Sunday, December 11, 2011

Batman #9

Batman #9 (Feb./Mar. 1942) Detective Comics Inc.

As you can tell by the date stamped on the cover of this issue, this issue was on the newsstands today in 1941.  Retailers did this so they could know how long a comic book or magazine had been on sale.  Usually they had more than one copy of the issue, so they would stamp the issue on the bottom of the pile.  That way it would be last issue sold.

Sometimes this date would just be hand written and sometimes it would indicate which wholesaler to which it would be returned. 

You can find different dates stamped on different copies of the same issue and they both could be correct.  It depends where the comics were sold.  A comic book in San Francisco could be on sale 2-3 weeks later than one on sale in New York.  It all would depend on where the distributor shipped the books to first.  It could easily take that long for freight to travel across the country.

This practice pretty much disappeared in the 1970s but you can still occasionally find it today in some old time, non-computerized stores.

I like them on my comics as it gives you a sense of history and actually gives you more information about the book.

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