Too often the comic book is found without the record, and is either believed to be the original printing or is 'passed off' as being the original to non-collectors who think they have found a 'Great Deal'.

When looking just at the cover of the comic book, when pictured in an auction listing, the one BIG thing that will differentiate the reprint from the original is that the reprint will NOT have the cover price of either 10 cents or 12 cents on it. (Please see the Fantastic Four #1 at the top left for the REPRINT copy issue.  The photo shown below that is the ORIGINAL printing. It HAS the cover price of 10 cents printed.)

The above example is just one of the pitfalls of buying online from someone who is not normally a comic book seller, as how would they know without a Comic Book Price Guide?  There have been other reprints throughout the years, but the above 'Golden Record' reprints look so close to the original until close-up inside the pages inspection, (as they also don't reprint the original ads as well as the cover price!). 

As a last note, the above 'Golden Records' and the reprint comics also do have value.... just that the reprint comics don't command the full value that the originals do!  A 'Fine' 6.0 graded reprint is 'price guided' at $42 while the original in 'Fine' 6.0 grade is 'price guided' at $1,455 ! (Note: these prices were in effect at the time of this blog post's original publishing.)

So please folks, be aware that these reprint issues are out there, and end up quite often on certain auction sites for sale...  They are not worth even close to the value of the original prints!