Spiderman collectors, i need help!

i just picked up Amazing Spiderman 361. you of course know this is the 1st app. of Carnage .

i had just visited my friend who has two copies. one is silver and one is regular like mine

but something i noticed was his didnt have barcodes, they had "30th anniversary of spiderman" with his mask instead on both of his issues.

but mine has the upc barcode. so is mine a knockoff or a fake issue . what's the deal with that?

anyone?

"Traditionally, comics were sold in newsagents. When bar-codes became common, they were added to comics like any other item. During the 90's the ever-growing presence of specialist comic shops lead distributors to produce two batches of comics.

The first batch would go to comic shops, where the dedicated fans eagerly awaited them. Because most comic shops don't use bar-code scanners, these first distribution books did not have a bar-code. A few weeks later, the next batch goes to newsagents and super-markets, where a bar-code was generally expected, and hence is included on the cover.

With very few exceptions, the only difference between the two versions of the comic is the presence or lack of the bar-code. Collectors almost never distinguish between the two versions in this case - they are considered the same comic, and collections will mix the two versions without comment.

There are other cases where the new-stand version was different, but these are not common, and are too detailed a topic to cover here."

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