There’s been a fair few articles (and videos) about the rarity of UK price variants and, also, that they’re generally cheaper than cents copies. I think that’s one of the myths that’s grown around pence copies – they’re the cheaper UK cousins, a good way to get a key without having to pay top dollar.

The reality is this: pence copies, despite being printed before cents copies, despite how difficult it is to find Silver Age pence keys in decent grades, are still massively undervalued and overlooked.

Why?

They have a d instead of a c on the cover.

(Canadian variants don’t have this problem, and are seen as highly valuable as well as rare – but they have that magic c on the cover.)

It’s the preconception that cents copies are the real deal, the originals, that makes people flock to them first. Even though pence copies are the real deal, the true originals – off the printers first so they can get across the ocean to appear at the same time as cents.

And these myths and preconceptions are not only propagated by Americans, they’re also backed by the Brits. I see it all the time – Brits boasting about how amazing cents is compared to pence. It’s baffling, really. Stop the prejudice against ds!

But maybe you just can’t get collectors to see beyond that d (or p in bronze age books) on the cover (yet). You can throw all the census numbers around you like (for example, 56 blue label copies of Amazing Fantasy 15 vs 2387 cents blue label copies), but a d is a d and a c is a c, right?

That’s why I strongly believe in pence copies and will continue to deal in them. I believe in buying great quality pence copies now (especially early Silver Age), when they’re massively undervalued and overlooked. This will, eventually, change. Pre-code horror wasn’t always as highly prized as it is today, for instance. At some point, collectors will start to see pence not as the cheaper, foreign, cousin, but as beautiful, hard-to-find, jewels, and that time may come around sooner than you think.