Rare 1980’s Price Variants To Collect

By Benjamin Nobel, June 28, 2016

A gallery/slideshow of a few comic book examples I found particularly interesting, from the ~2-7% distribution-rarity Canadian price variant publication window [10/20/2017 update: I have added slides from The 2018 Price Guide for 1980’s Marvel & DC Newsstand Canadian Cover Price Variants (Type 1A)]. Canada’s population represented 9.8% of the North American comic book market during this price variant window, and only the newsstand portion of that market were the rare cover price variants (priced only in Canadian dollars, at a time that the exchange rate had moved sharply). Without further ado, a slideshow of comics to spark ideas for rare price variants to collect:

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Learn about Canadian price variant rarity. [ Enlarge ]

This small sampling of ideas for rare 1980’s Canadian cover price variants to collect only scratches the surface of what is a large multi-year publication window during which these exist at Marvel, D.C., and other publishers as well. [If you want to delve into other examples, explore this list of important comics from the 1980s with price variants pointed out].

As a newsstand-only “class” of price variants, these 1980’s Canadian editions have suffered the high destruction rate that is typical of newsstand comics, being bought mostly by readers (“serious collectors” buying from newsstands were the exception, not the norm… collectors were typically found over at the specialty comic shops, meaning they took home and carefully preserved direct edition copies, rather than these price variants).

This is an interesting contrast to today’s modern “1-in-whatever” retailer incentive comic book variants: while the typical buyer of our 1980’s variants bought them to read them, nobody is buying today’s modern retailer incentive variants to read them, because by contrast the incentive variants are immediately recognized as a collector’s item both by the shops ordering them and the collectors taking them home for a high price tag… So excepting any accidental damage and loss, the bulk of today’s modern retailer incentive variants have been prized and carefully preserved immediately upon being distributed.

What a stark contrast to the 1980’s price variants which not only have distribution rarity to rival today’s modern variants (5% distribution rarity, for example, equates to “1 in 20″… 1 divided by 20 is 5%), but perhaps even more importantly, nobody considered them collector’s items initially… Even to this day collectors are broadly unaware that this “class” of variants even exists… As I write this post in 2016, this class of comics are flying completely under the radar of not just Overstreet, but the majority of collectors today — as I’ve documented in some of my other posts on the subject of these variants. If you are interested in learning more about these “Canadian Edition” cover price variants, please read the following:

Happy Collecting! 🙂