So What Are Bronze-Age Marvel Price Variants?

In April 1976, like the rest of the world, Marvel Comics Group was faced with rising costs of producing and shipping books. At the time, the cover price of a regular issue was 25 cents. The marketing executives were faced with the classic question of whether and how much raising prices to recover the additional production would erode sales. In 2010, a price increase of a nickel may not seem like much, but in 1976, a five cent price increase was 18%. To answer the question, for four months, Marvel issued test price versions with a cover price of 30 cents in six test markets. The six test markets were Grand Rapids, Baltimore, San Antonio, San Jose, Albuquerque, and somewhere in Massachusetts. The answer, apparently, was that the price increase either didn't hurt sales much or the production costs had increased enough that there was no alternative to a price increase. In September of 1976, the regular issue price increased to 30 cents.

Marvel repeated the experiment from June to October in 1977 by releasing test editions with 35 cent prices instead of the normal 30 cent cover price. Apparently, the 35 cent test was done on an even smaller scale than the very limited 30 cent test, because the 35 price variant books are even more elusive than their 30 cent price variant brethren.

There are two things that continue to astound me about the marvel price variants. Except for Iron Fist 14 and Star Wars 1, for twenty years no one noticed the price variants until Jon McClure published an article about them in Comic Book Marketplace #55. The other thing that is amazing, is that over thirty years after their publication and some serious money chasing them, there have been so few found. Happy hunting.


Paul Merolle is one of the collectors who has managed to find every 30 cent variant. His website http://mysite.verizon.net/psmerolle/variantlist.html provided the first checklist that I used in my search for price variants and is still accurate.

For more information about Jon McClure and his early research on price variants go here. http://www.jonmcclure.net/

You can find a ton of information about 30 cent price variants here. http://www.stlcomics.com/gallery/30cent/

You can find a ton of information about 35 cent price variants here.
http://stlcomics.com/gallery/35cent/