Coming. Free.
A public guide to which pence copies exist and what they sell for, built from real sales, is coming to this page. It is the last item on the plan, and it launches when it is real. Until then, here is the short version of why pence copies matter.
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Twenty years of pence in the corner.
American comics reached British newsagents in two ways. Some were US copies shipped over and priced by hand, with a distributor's stamp or a sticker. And for about twenty years, some were printed with a British price in the corner box at the factory, in the same run as the US copies. Those printed ones are pence copies.
Marvel starts. Part of the run goes out with a pre-decimal price in the box: 9d, 10d, then 1/- as the sixties wear on. From 1960.
Decimal Day. The box switches to new pence, and 5p is the first of them. In 1971.
The price climbs. Inflation takes the corner box up through 6p, 7p, 8p, 9p, 10p and 12p, so the price alone often dates a copy to within a year or so. Through the seventies.
DC joins in. DC's pence copies run mainly from 1978 to 1981. From 1978.
The end of the era. Separate pence printings stop, and from the early eighties covers carry both prices instead. Around 1981.
It was not only Marvel and DC. Charlton, Gold Key and Dell had pence copies too, and the catalogue records hundreds of them.
Dates are approximate. The guide will have the detail, title by title.
- 9d
- 10d
- 1/-
- 5p
- 6p
- 7p
- 8p
- 9p
- 10p
- 12p
- 15p
- 20p
Same comic. Smaller run.
Different money.
A pence copy was printed in smaller numbers than the US copy and sold only in Britain, so for some issues it is the scarcer book. Its value can sit above the US copy or below it, and the two get confused constantly: a 12p copy listed as a cents copy, or the other way round, because the seller never looked at the box. Pick a cover to read its box.
A US price with a stamp or sticker over it is still a US copy. That is the gap the guide is for: real sales, counted, so you can see how solid a number is before you trust it.