Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

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nycjadie
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Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by nycjadie »

Many of you know that the Magnus coupons in issues 1-8 had a printing error, where some were printed with a red logo (and red details), and others were printed in black and white. The black and white was a printing error that was quickly corrected by Valiant, but they still used the black and white coupons throughout the run. It's not known how many errors there were. All we have is estimated print runs and anecdotal evidence.

The black is clearly the harder to find. I found Magnus 1 in black incredibly hard to find. This doesn't make much sense to me, as the print run for Magnus 1 was the largest. So what is the actual ratio of black to red? We are likely to never really know, but it's fun to take a stab at a guess.

Some possible presumptions:

(1) Estimated print runs. It's the best we have and likely pretty accurate, but the actual numbers may be different.
Magnus 1 - 90,000
Magnus 2 - 60,000
Magnus 3 - 60,000
Magnus 4 - 65,000
Magnus 5 - 70,000
Magnus 6 - 75,000
Magnus 7 - 75,000
Magnus 8 - 80,000

(2) The same ratio of black was always used. If that's the case, then the larger the print run, the more black copies there are. That would make issues 2-4 the more difficult to find, and the more valuable. This doesn't fit with my experience with issue 1, however, but that could be that the dozens of copies I've come into they just happened to be red.

(3) A different ratio fo black was used throughout. If that's the case, then each issue may have a different ratio of black to red, and we can't make any qualifying metrics outside of anecdotal evidence. I think this is probably what happened.

(4) Red was exhausted before black was used. Unlikely, as it would be difficult to manage that inventory, but this would probably have been Valiant's preference, and we know that Shooter was incredibly fastidious.

Anecdotally, I've seen as few as 1:40 black to red, to as high as 1:10. Not sure where the reality lies, but it's likely somewhere in the middle of that.

If you take the 1:10 approach with issue 1, we get 9K black copies. That means 80K copies of #1 were red. If red was used before black, then we wouldn't see any black copies in the later issues, as the largest print run was 80K in #8, and we'd need more than 81K to see a black copy.

If you take the 1:5 approach with issue 1, we get 18K black copies. That means if red was used before black, the ratio might be:
Magnus 1 - 72,000 to 18,000
Magnus 2 - 60,000 to 0
Magnus 3 - 60,000 to 0
Magnus 4 - 65,000 to 0
Magnus 5 - 70,000 - 0
Magnus 6 - 72,000 to 3,000
Magnus 7 - 72,000 to 3,000
Magnus 8 - 72,000 to 8,000

That still doesn't make sense, as we have numerous examples of the black coupon in issues 2-3, so it is unlikely that red was always preferred over black. We also know that some of the black coupons are incredibly difficult to find. So the ratios red to black are unlikely to really be 1:5.

Based on the limited amount of knowledge I have, I think it's unlikely that red inventory was exhausted first, or there was a similar ratio of red to black used throughout the print run. That means that we only have anecdotal evidence to show scarcity of the black coupon.

So this was an exercise in futility. :lol:

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by magnusr »

I think someone long time ago listed how often he had found black coupons for each issue. Those numbers should be combined with the ones here.

/Magnus

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by michalward »

I don't suppose CGC notes the difference?

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by magnusr »

Found the old discussion: http://www.valiantfans.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=12606" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In it, I actually claim to have seen black cards in issue 1 or 2. Must double check if I really knew what I was talking about. Also has a quote on how it happened:
hulk181man wrote:Apparently this topic was around many, many moons ago. I recently found this article in Comic Buyers Guide # 910 from April 26, 1991:


Magnus trading cards have slight variation
Due to a printing error, some of the binding flaps which fasten the Magnus Trading Cards into the Magnus Robot Fighter Valiant comic book will have a slight variation. According to Valiant, "The printer neglected to add a second color (red) to certain parts of the flap as we had requested. This variation does not affect the cards or the coupons. The error was caught and corrected."
Since all 24 cards and eight coupons were printed at the same time, this random flap variation will be consistent through all issues of Magnus containing the trading cards (#1-8).
/Magnus

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by nycjadie »

magnusr wrote:Found the old discussion: http://www.valiantfans.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=12606" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In it, I actually claim to have seen black cards in issue 1 or 2. Must double check if I really knew what I was talking about. Also has a quote on how it happened:
hulk181man wrote:Apparently this topic was around many, many moons ago. I recently found this article in Comic Buyers Guide # 910 from April 26, 1991:


Magnus trading cards have slight variation
Due to a printing error, some of the binding flaps which fasten the Magnus Trading Cards into the Magnus Robot Fighter Valiant comic book will have a slight variation. According to Valiant, "The printer neglected to add a second color (red) to certain parts of the flap as we had requested. This variation does not affect the cards or the coupons. The error was caught and corrected."
Since all 24 cards and eight coupons were printed at the same time, this random flap variation will be consistent through all issues of Magnus containing the trading cards (#1-8).
/Magnus
:thumb: I just bought a black coupon issue 2 yesterday at a local shop! Looked through an entire stack of Magnus coupon books, and it was the only one!

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by corey »

nycjadie wrote:
magnusr wrote:Found the old discussion: http://www.valiantfans.com/forum/viewto ... =1&t=12606" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In it, I actually claim to have seen black cards in issue 1 or 2. Must double check if I really knew what I was talking about. Also has a quote on how it happened:
hulk181man wrote:Apparently this topic was around many, many moons ago. I recently found this article in Comic Buyers Guide # 910 from April 26, 1991:


Magnus trading cards have slight variation
Due to a printing error, some of the binding flaps which fasten the Magnus Trading Cards into the Magnus Robot Fighter Valiant comic book will have a slight variation. According to Valiant, "The printer neglected to add a second color (red) to certain parts of the flap as we had requested. This variation does not affect the cards or the coupons. The error was caught and corrected."
Since all 24 cards and eight coupons were printed at the same time, this random flap variation will be consistent through all issues of Magnus containing the trading cards (#1-8).
/Magnus
:thumb: I just bought a black coupon issue 2 yesterday at a local shop! Looked through an entire stack of Magnus coupon books, and it was the only one!

Thx for picking that up for me :high-five:

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by ckb »

This can really go a lot of ways and it gets very complicated what really might have happened.

The key thing to remember is that everything started out as an uncut sheet. If you go back to the old thread and look at my post with the uncut sheet and the poster you can see the difference.

It turns out there is enough color outside of the cards (for all 8 issues) for you to tell which uncut sheet that coupon insert started life on.

In order to print 90k copies of Magnus 1 you needed 90k uncut sheets with all the inserts for all 8 issues. You are not going to cut them partially. In order to start with Magnus 1 you are going to slice up all 90k sheets and put away the other 7 pieces you cut until the other issues are published. The logistics of this are a nightmare.

You can think of a million ways it can go but none I can think of completely make sense.

One way it could go is that it was noticed while the uncut sheets were being printed. Now you start out with a fixed proportion of the two variants. There will be likely be more "right" ones than wrong. You are going to cut them all and put them in 8 buckets. Now it depends on how they are shuffled in those buckets when the issue was printed. If they were not well mixed and the print run is 60K (like a later issue of Magnus) and not 90K, you could have a big disparity to the original ratio.

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by magnusr »

nycjadie wrote: :thumb: I just bought a black coupon issue 2 yesterday at a local shop! Looked through an entire stack of Magnus coupon books, and it was the only one!
Conrats. Checked mine. No black issue 2, but I only have two copies anyway. Of my 6 copies of issue 1, 2 were black (unfortunately one of them without its coupon).

/Magnus

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by nycjadie »

magnusr wrote:
nycjadie wrote: :thumb: I just bought a black coupon issue 2 yesterday at a local shop! Looked through an entire stack of Magnus coupon books, and it was the only one!
Conrats. Checked mine. No black issue 2, but I only have two copies anyway. Of my 6 copies of issue 1, 2 were black (unfortunately one of them without its coupon).

/Magnus
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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by reddog »

interesting post.....all my magnus coupon logos look like this with black details on the other side....naturally they have different action scenes but the logo is the same....they all came from shooter and didnt go to comic shop and they were some of the first ones printed....dont know if this helps

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by Juki »

reddog wrote:interesting post.....all my magnus coupon logos look like this with black details on the other side....naturally they have different action scenes but the logo is the same....they all came from shooter and didnt go to comic shop and they were some of the first ones printed....dont know if this helps



Interesting....but I can’t view your picture (there is text saying I do not have “permission” to view. Can everyone else see the pic?

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by Juki »

reddog wrote:interesting post.....all my magnus coupon logos look like this with black details on the other side....naturally they have different action scenes but the logo is the same....they all came from shooter and didnt go to comic shop and they were some of the first ones printed....dont know if this helps



Interesting....but I can’t view your picture (there is text saying I do not have “permission” to view. Can everyone else see the pic?

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Re: Magnus Coupon Printing Errors

Post by reddog »

[img]20200109_184206_1.jpg[/image]
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