Double Issues

[David Wall]

So as I am organizing my collection I am coming across many doubles and in almost all the doubles one issue has a bar code while the othe has an image of Spiderman or some other image. The price is the same but I noticed one will have the UK prce as well as the USA and Cdn. Why is this and whats the diffence?

[Gregory Hecht]

I am assuming that these comics from the 1980's or so.  

At that time, Marvel comics were distributed to the newsstands on a returnable basis and to comic shops on a non-returnable basis (aka "direct sale").  Newsstands could get credit for copies that weren't sold, but to prove that the comics weren't sold they had to send back the covers (in earlier times, they had to send back the entire comic, but sending back just the covers made that less expensive).  Direct sales had a bigger discount, but if the retailer didn't sell all of their copies, they couldn't return them. 

To prevent hanky panky of covers from direct sales comics getting mixed in with claims of unsold newsstand comics, Marvel set up two different covers.  The returnable market would receive comics with the UPC bar code.  Direct sales comics typically had a Spider-Man headshot in the box, although sometimes other things would be put in the space where the bar code was located (or, in those cases where there was a bar code, there was a thick diagonal line through the bar code).  Direct sales comics would usually put issue number and price in a diamond-shaped box in the upper left portion of the cover, and often the price would include Canadian and UK pricing since Marvel had direct sales to comic shops outside of the U.S.  

Some back issue dealers claim that newsstand and direct sales issues can have different valuations.  Theoretically, direct sales comics would be expected to be more rare early in the existence of the system I described above.  In later years, newsstands were carrying fewer comics b/c they took up rack space that could be used to sell more expensive items (and newsstands were in the process of dying out as well), and newsstand copies from those years would be more rare.  Also, presumably newsstand comics in general would be more difficult to find in higher condition grades b/c casual readers would be more likely to buy from newsstands and collectors who bought from comic shops would keep their comics in better shape. 

Chuck Rozanski (Mile High Comics) has been a big proponent of different valuations for newsstand vs. direct editions, but he (and other back issue dealers) have a vested interest in promoting the idea that comics that they have in stock are more rare and therefore more valuable.  Pete Bickford says that he is not seeing substantial differences in actual market activity for newsstand vs. direct editions, and for that reason ComicBase does not separately track newsstand and direct versions of the same comic issue.