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Why does this French Tintin book (Tintin et les Picaros) not have a printing number?

Photo of the title verso page of Tintin et les Picaros, copyright 1976

Update:

After talking with someone who lives in France they said to have a look at the bottom of either the first or last page for the Dépôt légal date for an idea of when it was released. bottom of last page

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    Do books printed in France have printing numbers, or is this an English-speaking custom? I don't own enough French books to tell, but judging from the one French book I own that I could easily find, I suspect that in general they may not.
    – Peter Shor
    Oct 12, 2021 at 14:53
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    Editions and reprintings of Tintin albums are hard to date. The copyright year, for example, is not helpful at all. What is needed is a more detailed description and images of the front and back covers, and some who has access to 444 albums Tintin, a collectors' guide by Luc Brigode.
    – Tsundoku
    Oct 12, 2021 at 19:15
  • @PeterShor During Hergé's lifetime, Casterman was very much a Belgian publisher, not a French one.
    – Tsundoku
    Oct 13, 2021 at 8:52
  • @PeterShor would you like to ask a general question about printing numbers being present during this period from publishers based out of certain locales?
    – bobble
    Oct 13, 2021 at 16:02
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    @Bobbie: I think that's a good idea. Wikipedia only has a page for "printer's key" in Polish and Chinese, and googling images using the Polish term for "printer's key," "Oznaczenie numeru druku," only gives me books in English and German, so I strongly suspect that this method is only used in a few languages, not including French.
    – Peter Shor
    Oct 13, 2021 at 18:23

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