Jean Grey: the suffix “bis”, a number slipped between two others

The collection of comics in France is built on kiosk series whose numbering does not follow the rules that we believe to be universal. We imagine a well-bred sequence: 1, 2, 3, and so on until the title stops. The editorial reality was much more flexible. When a publisher wanted to publish an additional issue without breaking its already announced commercial sequence, he did not create a new issue: he took the current issue and added the word “bis”. The issue was then physically inserted into the collection, between two issues that already existed, without moving anything.

This typographical detail has a direct and concrete consequence on any personal inventory. A number is not a number. It looks like a number in the vast majority of cases, which makes the illusion comfortable, until the day we pick up a booklet whose identifier contains letters. At this point, a numeric field behaves in two possible ways, both bad: it either refuses entry, or it silently crops out the part that bothers it and saves the copy as if it were the number from which it derives. In the second case, two distinct issues are confused in a single line, and the collector only realizes this by counting his piles.

A French statement, in euros, and what exactly it measures

The measurements published here most often come from American marketplaces and are expressed in dollars. This is not the case with this one, and precision counts: the following amounts were recorded on the French market, on a general auction site, and are expressed in euros. They therefore do not directly compare to the site's usual statements, neither by currency, nor by the population of sellers, nor by description habits which differ from one country to another.

Second clarification, just as important: these amounts are those that sellers requested on August 30, 2026, at the time of the statement. No one paid these amounts. An ad displays an intention to sell, not a completed transaction. The difference is not cosmetic — a booklet can remain for months at a price that no one accepts, and yet it will appear in the count like any other. Reading these figures as market prices would amount to confusing what we demand and what we obtain.

Third clarification: this is a photograph taken only once. A statement on a single date cannot describe any evolution, trend, increase or decrease. To talk about movement, we would need at least two comparable records separated in time, and this article does not have them. Any sentence suggesting that these fascicles “go up” or “go down” would here be a pure invention.

On the query “Strange Special Origins Lug”, the report includes 70 advertisements. The lowest amount claimed is €3.00, the median is €6.00, and the highest amount is €149.00. This isolated maximum says nothing about the level of the market: it expresses the hope of a particular seller, at a given moment, in a population where half of the offers are at €6.00 ​​or less. Finally, out of these 70 announcements,nonedoes not relate to a copy verified by an independent body.

What the five cheapest listings reveal

The striking fact is not the level of these prices, which remains in the low zone of a reading whose median is €6.00. The striking fact is the coincidence: the five least expensive advertisements in the entire survey bear, without exception, a suffixed number. Five advertisements form a tiny number, far below what would be necessary to establish a price level, and there is nothing here to support the assertion that the “repeat” issues are worth less than the others. What these five lines show, on the other hand, is that the form of the number varies from one announcement to another while the thing designated is perfectly stable.

Why does a digital field lose these copies?

The suffix is ​​not a marginal exception

One might believe that these interspersed fascicles are a matter of curiosity, a borderline case that an inventory can afford to ignore. The statement says the opposite. On a very common query, the population of which exceeds sixty advertisements, the five most accessible offers all have a suffix. A collector who starts at the bottom of the range - which is naturally what someone who builds a series of kiosk number by number does - therefore encounters the problem with his first purchases, not after several years.

We also need to understand why the practice existed. A series of kiosks lives on an announced rhythm and on a linear location. Inserting an additional issue by shifting the entire sequence would have required renumbering what was already printed, announced, or in production. The suffix resolves the difficulty without breaking anything: it creates an intermediate position. From an editor's point of view, it's an elegance. From a modern inventory perspective, it's an identifier that contains letters, something most spreadsheets and forms never anticipated.

The practical consequence is that sorting by number behaves badly. Arranged like texts, “148 bis”, “15” and “175 Bis” are not placed in the order in which they appeared. Arranged like numbers, suffixes stick to their original number or evaporate. Neither of the two naive approaches restores the real order of the publications, which is that of the collection on the shelf.

Finally, this difficulty does not only concern the meticulous collector. It affects anyone who simply wants to know what they have. The question “am I missing anything between 172 and 173?” » has no answer as long as the inventory is unaware that an object can exist in this location. The hole does not appear, because the tool has no box to show it.

Read or own: the suffix changes the calculation

For those who only want to read a story, an interspersed booklet is just another chapter, and its number matters little. For those who constitute a material collection, this same issue is an object in its own right, with its cover, its inserts, its condition, and a precise place in a suite. This distinction betweenread the story and own the objectbecomes particularly clear with the “encores”, because the object exists while the story does not indicate anything special.

The survey illustrates this discrepancy. Two advertisements offer the same “172 bis”, at €3.00 and €3.50. A reader would choose the cheapest without hesitation. A collector notices that the cheapest one explicitly announces the absence of the cards, while the other remains silent. Fifty cents separate the two prices, but the question asked is not the same: the difference is perhaps due to completeness, perhaps to the condition, perhaps to nothing at all. With two announcements, we cannot conclude anything - the number is far too small to draw a rule from it.

What we can remember, on the other hand, is more solid: the silence of an announcement does not constitute a declaration of completeness. A seller who does not mention the inserts is not affirming that they are there; most often, he has not checked, or he does not know that the question arises. Faced with a booklet whose insert is detachable, the absence of information is information in itself: it signals that you will have to ask.

The logic is similar to that offascicles whose content does not correspond to what the numbering suggests. In either case, the apparent reference is misleading: the number does not say what is inside, and it does not always even say which issue it is.

What the complete absence of verification implies

Zero copies verified out of seventy advertisements: the figure deserves attention, because it is absolute. This is not a small proportion, but a complete absence. In this segment of the French market, at that date, no one was offering a booklet whose condition, authenticity or completeness had been verified by an independent third party.

This shifts the burden of description entirely onto the sellers, and we see in the statement how irregular this description is. Some advertisements indicate the publisher, the year, a status code, and indicate the absence of an insert. Others are limited to the title and number. Two offers relating to the same issue do not say the same things, and nothing obliges anyone to harmonize.

For the buyer, the consequence is simple: the only verification available is that which he does himself, before the purchase by asking questions, after the purchase by opening the package. For the owner of a collection, it is just as simple: what his inventory contains is only true because he has observed it, and he therefore has an interest in noting this observation at the time he does it, rather than hoping to remember it.

Let us also note what this zeronesaid not. It does not say that third-party verification would be unnecessary or impossible in this market, nor that it would change the prices recorded. He notes a state of affairs on a date: on this request, on that day, the practice was absent. Nothing more.

What to note for each booklet

The complete number, including suffix, as printed."172 bis" is written as "172 bis", not 172, not 172.5, not 173. The field that receives this value must accept letters, spaces and parentheses, because the statement shows all three. Converting to a number, even once, even “just to sort”, merges the interspersed issue with its neighbor and makes it disappear without warning. If we still want a correct order, the place of the issue in the following is noted separately, in a dedicated field, without ever touching the number itself.

The presence or absence of inserts.One announcement of the statement states “WITHOUT the Files”, another says nothing for the same number. This information cannot be deduced from the number or the price: it can be seen when opening the booklet, and it must be written. Three states are worth distinguishing: inserts present, inserts absent, not verified. Le troisième est honnête et utile ; confusing it with the first is the most common way of creating a false certainty.

The exact title of the publication, including the word “Special”.“Strange Special Origins” is a name, not a combination of qualifiers. Writing “Strange” and checking a “special” box elsewhere breaks the title and makes the connection with the catalog hazardous. The title is copied as it appears on the cover, with its accents and capitalization, and we resist the temptation to shorten it because it is long.

The publisher and year of publication.The statement shows a constant publisher on these advertisements and two distinct years, 1982 and 1984, for two issues with different suffixes. These two pieces of information do not replace the number – an “bis” and its original number share the year – but they close a lot of ambiguities when a title has been covered or reissued. They get up once, at reception, and then serve indefinitely.

The price paid, shipping included, and the date.What we enter is what we actually paid, not the amount displayed in the ad, not the median of the day's market. Shipping is part of the real cost and, on issues whose prices are between €3.00 and a few euros, it sometimes weighs as much as the item. The date accompanies the amount, because it is this which will one day make it possible to compare two measurements - a single measurement, today, does not describe any evolution.

Five frequently asked questions