Comic book upc codes

Why do some comic book barcodes have a line through them. Jun 17, 2016 the example with the barcode upc code on it is whats known as a newsstand edition comic book. The comic book upc database is currently under development. Give our search a try, take a look at the menu to the left to see how you can help us improve the site, or use my. Another reason to support comic book upc codes on all comic books is the fact that you could easily scan in the upc code and then look it up in a database to retrieve all the information about the comic. Barcodes are very simply digitally readable codes by which a stores computer system can quickly identify the exact product being scanned. This lets you scan in the barcodes upc, isbn, or comicbasecreated from a whole stack of comics, and enter them into your inventory all in one fell swoop. Does comicbase support any barcode scanners other than the ones you. But come november 1994, dc comics reverted back to the dc universe upc logo. I think upc codes started being used in the mid 70s. It was distributed across the newsstand distribution channel, where copies sat on the stands waiting for readers to make a purchase, and any unsold copies were returned to the publisher for a refund. In the 90s your book may be identical again or, more likely, has text inside the upc box that indicates what edition it is. On upca codes, the first digit represents the type of product being sold, with. Comics price guide was the first online price guide for comic books back in 1995.

Diamond rules the market, delivering for everyone from dc and marvel down to small indie presses. We hope to have a beta of the site up and running soon. The example with the bar code upc code is a newsstand edition comic book. Amazon standard identification numbers asins are unique blocks of 10 letters andor numbers that identify items. Anyways as you all know books can have multiple covers, variants etc which means its a pain in the butt to use the upc code.

Sometime in the 80s the direct market books replaced the bar codes with comic images. The programs for windowsmac come with builtin support for clz barry. With these upc coded newsstand copies representing only 12% of images distribution, a market premium over their direct edition counterparts certainly makes sense. For your self published comic book or graphic novel to be sold on you will need a upc bar code that is scanable to an original upc or isbn number. For books, the asin is the same as the isbn number, but for all other products a new asin is created when the item is uploaded to our catalogue. This is because of the direct market of comic sales, and has. Bottom line is a unique website which offers comic book fans and collectors an avenue to sell, purchase, trade, or consign items from their personal collection and we highly recommend this site because it is truly one of a kind. From our humble beginnings, we have grown to the largest, most complete comic book price guide with well over 1,000,000 comics in our database. For bookkeeping reasons, special coding symbols were devised and appear on the covers of these comics. You can find the asin on the items product information page at. The premier online comics price guide free comic book values. Your software is interpreting 977 codes as bookland, thus the information about issue number is instead considered as indicating pricing information. In this video i explain what the numbers on the comics cover barcode really mean. We have values for any marvel, dc, image, idw, darkhorse, or dell comic book that is in your collection.

Marvel comics and some of the other distributors often place bar codes on the new stand edition comic books. A code 02064 generally under the date see newsstand cover above appears. If you have an 80s comic with a upc code it is a newstand version, it will generally have a logo or a phrase like who watches the watchmen. This is a good example of a 1990s image comic with a upc which means it is a newsstand edition. Basically if those issues of spiderman where purchased from a drug store, grocery store or other none comic book store it will have a bar code. If youve found a comic book with a diagonal line across the bar code. Finally, diamond comic book distributors insisted on every comic book company adopting the same format for their upcs on their covers. Comic book price guides, like overstreet, have a minimum price for comic books. This posting clarified all of that, including why comics had a barcode of length 17 instead of length 12. Below are the symbols used by marvel as an example.

May 12, 2016 in 20, an industry insider revealed that 99% of comic books distributed by image comics were direct sales copies, with just 1% of the distribution being the newsstand edition copies those with upc codes on the covers to distinguish them as returnable for a refund whereas direct sold copies were nonreturnable see comic book newsstand. This information could be retrieved by comic book collecting software and automatically. Even though this article is almost a year old now, i wanted to say thank you tyler. It wasnt until the 90s that direct market books began displaying bar codes again. The universal product code upc is a barcode symbology i. However, your concern about adding unique 5 digit extensions for each book in your series,it is not acceptable as product id because it doesnt meet any asin,upc,isbn,or ean code. Uncorecct upc behavior tech support comicbase user community. This information could be retrieved by comic book collecting software and automatically enter the comic book into your collection. Vudu disc to digital list with upc codes comic cons 2020. Lets start with a brief explanation of what barcodes are. Comic books general fba questions amazon seller forums. Since 0, 1, 6, 7 and 8 are just up for grabs, comic book companies have generally chosen 7 as their first. I wanted to know how upc codes applied to comics and why some books had them and others didnt. If you have a lot of comics, get an overstreet price guide.

At the time this is where nearly all comic books were purchased so publishers started using early upc codes in the mid 70s. But the product id field only seems to accept the first 12 digits. Comics use the upc a code often with the upc 5 code as a supplement. The program now comes builtin with tens of thousands of ean and upc codes to help you find and enter your comics, and new codes are released as part of the downloadable updates each week. Feb 03, 2016 have you ever looked at an old marvel comic book and wondered why theres a picture of spidermans head where the barcode should be. May 20, 2018 find out which printing a comic is in seconds. Have you ever wondered what comic book barcodes actually mean. Sep 28, 2007 another reason to support comic book upc codes on all comic books is the fact that you could easily scan in the upc code and then look it up in a database to retrieve all the information about the comic. But they arent worth any less either even though there was a time many people said it mattered in the 80s comic scene. What do the numbers on the up code on comic book covers. The grand comics database gcd is a nonprofit, internetbased organization of international volunteers dedicated to building an open database covering all printed comics throughout the world. That format was called upc a supplemental 5, which simply means that it is a basic upc plus an extra five digits that comic book companies could do with as they pleased. It has to be listed as a book, but with books you have to have a upc or asin code, but many comics from that period do not have those, so it can be a painsome key points with comics.

Notice the newsstand copy has only one price on it instead of all of the different prices for. There is in fact quite some history to comic book barcodes, and for a short period of time, bar codes were the talk of the town in the industry. Comic book shipping boxes durable comic book mailers. Since 0, 1, 6, 7 and 8 are just up for grabs, comic book companies have generally chosen 7 as their first digit. In other words, it takes a dealer time to sort, bag, board and price any comic book. It, by contrast, was sold on a newsstand on a returnable basis what i mean by that is that any unsold copies could be returned to the publisher for a refund thats how the newsstand distribution channel worked. Therefore as you have editions of 11 homemade comic series,you need to have 11 different upc codes for all the editions of the your homemade series. All the user has to do is scan or enter the upc code of the comic book they wish to add. With the rise of the independent comic book shop in the late 70s publishers needed to know the difference between books sold to newsstands and to local retailers.

When comic book shops first appeared in the 80s, the comic book companies shipped two different versions of the comics to the newsstands grocery stores, department stores, gas stations, book stores, etc. The covers with upc symbols are distributed by curtis circulation to newsstands. Diamond postpones free comic book day 2020 as the impact and spread of the coronavirus covid19 continues to evolve, diamond comic distributors has made the difficult decision to postpone the event to a date later in the summer. Does comicbase support any barcode scanners other than the ones you sell. What do the numbers on the up code on comic book covers mean. International prices for uk and canada are included on cover. In 20, an industry insider revealed that 99% of comic books distributed by image comics were direct sales copies, with just 1% of the distribution being the newsstand edition copies those with upc codes on the covers to distinguish them as returnable for a refund whereas direct sold copies were nonreturnable see comic book newsstand. If there are just 2 numbers on the short part on the right, its a newsstand upc. As some of you may know or may not know im a it guy that works for motorola and i like to code for fun in my free time. Instead of all of the copies out there being the same, some copies have bar codes aka upc codes or universal product codes in the lower left corner of the front cover, while some do not some have a logo instead.

Jan 18, 2016 in 20, an industry insider revealed that 99% of comic books distributed by image comics were direct sales copies, with just 1% of the distribution being the newsstand edition copies those with upc codes on the covers to distinguish them as returnable for a refund whereas direct sold copies were nonreturnable see comic book newsstand. To use a coupon simply click the coupon code then enter the code during the stores checkout process. If you want to put your comic into comic book stores, youll need diamond distribution. The spiderman and diamond symbols are for direct sales clients comic book shops. Save with comic coupons, coupon codes, sales for great discounts in may 2020. Restoring comics is a crafty art that involves the use of nonoriginal materials in attempt to return a comic book to its known state. Upc codes comic book upc db appears to be a new project to capture upc codes for comic books. For the books without a barcode or with a picture instead of a barcode, are considered direct market books so comics sold directly to the comic book shop. In rare cases, you can find a little more information by reading the 12 digits. The comic book upc database is a free, user contributed database of comic book upc codes. The comics code authority cca was formed in 1954 by the comics magazine association of america as an alternative to government regulation.

So, youll get one upc for your individual comic series, and with each issue, update the 5digit number on the end. How to restore comics fixing damaged comic books, repair. The cca allowed the comic publishers to selfregulate the content of comic books in the united states. Vudu disc to digital list with upc codes posted december 11, 2019 march 15, 2020 comiccons converting your existing dvd and blu ray collections to digital format is a great way to enjoy your movie collection anywhere, anytime. Unfortunately with the current market of those books, its difficult to gauge the pricing with barcodes. Upc barcodes typically encode an id assigned to the company that manufactures or sells the product, along with a code that the company assigns to that particular product. This was a way for stores to track products easily for sales by using scanners that would just scan the code and enter that price into the register instead of the cashier manually adding in each price. In the following two pictures, notice that one copy has a diagonal line across its bar code aka upc code or universal product code, looking at the bottom left corner of the cover. Starting in the early 1990s, the direct edition generally used a upc code with the words direct market printed next to it. How to start a comic book publishing company pen and the pad. In 1974, though, the universal product code upcs was officially introduced.

In these more modern examples, the direct edition and newsstand copies both were given upc codes, but if you look closely youll see they are. Howdy, we have a homemade series of 11 comics, and we have the usual upc code, plus 5 digit extensions for each book in the series eg 725350782238 00311 book 003, variant 1, edition 1. Comic book cataloging and collection software use our web service to. Scarce promotional edition obtained by submitting three frigo cheese heads upc bar codes to saputo cheese. This was very commonly done in the 80s and 90s and is probably still practiced today. And some of you may also know or not im a comic book nut so my latest hobby is thinking up cool things i could code up to help comic book. Current free marvel digital comic infiniteuse codes. Im fairly certain, without doing the research again, that the upc is used on magazines similar to the way issns aretheyre issued on a per title, rather. How do i list a series of comics, with 5 digit upc extensions.

Listed above youll find some of the best comic book. Comic book cataloging and collection software use our web service to retrieve comic book title and issue information when users add issues to their collection. Have you ever looked at an old marvel comic book and wondered why theres a picture of spidermans head where the barcode should be. Anatomy of the modern comic book barcode a visual guide. Have you ever wondered what comic book barcodes actually. Apr 01, 2011 for the books without a barcode or with a picture instead of a barcode, are considered direct market books so comics sold directly to the comic book shop. The minimum price is not a real reflection of market value. Comic books with a barcode could be newsstand editions books from corner stores. If there are 5 numbers on the short part on the right, its a direct edition upc.