Marvel UK Price Variants 16 16

[Pinkerton]

10 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

...I thought they might be interested in the US Price Font Variant work I did though, Overstreet, and it's link to my pence research. That would have made a cool article I think and may have appealed to both US and UK collectors. It's the way it is though. Look at all the work John did, especially on IW Super Comics. And barely a flicker of interest from anyone. Money, it seems, is all the majority can think about.

Not all of course, we have a merry band here on the boards who appreciate the esoteric. For myself, I've always been a bit of a loner so it doesn't bother me that much if few pay attention. I have a moan every now and again, too often probably, as do others here who post largely under the radar (and in some cases have given up posting due to the lack of interest) but that's life isn't it. I like it outside of the circle though, truth be told. Always have. 

Night boys 

I can't agree more about the price font stuff - that is directly relevant both to cents copies and to pence copies and how in practice they were actually produced, which is not only of interest in general terms but also informs about the cents vs pence "value" debate as it shows even more clearly that the pence copies are price variants (same day, same presses etc). Also, not forgetting it is just a bluddy luvverly piece of visual detective work - but your eyes have to be open to see what you saw!

[mikeyc67]

A pick up inspired by this thread Steve - Rawhide Kid # 23 L Miller variant

 

[Kevin.J]

 

[Kevin.J]

[Get Marwood & I]

29 minutes ago, mikeyc67 said:

A pick up inspired by this thread Steve - Rawhide Kid # 23 L Miller variant

That's cool Mikey - I like the 9d cover stamp

It's not the usual Miller one, 3d dearer and missing the 'LM', but I have seen the format elsewhere before

 

[Kevin.J]

I wish my Pence was as nice as my Cents  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Get Marwood & I]

4 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

 

4 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

Show off 

[Get Marwood & I]

Interesting eBay lot here from DMcA - CGC didn't put "UK Price Variant" on the label and, if you look up the verification tool, they haven't listed it as a UKPV either. It is indeed the highest graded UKPV by default, as there are no other Country Variants on the census for this issue, but I'd be a bit miffed if I was Duncan that they've recorded it as a US copy:

 

And some interesting 'what came first' commentary in the listing details....

[Kevin.J]

32 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Interesting eBay lot here from DMcA - CGC didn't put "UK Price Variant" on the label and, if you look up the verification tool, they haven't listed it as a UKPV either. It is indeed the highest graded UKPV by default, as there are no other Country Variants on the census for this issue, but I'd be a bit miffed if I was Duncan that they've recorded it as a US copy:

 

And some interesting 'what came first' commentary in the listing details....

Yeah have read as much on here before by some who worked the printing presses back in the day, dont remember who, lots of peeps disagreed but it does seem logical, I guess we will never know.

I dont really care, I love comics and dont care if they are pence or cents, I do think Pence copies will have their day, grab em while ya can 

[Kevin.J]

43 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

 

Show off 

I was just trying to keep this great thread moving along 

[Get Marwood & I]

35 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

I was just trying to keep this great thread moving along 

I know, I was kiddin Kevin. Post away mate, post away.

[Kevin.J]

46 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I know, I was kiddin Kevin. Post away mate, post away.

Yeah I knew you were, I was too  

[Get Marwood & I]

1 hour ago, Kevin.J said:

Yeah I knew you were, I was too  

Yeah, I knew you knew I knew you knew I was. 

I knew that. 

[Get Marwood & I]

2 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

Yeah have read as much on here before by some who worked the printing presses back in the day, dont remember who, lots of peeps disagreed but it does seem logical, I guess we will never know.

I did a thread a while back asking, if it were proven that pence came first, would it actually matter? The general concensus, as I recall, was nay and thrice nay. 

[Kevin.J]

2 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

I did a thread a while back asking, if it were proven that pence came first, would it actually matter? The general concensus, as I recall, was nay and thrice nay. 

Of course it wouldnt matter, peeps will always go for the books they grew up with, it will always be a niche market but it is growing and I think people at least finally understand what they are and I guess understanding is the best we can hope for at this point  

[Kevin.J]

 

[mec3437]

I've neglected my X-Men run long enough.  Finally had a UK price variant arrive for the first time in a couple months.

 

[Pinkerton]

On 5/30/2020 at 11:53 PM, Kevin.J said:

Of course it wouldnt matter, peeps will always go for the books they grew up with, it will always be a niche market but it is growing and I think people at least finally understand what they are and I guess understanding is the best we can hope for at this point  

Hi Guys

Re: Pence/Cents - which were printed first?

I have been slowly working my way through some very ordinary late Silver/Bronze Cents and Pence Marvels I own, as I don't currently log which cover price they are. I washed up at my Pence copy of FF #119 (Feb 1972) - not exactly the rarefied period covered so lovingly in this thread, but it might be of some small interest in the old "who printed what first" debate - at least for this one book on that one day. This is not because I have a view about "which is better" but just because actual visible cover evidence that informs the question (as seen beautifully with Marwood's price font research) seems to be rare.

FF #119 is in the middle of a long Pence run of issues and saw the introduction of the (much disliked by me) "new" blocky FANTASTIC FOUR logo. I usually use GCD to quickly check what cover variants are known, to see if they already have a Pence cover image. Yesterday I was surprised to see there were TWO Cents cover variants posted on GCD - a Cents cover referred to as a "Color-Correct Logo Variant" and another Cents cover simply labelled "Regular Edition". No Pence cover. Hmmm. I uploaded a scan of my grubby Pence copy so including mine ("British") there are now three covers at https://www.comics.org/issue/1648308/cover/4/.

I hope that link works - it should show all three covers side by side. I have uploaded my Pence cover, water damage and all.

Where is this leading? Remember this is the very first printing of an FF book with the new logo. Look on the GCD page at the three cover logos between the "F" and "A" of FANTASTIC. There is a rogue yellow patch in my UK Pence (which I had never noticed) AND the Cents "Regular" covers, which has evidently been corrected in the "Color-Correct Logo Variant". Looking elsewhere online both versions of Cents copies are out there, in approximately 50/50 split.

Now this is an argument from circumstantial evidence, but to me the only rational account of what happened in the printers is that they had the new-but-defective logo plate (sorry I am hazy on the technical side but someone much more knowledgeable will know what I mean) ready to go, and they started off the run on the Pence 6p copies, which would have been a very short run (maybe 5% of the total). No-one noticed the rogue yellow patch in the logo - it isn't obvious unless you know what you are looking for. Then they swapped the 20c part in for the 6p part, and continued the run, still with the yellow glitch. At some point someone noticed, said a bad word, they stopped the presses, corrected the logo plate and started up again hoping no-one would get into trouble... The result is all the Pence copies have the logo glitch, and some Cents do and some don't.

I cannot see any other logical course of events and this would unambiguously place the Pence printing before the Cents - on that day, with this book, in that print house. Of course 1972 in Sparta Illinois is a long time away from 1960.

If there were any Pence copies without the logo glitch that would amaze me and confound my argument, but images of unimportant pence copies are scarce out there.

This evidence relies on five things all happening: there being (a) an error in the cover printing which is (b) not obvious on a quick check, (c) clearly identifiable once you know where to look (d) fixed mid-run and finally (e) on a day when both Pence and Cents are being printed. Quite unlikely? I wonder if there might be others out there relating to books which had a Pence run?

By the way I gave a link to the GCD page rather than try to upload all three images to this forum firstly because it was easy, but also because as a newbie I have not tried uploading images and didn't want to make a mess. I hope I haven't contravened any unwritten code of conduct by doing so. I would have had to copy the GCD images to upload them anyway.

Cheers, Geoff

Later Edit: Well I have looked around online for more Cents covers of FF #119 and interestingly - and this may blow my precious theory above out of the water - there are Cents copies which are intermediate in their yellow or red in that logo patch, with some red and some yellow - for example see https://www.pedigreecomics.com/auction/comic/015486/fantastic-four-119-cgc-94-ow-w

There are other examples online that look just the same. So maybe for some technical reason the colouring of that area was just flaky? Perhaps a doyen of printing might comment?

I might be forced to withdraw my case!  Ah well.

Geoff

Edited June 3, 2020 by Pinkerton
corrected link

[Kevin.J]

Very interesting Geoff, I never noticed that before, I dont have a scan of my 119 at hand but will check tomorrow to see what I have.

[Get Marwood & I]

16 hours ago, Pinkerton said:

Now this is an argument from circumstantial evidence, but to me the only rational account of what happened in the printers is that they had the new-but-defective logo plate (sorry I am hazy on the technical side but someone much more knowledgeable will know what I mean) ready to go, and they started off the run on the Pence 6p copies, which would have been a very short run (maybe 5% of the total). No-one noticed the rogue yellow patch in the logo - it isn't obvious unless you know what you are looking for. Then they swapped the 20c part in for the 6p part, and continued the run, still with the yellow glitch. At some point someone noticed, said a bad word, they stopped the presses, corrected the logo plate and started up again hoping no-one would get into trouble... The result is all the Pence copies have the logo glitch, and some Cents do and some don't.

I cannot see any other logical course of events and this would unambiguously place the Pence printing before the Cents - on that day, with this book, in that print house. Of course 1972 in Sparta Illinois is a long time away from 1960.

Nice post Pinkerton - I like the way your mind works.

That said, and I am certainly no expert on the printing process, here is an alternative possibility:

The cents run begins first, and all is well:

Half way through the cents run, a small piece of the plate breaks off, or the ink runs low, or an obstruction falls on the plate which causes a small area of red not to print:

Then, a larger piece of the plate breaks off or the obstruction moves etc, eliminating the entire red area within the 'F':

The plate is then changed to pence and continues unnoticed to its conclusion:

There is a mix of full and half printed cents copies on ebay but every pence copy (that I have seen) has the error as you said. So the sequence above could be just as likely as the one you posited. I'm also not sure that the error would have been noticed, or even if it were, that they would have stopped the presses to correct it (anecdotal evidence suggests that the process was quick and dirty in them days and they were 'only kids comics' anyway)

We will probably never know. I remain of the belief that the printing order varied down the years, i.e. sometimes pence copies were run first, perhaps to get them on the boat quicker, other times not. I also believe that it doesn't really matter. I see each run as one entity - it shouldn't matter which was first to be done - the pence and cents copies are all part of one end to end print run, one production request.

It may well be that some early pence copies have deeper colour strikes - as CGC themselves have noted - as a result of being printed first, making them more visually attractive. But in the majority of cases, I find, the currency denomination overrides that aspect in the eyes of the average collector.

I do enjoy the speculation though.