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How do you tell which printing of your Tintin album you have?

The year in the front is usually not the printing year. Six things that do tell you which printing you are holding — and why that decides the value.

Two copies of the same Tintin album can differ a hundredfold in value. Not because one is better kept, but because it is a different printing. The cover says so nowhere. Below is where it does say so, in the order in which you will find it fastest.

1. The year in the front is usually not the printing year

This is the misconception that trips up most people. In the front of your album is something like Copyright 1947 by Casterman. That year belongs to the version of the story — the drawings, the colouring, the text — and not to the moment this copy came off the press. Casterman left the same copyright year standing for decades.

Our database holds 75 printings with copyright 1947. They were printed between 1946 and 1978. An album with copyright 1946 can therefore easily be from 1986, and the difference in value between those two is enormous.

In short: the copyright year tells you which story you have, not which printing.

2. Is there an ISBN?

The ISBN has only existed since 1970, and publishers only started using it in the years after. The earliest printing with an ISBN in our database is from 1973; the last one without is from 1971.

No ISBN — your album is from before roughly 1971. That is the side where the value is.
An ISBN — a reprint from the seventies or later. Usually a one- or two-figure amount, unless it is a special binding.

Look in the indicia, in the small print at the front or the back. One glance, and you know which half of the century you are in.

3. Hardcover or softcover

Most Tintin albums are hardcover. From 1960 a softcover series appeared alongside them — the same stories, a limp cover, and considerably cheaper then as now. In our database 563 of the almost 600 printings are hardcover and 33 softcover.

It is a small difference to see and a large difference in value, so it is worth noticing before you search any further.

4. The album list on the back cover

This is the sharpest tool there is. On the back of many albums is a list of the other titles in the series. That list was brought up to date with every new run, so the last album listed says when this copy was printed: no earlier than the moment that album came out.

If The Calculus Affair is listed last, your copy is from after 1956. If Explorers on the Moon is there, it is from after 1954. That often pins a printing down to within a few years, without knowing anything else.

Watch what is just missing, too: sometimes a printing differs from its predecessor only in that one title has been added, or in that the texts are boxed in black.

5. The indicia and the legal deposit number

Belgian and French editions often carry a legal deposit number in the form D. 1953/0053/12. The first number is the year of deposit and usually matches the printing year. On older Casterman printings you will also come across lines like Imp. Danel n973, 4e trim 1955 — the printer, the number and the quarter.

That is often the only way to tell printings from the same year apart. Of The Blue Lotus there are three from 1955 that can only be told apart by that line.

6. The endpapers

The endpapers are the printed insides of the cover, at the front and at the back. With Tintin they changed a few times over the years — from plain to a drawing with aeroplanes, in various colourways. So the endpapers date a printing roughly, even when the indicia have become illegible.

All together

You do not have to work all this out yourself. Answer a few questions about what you see — the back cover, the binding, the ISBN — and we will tell you which printing you are holding and what it is worth. If we cannot work it out, someone here looks along on your photos.

Work out what your album is worth