Marvel UK Price Variants 16 16

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, rakehell said:

Spotted this on the Magazine Collectors thread -

Is this news to anyone else?

Marwood? Have you ever seen a UK pence price variant on a magazine? 

Yes, I've got a folder somewhere. I never got around to doing a post on them. I'll have a look when I get home from work Alice. 

[rakehell]

54 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Yes, I've got a folder somewhere. I never got around to doing a post on them. I'll have a look when I get home from work Alice. 

Thank you, Juanita. As always, much respect to your probing...umm...nature (?).

[Get Marwood & I]

3 hours ago, rakehell said:

Thank you, Juanita. As always, much respect to your probing...umm...nature (?).

Can't find it 

I remember looking for a specific copy of Epic Illustrated at the fair for someone but I'm damned if I can remember who / why. And I gathered lots of images as I recall, including the dual pricing cut off point etc. There were some other magazines too but I was never as interested in them as the comics if I'm honest. I did the Treasury Editions and parked magazines for another time. Maybe next year.

 

[gadzukes]

Where do any of you Pence guys currently put the value of Pence copies in relation to their Cent counterparts?  50%? 60%? 70%? More?

I haven't really examined it in a while.  Are they trending upwards?

I figure key issues would get the highest percentage.  I've got a mega key Pence (AF15) and I'm always trying to figure out how I should value it.

[mec3437]

@gadzukes, if I am selling pence copies, I tend to list them at an even price with cents counterparts.  I look at it as a niche market, like newsstand collectors.  High grade (9.2 and up) pence keys may command a premium due to there not being as many copies available.  Overall, the price disparity was around 15% to 30% less for a pence copy but the gap may be closing as collectors are becoming more educated on them.  I can only speak from my experience and don't have anything scientific to go on.  @Get Marwood & I may have better information for you.  

[rakehell]

14 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Can't find it 

Well, that ain't no damn good. Did you check under the sofa cushions?

I'll start digging a fresh rabbit hole. After the co-opted neo-pagan winter solstice festivities, that is. 

[rakehell]

4 hours ago, mec3437 said:

@gadzukes, if I am selling pence copies, I tend to list them at an even price with cents counterparts.  I look at it as a niche market, like newsstand collectors.  High grade (9.2 and up) pence keys may command a premium due to there not being as many copies available.  Overall, the price disparity was around 15% to 30% less for a pence copy but the gap may be closing as collectors are becoming more educated on them.  I can only speak from my experience and don't have anything scientific to go on.  @Get Marwood & I may have better information for you. 

What he said.

Check out the census as well. High grade pence copies are few and far between & they seem to appeal to high end collectors.

How's about you stick up a picture of your AF15? 

[Get Marwood & I]

Putting aside completists and run collectors most Marvel pence copies seem to be worth / prized notably less, especially the later ones. But some early books are now so scarce in any denomination that I find that they sell extremely well regardless, e.g. pre-hero. It all depends on the seller, buyer and appeal of the comic. Some UK dealers price pence and cents equally, others with a reduction for pence. Some dealers actively avoid pence. If money were no object, I would pay the same without hesitation. Others wouldn't. AF15 is a tough one as it is so highly prized and also highly expensive. Any suggestion that pence copies are somehow inferior will put off uneducated buyers. Who wants to slap down 30k for a book with a question mark? So you will need the right buyer to achieve parity. Some say that one day pence copies will carry a premium being as rare as, say, 35c variants. I don't see it myself. There will be a small group of people chasing them, and therefore only the basic rules of supply and demand will dictate what prices they achieve. Good luck @gadzukes

[gadzukes]

5 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Putting aside completists and run collectors most Marvel pence copies seem to be worth / prized notably less, especially the later ones. But some early books are now so scarce in any denomination that I find that they sell extremely well regardless, e.g. pre-hero. It all depends on the seller, buyer and appeal of the comic. Some UK dealers price pence and cents equally, others with a reduction for pence. Some dealers actively avoid pence. If money were no object, I would pay the same without hesitation. Others wouldn't. AF15 is a tough one as it is so highly prized and also highly expensive. Any suggestion that pence copies are somehow inferior will put off uneducated buyers. Who wants to slap down 30k for a book with a question mark? So you will need the right buyer to achieve parity. Some say that one day pence copies will carry a premium being as rare as, say, 35c variants. I don't see it myself. There will be a small group of people chasing them, and therefore only the basic rules of supply and demand will dictate what prices they achieve. Good luck @gadzukes

Thanks for your thoughts Marwood.

I think 1 extra thing I have going for my AF15 is that it's the highest graded on the census, which might give it a little bump in value.  I suspect though, that there are many pence Af15s that haven't been slabbed yet because they're sitting raw in the UK.  7.0 is a pretty high grade for a pence copy, but I suspect there's gotta be a higher grade than that.  Even Hulk 1 and TTA27 have higher graded pence copies which doesn't make sense to me.

[gadzukes]

Here's another question.

When you check the census on all Silver Marvel keys, it shows the Cent copy census and then you can scroll down and see the Pence copy census.  But for AF15 it doesn't have the pence copy census with the cent copy census.  You have to search out the AF15 pence census separately.  As far as I can tell Af15 is the only marvel silver key that the census handles this way.  Anyone have any idea why?

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, gadzukes said:

Thanks for your thoughts Marwood.

I think 1 extra thing I have going for my AF15 is that it's the highest graded on the census, which might give it a little bump in value.  I suspect though, that there are many pence Af15s that haven't been slabbed yet because they're sitting raw in the UK.  7.0 is a pretty high grade for a pence copy, but I suspect there's gotta be a higher grade than that.  Even Hulk 1 and TTA27 have higher graded pence copies which doesn't make sense to me.

I forgot yours was the highest graded. That should help it's value if you decided to sell I would have thought. One thought on why the lack of pence copies - the book is now worth a small fortune. Maybe owners of high grade copies are wary of sending them abroad. It puts me off (mine is a cents copy). The thought of it going overseas and then back again gives me pause I have to say, especially with my luck. Maybe if CGC set up a UK grading hub then that would tempt more copies out of the woodwork. But they can't do that of course, as it would compromise consistency having two functions in different locations. 

1 hour ago, gadzukes said:

Here's another question.

When you check the census on all Silver Marvel keys, it shows the Cent copy census and then you can scroll down and see the Pence copy census.  But for AF15 it doesn't have the pence copy census with the cent copy census.  You have to search out the AF15 pence census separately.  As far as I can tell Af15 is the only marvel silver key that the census handles this way.  Anyone have any idea why?

Nope. One for CGC to answer I guess. 

Only 60 pence copies graded vs 3,267 cents I see. The word on the street down the years has been a print ratio of 5-10% pence copies vs cents. Current figures show less than 2% of the cents figures graded in pence. Where are they all....

[gadzukes]

32 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Nope. One for CGC to answer I guess. 

When you look up the census on AF15 it shows the pence copy as coming out one month later.  Weird.  None of the other keys show that.

[Get Marwood & I]

3 hours ago, gadzukes said:

When you look up the census on AF15 it shows the pence copy as coming out one month later.  Weird.  None of the other keys show that.

I posted about that here:

On 11/19/2018 at 3:57 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Meanwhile, and this is nothing new, just worth repeating, Amazing Fantasy 15 has a potentially unique indicia scenario.

There are two first printing copies - the pence and cents copies like so:

 

The pence copy has an additional line of indicia data - 'SOLE DISTRIBUTORS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM - THORPE & PORTER LTD' - just below the usual cents details.

In keeping with the practice at the time (to eliminate the confusion caused by long shipping times), the pence copy has the cover month removed like so:

And the US copy has the month of August:

But in what may be the only example of it's kind, both pence and cents indicias list the month as September 1962, not August:

Hope you can make them out.

The GCD has this to say on the matter:

They say September is the correct date. 

So that's what I put in my spreadsheet. Thing is, when you look at the title - which was formerly Amazing Adult Fantasy (which itself was formerly Amazing Adventures) you can see August is missed as a sequential month:

 

Issues 3 to 14 are all sequential. It would make so much more sense for AF15 to be August wouldn't it....

 

 

 

[gadzukes]

41 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I posted about that here:

 

So, what you're saying is that the Census lists the pence copy as Sept, when it really should be Aug.  

Good detective work.

[Get Marwood & I]

4 minutes ago, gadzukes said:

So, what you're saying is that the Census lists the pence copy as Sept, when it really should be Aug.  

Good detective work.

Both cents and pence should be recorded as September, as both carry that date on their indicias. The pence copy has no cover date, the cents says August. So the cents copy has the contradictory info. Interesting that CGC take the indicia as the pence date, given the lack of cover month, but take the August cover date on the cents copy over its September indicia. I was taught to take the indicia as the correct detail. 

[gadzukes]

8 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Both cents and pence should be recorded as September, as both carry that date on their indicias. The pence copy has no cover date, the cents says August. So the cents copy has the contradictory info. Interesting that CGC take the indicia as the pence date, given the lack of cover month, but take the August cover date on the cents copy over its September indicia. I was taught to take the indicia as the correct detail. 

And I was always taught (here on the boards) that the Cent and Pence copies were printed at exactly the same time, not one month apart.

[Get Marwood & I]

2 minutes ago, gadzukes said:

And I was always taught (here on the boards) that the Cent and Pence copies were printed at exactly the same time, not one month apart.

They were. Did I imply otherwise? 

[gadzukes]

6 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

They were. Did I imply otherwise? 

No, I was agreeing (just worded it weird)

[Get Marwood & I]

1 minute ago, gadzukes said:

No, I was agreeing (just worded it weird)

Ha! I was watching the final of Master Chef and thought I'd mistyped or something 

[Get Marwood & I]

Hello 

In the first few weeks of the new year I decided to revisit my Marvel pence research files which I had left resting in relative peace while I focused on building up the other six (DC, Charlton, Dell etc).

Marvel was my first pence thread here and it seems to have been the most popular if views and interaction are anything to go by. Perhaps this is just a reflection of collector’s general preference for Marvel Comics over pretty much all other publishers? Who knows. Ask him, next time you see him. Her? Actually, no. Him. 

Despite mining what I thought was every conceivable commentable aspect of the 3,019 confirmed books’ existence over the last three years I discovered that I’d forgotten that there were still several elements of my work outstanding that I had parked to finish another day. Accordingly, and buoyed by the enthusiastic feeling of renewal that only a new year can bring, I set to work and embarked on a massive clean up exercise that resulted in a comprehensive overhaul of all 15 of my ongoing research threads (which is probably why you haven’t seen me for a while).

It’s funny how new things jump out at you when you look at them for the first time in a long time, especially when you have learned to look at new things in new ways via other research strand activities. And so it was with Marvel.

The great news, aside of what I gleaned from my file refresh, was the arrival of a  new pence book   that my US Price Font Research told me could – nay would – one day surface as a pence copy. I’ll post more about that aspect in the font thread later, but here it is at last, the only book on my Marvel pence wants list to rival Wyatt Earp #29 (see earlier posts) – it’s Battle #70!

Yay!

Again, yay!

There’s a funny story about how it came to be with me which I’ll tell another time but my God in Heaven, isn’t she nice. So good to see her finally appear. If we look inside we see she's a Porter. There was an outside chance she'd be a Miller, given the Miller appearance in Amazing Adventures, but a Porter she be:

Battle #70 leaps straight into the ‘First 20 Marvel UKPV’ list and pushes out Journey into Mystery #62 in the process. Here’s the revised list:

I've got eighteen of the top 20 now and will post a gathering picture later. They look very happy together I tell you.

Battle #70 also takes us up to what I believe will be a final total of 3,020 Marvel UKPVs. I am not expecting any more to appear based on my years of research – Battle #70 was the last one.

As well as increasing the final UKPV total to 3,020, I have also finally gotten around to adding the non-UKPV Marvel Annual and Giant Size titles to the overall copy list. In my previous postings I have listed the total number of Marvel comics published between the UKPV dates of May 1960 and December 1981 as 6,546. With the addition of the 32 additional annual titles with no UKPVs (adding 95 issues), the additional annual numbers for those titles that do have them, and 28 giant-sized titles (adding a further 72 issues) that number now increases to 6,743. The overall title list rises from 200 to 259 with the UKPV titles rising by one to 119 as a result of our Battle #70.

I’m always happy to be proven wrong, but I do not believe I have missed any titles or issues in this refresh and I therefore expect these figures to stay / remain accurate. To confirm, these are the figures for all comic size books - regular size, annuals, double size, giant size etc. As long as the cover dimensions are that of a standard comic, they are included. Only over-sized books are excluded, i.e. Treasury Editions and Magazine titles.

The final figures for Marvel should therefore be:

• 3,020 confirmed UKPVs from a possible 6,743 eligible US editions
• 119 titles with one or more UKPV confirmed from a possible 259 eligible US titles

I will be placing updated lists over at Molar’s and I’m sure if anyone reading spots an error or any omissions, they’ll dive in (I always enjoy it when they do to be honest – it means more comics to analyse!)

The eagle eyed among you may have spotted Patsy & Hedy #70 in the Top 20 table above – this is another book I’ve been waiting on for a very long time and I’m pleased she finally turned up too:

It's a T&P indicia again – I have added this one and Battle #70 to my T&P Research Summary which you can find in my Journal. Here's the updated page for the Period 1 indicias:

One last thing, as if that all wasn’t enough, whilst scrolling the updated master list a thought occurred as to why Marvel Team-Up #81 has always been missing its pence copy while Marvel Super Heroes #80 was always a rather a solitary pence copy:

Hmmmm.

Now, do you think the printer could have made a mistake that month and selected the wrong title…..? 

See ya!