By Benjamin Nobel
This slideshow is part of a post about other overlooked cover price variants to compare against Star Wars 35¢ cover price variants. A little-known cover price variant window existed at Marvel Comics from 10/1982 to 8/1986, during which newsstand copies printed for the Canadian market had a higher cover price (priced for Canadian currency). Without further ado, a slideshow of 10 overlooked Star Wars cover price variants that rival the rarity of 35 cent variants:
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With these 10 examples I’m really only scratching the surface of ideas for Star Wars cover price variants from among the myriad Rare 1980’s Price Variants To Collect that came out of this large multi-year publication window of October 1982 to August of 1986 (and D.C. went on for even longer).
Unlike the retailer incentive variants of today with low distribution rarity, which are immediately treated as collector’s items by anyone who takes them home, these 1980’s cover price variants by contrast were mostly purchased by readers, because these cover price variants were a newsstand-only “class” of comic books.
Being newsstand-only also means they were only distributed to a portion of Canada. The portion of the Canadian market for comic books serviced by specialty comic shops got the very same direct edition copies that were sold in the United States. So by taking the population of Canada as a 9.8% slice of the total North American market for comic books, and then dividing that market into direct edition vs. newsstand sales using distribution figures published by industry insiders, we can estimate the distribution percentage of the cover price variants by year. If you are interested in learning more: Read this next post to learn more about the low distribution figures and to learn how to spot these rare Canadian cover price variants.
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Happy Collecting!
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