go if folks want one. Although they are high grade copies, many of them do have some minor flaws from storage in the box over the years. Like the DC treasuries it is regular staple bound not square and super tough in high grade. I'll be very conservative and call the ones with just the slightest flaws VF-NM (NCB stress line, soft corner, etc.) and the ones with a few more flaws VF (one or two stress lines, slight color break, etc.). But these are about as nice as you can find. I'll post some more pics as well. Thanks! Jeff

VF-NM - $60 (5 available 3 available)

VF - $30 (5 available 3 available)

 

 

 

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Edited by Theagenes
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Theagenes: For whatever reason, when the 1976 release of this treasury came out, I didn't buy it--I can't remember if I skipped it because I already had the 1968 version, or I simply never saw it.  These days, in attempting to rectify my oversight, I've had the opportunity to look at LOTS of copies of this comic online, and every one of them claims to be the 1968 printing.  Whether this is true or not, I've been unable to determine.  The cover seems to be identical in every way to the 1968 printing.  The cover price was the same in 1968 and 1976 (unlike the earlier Whitman JUNGLE BOOK 1967 treasury, which had a 59-cent price and a different cover than the 1978 $1.00 reprint.)  The indicia in the original only has the 1968 copyright for Merian C. Cooper, and I assume this is true for the copies you have pictured here.  However, the standard Western Publishing splash page information hand-lettered at the bottom of the art (which was not present in the original printing) should say, from the information listed in all the price guides, "11229  King Kong #1 - 7612" (reissued to take advantage of the 1976 KING KONG movie remake starring Jessica Lange, which came out at Christmas of '76) though, if this is true, nobody selling their copies has noticed.

Your listing here, corroborated by the actual PDQ for the store display (and your anecdotal reinforcement of owning it in 1976) are the very first instance I've been able to find that seems to prove it was actually issued--though my magazine, THE COMIC READER, did feature a mention that it had been at the time and included a photo of the cover (from the copy purchased from my TCR partner Jerry Sinkovec).  So, if it's not too much trouble, I'm requesting that you open one of your copies and tell me whether there is anything in the comic that indicates that this is indeed a 1976 printing--which, seemingly, could only be the hand lettering at the bottom of the splash page.  The more subtle, and perhaps imperceptable, indication would be a difference in the paper and printing between the '68 and '76 issues, since the original would have been printed in Poughkeepsie on Western Publishing's own presses, while the 1976 would have been printed in Sparta at World Color Press.  The only alternate explanations I can come up with would be that the copies in your display were stored in 1968 and redistributed in 1976 (which would have required Western to believe there'd be a reason to warehouse them that long), or perhaps more likely, that Western simply reprinted them in toto in 1976.  Where that partial ISBN number for the issue came from then, I can't explain, since it's not anywhere on the cover.  I hope you can help clear this up once and for all!

Thanks in advance.

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