In 1961, the cover price of Dell Comics increased from the standard TEN CENTS, which it had been since at least 1940, to an unprecedented FIFTEEN CENTS! ...And sales plummeted!
This injurious increase led to the creation of GOLD KEY COMICS, which rolled its prices back to a more manageable TWELVE CENTS in mid-1962!
Hard to believe, from this inflationary perspective, that THREE CENTS could ever have been such a big deal, but it was!
While Dell was jumping a nickel, DC Comics held its line at TEN CENTS... the large amount of advertising found within DC's pages, vs. Dell's being virtually ad-free, very likely had something to do with that!
Nevertheless, while in that window where Dell was FIFTEEN CENTS and DC was TEN CENTS, DC, like any good competitor, ran the following ad inside its comics...
Gotta love the KIDS scattered throughout the ad! (Click to enlarge!) TAKE THAT, DELL!
Eight months after this ad, at the end of 1961, DC's cover prices would increase to TWELVE CENTS, a level at which the vast majority of comic books from all publishers would remain throughout the Silver Age.
Gold Key, ironically echoing its predecessor Dell, would raise its cover price to FIFTEEN CENTS in a regionally staggered method from March, 1968 thru June, 1968! As seen below...
DONALD DUCK # 119 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: May, 1968) - with a TWELVE CENT cover price!
My original copy of DONALD DUCK # 119 (purchased March, 1968 - in Flushing, New York) with a FIFTEEN CENT cover price!
DC, along with most other publishers, would increase to FIFTEEN CENTS by mid-1969!
But, it's sure nice to step back and appreciate this "ancient relic" of the once-glorious days of TEN CENT COMIC BOOKS!
15 comments:
Scrooge must have been depositing all those extra nickels he earned from his comic going to 15 cents.
Deb:
Actually, that was just his cut of the “extra nickels” after Dell received its cut!
Not content with that, he set out to buy Western Publishing and branded the comics as something dear to his own heart – “GOLD Key”!
He kept Carl Barks writing and drawing his title for a while but then, after a brief transitional interlude by Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl, he made the move to more economical REPRINTS OF BARKS to fill those pages, rather than continue to pay for new stories.
In fact, he apparently utilized REPRINTS in every Gold Key title in which he could get away with it (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Woody Woodpecker, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, etc.) by late 1964-early 1965!
Some say it was Scrooge himself who came up with the oft-seen phrase “Reprinted by Popular Demand” in those comics – with HIS being the most “Popular Demand” in the room!
WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST, and its companion title GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST, was nothing more than an effort to SAVE PAPER on Scrooge’s part!
And the GOLD KEY COMICS CLUB was but another of his innovations to cut down on story content pages! Carving-out SIX PAGES of story in every issue for lame and repetitive content (that would be more at home stuck to a parent's refrigerator door) mostly supplied (at no cost) by readers!
Funny, this was a part of Scrooge’s biography that Don Rosa seemed to miss!
Maybe Rosa missed it, but Don did show what became of Scrooge’s comic book business in his second Uncle Scrooge story, “Nobody’s Business” in Uncle Scrooge #220 from 1987.
Indeed he did, Deb! Indeed he did!
Though this must have been a later enterprise, as the comics were no longer branded "GOLD Key"!
I've always wondered how - or even IF - this story was translated for other countries, as it required the publisher to be named "GLADSTONE"!
I'm sure someone reading this will respond.
With all of his investments in other places, Scrooge can be forgiven for letting Gold Key slide into the boringness of Whitman. By now we all know that the Duck family was alive and well throughout Europe all through their nadir here in the states. (Okay, this is really getting off-topic...weren’t we talking about cover prices instead of the director’s cut version of Scrooge’s life story?)
Nothing’s ever really off-topic around here, Deb!
Especially when it comes to adding new chapters to “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck”!
“The Fox of the Four-Colors”, anyone?
Maybe with Scrooge McDuck meeting folks like Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and of course, the artist he’d entrust his life story to, Carl Barks! (Although Barks and Rosa have appeared in Disney comics before).
Hey, YEAH!
And maybe that’s how Jerry Siegel came to write this amazing issue of UNCLE SCROOGE!
I can easily imagine McDuck creating the “Dell Pledge to Parents” after seeing some of the comic books his nephews were reading (it fits McDuck’s character, as he is always a little behind the times), and later leaving Donald in charge of Gold Key and Whitman while he manages his other businesses, thinking, “Even that dunderheaded nephew of mine can’t mess this up!”
DONALD? Ah, that explains Whitman”!
A price increase from ten to twelve or fifteen cents doesn't sound like much now, but in 1962, to a kid whose allowance was maybe fifty cents a week or less, it might mean being able to buy only three comics instead of four or five.
For years, comics stayed at a standard ten-cent cover price, but page count was reduced from 64 to 56 to 48 and finally to 32. In the early 1960s, they may have decided that they could not reduce page count much further and still have enough pages to hold the covers apart.
I seem to recall some early 1960s Gold Keys with a cover price of "still only 12c," so maybe Western, like DC, was hoping to undersell post-Western Dell.
And some Gold Keys, with the Hanna-Barbera "funny animal" TV cartoon characters, had a price tag saying "now only 12c." That may have been when they reverted from the 80-page-for-25c format (like DC and Marvel used for Annuals and "King-Sized Specials") to the standard 32-pages.
I remember post-Western Dell, mainly adaptations of TV cartoons (Alvin, Mighty Mouse), and live action TV shows and movies (Get Smart, F Troop, The Monkees). IIRC, the ones I saw were 12 cents. They did go back up to 15 some time around 1968, but then, so did everyone else. In fact, the first 15-cent comic I ever saw (AFAIR) was a Gold Key: Tarzan #178.
Also, AFAIR, Flash #163 was the first issue of that character's self-titled solo comic that I ever bought, although I was somewhat familiar with the character already, from his appearances in Justice League.
TC:
You write: “ A price increase from ten to twelve or fifteen cents doesn't sound like much now, but in 1962, to a kid whose allowance was maybe fifty cents a week or less, it might mean being able to buy only three comics instead of four or five.”
My allowance in the Silver Age was ONE QUARTER (…and my younger brother only got a DIME)! So, what would I do with that quarter? Buy TWO twelve-cent comics, and save the leftover penny for twelve weeks to by a third! …Yes, really! Good thing I didn’t have much in the way of living expenses!
I’m reading a great book right now (I tend to take a VERY long time to read books) called “COMIC BOOK IMPLOSION – An Oral History of DC Comics Circa 1978” by Keith Dallas (whom I had the pleasure of meeting at New York Comic Con) and John Wells.
From this, you can see the forces at work beyond the actual cost of producing a comic book that figured into the cover price – and it’s very many increases in the 1970s-1980s!
For one, when a comic book was TEN CENTS, or TWELVE CENTS, or FIFTEEN CENTS, or whatever comparatively economical price they sold for at any given time, the profit, not for the publisher – but for the NEWSDEALER, was simply not enough to continue carrying comic books, vs. other magazines with much higher per-copy profits!
So, just to survive within what was then their ONLY venue of retail distribution, the cover prices had to go up and up! The situation was certainly more stable during the 10-15 cent days, but really got into a vicious-death-cycle after that!
The one thing that still doesn’t make sense was the WAY the increase by Gold Key, from twelve to fifteen cents, was implemented. The issue of Donald Duck in the post is a perfect example.
On that memorable Saturday in MARCH, 1968, around my aunt’s house in Flushing, NY (in the east-most borough of New York City), I was astonished to find DONALD DUCK # 119, MOBY DUCK # 2, and DAFFY DUCK # 53 all priced at FIFTEEN CENTS EACH! (…Good thing my allowance had been upped to fifty cents, by then!) Grand Comics Database doesn’t even have these 15-cent variations in their Cover Gallery!
DONALD, MOBY, and DAFFY
But, I have ‘em! And the weirdest thing was that just a few miles east of Flushing (outside of New York City) where I lived, Gold Key Comics would remain at 12 cents until JUNE! Same for where my paternal grandmother (not “Grandma Millie”) lived, an hour or two north of NYC!
So, was this an early experiment limited to New York City only? I’ve never heard anyone else echo this from any other part of the country! …For every mystery we solve, we uncover several more!
During the 15 cent era, our family took a trip up to Canada. Comics there were 20 cents, the same ones selling for 15 cents in the States. I bought a copy of Little Stooges #1 for 20 cents. Not only was the price different--I had seen copies of the same issue for sale in the States--the back cover featured a cool Stooges Family Tree, where the US copy only had an ad. I think that was what clinched the deal for me, since I had passed on purchasing it a week or so earlier. I still have the issue. I remember being somewhat relieved on returning home to find the prices were still at 15 cents. Of course, I had NO idea what outrageous price hikes were coming in the not-too-distant future....
This does underscore the fact that the same comic book could have a different price depending on where it was being sold.
Scarecrow:
In your case, I would expect it was the currency exchange rate between the US and Canada that would account for the difference. You would often see a higher Canadian cover price (below the American cover price), on comics published during the direct market era. Sometimes, even a UK price as well!
Before that, perhaps the dual-or-triple-cover-pricing model was avoided because “more than one price on an item” would cause confusion for customers and/or newsstand agents. We all know now how big a deal just a few cents could be!
The situation I describe is in no way explainable by any normal set of circumstances, like the aforementioned currency exchange rate! In Queens (eastern-most borough of New York City – and presumably the entire city, though I cannot verify that) Gold Key Comics were FIFTEEN CENTS! Across the border in Nassau County (suburban county directly to the east), they remained at TWELVE CENTS. Ditto for upstate Orange County! That was simply that!
Again, I cannot verify any other locations – due to the usual limited mobility of very early adolescence!
It started in March, 1968, with the three issues mentioned above. The difference in prices (for Gold Key ONLY) remained in effect until June, 1968, when they became fifteen cents regardless of where they were sold. By or before the middle of 1969, all regular format comics became 15 cents as well.
Just another of “those fascinating things about Western Publishing” that we’ll never have an answer to!
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