Get Marwood & I

That is a good one. It looks like the Jokers' Nan in a tracksuit the morning after she's had a few. I would make that my avatar if I were you Blob. I like it

Morning guys @01TheDude @Albert Tatlock I've added a summary page to my journal and name checked you both: Dude, apologies again for managing to forget your first input which was spot on as it turned out. Albert, thanks for pointing out my error and for having the grace to share the credit.

Yes, I've just read those posts again and I find I can't recall even my own responses to them, let alone the original suggestions. I'm quite perplexed by this and not a little fed up by it if I'm honest. Sorry again.

Marwood, I thank you for your kind comments on my contribution to the numbered T & P stamps, but the credit, I feel, is not entirely mine. I have glanced back at the postings in this thread before I became involved, and I now see that 01TheDude put forward basically the same suggestion as far back as page 6 of this thread, but as he had no data to hand at the time to back it up the idea was not developed. I think 01TheDude should get at least a share, if indeed not the lion's share, of the credit, don't you? Also, I cannot help but think that I was by not the only collector at the time to notice that the stamp number, with occasional hiccups, was creeping inexorably upwards Oh dear, how clumsy of me to miss that. I shall make amends in the morning Albert. My apologies Dude

Thorpe & Porter UK Distribution Price Stamp Numbering Hello Reader Those of you who have been foolish enough to follow my pence threads over the years will know that I have often speculated as to why the UK distribution price stamps used by Thorpe & Porter in the early 1960's were numbered 1-9 like so: I've lost track of how many experts and collectors I have asked about it down the years and everyone was stumped. I undertook an exercise myself a year or so ago, captured I think in my DC UKPV thread, to see if I could detect any patterns (as I often do). It was unsuccessful because I was looking for the wrong thing, in the wrong way. Recently, two contributors to a thread I started about the early distribution of US comics to the UK finally cracked the code - @01TheDude first suggested it and then @Albert Tatlock, helped in no small measure I would assume by his extensive DC collection, confirmed what he and likely a few other collectors of the day had worked out. You can read all about it here, in my UK Distribution Review thread: Anyway, in short, it turns out that the numbers correlate with sequential - probably monthly - shipment arrival dates from the US to the UK. We know that the import ban on comics was lifted around mid-1959, so it is no surprise to see that our stamped US books started to arrive in the UK at the end of 1959 / beginning of 1960. Using the many images that I had already captured in relation to my distribution review, examples from the thread contributors, and a subsequent trawl of eBay and other online sources, I plotted all the DC comics I could find in line with the 1-9 stamp numbers and the pattern was indeed confirmed: Click to enlarge by the way The tables show us that the books arrive approximately monthly - as you would expect for a monthly comic medium - and that each shipment comprises a mix of issue sequential books not usually separated by more than three months by cover date (which makes sense when you consider the end to end process involved from the point that issues were returned as unsold in the US to their arrival in the UK). I'm not going to go into too much more detail here as I suspect that the vast majority of readers won't find this interesting. The small group that do will likely want to read the whole thread. So, in a final nutshell, this is what we believe was going on: With the import ban lifted, Thorpe & Porter made an arrangement with DC to have unsold books in the US sent to the UK US sellers removed unsold DC comics, perhaps once the replacement next issue arrived, and sent them to a central returns point The central point collated the US country-wide returns and shipped them to the UK, likely monthly Thorpe & Porter received them, stamped them (using the 1-9 stamps on a rolling cycle) and distributed them to the UK The evidence points to the stamp number 8 in the first cycle as being the likely 'first ever shipment' and it probably arrived in the UK for the books to go on sale around January 1960. As ever there are gaps and quirks all over the place - there always are in this wonderful period of comic history - but you'd have to be blind to not see the pattern behind the outliers. The discussion thread covers Marvel and the other publishers for whom we have T&P stamped examples in the UK. So, with an element or two left to be finessed, notably a definitive calendar date for the start month, the mystery of the Thorpe & Porter price stamp numbering has, to my mind, finally been solved. Well done to the Dude and Tatlock for making the breakthrough Cheers, Steve P.S. I put these 1-9 grids together, for the numbered stamps. A few more to do, but I'll get there....

I looked at the other publishers who have 1958 / 1959 stamped books by the way - ACG and Archie - and concluded that I don't have enough examples to justify adding them in. A lot of the Archies are stamped with a 6 though, regardless of cover dates, so they either are second cycle bulk late comers, or they maybe make up the DC '6' compliment and make that stamp number the 'first ever' UK comic shipment lot.

Indeed. I've been comparing the content to my UKPV research and it's quite interesting to see the joins. It's a little melancholy as an exercise though, as back in the day there were clearly so many more people involved in comic discussions and such. I'd like to go back to those days and play a more active role at a time when it all mattered. Let's face it, who really cares about this stuff nowadays...?

A couple of snippets from some old 1970's UK fanzines I've been reading - I was hoping to find a review or something - will keep looking

Here's another clipping from issue #6 (Aug-Sep 76): Did Fantastic Four indeed not come over for two months? Not bad! Explains why I've never found #176 I suppose. And did X-Men, Premier and Spotlight stop? Yup. Nice

Yes, I called it 'oddly similar' for a reason Juno

Based on my extensive Miller research, I'm going to stick my neck out and say there's near to zero chance of that Gary. So expect one along any day now Looking forward to it. I can't look back on it, because it hasn't happened yet

And here it is. For DC, the available stamped examples plot as follows, and we either take the 6's or the 8's as the first DC shipment to the UK: We know that there are many Charlton books with 1959 cover dates which are stamped earlier than '6' or '8'. Indeed, my early thread posts show Charlton's War at Sea #29, cover dated February 1959, and stamped a '2'. And we have a handful of 1958 Charlton 100 pagers in the mix too with '1' stamps. So the question is - did the Charlton examples precede the DCs, or did they come over - out of sequence - in later stamping cycles? There are 3 likely scenarios as I see it: Scenario A has the books plotted in stamp order and we can see six examples populating the '1' box. But the dates don't make sense as the first ever use of the '1' stamp would likely have far preceded the availability in the UK of October 1958 cover dated books. Also the lack of 3-6 examples looks out of step. So the scenario seems most unlikely to me: Scenario B has the books plotted in the second cycle. But, again, the 1's and 2's seem to have generally later cover dates than the books that follow and there is no flow to them. So this scenario doesn't feel right either: Scenario C has the books plotted with the 8's and 9's in the first cycle, and the remainder in the second: This flows better and feels right to me. If we accept that the DC 6's are likely late cycle two books, and therefore the DC's start with stamp #8, then it makes total sense that the Charlton examples would also start then. It also feels right because the first ever number 8 stamp would: A. Deliver the books to the UK around January 1960, which anecdotal evidence supports (see my earlier analysis) B. Fit with the notes we have seen regarding when the US-UK embargo was lifted (mid-1959) and books could come to the UK legally So my money is on the whole thing starting with the first cycle 8 stamp with the 6 stamp DCs being second wave - that looks like this: The DCs have some cover date vs stamp number chronological order - the Charltons are largely a random mix of 1958/1959 overstock or unsold copies. Any thoughts?

Charlton theory coming soon....

Evening Every so often, I like to browse old UK fanzines to see if any snippets jump out that fit with some of my UKPV research. Many do, as it turns out which adds to the comfort that I've captured them all correctly. More or less. Here's one such snippet, from The Panelologist #5 from May 1976: So, how did they do? Kull #16 won't be coming over - check Eternals will - check In August we lose: Marvel Chillers - check Marvel Triple-Action - check Son of Satan - check Strange Tales - wrong! One more snuck in Woops, I forgot to add Son of Satan in. In other news, Nova arrived as promised. And the September Iron Fist did actually appear, but October didn't. Quite close. And as for the 25 issues per month maximum...

Great work Lobstrosity - I love it when people dig. Here's to all the diggers!

You're on a roll MR SigS

I've finished To recap, over the last week or so I have trawled eBay and various other sites for images of every DC title that crossed the cover dates of September / October / November 1959 and added them to a table which, in theory, covers the first four sequential uses of the T&P 1-9 stamps. There are 47 of them and 40 have at least one T&P stamped copy. The seven that I didn't find one for are shaded in orange in the table below: (Click to enlarge) For the 40 titles that had at least one T&P stamped copy, I have also added the first issue number that I found with a stamp. I'll compare these later to the summary over at the UK CBPG site here... www.comicpriceguide.co.uk/features - First DC Distribution Article ...to see how closely they match. If any one reading has an earlier stamped copy, do let me know. Here are the results, with a little commentary under each entry: The key observation for the first use table is the fact that we have four 6's, no 7's and then a load of 8's and 9's. Remember, this is a DC exercise only, and I have not added any of the other potential publications and comics from this timeframe (Charlton comics and various magazines). There are three possible scenarios here: The four books with a 6 stamp are the first ever DC stamped books The four books with a 6 stamp - given the absence of any 7's - are actually very late second cycle stamped copies, which would make the 8's the first ever books There may be 7's out there yet to be found I'm not sure it's possible to be sure which option is true without some credible evidence. People's individual recollections can sometimes be unreliable and I'm also conscious that the same books may not always have been distributed to the same geographical areas so one collectors experience may differ to another. If the 8 and 9 entries are true, and directly linked to two sequential shipments, then it's clear that each shipment contained a mix of cover dates spanning 2-3 months so, for the period covered at least, we cannot say that a book of a given cover date will always have a certain stamp number. This makes complete sense of course as the returns process in the US would hardly have been so robust as to deliver returned dated copies to an exact sequence. For the second cycle the books are largely consistent with a spread of 2-3 cover months being the norm. There are a number of examples of books arriving out of issue number sequence which ties in with anecdotal recollections from some of the collectors I've spoken to. There seem to be considerably more titles in the beginning / end of the cycle with the number 6 stamp much less used than others. The 9 stamp group appear to have a high level of out of sequence books (March 1960 vs the prevailing September 1960) which indicates how a rogue late batch could appear and muck everything up. By the third cycle, things seem to be settling down a bit with much less variance by cover month this time. That pattern continues into the fourth cycle. If we look at the cover dates in each cycle, they broadly match sequential calendar months which indicates that the shipments themselves were likely monthly, in line with most comic titles. So in summary, we can see clearly what was going on and understand how the numbering system was being used. The one thing we cannot yet say definitively is the calendar dates for each of the numbers within each cycle. We could probably make an educated guess and be within a month or so either way, but we don't know if the shipments were on the same day each month or, indeed, whether they were every month or crossed months. And we don't know how long the shipping window was - one month or three - and how long T&P sat on any receipts prior to distribution. But the pattern is clearly there, and it holds true. Depending on the first cycle 6 stamps, this exercise also allows us to pinpoint which DC issues came over first, which is quite cool, 60 years after the event. I'm going to use this table going forward to look for other DC books to see if any more / earlier 10 or 11/59 cover date examples appear. My next task is to overlay the Charlton books and the magazines that we know exist with stamp numbers that appear to fit the first cycle and, potentially, precede the DC comics. All good fun

That's a good one.

I can't wait to see what's in the Spidey Super Stories

They hammer stains though don't they, CGC? I mean, it's bound to be covered in them isn't it?

Flaming Nora this is time consuming I've got 11 titles left to add to the tables (the ones below in white). Hopefully I'll get them done by the weekend and then I'll post my findings ....and a big summary of everything The 'second use' wave of stamps are filling up nicely: The '6' stamp wasn't a popular month it seems, although I do have 11 more titles to add so it may fill up a bit. It gives me hope that the first use 6 stamp may indeed be the first ever use though - low numbers in both you see....

That's a conundrum isn't it

Excellent. I'm getting excited Gary. You can be our Marvel correspondent

Yes, 'true' back cover colouring is often what decides it. I have to say though, yours is the oddest sun fade I have ever seen, and I can well understand why you would be in two minds. Or, at least, a hopeful mind. Very strange.