Comment made at: Hoot Gibson 006Most of the time, these re-numbering situations were prompted by a local postmaster, who objected to publishers who took advantage of their already-paid-for second-class mailing privileges by radically changing the title from (as in this instance) a romance title to a western. As I understand it, they would countenance minor title changes, but most of the time, a full genre change was going too far. For collectors, this sometimes created an annoying situation where there were two identically numbered sequences within a year or two (such as G.I. JOE), and which sellers often are unaware or or can't be bothered by noting this when they sell them. It also created situations (such as STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES and ALL-AMERICAN MEN OF WAR) where one number in the original sequence was somehow skipped when beginning the new numbering (#131,132,133 then #3 for the first, #127, 128 then #2 in the second instance), creating an issue you may not even expect to exist. Nowadays, of course, nobody cares about second-class mailing, so nobody even attempts it anymore.
