themagicrobot

I messaged the seller of the comics I posted yesterday. She is selling the 1960s DCs on behalf of her father. He now lives in England but grew up in Ireland which is where the DCs were purchased new. Out of the batch of 1960s DCs he owned, quite a number of them had the Eire price stamps and quite a few (like this one) contained no price stamp at all. So does that satisfy @ Malacoda or not? We still don't know if they arrived via T& P or not though but the stamped ones must be as rare as hens teeth? The fact that the collection she was selling contained very few Marvels leads me to speculate that very few Marvels of the early 1960s found their way to Ireland. I believe I have mentioned this before but growing up in the 1960s in the UK I found 8 out of 10 spinner racks in my region to be exclusively DC and really had to hunt for Marvel comics (usually FFs as I always preferred Superman and Batman to most Marvel comics of the time anyway).

????? Time moves on and stickers becoming a thing seems reasonable to me. Later there would be price guns and then bar codes. Didn't T & P have a fling with sickers too? I dont want to start an argument about this trivia. I'm sure I could find examples of magazines and paperbacks that display a higher price for Ireland if I tried. Let's agree to disagree and I'll move on and return this thread to Marwood.

It always was more expensive to live in the Republic of Ireland. I'm pretty sure my British comics like Lion and Valiant showed prices for numerous other countries that worked out higher than the 7d (for example) I paid.

By 1966 the price had increased to 1/3. Isn't that another "Ireland" sticker?? I rest my case. PS If T & P comics made their way to Northern Ireland (and I can't see why not ) comic fans near enough could cross the border and save 3d on each and every comic

If the comics were destined for Northern Ireland, being part of the UK surely they wouldn't have had the need to display "No tax" or "No duty"? So that is why I lean towards these books being originally sold in the Republic of Ireland. Didn't I post an image of a Doom Patrol comic with an "Ireland" sticker? That was from the same eBay seller as the above scans came from. In fact a few weeks ago that same seller had a number of early 1960s DCs for sale that looked as if they belonged with these images posted above that had NO price stamps on at all so perhaps not all comics in the batch received a stamp. Once the newsagent knew the price of the things he wouldn't need to keep looking for a stamp anyway.

There might only ever have been a few hundred of each title that found their way over there perhaps? Here is some more colour for this thread. If the first number is a "C" and the other is an "I" then the sequential theory is back on.

Adventure 313 has an "E" stamp. Adventure 314 has a "H" stamp. So that blows the sequential theory. There is always the unlikely option that Ethel had an "E" stamp and Hilda wielded a "H" stamp?

But I don't know if the comics would have been shipped to Thorpe and Porter first though. The same seller has a FF20 with an Irish price stamp on a cents issue. Here in the UK we had 9d prices printed on Marvel comics at the time. Did T&P also request cents issues so they could be stamped with the higher price???? Or was some other wholesaler involved????

I think we can safely say these comics were desitined for Ireland as this Doom Patrol is from the same eBay seller.

Never seen one of those. I did have a period where I collected Batman toys and in fact any plastic tat that contained a Batman logo. The early days of Pound shops were a good source of weird wonders most likely unlicensed. Batgun anybody?? . There must still be a box in the attic with Batman jigsaws and unmade Batboat model etc.

No duty or tax for this one.

I snagged these cheap just the other day. I am assuming they are Irish and not from some distant part of the British Empire (remember that?) There must be someone who can confirm. But just wondering how they got to the Republic of Ireland though. Would they have been imported directly and stamped there? Or would they have come via Leicestershire and been stamped by T& P or stamped closer to home?

It's uncanny how the prices move around the covers.

You can see a faint 1/- behind the 5p price on your comic. Alan had got the prices right for previous issues. You can imagine him saying "Damn I put lsd price and I need to do the cover again. No I can just overwrite it. No one will ever notice".

I think I'll submit my Aventures into the Unknown 157 here with an accompanying note saying I wish them to label it as Uncanny Tales 84 as I prefer my comics to be approved by Alan who is a real person rather than by the ficticious Comic Code Authority.

Why not get it encapsulated and then it could be transformed into an Adventures into the Unknown (and probably be worth less than 50p)

And by this time it was part of the "Class Series" and no longer "Approved". My father certainly didn't approve my purchasing them. He one day wondered out loud why I was reading a Lois Lane comic. He approved of the Rover with its text stories. Also Look and Learn and the Classics Illustrated comics which he would gladly buy for me and I would glady accept, whilst still buying Alan Class comics most weeks when we went to visit my Aunt. There was a newsagents close to her house that had NO SPINNER RACK!!! but did stockAlans black and white "rubbish".

The first two issues were called Tales of Suspense until Alan must have realised or been prompted that there was already a pence Tales of Suspense being sold. So from issue three it became Amazing Stories of Suspense. After a decade Alan began reprinting his reprints but when it came to the covers he couldn't be bothered to change the titles so now and again the comic would once again become Tales of Suspense. But I do need to buy issue 133 to see if Alan changed the interior story title from "The Endless Journey" to "The Trap" as well as altering the cover. By Issue 161 it was back to "The endless Journey" once more.

Personally I frame True Believers or similar reprints of significant comics and display them. To my friends and family they don't know the difference. Why risk valuable stuff fading, falling, being damaged, being stolen.

Or indeed any passer-by who is not only familiar with the Dynamic Duo and ancient warriors but also recognises a time-space warp when he sees one.

Oh...a Toby's variant. Then perhaps it is worth £80. Plus what is going on with all the hatching effects on Thor and Herc's skin? I know different scanners and printers can reproduce colours differently but the Toby's comic above looks quite different to others currently for sale or this one.

Toby's 126 IS a very early Thor, being the first issue where they dropped the Journey into Mystery logo but "acceptable" seems to be the new catch-all term for Silver Age comics on eBay that are in so poor condition that they want chucking in the bin, not selling for £80. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334047299686?hash=item4dc6c54866:g:aycAAOSwMz9gz0Me

It's a June 1963 issue. If it has a Miller stamp them my £2 will have been almost justified. Not so long ago I would have paid 50p for the annual at a Jumble sale. 6d for the Thorpe and Porter comic at a Market stall and maybe 50p for the old Archie at a Comic Mart. The rest is landfill as is the thousands of Victor comics no one can sell on eeBay.

Sad isn't it what we oldies have come to. Bidding on old bits of paper. The other day I won these ten comics for a massive £2 starting bid. The cowboy comics will end up in the recycling as soon as they arrive. The others (and that mountain in the spare bedroom) will end up in the recycling when I kick the bucket as I can't get my nearest and dearest to show the slightest intesrest in my collection/burden. Surely valiues of AF15 must have peaked as there are now hundreds in CGC capsules. No encapsulated WDL cowboy comics that I'm aware of as their time has passed (My dad would have loved them though....).