Country Cowfreaks Headshop

A Guide To Underground Comics & Collectibles
(Part 3 - Buying 1st Editions)

In the first and second part of this guide we looked considerations to bear in mind when viewing photos and deciding on the "condition" of an item.  This section is concerned with 1st editions and printings.

3) 1st Editions : First Editions – are a real problem on Ebay, if you have any sense, to paraphrase a well known quote:

”Believe half of what you see, and nothing that you read on Ebay”

Why ? because an awful lot of sellers on Ebay actually know little or nothing about the items that they are selling, and some will happily distort the truth or lie in order to get more bids and have a higher end of auction price.  Sadly, it’s the truth.

When dealing with Underground comics and books, a lot of dealers will holler “1st Printing !” as if they have just discovered the Holy Grail.  Most read “1st printing” somewhere on the comic itself and immediately assume that as it is a 1st, there is a 2nd, 3rd, etc and mentally start counting the money they will make.  Some are merely amateur enthusiasts who have bought the comic from somebody else on Ebay and are selling it with the same description.  In most cases, as regards underground comix, the vast majority of titles are first and only printings….many were merely printed over and over, for as long as the comic would sell, having originally been marketed as novelty items for the hippy headshops of the 1960’s and 70’s.  Therefore, there are NO separate printings in many cases – all copies printed are “1st Editions”.

Price stickers should also be ignored, comics often had these stickers applied when the selling price of a comic was altered, and older stock was to be sold at the new price.  This said, never remove any stickers from a comic book, firstly if it’s been on the comic a long time chances are that it will rip the comic and cause you pain.  Secondly, the sticker is part of the comic books history, and in most cases does not significantly detract from the value of the comic book itself.  To find out the original cover price and therefore be more able to accurately judge which printing the comic is, if multiple printings were produced, simply hold the comic up to a strong light and you should be able to see the original cover price.

 One seller told us that a copy of a comic was definitely a 1st as it had Copyright © 1968 written on the cover.  It was't - copyright dates refer to the date the material was first produced/published – and not necessarily the copy in question.  A comic might say Copyright © 1968, but the edition you own could well be from 1988 !.  The same thing applies to books, where it might say 1st printed 1968, and elsewhere, this edition printed in 1976.  Sometimes even when printing information is given it can be wrong, or misleading - so don’t trust all that you read. 

An example of this is where different publishers printed a particular title.  It might say first published by one company, implying that it is a 1st edition when in actual fact it was previously published by a different publishing company altogether.  An example of this would be Bijou Funnies 2 and 3 - 1st & 2nd printings don't have any information to say which publisher released them (Print Mint 1969).  By the 3rd printing they were produced by Kitchen Sink 1972 and say 'First Krupp printing'.  Also many printings are simply unknown as the publisher did not change the printed matter in any way, making different printings indistinguishable from one another, in which case a lot of sellers will say 1st printing as it seems to add to the prestige and usually increases the size of the final winning bid.

Another phrase that we have recently seen on Ebay is “first printing of a re-edition” which is a very misleading term. Publishers print in separate runs, 1st edition, 2nd edition, 3rd, etc.  Sometimes a re-print in issued, of an older comic, sometimes with a different cover design, etc.  The Adventures Of Fat Freddy's Cat by Gilbert Shelton was re-published in 1988 in a larger comic book size having originally been printed in a "mini" size.  After this time the cover price changed in subsequent editions, although the even the first comics in this series are re-printed material from the 1st edition published in 1977.

Sometimes you will find the sellers knowledge of the comic is minimal, and they might not state that it is a 1 st or 2 nd edition, but that it “might” be, as the cover price is the same, or some detail such as the copyright notice is the same as a 1st edition.  Always be wary of these claims.  In one instance a number of comics offered for auction were 17th printings and the seller had based his assumption that they were possibly 1st or 2nd printings – “…but most likely 1 st…” (what a surprise) because the details did not correspond to either of the descriptions they had read of a 1st or 2nd edition !.

It is possible that in the examples given above the sellers merely made a mistake, or perhaps were overly optimistic that they had 1 st editions.  However, in each case we emailed the seller and told them the details of the comics that they were selling, which edition they were, how we had determined this, etc.  Not one of these sellers revised the auction listings in question and most ended up getting vastly inflated sums for comics that were worth a fraction of the cost, in many cases they could be found at a more realistic price in better condition in an earlier printing.

The buyer often assumes the seller knows what they are talking about, and is without the knowledge to reject the seller’s claims.  If they find out later, after leaving feedback and a lengthy time period has elapsed, they will find they are often out of luck as regards getting a refund and have a comic/book worth a small amount that has cost them a lot of money.  Unfortunately it happens all too frequently.

  All we can suggest is that you try and become as knowledgeable about the comix that you are interested in buying as possible.  To date the best guide that has been released is The Official Underground And Newave  Comix Price Guide" by Jay Kennedy published by Boatner Norton Press in 1982, although much of the pricing information is now out of date.  There is another guide more recently released, Fogel’s Underground Comix Price Guide, although we cannot offer any personal opinion on this Guide at this moment in time.

Hopefully this guide will have given you a few pointers as to what to bear in mind when deciding whether to bid on 1st editions offered for sale on Ebay.  In the next part of this guide we will look at why you should record you wins and Ebay transactions.
 
We hope you have found this guide useful, feel free to view our items for sale.  Our About Me page can also be found here.  If you have any additional questions about any of our items or if there is anything you might want to ask advice about, please feel free to email us.

© Country Cowfreaks Head Shop