Well, so much for a company that knows its comics: just under £10 on Ebay:
OUT OF THIS WORLD VOL:1 # 4 - VERY GOOD/FINE - ALAN CLASS
Nothing to do with Alan Class
Now, this one had me laughing. It's a VERY dark image that always makes me suspicious because there is no reason for this today. £20 + £2 p&p. I'll get on to why I laughed in a few lines.
Look at the damaged spine. These books were printed for as little as possible so what an old fan will tell you is that the glue hardens and becomes crystalised over the years. No way of repairing that and here it looks like the book has not been properly stored because the spine should NOT be facing the viewer. Now look along the outside ege of the cover and those tears and cover curl make this book around £3.00 IF you wanted it.
So why did I laugh? Well I am a BIG fan of the 1960s Archie/MLJ super hero comics. And this is the cover of Mighty Crusaders #4 -my all time favourite and I have written about it on CBO:
http://hoopercomicart.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/i-love-em-return-of-too-many-super.html
And THIS is how the cover should look -even on the Class b&w reprint:
Bright and colourful as it should be. And I purchased Fine to Near Mint copies of Mighty Crusaders 2-7 from the United States and with p&p at £23.00. I purchased a The Fly #2 for £1.50 in the UK. So, one tatty old, black and white reprint will cost as much as a set of the original full colour versions.
The other thing you have to watch out for are copies from the United States. They appear on Ebay UK for incredible amounts -£35, £45, £55 and even higher. To that you need to addpostage which is high.
Any old British comic is being sold off as "Vintage rare Alan Class 1960s" and I can only assume that if someone looks at the cover and sees "T&P" or "L. Miller & Co." and thinks "Alan Class!" they are about five Lego bricks short of building the Tower of London.
"1960s" is also used -when the cover price reads 50p. There are also claims of "1970s? Class Comic".
On 15th February,1971 -known as "Decimal Day"- the United Kingdom moved from Pounds, Shillings and Denarius. Or £ S(/-) and d (penny). So, as Alan Class never -never- dated his comics for reasons given in his interview. So, someone claims "This is a 1975 issue" -NO. Even those who say "It IS a 1972 comic because I bought it then!" -No. One newsagent told me that he had a batch of Class Comics in 1975 and took them off the rack, put them back on the rack, took them off and eventually sold the last one in 1980. THAT is how it worked.
The simplest way of telling how old Class Comics are is simple. Class Comics began as 68 pagers that contained a mix of comic stories from US companies but not in colour but reproduced in black and white with colour covers that were sold for 1/-. Now 1/- ceased to exist after February, 1971 and became 5 pence. So early 1971-1972 would be 5p but then came price increases -6p, 8p, 10p, 15p and toward the end 55p.
Any title carrying a "p" price is 1971 onward. Dealers should know this if they are from the UK but they craftily add that question mark so they can plead innocence: "Well, I did say '1960s?' because I wasn't sure"
Have a look at these prices:
So we go from 1971/72 at 6p, later 8p and then leap ahead to 25p and the final, 1980s 55p.
There are a LOT of copies of these books out there but you have to be aware that dealers see the chance of ripping you off then they will. Class Comic fans are a small group. We are almost...well, we ARE a "comics minority"!
People think this means the comics are going to be worth a small fortune but, no.
If you want to start collecting Class Comics do it because you like the look of them and what is in them. These comics should never ever cost 3-5 (or more) times what the original full colour comic costs. That is just idiotic.
Now, enough of this. I need to get my material together for a postings we'll enjoy!
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