Albert Tatlock

On 5/22/2024 at 12:16 AM, Malacoda said:

How exactly did the pricing work at Burtonwood?  75p for 9, but £2.37 (and a ha'penny) for 24 look about consistent with a couple at 50c and a dollar,  but what were you paying per comic? Was there a deal?

 

This is over 50 years ago, and at the rate my brain cells are dropping off their perch, it is a miracle I remember anything at all.

The mags were priced in US currency, of course, as was everything on the base. I just took my loot to the counter and handed over what was demanded.

In the next shed was a change desk, where I handed in pounds for greenbacks.  I could have miscalculated the sterling equivalent. Bit late to go back and check now, the receipts will be long gone, unless Uncle Sam has filed away his copies in some remote desert storage facility. Burtonwood USAF was razed to the ground years ago.

These kinds of places were probably where the few copies of ND comics came from before US dealers had customers on this side of the pond.

On 5/20/2024 at 7:50 PM, Malacoda said:

I think your recollection matches the general remembrance, Albert.  I've never seen a stamp until Gary & Steve posted these and I looked at several hundred. I was betting that if they did turn up stamped, it would be the other fellas. 

In the 70's, PG had this as rare and it was twice the price of surrounding issues. Likewise AA in the 80's (however, neither of them listed it as ND!)

I have just gone through my FF collection from this period.

They are all stamped cents, except for # 72 and #80, both unstamped cents..

#72 was not common at the time, but of course enough copies have been imported by now to make it nothing special.

Here is a record of a few purchases I made at the PX on Burtonwood USAF base.

Not checked yet, but they are probably in advance of UK retail outlets.

A good bit of what I bought there had the Mark Jewelers and Diamond inserts.

Some I foolishly tore out and discarded, to keep down the price of postage on the ones I was selling.

I still have a few, though, and one day I will go through everything within reach and see how many still survive.

Look what Ena is up to now....

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/276412979069

Rochdale in the Premier League?

Wait till she comes into t'Rovers, I will give her a piece of my mind!

Don't worry, will get back on track with my next post, I have found a few more purchases that can help us date arrivals.

On 5/18/2024 at 10:08 AM, Garystar said:

I've lost track but have we seen this one before as a T&P, if so can't have been very often. Duncan has it as ND.

We knew nothing of nd or ND at the time.

All we knew was that this was 'impossible' to get hold of.

We waited in hope that it would eventually surface, as # 56 and #57 had done, several months late, but no, it never showed.

I am surprised that a few arrived to be stamped, but they must have been in very small numbers.

On 5/19/2024 at 2:15 PM, Malacoda said:

As you say, we'll never know, I'm not offering proof, just throwing an idea out, and I'm not sure I can do this in one sentence, but while I'm putting it together, let me add another question to the mix:  why are the 1965 annuals all stamped despite being UKPV's?  It can't be that Ethel accidentally stamped a few - they're all stamped, and they're all stamped with the 1/6 stamp, so clearly not an error.  

Maybe T & P decided, when the Annuals arrived, that the printed price did not look quite right, not quite what they had envisaged when putting in the order.

Instead of the nice clear 9d or 10d of the past, there is what might be mistaken for a vulgar fraction instead of a price in the currency that we Limeys used at the time. There is no sign of the d. Few of the US print operatives on the shop floor would have known of the historical link back to the denarii of Roman Britain.

And the 1/6 is small compared to the usual printed price. To reduce the chances of confusion at the counter of the newsagent or sweetshop, it may have made sense to apply the usual big bold unmistakeable splodge of ink, even though that would have meant paying Ethel a bit of overtime.

On 5/17/2024 at 9:34 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Still got em, Albert?

Those were his spares.

I only bought them so I could sell them.

He gave up collecting in about 1972. He got good prices (over a quid each for some of them, would you believe?).

I bought what was left, mostly non Marvel and DC..

On 5/16/2024 at 11:26 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Fabulously hard book to find as a UKPV. I've only seen three in the last 8 years...

...and I've been studying real hard!!

Maybe it is lesser spotted because it did not sell.

Mine had to be reduced to 6d before anyone nibbled.

And I have rediscovered the date I originally purchased it, way back in February 1968 (I had an idea it was early 1970s, but my yellowing scrolls do not lie).

The figures in the right column are shillings and pence, not pounds.

The lad I bought them from had managed to build up a complete set of Marvels from FF # 1 onwards by means of a sneaky trick. He got a Saturday job on Gordon's bookstall on Salford Market, thereby getting first dibs on anything that came in.

That stall was the go-to place for panelologists for miles around, a veritable Aladdin's Cave.

I could describe it as our Mecca, at the risk of bringing down a fatwa.

Alan Austin deemed Pearl unworthy of mention in his Price Guide.

I must get round to reading my copy one day, I scorned to do so at the time.

.

On 5/14/2024 at 8:29 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I've always limited my research to what the comics tell me

Here is what the lettercol of FF # 6 tells us:

Set in type 14 March

Mike says it shoulda got to where it shoulda got to by 12 June

Cover date September 1962.

On 5/14/2024 at 6:29 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

My arrival date studies are focussed elsewhere Albert. Someone else can have a go

I will try to shoulder that burden, in my limited interludes of sobriety.

On 5/13/2024 at 12:06 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

I found this cool example on Heritage while looking - a UKPV JIM #58 with a T&P stamp on it!

Any idea what this lot sold for?

The JIM UKPV AND stamp may make it unique!

On 5/13/2024 at 12:06 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

So the first conclusion is that the LOC dates do not match the extant physical examples. We've always worked on the industry theory that books were on sale around 3 months prior to their cover dates, so March makes more sense than January for a June dated book. We can assume therefore that the UKPVs would have been printed some time in late February 1960.

What would help, if we could find enough of them, would be arrival dates on later than # 58 copies of JIM in 1960 and 1961.

Then, comparing them with arrival dates from the same cover months on TOS, TTA and Strange Tales would inform us whether the alleged 3 week gap in the on sale date was reflected in the arrival dates in bricks and mortar outlets Stateside.

And, if that turned out to be the case, it would make sense for the JIMs sent across to the UK to have been subject to a similar time lag.

I noticed back in 1961 that the late arrival of JIM was what was happening as I religiously focused on those four PHM titles, never missing an issue once I latched onto them, but have not followed up Mike's data further than the end of that year. Maybe it continued right up to # 125, or even beyond, retitled as Thor.

On 4/19/2024 at 8:16 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

The first two Marvels, as we know, were the two 58s, Gunsmoke Western and JIM. Only Gunsmoke Western carried the Miller distribution indicia data - the T&P details were absent from their inaugural UKPV issue:

 

So if anyone had their eyes open, and spotted the UK printed pricing in that first period, the only books they'd have been able to identify the distributor on would be the Miller Gunsmoke.

Let me chuck my two pennorth in here.

I believe that the first batch of Marvels arriving in 1960 numbered three, and not two.

Below are pics of probably the first 4 pre-hero Marvels I purchased, all at the same time from the paper shop at the bottom of the street where we lived at the time, which until then had been the source of my and my brother's weekly Topper and Beezer, Certainly the first purchased 'set' of the four titles of which I was them aware, Amazing Adventures escaped my notice until # 3 suddenly popped up in a nearby newsagent, which doubled as a sweetshop, situated as it was immediately opposite a primary school.

Three of them are cover dated June 1961, but the JIM is May. At the time, JIM always lagged a month behind the other three titles, a situation, I noticed, which continued until at least the end of 1961.

The reason why can be found in Mike's Amazing World of Comics, where the release date for the JIM is given as 28 February, and the other three as 7 March, just a week apart.

The June JIM, #69, was not released until 6 April, so would have travelled with the July TOS, TTA and ST. I picked up all four of those simultaneously the following month.

Now turning to the May 1960 issues, before the bug had bitten me, but Mike gives the on sale date of JIM # 58 and Gunsmoke Western # 58 as 29 January.

The on sale date of Strange Tales # 75 is also 29 January, which tells me that it would have been sent with the two May issues.

Enough to convince me, at least.

QED?

On 5/9/2024 at 1:11 PM, Malacoda said:

However, it turns out the score is Alan 0, Duncan 1, because this dropped onto my doormat this morning....

 

I think the extraordinary difficulty of finding even a single copy of this points more to it being ND with a tiny number of randos turning up either at the time or subsequently than it being distributed in anything like the same volume as a normal T&P Marvel order at the time. 

Haystack 0, needle 1.

Everything comes to him who waits.

On 5/7/2024 at 8:57 PM, Kevin.J said:

There's an old story that I found a old pound note in a puddle and showed my Dad, he said do you want that dirty old bit of paper or this lovely shiny sixpence, guess what I wanted

You should have held out for 9d then hit the spinner rack.

On 5/7/2024 at 2:53 PM, Kevin.J said:

Couple of months later

"Lets try 8p again, I hate losing all those 2ps to greedy kids"  

 

 

Not even 2p, just its forerunner, 2d.

Suppose every bit helps, though.

2d or not 2d, that is the question.

On 5/7/2024 at 12:00 AM, Kevin.J said:

Thats a bargain, someone increased the price to 8p for mine  

 

Without even looking, that has to be a Miller, with its pre-decimal PBS stamp.

Any estimates on what proportion of the surviving copies are Millers?

And does anyone know when the PBS upped the price from 6d to 8d?

When the cover price was increased to 10d, possibly?

And there are presumably some still in circulation with more than one price stamp.

On 5/5/2024 at 11:28 AM, Malacoda said:

Hey @OtherEric are there brands of backing boards in the US that have adverts on them?  Those comics Leonard is holding are clearly not JIM 83 and FF5 (though Howard is holding Hulk 160).   The pictures are wrong for the backs of those comics, but from the way he's holding them, they look like they're boarded (as you'd hope).  Are there backing boards with adverts? If so, those ads look weirdly (deliberately?) old.  Maybe for copyright reasons they couldn't display the original adverts so they had to create some. 

Or is this just bad continuity? 

Bad research.

There was an episode where Sheldon was pondering on the desirability of Flash # 123 versus FF # 48, and both of them were shown, but they were clearly mockups, the proportions were not right for a genuine comic book.

Maybe the props department budget would not stretch to the real thing.

On 4/30/2024 at 12:34 PM, Malacoda said:

How far back are you going?  He seems to have auctioned some personal collection items in Dec 22. 

Coulda been, maybe a garbled version of this that I picked up.

On 4/29/2024 at 6:50 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Apart from people like Albert's of course, who wrote stuff down. 

Think I read not long ago that Alan Class turned up at one of Excalibur's sales, possibly as a potential buyer, maybe keeping an eye on items he had consigned.

Did anyone else hear this?

Unfortunately this was one of the things I neglected to write down, so no chapter and verse at present.

itmmeta=01HWDJ77R5YR602QNMFR0J42WX&hash=item2aca0fac07:g:MKAAAOSwbxpalfWY&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA4B%2Fglx%2BKO5qe0VQhXGqNwSfAJGpqhV7GTKDQibMxvlH2YQq9m55aRmoyeqDrgmABbe5vg1vgTPN8fqM6Hr7dIBEzcVqHIAO0hMDLWJrXSXMz6fazDq76lOJlBH1sG7oMYKNS6kt1b8Zjm4XOxganTmWS35HPGs483DDxQ3bOCLxmXn5dOOly%2F4jpCTc%2BcB28jH3ORpZhpHH0f7yCgLsTseVqa30U1y0fjGD2yQv3kgGf0h1pSB091MiUJJ0yU%2FHh4cN5gqS7I2Zqnar2WWOuULR%2BhO01SolgcJ%2B2c2EwmQll|tkp%3ABk9SR5T8nLLjYw

The seller of this item (Action # 317) on ebay says it is a rare version, not the usual 10d one.

Probably true, all the other stamped copies on ebay right now are 10d ones, but here is one I got locally recently:

Also an 8d stamped copy of # 430.

And Ethel has positioned the stamp on both the #317s within a couple of microns of each other. That's what years of experience can do for you.

On 4/23/2024 at 7:16 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Back in the day you could sleep eight hours and they'd still be on the first frame 

I used to like Steady Eddie. Selby is in the same mould. 

Eddie Charlton's middle initials,

On 4/22/2024 at 9:04 PM, Get Marwood & I said:

Fell asleep in front of the snooker.

Was it Eddie Charlton v Cliff Thorburn?

If so, don't bother waking up.

On 4/19/2024 at 5:37 PM, Malacoda said:

What's the guide they're talking about? 

Canadian Price Variant