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Albert Tatlock

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Everything posted by Albert Tatlock

  1. He was probably a beginner compared to some of the regular contributors here.
  2. A few offerings from the current Excalibur sale. Three of them are cents, but have had pence stamps applied, so they are likely to be among the few from the pre-decimal era to have arrived without the involvement of T & P. The Kid Colt is a UKPV 9d, repriced 10d after failing initially to find a home, then repriced again by PBC at 8d.
  3. The DCs from this time are all cents only, so no variants. The ones we got (first LSH was #267, just after the real deal, not reprints, started flooding in) were all defaced/enhanced with the familiar T & P 9d stamp).
  4. But does 'Left Over' include returns? Would DC not have made every effort to distribute as close to 100% of the print run as possible? Could be that of 100 copies which were sent out into the distribution network, 50 were sold, and eventually paid for, and 50 were eventually returned, some of them destined for T & P, maybe only 10 or so, which would equate to .30,000 mags. Say T & P had a similar sell-through rate, that would mean that they took back 15,000 copies. If so, they must have been stacking up in Leicester faster than they could be disposed of. Before too long, most of T & P's holdings would have been deadstock. After recirculating some of it at reduced prices, there would have been no realistic alternative to selling it to a waste paper merchant. And similarly back at DC's HQ. That is how I read it.
  5. Could DC have been booking machine time simply to deny it to the competition?
  6. Now you're twice as unwell! Don't leave it too late, Kev. It's the highest bid, not the latest, that wins. Pretend you're in an Irish election and bid early and often.
  7. ......and the ad refers to coins from 'strange, far-away lands', one of which is listed underneath. England! Possibly Susan felt insulted and decided not to swell the coffers of such a bunch of xenophobes. What could be simpler than the coinage of England at the time? 12 pennies = 1 shilling 2 and a half shillings = half a crown 20 shillings = 1 quid Not to mention the farthings, ha'pennies, tanners and bobs. And the abbreviation for penny, quite logically, is d.
  8. Strange that the father objects to the neatly turned-out young man , but not to the Iron Cross that his putative son-in law was awarded, possibly for services to a foe of Uncle Sam.
  9. Here are a few Harveys, brought to these shores by Miller. A couple of the stamps are not too clear, but they are there if you look. The Audrey one is unstamped, but must be an import, firstly because it has a 6d second-hand seller applied scrawl, and secondly because Susan Smith of Boscombe, then aged 11 (she would now be 75, hope she is still in fine fettle), has filled in the coupon on the back cover. Susan, if you can spare a moment, please log into this chat board and tell us why you decided to purchase this particular item, with its cover date of July 1960, when you could, for the same amount of your pocket money, have come into possession of the Brave and Bold # 30 depicted just beneath. Was it because of the unsightly T & P applied 9d blodge on the cover, did that spoil it for you? Or maybe you were getting as much T & P product as you wanted from your Auntie Ethel, smuggled out of the stamping shed in her corsets. Do chip in, please, Susan (don't mind if we call you Sue, I hope?), we are dying to know.
  10. That's a good 'un! This issue of ST was available as a UKPV, so how this copy found its way into circulation before the end of the 1960s is a Strange Tale indeed. Possibly sold on second-hand after a n-n-n- nineteen year old servant of Uncle Sam bought it in his PX at Lakenheath or wherever. 9d was the full shop price at the time, not a clue who applied that stamp. But there is also what looks like a hastily scribbled 3d, possibly a market stall price as the mag sank lower in the resale chain. Incidentally, this is one of quite a few pre-hero Marvels where it is evident that the cover artist (in this case Kirby) was not in cahoots with the illustrator of the inside pages (in this case Don Heck), as there is no resemblance between the two versions of the Thing (or the Thing On The Moon as depicted within). Others that spring to mind are Rro from JIM # 58 (Ditko/Heck), Bombu from JIM # 60 (Kirby and Kirby, one of whom did not consult the other) and more. Someone out there with time on their hands could probably reel off a full list. From memory, the monster threatening the human race on the cover was always scarier than his counterpart within. I got my first copy of ST #79 from a lad at the top of my street, who demanded, and got, 2 comics in exchange. 'What a mug', he must have chuckled into his sleeve, but I just had to add it to my small but treasured portfolio. The cover story was a let-down, not so the first interior Tale, Kirby's chiller about the Shadow Creatures, selected for re-publication in Marvel's first foray into the 25 cent Annual territory, Strange Tales Annual # 1. It cost me an arm and a leg (1/6d) when I first spied it in a local newsagent, but once again, I had not the capacity to resist its allure.
  11. Some people clearly live in hope. For example, here are the current listings of a seller on ebay, https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_ssn=sher8648&store_name=cultcomicbooksinternational&_oac=1&_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l2562 202 listings, well over 100 'key issues'. Can't spot quite as many as that, myself, though.
  12. And the PC brigade decided to lean on Camp coffee, too. Out goes the old oppressive colonial trope at top, in comes the more progressive and enlightened one at bottom. You can be as Camp as you like these days, they can't touch you for it.
  13. Yep, remember 'em well. Selling them these days would get you 6 months, though.