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Marvel US Price Font Variations (June 1960 ~ February 1961)
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127 posts in this topic

I think I'm with you on it indicating a 1st and second print, but maybe also one or the other is for export and then rubber stamped by T&P. I'm grasping at straws really. :insane:

Edited by Gnasher
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6 hours ago, Gnasher said:

I think I'm with you on it indicating a 1st and second print, but maybe also one or the other is for export and then rubber stamped by T&P. I'm grasping at straws really. :insane:

Grasp away Gnash. If one is for export, why change the plate from 10c to 10c? 

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2 hours ago, Gnasher said:

I can see why Ditko wrote that letter now... lol

He was on the mark for sure, rest his soul. The 'problem', it seems, is indeed trivial...

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Morning :)

I don’t update this thread often so here’s a brief summary for any new readers before we get into the nitty gritty.

During my early pence variant research I spent a lot of time looking online at the price boxes of 1960’s Marvels. You get quite attuned to it after a while and anything that looks different starts to jump out at you even during cursory scrolling. During the search I noticed a Journey into Mystery #60 with a different US price font to the other copies I’d seen.

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Even though that was nothing to do with pence research (albeit, as it turns out now, it maybe was / is) I started to gather examples as a separate research strand. I like anything out of the ordinary to be honest and couldn’t find anything about it anywhere else online at the time (I’m not claiming to be the discoverer of these variations by the way – I see now that they have been noted before here and there – but I do believe I am the only person who has wasted spent any meaningful time documenting them).

I started up a thread here on the CGC boards in 2016 and there was some good debate. Unfortunately, most of the images I used were put up via Photobucket, and they all went when PB ‘did the dirty’ on its faithful users. So I started this new thread and took full advantage of the new boards direct picture uploading feature (the single best thing that ever happened here functionality wise I think).

I’ve been building up a picture over many years now, on and off, and have put various documents together to present the images in a structured way. Some of them I lost in a file download calamity. But I like to put images next to each other to see if any patterns jump out and they usually do. So the latest incarnation of my research findings exists in the form of an excel spreadsheet. Here are the headlines so far.

During the cover months dated June 1960 to February 1961, Marvel were producing the following 20 titles:

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You can’t open them files by the way, it’s just a picture. Sorry.

I have plotted all the price box images I have gathered for all 20 titles over many years on the spreadsheet in the following format – shown below are the first three titles only (so I can fit it clearly on the page for you to see):

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As you scroll along and look at each title, and the price fonts used, you start to see common patterns from which you can start to make reasonable assumptions. And to be clear, that’s all they are – speculative assumptions. I am not claiming any of what follows to be concrete proof of anything – just, hopefully, interesting hypothesising, based on the facts of what I have so far found to exist.

It’s quite difficult to explain this kind of stuff clearly in writing – it would be so much better if I could talk you through it in person, with us both looking at the spreadsheet. But we can’t do that because I’m antisocial. So here is a list of bullet points instead:

  • My research includes any comic with a pence printed price, and any comic with a US cents printed price produced between the cover date ranges in which I have found US price font variations. The pence copies are included because I believe their existence is connected to the existence of cents price font variations.
  • The earliest comic I have found with a US price font variation is cover dated June 1960, I have found no titles with a variation prior to that date, but I suspect that one or more may exist for May. I will explain why later.
  • The last comic I have found with a US price font variation is cover dated February 1961. From March 1961 onwards, every title I have researched has only one US price font type per issue leaving only two possible types – pence (where produced) and cents.
  • 91 comics span the cover dates in question across the 20 titles.
  • Of those 91, I have found 13 issues which have US price font variations straddling 6 of the 20 titles. These comics are:
  • Battle #70
  • Journey Into Mystery #60, 64 & 65
  • Rawhide Kid #17
  • Strange Tales #75, 76, 77 & 81
  • Tales to Astonish #14 & 16
  • Two Gun Kid #54 & 55
  • If I work back from cover date April 1960 every issue for all 20 titles has this same ‘bold’ US cents font: 5.PNG.fb021ed494d017b1af4f9968a8153c7c.PNG
  • We know that the first pence priced copies are cover dated May 1960. These are Gunsmoke Western #58 and JIM #58. Both have a corresponding bold US font only.
  • From June 1960 however, when pence copies really get going, we see for the first time a new US cents font – the ‘tall font’ like so:  6.PNG.cd62a79300a239a50fbbac25dc46ff8d.PNG
  • This gives rise to my theory that the reason the ‘new’ US font exists is because of the existence of the pence price. The coincidence is too great – years of the same bold US font come to a halt within one month of pence copies appearing.

 

As followers of my pence threads will know, I have been researching what pence copies exist for Marvel for over 10 years now. What does and does not exist from the early 60’s on is fairly concrete now. There is little chance of a book from, say, the 1970’s appearing. I’ve been looking too long. But for the early months of 1960, when pence books first began, it is still possible that a pence copy has yet to be found for one of the 20 titles that Marvel were producing at the time. In my Marvel pence thread I maintain what I call a ‘missing list’ which is essentially a list of these early books that have yet to yield a pence copy. In the last two years, a handful have appeared and they are often the only copy ever to have been seen - my copy of 'My Girl Pearl' #7 is a good example, being the only copy I have ever seen:

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Using the font variation spreadsheet, you can start to see why pence books have yet to be – and may never be – found. Take a look at the three titles below:

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All have no pence copies found. All have bold US cent fonts only. The two features seem to lend themselves to each other.

Now look at My Girl Pearl (which restarts at issue number 7 after a long lay off):

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I have only found issue #7 with a pence copy. Lo and behold, the corresponding cents copy is not the expected bold font. The remaining copies, for which no pence book has been found, are the bold cents font. See the pattern?

So, if we look at Battle #70, we see a US bold font and a US tall font. This leads me to believe that a pence copy may yet exist. The presence of the additional tall font, when viewed against other examples, gives reasonable cause for speculation that a pence copy will surface (even though it is the last issue in the title - see Wyatt Earp #29 which is also the last issue for a long period, yet has a pence copy):

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Look at Kid Colt Outlaw. A popular title, and one which logic indicates will likely have survived in collections in greater numbers than ‘My Girl Pearl’ would have:

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We can see straight away that #90, 92, 93 and 94 have no pence copies, and all have only bold US fonts. It’s that pattern again. Where pence books exist, for 91, 95 and 96, the cents font is the ‘tall’ font on two of them. Annoyingly, from a pattern perspective, 95 has a bold US font beside it. But this shows that nothing is cast in stone. Nothing is hard and fast. But this always happens in research I find - the overall picture is certainly intriguing.

Still on the Kid, in this extract from my Marvel Pence Priced Variants spreadsheet, you can see how the Kid Colt pence 'gaps' match two other titles exactly (in yellow):

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So if you add that to the font variation pattern you can present a fairly compelling argument for why you have never found the missing pence issues – they are exceedingly unlikely to exist.

Back to the US price font variations. If we look at Rawhide Kid here we can see no less than three different US price fonts. Plus a pence copy to make four:

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One of the three is the US bold font. I can kind of see how that may have been run off first. Then a plate change to run the pence copies. Then that plate breaks, or they forgot to print enough US copies, so a new US font plate goes on. Etc. But three US fonts? Why on Earth would that be?

The general consensus I have found is that there were no reprints at this time. Anecdotal evidence suggests that all the books were produced in one run, in the same place, at the same time and in much greater quantities than were allegedly needed. Those that have contributed to this and my previous thread have speculated why there should be, in this case, four different prices / fonts if the one print run assumption is true. But could a piece of history be missing? Could RHK #17 have been so popular that a second or even third print was run? Could that fact have been lost in the ether down the years? But why would a subsequent printing necessitate a different font anyway? Why not use the same bold font for all printings?

Anyway, if you have persisted to the end of this post – well done. It was a long one, even for me! I hope you found it interesting though and I hope you can see the potential link between the existence of pence copies and the US cent variations. I don’t mind one bit if someone comes along with a backed up explanation and it is nothing to do with what I have speculated here.

Next up – further examples, a list of all the different fonts I've found (bold, tall, short, etc), the link to the existence of ‘Thorpe & Porter’ indicia details on US only priced copies, which muddies the waters still further, and maybe something about the three titles of the 20 which L Miller took over.

All good fun :)

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Looking back, I'm surprised by how much of the post above repeats what I already said in the post on the 8th September. My memory is atrocious!  :p

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On 10/3/2017 at 2:00 PM, mikeyc67 said:

Hi I was looking for explanation of this too - I have three different cents copies as well as 9d copy for Rawhide Kid # 17

 

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Sweet. RK #17 is a tough book in general, three different font variations is pretty interesting.

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On 9/25/2018 at 9:40 PM, porcupine48 said:

Keep up the good work Steve,many of us here I appreciate it.

Bless you Jim, you're a gent. And as you're the only person who liked the post...... :headbang:

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1 hour ago, sfcityduck said:

It's obvious to see that there is a UK pence font and a U.S. domestic sales font.  So for the third (or fourth) font, could be it that there was a print run for overseas U.S. military bases?  Also, what's the Canadian font look like?

A bite! Thanks for chipping in Mr Duck.

Let me turn the question back on you if I may. If the price for U.S. domestic was 10c, and the price for U.S. overseas was 10c, why would you need to change the font? It's the same price. Comics were produced as cheaply as possible back in the day - why would a printer change a price font if he didn't have to?

There is no 'Canadian' font that I am aware of, as there are no Canadian only priced copies for this date range. There are only cents and pence Marvels. There are Canadian only priced Marvels in the 1980s - priced 75c to the US 60c etc - but no Canadian only priced Marvels exist in 1960 unless you know differently? Even if there were, and the price was also 10c (see historic conversion chart below), again, why change the font? 10c is 10c.

1455429096_USvsCan.thumb.PNG.629f2cb0edd65a89305a686727c9e516.PNG

(:

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3 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I Live! said:

Let me turn the question back on you if I may. If the price for U.S. domestic was 10c, and the price for U.S. overseas was 10c, why would you need to change the font? It's the same price. Comics were produced as cheaply as possible back in the day - why would a printer change a price font if he didn't have to?

There is no 'Canadian' font that I am aware of, as there are no Canadian only priced copies for this date range. There are only cents and pence Marvels. There are Canadian only priced Marvels in the 1980s - priced 75c to the US 60c etc - but no Canadian only priced Marvels exist in 1960 unless you know differently? Even if there were, and the price was also 10c (see historic conversion chart below), again, why change the font? 10c is 10c.

 

It could be as simple as that the print order was dictated by shipping schedules.  Let's assume that they printed the normal U.S. copies first, and next in order were the copies to be shipped to the UK, and then they printed the copies to be shipped to the military (or Canada/elsewhere) third.  That would explain the font change for the second batch of 10 cent comics.  Why would they use that Order?  Might have to do with the shipping priorities.  

What I find intriguing is that on the Rawhide Kid 17s pictured above, the first price uses a cent symbol (U.S. style) and the rest use lower case d (UK Pence) or c.  A lower case c is not a U.S. cent symbol.  That makes it appear to me that the print run shifted from the U.S. print run to the UK run and then to other foreign runs.

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7 minutes ago, sfcityduck said:

It could be as simple as that the print order was dictated by shipping schedules.  Let's assume that they printed the normal U.S. copies first, and next in order were the copies to be shipped to the UK, and then they printed the copies to be shipped to the military (or Canada/elsewhere) third.  That would explain the font change for the second batch of 10 cent comics.  Why would they use that Order?  Might have to do with the shipping priorities.  

What I find intriguing is that on the Rawhide Kid 17s pictured above, the first price uses a cent symbol (U.S. style) and the rest use lower case d (UK Pence) or c.  A lower case c is not a U.S. cent symbol.  That makes it appear to me that the print run shifted from the U.S. print run to the UK run and then to other foreign runs.

Keep talking, I like the discussion. What are these 'other foreign runs' you speak of though, with their lower case 'non-US' 10c prices?

And the overseas military would expect the US cents 'c' would they not?

And why is it all so random? If a lower case 'c' indicates a market other than the US, who used a 'c', what does it stand for (got to be cents, surely) and isn't it a coincidence that the currency conversion is still 10. And why did this market order so haphazardly for such a short window?

All we know for sure is that we have cents and pence. Don't forget, there are comics that do not have the 'bold font' US prices on certain issues (at least I have not found one) so the copies circulated in the US had the lower or upper case 'c's anyway. My thinking so far is that the pence were for the UK and the cents - no matter what font - were for US markets. 

Look at KCO here. There are no bold font copies for issues 91 and 96. So that can only mean that the 'tall c' font was intended for the US. Why not use the standard bold one (like with issue 95)? The evidence to me suggests that the presence of the pence font is the cause of the cents changes. And remember, I have overlayed the indica analysis fully yet - many bold fonted cents books have Thorpe & Porter distribution data on their indicias. I think it was all just a big mess up, caused by the pence books. 

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46 minutes ago, Get Marwood & I Live! said:

 

All we know for sure is that we have cents and pence. Don't forget, there are comics that do not have the 'bold font' US prices on certain issues (at least I have not found one) so the copies circulated in the US had the lower or upper case 'c's anyway. My thinking so far is that the pence were for the UK and the cents - no matter what font - were for US markets. 

The U.S. denotes cents by using a cent symbol.  It makes no sense for a U.S. publisher to use a lower case "c" for the U.S. market. So I doubt that was an intentional choice by Marvel, especially when so many comics of that period have the cent symbol.

Either (1) cent symbol copies exist that you haven't found yet (the comics you are looking are not high volume sellers on Heritage) or (2) the lower case "c" copies are errors sold in the U.S.  As to this second possibility, perhaps the order the comics were printed in started with the UK editions, switched to the lower case "c" foreign/military editions, and ended with the U.S. editions - and sometimes the printer failed to replace the lower case "c" for the U.S. editions.  It is not as if Atlas/Marvel did not use the cent symbol before and after the time period in question.  They did.

Commonwealth countries use lower case "d" for pence.  Canada, however, uses cents, not pence.  It may be the printer thought that if the UK used a lower case "d," then Canada and other foreign destinations must use a lower case "c."  I've never seen that, but the printer could have been confused for the few months you see this issue.

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, sfcityduck said:

The U.S. denotes cents by using a cent symbol.  It makes no sense for a U.S. publisher to use a lower case "c" for the U.S. market. So I doubt that was an intentional choice by Marvel, especially when so many comics of that period have the cent symbol.

Either (1) cent symbol copies exist that you haven't found yet (the comics you are looking are not high volume sellers on Heritage) or (2) the lower case "c" copies are errors sold in the U.S.  As to this second possibility, perhaps the order the comics were printed in started with the UK editions, switched to the lower case "c" foreign/military editions, and ended with the U.S. editions - and sometimes the printer failed to replace the lower case "c" for the U.S. editions.  It is not as if Atlas/Marvel did not use the cent symbol before and after the time period in question.  They did.

Commonwealth countries use lower case "d" for pence.  Canada, however, uses cents, not pence.  It may be the printer thought that if the UK used a lower case "d," then Canada and other foreign destinations must use a lower case "c."  I've never seen that, but the printer could have been confused for the few months you see this issue.

Interesting. What do others think - anyone?

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1 minute ago, Get Marwood & I Live! said:
3 minutes ago, ADAMANTIUM said:
  Reveal hidden contents

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  Hide contents

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I just felt that I should respond to let you know I was keeping up with the thread :foryou:lol 

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